Tag Archive for ‘howard government’ at Larvatus Prodeo

Tag Archive for 'howard government'

Balance?

Published

1 month ago

. 37 Comments

I’m not sure how this one slipped through:

What the longevity of almost all state and territory governments suggests is that it is difficult for an opposition to come to power except through the electorate’s view that it is time for a change… It is unlikely, however, that this will stop the Canberra press gallery working itself into a state of excitement over this year’s national and state votes.

From The Australian today.

In related news, I was somewhat heartened by Greg Hunt’s declining to start ranting and raving over the ’solar panels will burn your house down’ thing last night on Lateline, when effectively invited to do so by Tony Jones. The question followed a story which was clearly framed to build momentum for the ‘Peter Garrett Must Go’ campaign.

I thought, and still think, that Garrett’s position is worth debating, and as Roger Jones noted, the comments thread on the post here has been quite illuminating compared to the media coverage. But I’m not so sure that the press has the responsibility to collude in a campaign to take a ministerial scalp. My memory may well be faulty on this score, but I really don’t recall the same level of intensity and pursuit of Howard government ministers. Given recent admissions by AWB, it might be instructive to go back and look whether Alexander Downer faced constant front page stories on the Wheat for Arms scandal.

Sure, all the ingredients for a press frenzy are there in the insulation debacle, including human interest stories from relatives of those who tragically lost their lives, or workers who were injured themselves. But perspective seems sadly lacking, or even basic research, as Bernard Keane observes in Crikey today.

The Overshadow

Published

Mark

1 year, 1 month ago

in Economics and Politics

. 43 Comments

Props to Paul Burns for cooking up the latest apt nickname for Peter Costello – it says it all, really. If the Liberal Party thought they’d recovered from the political morass they sunk themselves into with the stimulus package naysaying, they’d be quite wrong. Most voters won’t be reading every single one of the five hundred or so articles about Costello’s continuing ambitions/frontbench refusal/refusal to comment in every single paper. But the Liberals have succeeded in conveying the message that they are opposed to doing anything much right now about the economic situation and that they’re much more interested in themselves. Good one.

Just how dire the gap between Liberal obsessions and public opinion is can be discerned from a perusal of Possum’s close reading of the figures in the latest Essential Research poll.

All this raises the question of Joe Hockey’s suitability for the Shadow Treasury. He’s been touted by Malcolm Turnbull as a “great communicator”. Opinions might reasonably differ on that. But if we accept the claim for the sake of argument, what exactly will be communicating?

It hasn’t escaped notice that Hockey’s elevation (and Christopher Pyne’s promotion) leaves a gaggle of “moderates” at the top of the opposition tree. Perhaps there’s a need to pacify the Liberal right by reciting endless mantras about the virtues of free markets (although again, whether the Howard government incarnated such virtues is surely dubious). The problem here is that “free markets” are, in the public mind, the cause of our current woes and pledging one’s faith in their wonderfulness is also coming across as code for… doing nothing. And waiting for the economy to tank.

I’ve always argued that to claim that Malcolm Turnbull has an “economic strategy” is to stretch words beyond the limit of their meanings. Continue reading ‘The Overshadow’

The Liberal bottom line

Published

Kim

1 year, 1 month ago

in Economics

. 36 Comments

Since everyone else is, I thought I might add in my ~~$950~~ two cents’ worth into the great stimulus package debate. I’m also in the camp of thinking Malcolm’s nuts, and while some have been decrying those who discuss the stimulus package in terms of its politics rather than its policy robustness, I’m a tad surprised Turnbull and his crew haven’t copped more flak for a deeply cynical move to try to capitalise on the country’s misfortune – is it the price we need to pay for Turnbull’s desire to be “relevant” – as articulated today? It’s becoming clearer from what’s been reported in the press about the party room meeting that the main factors in the Coalition’s thinking are purely political.

Continue reading ‘The Liberal bottom line’

Kevin Rudd’s ideological manifesto

Published

Mark

1 year, 1 month ago

in Economics, Howardia, Markets, Philosophy and Politics

. 88 Comments

The Prime Minister has written a long essay for the next issue of The Monthly, excerpts from which are available on the web. Robert Corr extracts the telling quote:

The time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes. … Neo-liberalism, and the free-market fundamentalism it has produced, has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy. … Government is not the intrinsic evil that neo-liberals have argued it is. Government, properly constituted and properly directed, is for the common good, embracing both individual freedom and fairness, a project designed for the many, not just the few.

Paul Kelly has pinged the politics:

He shuns any embrace of old-fashioned socialism. For Rudd, Labor’s task is to hold the middle ground – between state socialism and free-market fundamentalism. He argues the failure of neo-liberalism has made the state the primary actor; it must save the financial system, stimulate the economy and impose a new global regulatory regime.

Rudd has put Turnbull on notice. His plan is to convert the global crisis into a historic failure of Liberal Party philosophy and its pro-market ideas.

I’m a bit sceptical about whether the Howard government actually was a neo-liberal regime. Dirigism for its supporters at the top end of town and populist handouts for the masses, while seeking to control more or less everything was more its style. But here probably the direction and intent of regulation and interventionism is more important than the size of the state. I suspect, though, Rudd will get away with making the charge stick to the Liberals. And that, I think, is the purpose of the exercise. I’m not sure how much ideological content there actually is in Rudd’s essay. I think the ideological chasm Lenore Taylor perceives might be a tad illusory.

Elsewhere: Jason Soon, probably predictably, isn’t impressed, but I think he has exposed some flaws in Rudd’s argument and logic.

Elsewhere: Guy Beres.

Howard’s back! II

Published

Mark

1 year, 2 months ago

in Howardia, Media and Polls

. 72 Comments

The former Dear Leader has received his reward – something a little more prestigious than the weirdly named awards from obscure right wing think tanks he spent some time trotting over to America last year to collect. John Howard will be awarded the “Medal of Freedom” by another soon to be former leader – George W. Bush. Apparently it’s “America’s highest civilian honour”, but I can’t read the name without thinking of all those wingnuts who have “blog[s] of freedom” or whatever.

Anyway, this might be an opportune time to link to a post from Possum – wherein he has crunched some polling data comparing the first year of Howard’s first term with the first year of Kevin Rudd’s. As is his wont, Possum has provided some nifty graphs. A comparison of their respective performances is worth filing away next time the “one term” stuff pops up in the media.

Of welfare policy, work, entitlements and parental leave

Published

Mark

1 year, 5 months ago

in Economics, Education, Government, Health, Howardia, Immigration, Industrial Relations, Parenting, Policy, Poverty and Women

. 65 Comments

There’s been a lot of discussion sparked by the Productivity Commission report into Parental Leave about “middle class welfare”. Because the PC also made recommendations about the baby bonus, and therefore there have been predictable calls to share the dosh equally with non-working mothers, paid parental leave is being conceptualised as “welfare” rather than as a workplace entitlement. The Commission is quite explicit that the goal of the recommendations is to ensure that leave (which in itself as a concept only works if it’s related to work) is available for parents – primarily for working women. That’s why it will be paid by employers (who will later claim the amount back from the government) – to symbolise that it is an entitlement pertaining to employment rights and not a “hand out” or “welfare”. I think that needs to be recognised.

But perhaps some of the conceptual slippage (which is really important politically) is understandable. The policy has more than one aim – and one of its aims is to foster early childhood development, and the assumption here is that direct involvement of a parent or parents is crucial at the early stages of infancy. But, nevertheless, it is worth reinforcing the fact that insofar as non working mothers have made a choice not to work, that under the current policy design, 10 hours a week for a year would be enough to trigger the paid parental leave entitlement.

So, that’s that. But there are some ambivalences around all this, some of which I share. Writing today in The Australian, George Megalogenis launches an assault on “middle class welfare”, giving readers a history lesson about when family payments took off, and pointing out that in the age of Menzies they were small change. The implication seems to be explicitly that politicians are in the habit of tossing bribes around, and that virtuous self-reliance was the norm for 50s and 60s Australia. What this ignores, though, is that Menzies Land was surrounded by high tarriff walls and as a result of the Australian settlement, had a highly regulated wage system that was openly premised (from Higgins onwards) on the male wage as a breadwinner’s wage sufficient to support two adults and the then average number of children.

As Kim pointed out in a post here a month or so ago, reflecting on Betty Friedan’s legacy, the second wave of feminism and the movement for women’s workforce participation coincided with the increasing inability of a sole wage to sustain the level of consumer demand that sustained a consumption oriented “modern industrial economy”. Feminism, if you like, lent a hand to save capitalism. Megalogenis is right to point to remaining hurdles in the tax/welfare mix to participation in the labour market, but I want to trouble the logic that this should be the sole aim of policy.

Continue reading ‘Of welfare policy, work, entitlements and parental leave’

Peter Costello’s legacy

Published

Mark

1 year, 6 months ago

in Economics, Howardia, Media and Polls

. 11 Comments

The Fin Review ran today with a cover story on Peter Costello’s legacy – not on the Liberal leadership but as Treasurer. It appears to be an article of faith – based on a questionable analogy about the supposed damage a move away from Paul Keating’s legacy did to Labor in opposition (and one, incidentally, pushed by PJK himself to journos and commentators) – that they have to hug John Howard close to their chest. So Peter Costello is routinely dubbed by Liberals as “Australia’s best Treasurer”.

The IMF didn’t think so. The Fin has obtained leaked Treasury documents prepared for discussions with IMF officials last year. The upshot of the story can be summed up by its tagline – “Peter Costello’s fiscal policy was potentually more damaging than any other period since the Whitlam years”. IMF wonks were deeply concerned about a stimulatory budget and fiscal policy at a time of economic over-heating, and the article by Paul Cleary concludes:

… from 2003 onwards, Costello executed a sustained expansion of fiscal policy during a sustained upswing in the economy. Looking further back, his predecessors had only engaged in such a policy during recessions. The result of this outbreak of bad policy in the last years of the Howard government is likely to be a long period of inflation and weak economic growth, and it may take some considerable time, and pain, to get the balance back in the right order.

Continue reading ‘Peter Costello’s legacy’

What if they held a History War and nobody came?

Published

Kim

1 year, 6 months ago

in Education, History, Howardia, Media and Politics

. 109 Comments

Now that the Howard gubbermint is ancient history – except in the memoirs of the ghost of Peter Costello who wants you to know that Howard LIED six times and failed to hand him the leadership on a platter (ps. don’t waste your 55 bucks on his stoopid book – it’s been scooped, and that’s about it, except Pete WAS TEH BEST TREASURER EVAH! and could have singlehandedly sorted the international credit crisis) – there’s very little force, I’d have thought, in a claim that “the history wars have been revived”. A claim made by the usual suspects – particularly Dr Kevin Donnelly – that teh Communists have their hands on the history curriculum under a Labor Government. Read all about it here – in Crikey – by Jeff Sparrow – who skewers this nonsense without even raising a sweat, I suspect. As you were. No narrative here. Look away. There’s commies under your bed though.

Continue reading ‘What if they held a History War and nobody came?’

Continued subsidies to private schools will entrench disadvantage

Published

tigtog

1 year, 8 months ago

in Education and Parenting

. 70 Comments

The Age: Equality in education is a dying concept (Kenneth Davidson)

The imputation is clear. The Rudd Government education “revolution” involves continuing with the unfair funding arrangements of the Howard government. Why? This can be explained by a simple political calculus, which suggests that the Government has more votes to lose than to gain by a level funding playing field as operates in most OECD countries. This is where private schools receive public funding only on the condition that their total spending per student is no higher than for government school students.

It is not to denigrate government schools to point out that they educate most of the “at risk” students. It is irrefutable that each dollar spent on these schools will generate a much bigger pay-off in economic and social terms than a dollar spent on non-government schools, which are already better resourced than government schools.

Combine this failure to ensure a more level playing field with the fiasco enveloping the plan to give all school kids a computer and the current government’s education policies are looking more shambolic every day. I knew that this centrist government was never going to sort out everything on my progressive wishlist, but I thought they’d do better than this.

Auntie ABC passes the “biased reporting” test

Published

tigtog

1 year, 9 months ago

in Authoritarianism, Culture, Howardia, Media, Policy and Politics

. 37 Comments

Today’s Age:

THE ABC’s flagship radio current affairs programs — often the source of tension and controversy in the Howard years — have won overwhelming endorsement from a landmark report by an external expert.

An audit of AM, PM and The World Today found they were almost 96% accurate.

[...]

The review, by an expert who reported to the ABC’s director of editorial policies, Paul Chadwick, found 95.3% of items sampled from the three programs were either wholly or substantially accurate for plain facts and were 97.3% accurate on the context of the facts.

Denis Muller, an independent media research specialist and a former associate editor of The Age, devised a method to review a sample of 150 current affairs items from last October.

I’m sure that some will cavil that this audit only covered three radio programs, and thus doesn’t account for the dastardly mind-control powers of Red Kezza on the 7:30 report, but it’s a fine result considering the relentless complaints of bias from the Howard government, and especially the complaints from former Communications Minister Richard Alston against these radio programs in particular.

It would be interesting to see a comparative audit of programs from before the time of Director Scott’s “impartiality” rules (adopted in late 2006) to see whether they have made any fundamental difference to the flagship news programs, or whether the new mandates requiring a “balance” of opposing opinions on any “matter of public contention” have just meant that various opinion programs have subsequently been hijacked by “balance”, no matter how ridiculous and poorly argued some of those “balancing” views might be.

My own suspicion is that the news programs before the new regime would prove to have been just as accurate as in this last audit, while the accuracy of content presented in the opinion shows would prove to have declined drastically since the mandatory “balance” rules were imposed.

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