Tag Archive for 'Janet Albrechtsen'

Even the devil sometimes speaks true? Rudd, Labor and the 2010 election

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by
Mark
2 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change, Federal Elections, Government, Health, Howardia, Industrial Relations, Policy and Politics
. 50 Comments

We have it on good authority, that of St Thomas Aquinas, that demons and evil spirits can sometimes speak the truth. Now, I’m not saying that Janet Albrechtsen falls into either of those categories, but for once I was interested to read something she wrote:

It is disappointing if this is now the politics of Rudd’s prime ministership. Despite Rudd’s tendency to conflate issues as moral challenges, he appears to view every political decision through one prism: inflict no pain and it’s all gain for him. … Here, in a nutshell, is Rudd’s political nirvana. He can continue a prime ministership based on rhetorical flourishes and symbolism without inflicting any pain on voters.

Much of Albrechtsen’s analysis is inflected with the spleen one would expect (and the illusion that to introduce WorkChoices is to do good), but I suspect she has something of a point. I’ve been critical myself of Rudd’s ‘big tent’ strategy – the accumulation of political capital for its own sake. As I’ve also commented, the Labor Party, in the face of Abbott’s leadership, is likely to downplay climate change as an issue. In an election year, the theme will move to an accentuation of the argument that Abbott and his frontbench waxworks represent a return to Howardism; but a nastier, more brutish version. And don’t be misled, they’ve hardly even begun to fight on this front. In many respects, the smart political move is to let Abbott prepare his own noose, as his negatives are already very much defined in the public mind.

But any election theme that Abbott represents the past requires painting Rudd as representing a brighter future. I’m not so certain Labor can just run on its record – a la the first term Hawke government, which got a nasty surprise in the 1984 election. Continue reading ‘Even the devil sometimes speaks true? Rudd, Labor and the 2010 election’

Rudd’s honeymoon and Abbott’s one night stand

Published
by
Anna Winter
3 months ago
in Levity, Music, Politics and Women
. 231 Comments

So no doubt all you ladies out there have finally felt that you have permission to admit your passion for the love rug.

Tony Abbott laughing
“What about the Love Rug?” he demanded. “Can’t you lift your gaze?” (via)

Emboldened by Ms Albrechtsen’s words I will admit to a level of respect for the man. His beliefs really are genuine and well-considered. He, for the moment at least, seems rather incapable of bullshitting the electorate about what he thinks. On a certain level I find that more understandable and easy to empathise with than I do politicians with no discernible policy ideas or passions at all.

But invoking the bad boy fantasy in support of Abbott’s chances is more apt than Ms Albrechtsen seems to understand. Sure the fantasy of catching and taming the bad boy might be common, but almost everyone understands it as fantasy. We all know that in real life it plays out as an action-packed summer, ending in heartbreak and/or difficult life lessons (and maybe even a love child).

Of course, most of us also cast our votes for reasons other than analogies with teenage fantasy. But that’s all a little serious for a Friday afternoon. So instead, listen to Sabian Wilde do a Gregorian chant about the Mad Monk.

[audio:http://inconversationwith.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/091114_icw_madmonk.mp3]

Grumpy is the new black

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Media, Politics, Sociology and The Web
. 108 Comments

Jason Wilson has a spiffy piece up at New Matilda on the rise and rise (and fall?) of the “trollumnist” – the op/ed columnist who provokes for advertising’s sake. He instances Miranda Devine, David Burchell, Planet Janet and Catherine Deveny. Riffing off Devine’s recent rant about cyclists, he writes:

But really, Devine’s column isn’t there to express a view shared by real people, but rather to disagree with a particular group. The column is aimed at cyclists, and those who are prepared to get angry on their behalf. Anyone who — like Devine — uses Twitter will have seen the outrage cranking up as soon as the column was posted. Along with the expressions of anger come links to the online version of the column, where metrics are collected and advertising hosted. In a fragmented media marketplace augmented by real-time social media, networked irritation drives traffic. Devine’s columns look more and more like linkbaiting, pure and simple.

I’ve rarely seen a better analysis of just why exactly all this ranting and raving is the lifeblood of a declining media than Wilson’s. But it does beg the question – what is it, precisely, about our culture that fosters the desire to be indignant? One wouldn’t want to credit the “trollumnist” with too much originality. The ground has to be prepared.

Kevin Rudd, Gordon Brown, Adam Smith and free markets

Published
by
Mark
11 months, 3 weeks ago
in China, Economics, Europe, History, International, Markets, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology and USA
. 95 Comments

As Kevin Rudd joined Gordon Brown in decrying “the false god” of “unfettered free markets” in London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, Janet Albrechtsen got her apoplexy in early, lamenting the fact that Kevin Rudd doesn’t read Hayek (apparently Ayaan Hirsi Ali has offered to tutor the Prime Minister in the guru of “economics and the rule of law”).

Albrechtsen tied herself in a series of knots trying to find the “gotcha” moment in Rudd’s ideological discourse. In point of fact, it’s quite possible to reconcile fiscal conservatism with being a social democrat, but the Hayek worshippers seem stuck in an age when there was supposedly a slippery slope between any view that markets are social institutions and socialism itself.

Here, it’s perhaps interesting that Gordon Brown chose to invoke Adam Smith on several occasions, a thinker to whom the authors of Hayekian dribble pay only occasional and meaningless obeisance:

Now, let me put markets in context. They can create unrivalled widening of choices and chances, harnessing self-interest to produce results transcending self-interest. When they work, they will fulfil the promise of Adam Smith that individual gain leads to collective gain, that even when people are pursuing private interests and private wishes they can nevertheless deliver public good.

But as we are discovering to our considerable cost, the problem is that, without transparent rules to guide them, free markets can reduce all relationships to transactions, all motivations to self-interest; as Jonathan Sacks has said, they can reduce all sense of value to consumer choice, all sense of worth to a price tag. So, unbridled and untrammelled, they can become the enemy of the good society.

And we can now see also that markets cannot self-regulate, but they can self-destruct and, again, if untrammelled and unbridled, they can become not just the enemy of the good society; they can become the enemy of the good economy. Markets are in the public interest but they are not synonymous with it.

Gordon Brown, a former university lecturer with a History PhD from Edinburgh, perhaps has a better claim to public intellectual status than Kevin Rudd. His whole speech is worth a read, and the full text is here (as is Rudd’s). Continue reading ‘Kevin Rudd, Gordon Brown, Adam Smith and free markets’

The spectre of Hayek haunts the land

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Economics, History, Markets, Media, Philosophy and Sociology
. 88 Comments

I kinda wish Kevin Rudd had never put his thoughts on Friedrich Von Hayek on paper, because had he not we’d have been saved some appallingly ill-informed “debates”. Although, if expert psephologist Janet Albrechtsen is right, Rudd’s articles on Howard’s Hayekian “brutopia” won Labor the election, so perhaps I should take back that wish.

My contention throughout the global financial crisis has been that blinkered ideological thinking has been worse than useless in explaining it or proscribing remedies, and that indeed the pressure of events has exposed yawning chasms in the coherence of ideology, and what we might call its fit with reality.

That’s never been more evident than in a truly absurd column today from Alan Wood, which argues that Hayek has a lesson for Rudd in the story of the bank deposit guarantee.

Continue reading ‘The spectre of Hayek haunts the land’

ABC and SBS boards selection panel announced

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Film, TV, Video etc, Media and Politics
. 16 Comments

There’s been a fair bit of discussion around here from time to time about the Rudd government’s proposals for ensuring merit based appointments to the boards of ABC and SBS, a matter of quite a deal of interest because of John Howard’s habit of appointing the most ludicrously provocative culture warriors possible. Even from the point of view of the right’s own pseudo-Gramscian (counter) march through the institutions thing, these appointments were completely counterproductive – the lack of any broadcasting experience on the part of the appointees negated their ability to scrutinise or shape management proposals. Howard, I suspect, was playing something of a double game, appointing chairs such as Donald McDonald and Maurice Newman on one hand and keeping up the “balance” pressure with appointments such as those of Ron Brunton, Janet Albrechtsen and Keith Windschuttle. The resulting ire also helped maintain Howard’s cred with the culture wars commentariat.

Labor promised last year to eschew political appointments, and introduce a selection panel at arms length from the Communications Minister. The final appointment would still be ministerial, but any appointment not recommended by the panel would have to be justified and the justification tabled in parliament. The procedure is outlined here. Ex pollies and senior political advisors are banned from appointment.

There are now two vacancies on the boards of both ABC and SBS, and the panel has been announced (note that it hasn’t been appointed by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy but by PMC Secretary Terry Moran). By the way, you’re reading about this first on LP – it hasn’t been picked up in the media yet. The panel is: Continue reading ‘ABC and SBS boards selection panel announced’

Economics, Planet Janet style

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 7 months ago
in Economics, Ethics and Media
. 11 Comments

The other day when I was talking about the findings in the Essential Research poll about public attitudes towards banks and passing on Reserve Bank interest rate cuts, I linked to Janet Albrechtsen’s column in which she loudly denounced populist bank bashing and asserted the Government and citizens should all be grateful to the banks:

The bottom line is this. The more the PM and the Treasurer bash the banks, the more they hurts Australian borrowers. Bank-bashing may feel good at the time but the subsequent pain will outweigh – heavily – the momentary pleasure. Anyone who understands the economy should understand that.

Anyone who understands economics? That apparently doesn’t include the Reserve Bank’s Deputy Governor Ric Battelino, who made these remarks to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics yesterday, reinforcing a “detailed case” from Assistant Governor Phil Lowe:

When we look at bank profitability, we find that Australian banks are around the top of the international range. On the surface, this could indicate a lesser degree of competition than elsewhere. But when we look a bit deeper it seems that an important reason for the high profitability of Australian banks is their unusually low bad debt experience.

That’s directly opposed to Planet’s arguments, any disagreement with which she denounced as “hypocrisy” and “ignorance”. Let’s dwell on the first of those nouns. Stephen Mayne revealed on Tuesday that Albrechtsen’s husband John O’Sullivan works in the banking sector, and that their family wealth was enhanced by remuneration including Commonwealth Bank shares worth $5.1 million. O’Sullivan received them as a senior CommBank exec. Does Janet disclose any of this? And this is the mob who have been crusading all week for the public “right to know”?

Newspoll Tuesday: Labor 57-43 (populist bank bashing edition)

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 7 months ago
in Economics, Markets, Media and Polls
. 16 Comments

The details can be found at The Poll Bludger’s joint. Nelson’s down 2 points (within the moe) but no doubt that will start off another round of Costello fantasising, even if the audience for that sort of idiocy will be even less than it usually is with the Olympics and all. It’ll be as meaningless as the change in the poll, and the relatively meaningless measure itself.

Of much more interest is the new kid on the polling block, Essential Research (which btw has Labor 58-42 on the 2PP). The online poll has been mixing it up a bit with different questions. You can read all the results here, but I wanted to focus on the question on interest rates and the banks.

Continue reading ‘Newspoll Tuesday: Labor 57-43 (populist bank bashing edition)’