Tag Archive for ‘Julie Bishop’ at Larvatus Prodeo

Tag Archive for 'Julie Bishop'

The Women

Published

3 months, 2 weeks ago

. 114 Comments

Dr. Cat’s post on women and Tony Abbott is a must-read. She really nails one of the problems I’ve had with the general coverage about Abbott’s “women problem”. So go and read it now. I’ll wait.

I’m not going to repeat anything she’s written because it’s unnecessary, rather I want to talk about another thing I’ve noticed through all the exciting #spillage of the last week, and that’s the role of women in the events themselves. We’re really starting to see the effects of decades of pushing to get women accepted into all areas of public life, while at the same time we’re still seeing the effects of keeping them marginalised for so long.

This week, after Penny Wong negotiated a deal with the Liberal party on the ETS, we’ve had Sophie Mirabella’s exit from the front bench alongside Tony Abbott, triggering a mass walkout of further Liberal frontbenchers. We’ve had “loyal girl” Julie Bishop, who has managed to survive three leadership spills and keep her job. We’ve had the brave and principled senators Judith Troeth and Sue Boyce, who walked the walk when other Liberal Senators toed the party line. While all this unfolded, Kevin Rudd was overseas, leaving Julia Gillard to run the country, while the new opposition leader promises to stop flirting with her. And over in NSW, the ALP caucus voted to make Kristina Keneally their first female premier.

Continue reading ‘The Women’

Julie Bishop: economy just fine, thanks

Published

Kim

1 year, 1 month ago

in Economics and Politics

. 45 Comments

There’s surprisingly good news on the employment front for January, with unemployment only increasing by .3%, full time employment holding steady and female full time employment rising substantially:

ANZ economist Katie Dean said the stimulus package had worked to retain jobs in January in tandem with aggressive interest rate cuts. “The stimulus measures are having an impact,” she said.

Interesting news for the Liberals, you’d think. The Shadow Treasurer’s reaction?

The Coalition’s Julie Bishop said it showed the jobs market was strong enough not to need the “$42 billion spending spree” rejected by the Senate.

Right then.

The politics of the Rudd essay and the stimulus package

Published

Mark

1 year, 1 month ago

in Economics and Politics

. 32 Comments

In retrospect, the timing of Kevin Rudd’s essay in The Monthly [discussed in this earlier post] was obviously significant. There’s been a concerted messaging campaign going on for about a week to lead up to today’s stimulus package, which is really more like a mini-budget. Wayne Swan’s remarks about deficits, leaking of the insulation measures, and Rudd’s move to paint the opposition as died in the wool free marketeers are all of a piece.

As well as the economic impact, the measures have also been chosen carefully for their political impact:

Its primary targets are Rudd’s core constituencies and concerns: the ill-defined “working families”, education, housing. Criticism of the package will become criticism of taxpayers, of our schools and the right to a decent home. The Opposition, which has painted itself into a corner backing tax cuts uber alles, has to either take those on or look even more confused than it already does.

This is stimulus à la Rudd.

So has Malcolm Turnbull fallen into the trap? Continue reading ‘The politics of the Rudd essay and the stimulus package’

Julie Bishop watch

Published

Mark

1 year, 1 month ago

in Economics and Politics

. 34 Comments

Joshua Gans at CoreEcon has the good oil on the latest example of economic illiteracy from the Shadow Treasurer.

Update: More from Gans.

Unemployment and social responsibility

Published

Mark

1 year, 2 months ago

in Economics, Industrial Relations, International, Poverty and Sociology

. 59 Comments

The economic news of the day was a fall in the number of jobs advertised – as measured by ANZ – to “recession levels” – the eighth successive monthly drop. A number of economists extrapolated this to an unemployment rate of around 7% by year’s end. Of course, the trend may not be a straight line, but these things have a habit of being self-reinforcing. It’s interesting to note that the Federal Opposition could currently have their own favourite line of 2008 turned around on them – they’re arguably “talking up” unemployment at the moment. Julie Bishop might like to take a lesson from any number of Labor shadows from their decade plus in opposition – this doom and gloom isn’t necessarily smart, particularly when you’re briefing your mates in the press about how exciting it is that you might be back in power after only one term.

But of more moment, probably, is the response of those who actually make decisions about the labour market. Predictably, the Howard era Fair Pay Commission Chair, Ian Harper, warned that the low paid couldn’t expect much. This, despite the fact that the pay rises awarded by the FPC over the past two years failed to have the dire impact on employment predicted by business lobbies. It was interesting in this context to read a good piece by Mike Steketee in The Australian last week:

Some economists argue that cutting wages, particularly for the unskilled and low skilled, is the surest way of keeping more people in work. Quite apart from the fact that Labor’s ruling out such an option helped it win the last election, the main problem facing businesses is lack of demand for their products.

Cutting wages would reduce consumer demand further and it would run directly counter to the Government’s policy of putting more money into people’s pockets to try to put a floor under demand. In any case, the wages share of national income is the lowest for a generation, suggesting labour costs are less of a burden for business than in the past.

Continue reading ‘Unemployment and social responsibility’

Signs and wonders! Miracles! Courtesy of John Howard…

Published

Kim

1 year, 3 months ago

in Education, Howardia and Religion

. 57 Comments

When John Howard’s government announced funding for school chaplains in public schools, then Education Minister Julie Bishop (remember her?) claimed it was all about instilling “values” in the kiddies. Apparently, the fruits of the program have exceeded expectations:

GOD has cured at least one state school student of attention deficit disorder and another of asthma, according to interviews with chaplains employed in 2850 schools under a $165 million federal government program.

The Lord has also made it stop raining at a state school assembly in Queensland and performed other miracles to bring state school children to Jesus.

One chaplain was able to “fix the head” of a disruptive student by placing his hands upon the boy’s head, and praying for him.

These and other miraculous claims are included in a book about the national school chaplaincy program, which was introduced by the Howard government in October 2006.

Fiscal stimulus: Eight economists and a few politicians

Published

Mark

1 year, 3 months ago

in Climate change, Economics, Environment, Industrial Relations, Markets, Middle East, Policy and Sociology

. 11 Comments

Picking up on Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens’ remarks about “borrowing to invest” and not being afraid of a deficit if there are good policy outcomes to be had, eight prominent economists (including a couple of blogging ones) have written an open letter to Kevin Rudd making suggestions for a further fiscal stimulus under three headings of policy – Superannuation flexibility, Building the nation and Preparing for climate change. The text is here at Troppo (one of the authors is Nicholas Gruen).

There’s been a bit of press coverage this morning, and no doubt it’s a worthy thing to stimulate debate by proposing substantive policy measures rather than just advancing critique. It may be an even worthier thing to shift the terms of the debate, regardless of the merits of the proposed policy directions. We don’t see enough of this sort of initiative.

But I do wonder if the economists stop and think about the political feasibibility of their proposals.

Continue reading ‘Fiscal stimulus: Eight economists and a few politicians’

The opposition unravels

Published

Mark

1 year, 3 months ago

in Politics

. 44 Comments

It’s been a shocker of a week for Malcolm Turnbull. We’ve had the Julie Bishop shenanigans, the missing deficit as a yardstick line, second guessing the Reserve Bank to argue that interest rates rises tanked the economy (which is an arguable point, but politically worthless when interest rates have been rapidly falling), a Nationals revolt, losing Fiona Nash from the frontbench, the embarrassment of Christopher Pyne’s arguments being repudiated by the private schools sector and a major win for Julia Gillard, and the revival of Howardism on mandatory detention and border protection – which created its own ripples and waves of internal dissent.

And it goes on.

Stoushing on the government’s infrastructure bill revolved around Coalition claims that it would enable a slush fund for porkbarrelling. A last minute about face by Shadow Cabinet recognised the reality that opposing it, with the House rejecting Senate amendments, might be a bad look – as such opposition could easily be painted as frustrating the desire to stimulate the economy. But the Nationals had drawn their own line in the sand – basically, because they wanted to ensure that the principle of porkbarrelling for rural and regional electorates endured! The result? Malcolm Turnbull was exposed as unable to enforce any sort of discipline on his own party:

There were another two hours of debate before the bill was brought to a vote. And when it was, only Senators Johnston, Ronaldson, Brandis, Coonan, Mason and Troeth from the Liberals voted for the unamended bill, although Mason missed the division on the sale of Telstra funds. Senators Eggleston and Ferguson voted with the Nationals in favour of the amendments. This was the second time in a week that Eggleston, from Western Australia, has stood apart from his colleagues, having joined Petro Georgiou earlier this week in backing changes to the mandatory detention of asylum seekers.

Johnston, Ronaldson, Brandis and Coonan are all shadow Cabinet members and thus are bound by Cabinet solidarity. Mason is a Parliamentary Secretary. According to the ABC, there was confusion within the Coalition over who was required to vote and who was allowed to abstain, and reports of Coalition senators trying to bolt the chamber before the doors were locked for the vote.

The mass abstention was a poor look for Turnbull, especially with his Senate leader being amongst their number.

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Continue reading ‘The opposition unravels’

Economic and political disconnects (and the sociology of knowledge)

Published

Mark

1 year, 3 months ago

in Consumerism, Economics, Government, International, Markets, Media, Sociology and USA

. 18 Comments

It’s hard to know whether to blame the pollies or the press gallery more for the sorry standard of political and economic debate in this country. Did that golden age Paul Kelly used to talk about when Paul Keating had everyone trained to cross swords on the arcana of economic levers actually ever exist? Anyway, as non-farm growth fell into negative territory and the Reserve Bank cut rates again (moving them back into an expansionary posture), all eyes were on Julie Bishop’s cat claws, and her non-performance was at the centre of the parliamentary stage.

But perhaps, although he presumably wouldn’t welcome the Bishop meltdown, Malcolm Turnbull isn’t too worried about the level of triviality in the great economic management debate. The budget deficit yardstick went missing yesterday (that was so… last week) and Turnbull might not like to be reminded of his inconsistency and constant contradiction – whatever happened to that “economic narrative” we apparently were awaiting from him? Anyway, Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t think there’s much of a global financial crisis any more – because he hasn’t heard of any “big events”. Presumably events only happen if they’re on the front page of Australian newspapers. He might like to check out the leading indicators of the credit crisis which suggest we’re not exactly back to normality. But so parochial are our political leaders and media that debates about the restructuring of global finance and the dangerous leadership interregnum in the United States are apparently off our radar.

But there’s another disconnect happening in the economic sphere too. Continue reading ‘Economic and political disconnects (and the sociology of knowledge)’

Live by the sword…

Published

Mark

1 year, 3 months ago

in Media and Politics

. 29 Comments

Julie Bishop’s been copping it from unnamed “senior Liberals” for her poor performance as shadow Treasurer, who’ve helpfully implied Malcolm Turnbull shares their worries, and suggested a few names to replace her (Dutton, Robb, Hockey) for good measure.

While Bishop has been massively unconvincing in the Treasury portfolio, it’s not only the Deputy Leader who should be concerned over this latest outburst of leaks to The Australian. Malcolm Turnbull and the rest of the Libs should also recall that Brendan Nelson was brought down as much by the constant dripfeed of negative stories to their mates in the press gallery, as by his own hapless efforts as Leader. What is now being done to Bishop (and the articles have been cleverly framed to keep the “narrative” alive for quite a while – by forcing her putative replacements to deny an interest, and thus further fuel the story) could be done to Turnbull tomorrow. As if to lay down a few markers, Peter Van Onselen published an otherwise bizarre op/ed on Saturday praising Peter Costello as the best available leader.

I’ve observed before that the opposition’s coziness with the press gallery does them no favours. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find a way of resolving problems internally rather than in newspaper columns.

The perils of celebrity: Julie Bishop, Peter Van Onselen, MUP and plagiarism

Published

Mark

1 year, 4 months ago

in Books, Writers & Writing, Ethics, Media and Politics

. 22 Comments

One of the minor notes of the political narrative last week was Julie Bishop’s half-hearted fessing up to publishing a book chapter containing numerous instances of plagiarism under her name, though (in a move quite reminiscent of the Howard government’s attitude towards ministerial accountability) she sought immediately to deflect responsibility onto the staffer who “dashed something together” for her in a spare moment, recycling and paraphrasing eight year old banal neo-liberal nostrums from the New Zealand Business Roundtable’s Roger Kerr. The news didn’t get any better as the week wore on for the editor of Liberals and Power: The Road Ahead, Peter Van Onselen, as it emerged that Brendan Nelson’s chapter had been ghosted by Tom Switzer, whose ruminations turned up in a column under his own name in The Spectator:

“It must have been subconscious … I have just regurgitated [what] was my line.”

Pushing a “line”, of course, comes naturally to the opinionistas of the punditariat/thinktank interface. The big surprise in all this, probably, is why an increasingly furious and perhaps naive Van Onselen ever thought that he could solicit contributions which actually represented the reflections of “some of the finest minds of liberal and conservative thought”. The notion, apparently shared by Van Onselen and Melbourne University Press Publisher Louise Adler, that Liberal politicians are in “a reflective period, a phase of rigorous self-criticism and reassessment” was always risible. All we’ve seen from the opposition since November 24 2007 are the fruits of a sense of frustrated entitlement, manifesting alternately in vicious infighting and empty and cynical populism.

Adler’s commentary on the book is yet another instance of blame shifting. Andrew Elder nails it:

If Adler was concerned about morality she’d pull the book and wear the financial consequences of doing so, to protect the intellectual integrity of MUP. Instead, the next Melbourne Uni student who gets busted lifting an essay straight off the internet should get Adler to brush away any nasty consequences (“so old hat!”).

The stimulus package and fairness

Published

Mark

1 year, 5 months ago

in Economics, Howardia, Markets and Poverty

. 61 Comments

Just before last year’s federal election, I read Neal Blewett’s Cabinet Diaries. The book is a good read, but I was also interested in reminding myself – in the dying days of the Howard Era – what a Labor government felt like. One of the things that really jumped out at me was regular discussions around the Cabinet table about assistance for the unemployed, and several of Keating’s measures to stimulate the economy were targeted to people on the dole, among others. Those with longer memories might recall Labor’s opposition to Malcolm Fraser’s “fight inflation first” austerity regime in the late 70s. Mike Steketee has a very good column today which shows just how much things have changed in the era of the deserving poor (and not so poor) and the undeserving poor. He rightly points out that some of the pensioners receiving payments will have substantial assets and incomes of up to $66000, and self-funded retirees with incomes up to $50000 for singles and $80000 for couples will also receive the one off payments. It would be very hard to argue that they are the folks in the community doing it toughest, and as Steketee suggests, there’s no guarantee the money will be spent rather than saved.

What we’re seeing here, I think, is a combination of Kevin Rudd’s very conservative personal values and political calculation.

Continue reading ‘The stimulus package and fairness’

Does Julie Bishop’s plagiarism matter?

Published

Kim

1 year, 5 months ago

in Disasters, Media and Politics

. 63 Comments

Andrew Norton argues that the controversy over Julie Bishop’s lifting of a form of words from the Wall Street Journal is irrelevant, and tries to excuse it by arguing that politicians recite speeches written by departmental or political staff all the time. Hmmm… I don’t think it’s quite the same thing, for two reasons:

(a) Bishop is being heavily touted by the Opposition and their cheer squad in the media as being part of the magic restoration of the Liberals’ putatively natural advantage on economic management. This despite the fact that Malcolm Turnbull has given zero evidence of departing from either Nelson’s populist nonsense or his own wildly incoherent “inflation doesn’t exist, and if it does, it’s Wayne Swan’s fault” puerilities from earlier in the year. Bishop is a lawyer, and I suppose lawyers prosecute a case for their clients. Perhaps therefore lawyers can be excused from not understanding what they’re saying? Her alleged forensic skills as an advocate are supposed to be one of her pluses – according to the aforesaid press gallery boosters. But isn’t there a problem – as with Peter Costello – when lawyers holding financial portfolios basically know stuff all about the actual economy and are only touted as having “credibility” because they’re able to argue a case?

(b) This stuff sticks. Just ask Joe Biden. He’s still living down having plagiarised Neil Kinnock (of all people) in his unsuccessful run in the presidential primaries in 1988. So in the terms of realpolitik, it doesn’t matter if it should be a problem when politicians plagiarise. When they do, particularly – as with Bishop – right at the start of their tenure in an important new job – it won’t be forgotten by the public.

Exporting the Melbourne Model

Published

Mark

1 year, 5 months ago

in Education and Sociology

. 24 Comments

As Luke Slattery observes, a significant number of universities are moving to emulate either the whole of or aspects of the Melbourne Model – generalist undergraduate degrees followed by vocational postgraduate degrees. UWA and Macquarie are the latest off the starting block, with Macquarie VC Stephen Schwartz stating:

Of course we will continue to teach professional skills – accounting students will still learn to keep books – but we will also ensure that each of our students learns how to analyse scholarly papers, criticise research methods, solve problems and integrate information into coherent arguments.

Some universities which are not going down this route are moving to a broader focus on core subjects and workplace learning for undergraduates – in generalist as well as vocational degrees. Sometimes this is driven by a desire to find a point of differentiation – for instance with Griffith’s emphasis on social enterprise as part of its Arts degree – which is, in part, a recognition that QUT and UQ have the vocational and sandstone/comprehensive humanities angles covered in the eyes of many students. Griffith Arts students also do first year courses like “Great Books”, which must gladden the hearts of the educational traditionalists (I don’t know what’s actually on the curriculum, I should add). And at ACU, all students must do “mission” units – particularly in ethics and to expose them to aspects of the Catholic intellectual tradition (as well as fostering social responsibility).

Slattery notes that some of this is driven by the international market – including the 3+2 Bologna Process for standardising tertiary qualifications across the EU where a bachelors degree is followed by a masters degree as a matter of course. There is probably some benefit – aside from considerations of the international export market – in maintaining the standing of Australian higher education, reducing the over proliferation of degree courses (itself driven by now superceded marketing considerations) and in fostering scholarly and critical skills across all disciplines in the academy. Continue reading ‘Exporting the Melbourne Model’

Winners and losers in Turnbull’s shadow cabinet

Published

Mark

1 year, 6 months ago

in Politics

. 47 Comments

The list is out and it can be found here.

Julie Bishop is the new Shadow Treasurer.

Contrary to Turnbull’s own claims, it’s clear that he’s rewarded his own supporters and demoted or discarded some of Nelson’s – such as Nick Minchin and Tony Smith. Tony Abbott seems to have shot himself in the foot with his undisciplined comments that he’d rather be closer to the action leading to his remaining where he was.

And Sophie Mirabella joins the Shadow Ministry. That might tell you something – along with the elevation of Concetta Fioranti-Wells – about the depth of talent Turnbull has to work with.

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