I was going to comment on the execution of the Bali bombers, and the attitudes of Australian politicians towards that execution, but I think this Age editorial covers the situation nicely:
Mr Rudd’s comments may have suggested that he was repudiating the Labor Party’s long-standing opposition to capital punishment, but it seems that now the bombers have been executed the Government feels it may be safe to act on principle again. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said in a television interview yesterday that although he had nothing but contempt for the bombers, Australia did not support the death penalty. Indeed, Australia will co-sponsor a resolution in the UN General Assembly calling for a moratorium on capital punishment.
So the double standard goes on. And to reassure Australians that it is a bipartisan double standard, Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Helen Coonan trotted out this familiar line: “From the Opposition’s perspective, we don’t support the death penalty. What we do respect is that other countries have different systems.”
It must be hoped that the General Assembly will pass the moratorium resolution, but if it does it will not be because Australia has earned any respect for a principled stance. The Bali bombers were criminals, not martyrs, and the abandonment of principle by Australia’s governments is one of their pernicious legacies.
Amongst the other stuff that almost went without notice over the past few days, the Victorian parliament passed legislation covering carbon sequestration, with the support of both Labor and the Coalition.
One of the stronger critiques of CCS is who has responsibility for the greenhouse gases thus sequestered, and over what timescale. While there are good reasons to expect CO2 sequestered in depleted gas fields to stay there, the consequences of leakage, particularly sudden leakage, are potentially very severe. While the legislation essentially hands control of the entire process to the Minister responsible, it does make clear that, ultimately, the greenhouse gas sequestered becomes the property - and thus the responsibility - of the Victorian government, something Greens Upper House MP Greg Barber covered in his speech on the matter (as the slightly paranoid parliamentary website warns us, this is a proof transcript and may contain the odd error).
Continue reading ‘Carbon sequestration bill passed in VIC parliament’
Amongst the myriad other things that Barack Obama (touch wood) will have to deal with, it’s negotiating a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that’s of the greatest long-term importance.
While it’s always risky to equate campaign positions with how a politician will actually govern, the noises from the Obama campaign have been reasonable. This is particularly so given the peculiar American fixation with “energy independence”. Their policy position is straightforward: domestically, an 80% cut by 2050 through cap-and-trade, with 100% auctioning of permits. Internationally, they want to re-engage with the “UNFCC – the main international forum dedicated to addressing the climate problem”. They will also create a Global Energy Forum of the world’s largest emitters “to focus exclusively on global energy and environmental issues”. It’s still inadequate, certainly, but it’s a heck of a lot closer to the ballpark than the current administration.
Meanwhile, the other big polluters have been starting to firm up their positions pre-Copenhagen (or, technically, pre the next round of talks in Poland in December), but the road to a deal is as clear as mud at this point. While a number of eastern European countries - and Italy - have tried to renege on Europe’s commitments to a 20% cut in emissions by 2020, the broader EU seems to be holding firm on its position. But the biggest unknown is China. China recently released its own white paper on climate change. It details in some detail, and without sugarcoating, the potential domestic effects on climate change. It also details a large number of domestic policies to reduce emissions growth. But as far as international targets go, it’s extremely vague, with lots of praise for the Clean Development Mechanism but very little about what it might take for the Chinese to sign up to anything stronger.
It seems like there’s lots of horsetrading to go before - if - we get a deal in Copenhagen.
As Peter Wood notes, the Treasury modeling for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme contains some rather dodgy assumptions: as he puts it: “There is no way in hell that the international community could accept a 5% reduction from Australia that corresponds to a 550 ppm target, or 15% corresponding to a 510 ppm target. These targets would involve Australia free-riding on other countries emission reductions.” On that basis, you’d have to agree with Peter that Australia’s standard approach to climate change negotiations - attempt to negotiate a position that involves doing as little as possible - is likely to continue.
However, there is a fair bit of good news in the Treasury report. As previously noted, paying developing countries for permits is likely going to be a major source of “our” emissions reductions for some time. I don’t have a huge problem with this; emissions are a global problem, and paying for clean technologies in developing countries is likely to be a win for both us and those developing countries. So getting a deal that ensures the largest pool of permits available for purchase is in Australia’s direct financial interest. But there’s more: the Treasury modeling seems to indicate that it’s not only Australia who benefits from joining a deal now, rather than later. According to Box 5.4 of the Treasury report:
Subsequently, when these developing economies join the global emissions trading scheme, their mitigation costs are higher than if they had joined earlier. A larger part of the economy now has to adjust to the emission price, resulting in larger distortions or allocative efficiency losses in the economy and larger declines in returns to capital.
In contrast, those that join the global trading scheme at or near the beginning receive a relative benefit once all regions join. As a result of the larger declines in returns to capital experienced in delayed-entry economies, early-entry economies receive relatively more investment, leading to higher levels of capital stock.
Continue reading ‘Modelling says: do a deal, and make it a good one’
…unless you already know and like the answers you’re going to get. You’d reckon that the Opposition might have learned its lesson on that. It seems like they might need another one, given their response to the impending release of the Treasury modeling on the economic effects of the ETS:
Mr Robb says the Government must include recent global events before it finalises the scheme in its White Paper by the end of the year.
“We will be demanding that the White Paper is not released until such time as the Government has made some attempt to assess the impact of this financial meltdown around the world,” he said.
Well, the government could have done that, but Robb probably wouldn’t have liked answers when they came back.
Continue reading ‘In politics, don’t ask questions…’
Sally Neighbour’s 4 Corners report on the AFP was a bit patchy, relying a little too much on two disgruntled former officers and, in one case, his wife, for interview fodder. However, it does provide a good, succinct summary of events leading up to the charging of Mohammed Haneef, strongly suggesting that the charges were the result of pressure from high up in the AFP. And there’s plenty on Keelty’s propensity for keeping the government of the day happy, and the Howard government’s desire for bureaucrats to stick to the party line.
But one of the most interesting bits of the whole program was on another issue entirely; there are indications that the refocusing of the AFP on national security issues has led to its ignoring other less glamorous but equally important issues. From the transcript:
JOHN BROOME, FORMER CHAIR NATIONAL CRIME AUTHORITY: The question I ask is whether we’ve done this at the expense of the AFP’s core budget, whether they’ve taken their eyes off major issues such as drug trafficking, financial crime, issues such as child sex tourism, these kinds of issues which the AFP saw as its main work four or five years ago and which apparently now is not its core business.
SALLY NEIGHBOUR: Former chairman of the National Crime Authority, John Broome, says the shift is reflected in a dramatic drop in the number of criminals charged by the AFP. Cases sent to the DPP for prosecution have fallen by half, from more than a thousand to around 500 a year.
Continue reading ‘4 Corners on the AFP’
Well, you’ve got to hand it to the PR firm that did Better Place’s publicity. Not only did they get their client on the Today Show, the story went global in the New York Times. And, on the face of it, their project sounds great. There are four big problems with the electric car: even the best batteries give a relatively short maximum range, they take a long time to recharge, there’s no infrastructure for recharging on the go, and the batteries are expensive. Better Place hopes to overcome these problems with a three-pronged (if you’ll pardon the pun) approach; a network of “recharge points” where you can plug your electric car in and recharge while parked, battery swapover stations that allow you to physically swap batteries in a couple of minutes if you’re on a trip and don’t have time for a recharge, and the financial machinery so that you pay for the service, rather than buying batteries outright.
The plan is plausible enough at the technical level. The Nissan-Renault alliance is planning to have full-electric vehicles available by around 2011 or so; reports vary on the range of the vehicles, but something around 160 kilometres is plausible. A number of battery manufacturers are building factories to churn the requisite lithium-ion cells out, and the projected battery durability is good enough to make the things practical. And recharge stations and battery swapover points are pretty simple exercises. So, in the longer term, I reckon this company is on to something along the lines of the right concept. Battery tech is already good enough to provide plausible city cars, and it improves every year. We already know of a number of ways to generate zero-emission electricity. And the battery leasing model takes a lot of the risk out of an electric car for the purchaser.
In the short term, however, there are very good reasons to be skeptical of large-scale electric vehicle rollout schemes; and lots of reasons to expect the companies involved to have their hand out to government.
Continue reading ‘I’ll believe it when I see the charging posts…’
The Oz reports that the AFP has finally released an unclassified version of their submission to the Clarke inquiry on the investigation of Dr. Mohammed Haneef.
I haven’t had time to read the report yet, but the Oz’s report summarises some of the issues that the AFP claims made them suspicious. What’s new is that they report finding “jihadist” materials in Haneef’s flat, a brochure ‘from the UK branch of an international organisation, which is prescribed terrorist organisation in a number of countries. The brochure includes a reference to “…the brutal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq… the killing and murder of our brothers and sisters and the brutality of British and American foreign policy…”’, as well as some audio files “containing lectures by an author “who has been linked to Al Qaeda”.
As the Oz notes, the AFP hasn’t named the organization nor the author. Given that at this stage it could hardly be sensitive information, you’d have to wonder why not.
Well, it seems that the Republican National Committee thinks so. Essentially, they’ve stopped using their money to pay for John McCain’s campaign ads.
Why? Because there are a whole bunch of other elections on US election day, and some of them are as important as the one for the White House. Most obviously, there’s the congressional races, where Democrats are likely to pick up seats in both the House and Senate. The Democrats have been fantasizing about getting 60 Senate seats. 60 votes allows them to override a filibuster (assuming that they can keep their own party in line). They probably won’t quite get there, but they will pick up Senate seats. Unseating incumbent Senators is ridiculously difficult, so some wins should entrench the Democrats with a Senate majority for some time to come.
But beyond that, there’s also the races for state legislatures and governorships. While you might not think that these matter terribly much from a national perspective, they have long-term effects on the shape of the federal congress. If a federal Senator dies in office, the state Governor gets to appoint his successor, at least until the next election, where incumbency again makes the appointee difficult to defeat. Furthermore, the geographical shape of US congressional districts is set (in most cases) by the relevant state legislature, and in recent years such redistrictings have resulted in considerable jerrymandering. So, particularly in the larger states, controlling the legislature at the time redistricting happens can give a substantial advantage for future congressional elections.
So, even if the US presidential election becomes a bit of an anticlimax, there will be lots to pore over after their election day.
When talk of a sporting merger with our trans-Tasman cousins comes up, it usually relates to putting together a decent rugby team. But, at the moment, the Oceania cricket team looks like it’d be a hell of a lot more competitive than the Australian one, who just got completely thumped by India in front of tiny crowds in Mohali.
Specifically, we could do with New Zealand’s captain, Daniel Vettori. While Bangladesh aren’t exactly of the same class as India, how’d you like a bloke who took nine wickets bowling off-spin in subcontinental conditions, and topped it off with two half-centuries to take his team to victory? Given the uninspiring performance of Shane Watson, and the continued absence of Andrew Symonds, Jacob Oram might be a better bet as an all-rounder as well.
Failing that, you do have to wonder about the Australian selectors’ decision to leave out left-arm spinner Beau Casson, who bowled reasonably well in Australia’s tour of the West Indies, particularly after Bryce McGain got injured. Was Cameron White - excellent one-day slogger (not to mention, a Victorian) that he is - really going to be a better option?
In the discussion of this thread, Mark referred to this column by Guy Rundle, in which he argues easy access to credit has helped paper over the cracks in American society:
In the wake of this crisis, blame is being sheeted home to the average person, who is apparently running up too much debt. Well, mercy, what a surprise, it’s the people’s fault. Let’s face it, people only consent to this crappy society because of what they can rack up on debt. If you’re going to spend forty years of fifty hours a week – your whole one life on Earth – in the same office, doing crap you don’t want to do, damn right you want a frikkin flat screen TV at the end of it. And to eat out. And drink stupid overpriced cocktails in awful resorts.
The short point is that if we close down easy credit, the rationale for Western capitalism collapses instantly. Because the rest of it is so godawful, that without rewards, no one would put up with it. Hence the need, over the last eight years, to keep it all bubbling, at any cost.
Continue reading ‘Stagnant middle-class incomes - cause of the credit crunch?’
While ASIO routinely over-reached in its early years in its spying on various activists, it seems (at least in terms of what’s come to light) that some of the worst examples of “secret police” surveillance of community organizations has come from state “Special Branches” and their successors. In Victoria, for instance, the Operations Intelligence Unit spied on all manner of people and groups, notably including one Peter Garrett. Well, it seems like the tradition continues. The Age has a long article about an undercover cop spying on a variety of groups, including Animal Liberation, Socialist Alternative (RM:Corrected), and - get this - the organizing committee for the Palm Sunday March!
Continue reading ‘Just because you’re paranoid’
With the Rudd government’s promise to speed up infrastructure funding, and the impending release of the Victorian Government’s transport statement, there’s been a couple of transport infrastructure plans floating around the media.
The first, splashed on the front pages of the Herald Sun, is a new freeway, is a leak from the Victorian Goverment’s transport plan. It joins the recently built Eastlink tollway in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, to the Mornington Peninsula freeway in Melbourne’s far south-eastern fringes, bypassing the suburbs of Carrum Downs, Frankston and Mount Eliza. The government wants federal money, from infrastructure Australia, for the project to build it without charging tolls. The second, put together by the Cycling Promotion Fund, a consortium of bicycle-related businesses big and small, proposes to spend a similar amount of money over four years building cycling infrastructure across Australia’s big cities, with the goal of “a doubling of cycling trips in capital cities by 2012 and tripling cycling trips by 2029 based on the 2006 census data.”
While it’s perhaps unfair to compare a public submission by what I imagine is a relatively small lobbying organization to a state government-backed inquiry can do, it strikes me that there’s a fundamental weakness in this document, and most proposals for large investments in cycling infrastructure over the years. The result is usually a pat on the head and a dribbling of money for cyclists, with the rivers of money continuing to go to the road builders.
Continue reading ‘Two transport proposals’
The media reports aren’t particularly informative, but the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s news release contains a fairly good explanation of why a Qantas Airbus A330 airliner suddenly decided to dive a couple of hundred meters (not thousands of metres as some of the more colourful passenger interviews state).
All Airbus airliners since the A320, and the more recent of Boeing’s aircraft models, are “fly-by-wire” craft. That is, there is no direct mechanical or hydraulic connection between the control stick, and the aircraft’s control surfaces, at all. So, even when the plane is not on autopilot, there is a computer system that translates the pilot’s commands on the controls into movement of the various movable bits on the wings and tail. This is by no means a new thing - the A320 first went in to service in 1988, and the F-16 fighter had such a system way back in 1979. Obviously, to get regulatory approval for such systems, the manufacturers had to demonstrate that the systems wouldn’t malfunction and cause the plane to dive into the ground. So all flight control systems implement multiple, redundant control computers, wiring, and whatnot, and the software is developed to the very highest standards, with highly rigorous testing and using the most advanced software engineering techniques to ensure reliability. This isn’t just marketing guff, either; I’m no expert in aviation, but I am a published academic in the area of software reliablility. And so, I’ve read one or two technical papers that came out of Airbus work. They do some very clever stuff (as, I’m sure, do Boeing).
One of the basic tenets of designing reliable systems is redundancy; the aircraft should be able to survive the failure of any single component, and critical components often have triple or quadruple redundancy. And so it is the case with the A320’s flight control system. The first relevant bit was the “angle of attack” sensors on the plane’s exterior, of which there were three. These measure the angle at which the plane is pointing. These are fed into three Air Data Inertial Reference Unit (ADIRU) units, which translate the raw readings of the sensors into processed data, which is then fed to the three, redundant flight computers which end up controlling the aircraft.
Continue reading ‘The Qantas nosedive - what happened’
It seems that even the business lobby thinks that the the Liberal Party’s continued bleating for the delay in ETS introduction - the latest excuse, as pointed out by Ken at Surfdom being the credit crunch - isn’t a great idea. From the Oz:
“If the Government pulled the plug and delayed the system now, the level of uncertainty would be even more difficult to deal with,” said Maria Tarrant from the Business Council of Australia.
“It is critically important for business to know exactly what the Government is planning and if they pulled back now it would be highly problematic, but the economic situation makes it even more important that it gets the design of the scheme right.”
Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Mitch Hooke said a “delay would just add to the uncertainty. All of my concerns can be addressed by the Government getting the design, the framework right.
Continue reading ‘Emissions trading still on course for 2010′
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