The frenzy of the resources boom leads to a higher dollar, and also drives up the costs of local inputs to manufacturing. What we will no doubt continue to see is far from some sort of painless and necessary ‘structural adjustment’ – unless our destiny in a globalised economy is indeed to be a quarry. That’s very far from the vision of value-added manufacturing, innovation and smart services that accompanied the opening up of Australia’s economy by Labor in the 1980s and 90s.

The mining industry has spent, and continues to spend, enormous amounts of money to convince Australians that its continued strength is essential to, and beneficial to, the national economy. In fact, there is no “trickle down” from the mining boom because it is a small employer of labour and most of its profits are repatriated. The fact that Australia’s Gross National Income is lower than its GDP while Japan’s is considerably higher (and Japan is normally thought of as a sclerotic economy) is demonstration enough – we, as a country, earn a lot less than we produce.

Fiscal policy is only of limited utility in addressing the distorting effects of the mining boom, because there are inflationary pressures coming from the demand for labour, goods and services from the resources sector. So, interest rates are higher than they ought to be, and will likely remain so.

The obvious solution is a proper Resources Rent Tax.

The irony here is that BlueScope itself was agitating against a Carbon Tax while it’s been their vulnerability to the distorting effects of the low tax rates paid by the mining industry that has cruelled their chances of competing in export markets, to their cost, and more importantly, to the great cost of their workers.

The report is based on extensive research, and was written by three researchers with extensive expertise and experience in immigration policy and immigration law: John Menadue, Arja Keska-Nummi and Kate Gauthier.

The report seeks to place the arrival of asylum seekers by boat in its proper perspective, and emphasises the continued dimensions of international refugee population flows and the continued salience of the UN Refugee Convention. In doing so, the authors demolish a number of the egregious untruths which have distorted the domestic debate, and proffer suggestions about how fact could be communicated more effectively.

The thirteen recommendations made rest on principles for a policy approach which:

* Adheres to all international conventions which we have voluntarily signed
* Quickly and correctly identifies those who are refugees and grants them protection
consistent with UNHCR policies and guidelines
* Protects Australians from any health or security concerns
* Discourages dangerous journeys, but treats fairly those who have made those journeys
* Affords all people in Australia their human rights, as well as access to the legal systems which deliver them, and
* Rapidly returns home in safety and dignity those who are found not to be in need of Australia’s protection.

The recommendations, to be found on pages 7 and 8 of the report, make a number of eminently sensible and practical suggestions about how the debate could be refocused, an emphasis on true regional cooperation incorporated into policy and how we could increase our intake, restrict detention solely to health and identity checks, care for children, and better promote resettlement in the Australian community of refugees.

The question, of course, all this raises is whether, in the current political climate, this sort of approach is feasible.

Fact and value

To large degree the question of asylum seeker boat arrivals is one of heart and head, fact and value. It’s normally assumed that the dominance of the frame which drives current policy is near impossible to shift.

I’m not at all convinced that is the case.

Let’s consider the framing of the debate. This report, for instance, points out that – under both Australian and international law – it is not illegal to seek asylum even if so doing involves actions which might otherwise be illegal. A recognition of that, and fostering an understanding of why desperate people are driven to take actions they would not otherwise take, would be enormously effective.

Fact and empathy go hand in hand.

The questions the Essential Research poll recently asked about degree of concern regarding boat arrivals showed a full 10% less were “very concerned” about boat arrivals when presented with just one fact: that the number of arrivals this year is less than half that of last year.

So, we have just a single fact being able to move opinion substantially. The truth is a powerful weapon.

There have been too many counsels of despair among progressies about the asylum seeker question. The CPD Report provides not just reasoned analysis and substantive policy direction, but also immense resources for persuasion. Mobilising a campaign on such a basis would be a tremendous start.

A new approach from Labor?

As to whether the government will take heed of this report, I’d have to say I think they’d have nothing to lose if they did. It’s intriguing to see Fremantle Labor MP Melissa Parke among the signatories to a letter of support for the report’s findings and recommendations.

It didn’t look like it at the time, but the Gillard government’s approach during last year’s election campaign was actually moderately promising. The Prime Minister did give a speech putting the numbers of asylum seekers in accurate perspective, and underlining the reasons for Australia’s international obligations. There was a clear logic in attempting to separate out some of the concerns the proverbial Lindsay voter had from the issue itself – through launching a debate on sustainability and population.

Of course, this wasn’t unaccompanied by the expected dollop of ‘tough’ rhetoric and visual imagery.

Sadly, but predictably, we’re back in ‘Stop The Boats’ land with the supposed argument for the ‘Malaysian Solution’ reduced to a sound bite about “breaking the people smugglers’ business model”. Once again, the government has allowed its opponents to frame the debate, and its attempts to be proactive are in fact reactive.

There’s been some talk over recent weeks about how Julia Gillard and Labor can respond to an Opposition Leader who’s torn up the rule book. The answer is actually obvious; to get on the front foot and to carve out distinctive positions based on both rationality and values.

The report, and the letter of support, recommend a return to “constructive bipartisanship” on asylum seeker policy. That’s not going to happen. What the government needs to do is to be constructively partisan.

It wouldn’t be too hard to think of an opening – delays to the ‘Malaysian Solution’ and Manus, for instance. It would not be too hard to argue for a completely different path. It would take courage. But Labor has very little to lose, and potentially a lot to gain, by doing the right thing.

Elsewhere: Frank Brennan.

Something similar will operate for electoral and donations reform.

To the degree that these processes are positive, and of course they’re obviously conditional on the ALP forming government, they have the potential to move beyond purely procedural improvements to the working of Parliament (for instance, time-limited answers and supplementary questions in House of Representatives Question Time) towards a more deliberative style of policy formulation. That holds true for private members’ bills, wrongly characterised in some media as merely an opportunity for local interests to be debated. Actually the presentation and debate of bills on such issues as same-sex marriage has the potential to widen the scope of debate and policy action beyond the very narrow set of concerns walled off usually by the politico-media complex.

(As an aside, I found it extremely interesting indeed that same-sex marriage became a fairly prominent issue in the campaign through a combination of agenda setting by The Greens and civil society movements, and media attention through question and answer forums such as Q&A and the Rooty and Red Hill events.)

So I think we can definitely see signs of what I pointed to in a previous post: a real widening of the hitherto circumscribed boundaries of political debate and policy action.

We can take this one step further by advocating for a holistic approach to donations reform. It’s properly seen as not so much a corruption of the democratic process (although it certainly is) but, more significantly, a privatisation of the public commons of political action.

It’s all interlinked. The professionalisation of politics rests on the existence of career paths which take major party members from staffer to Member to lobbyist, or straight from staffer to lobbyist. “Government relations” or “public affairs” staff grease the wheels which are further oiled through donations, and the existence of Labor or Coalition aligned consultants, think tanks, economic advisors, law firms and so on. The media uncritically reports a host of advocacy research, done only because it provides talking points intended to influence the policy process through both personal contact and framing public debate. And so it goes on, making a mockery of both evidence based policy and the public interest.

If we were to ban all donations from corporate groups (including unions, as Senator John Faulkner has advocated), and utilise the Parliamentary Budget Office agreed on by the Labor Party and The Greens to validate or invalidate “studies” done by industry lobbies and thinktanks seeking to influence public policy, there’s potential for a powerful shift away from the privatisation and corporatisation of our politics.

That’s a matter of process, then, but one that holds out the possibility of enabling a more open and genuine politics.

Elsewhere: Left Flank.

Andrew Jabukowicz writes:

This federal election has been a roundabout of personalities, melodrama and policy parries. There is a real social world out here, where a majority of people live an everyday multiculturalism. For the forty per cent or more of Australians who come from non-Anglo backgrounds and the rest who experience its benefits, it’s worth reflecting on what the future might be like if there was a policy debate in which cultural diversity was valued and productive diversity advanced.

If we take the largest Commonwealth spending areas and the places where new ideas or recycled old ones have been most evident, cultural diversity hangs well below the radar. It may well be that both the ALP and the Coalition believe that most non-Anglo people are working class and rusted on to Labor; they therefore require no feeding for the ALP, and will be immune to any seduction by the Coalition. Indeed studies by Melbourne social scientists Bob Birrell and Katherine Betts indicate that in the darkest days of the Howard ascendancy, Labor had two core groups holding it up — inner-city trendies and working class non-Anglo immigrants.

This may have changed – with so many immigrants in the last decade, the immigrant constituency is more diverse, in part far wealthier, and more politically astute than in the past. The loss of Bennelong in 2007 was caused by the desertion of more conservative Asian voters who turned to Labor; Howard has been working hard in the region to try to lure them back to what the Liberals hope is their “natural” home.

The gains in Queensland were from upwardly aspirational skilled workers, some of whom were earlier immigrants or their children, but not a group excited by multiculturalism. Indeed most of the people who really like multiculturalism may have already made their move across to the Greens.

Given there is no single “ethnic” or immigrant constituency, what are the issues that affect immigrants and ethnic minorities more dramatically than other segments of contemporary Australia? In simple terms they are those that relate to age group (older people, youth), language and communication, occupation and employment, extended family relations and human rights (often in quite complex ways). For some groups there’s also an interest in competitive leverage on influencing Australia’s foreign policies (eg Muslims vs Jews over policy in the Middle East – and yes, they are religious groups but they act as ethnic lobbies).

Let’s recall that in 1989 the Office of Multicultural Affairs was in PM Hawke’s portfolio, and the ALP won an election asserting the value of the concept and the importance of productive diversity. Two decades on, and we have to search under rocks to find either major party saying anything of any interest.

Read Andrew Jabukowicz’s whole essay on policy-making and cultural diversity here.

Yesterday, in his address to the National Press Club, when he could wean himself off talking about talking to “real Australians” at Rooty Hill and similar places, and after he spent half his speech attacking the government, Tony Abbott intimated that there might also be some sort of reason to vote for the Coalition other than relentless negativism.

On cue, a policy popped out on infrastructure – a confused mishmash of PPPs and savings measures – involving Infrastructure Partnership bonds, which would be issued by private infrastructure partners to raise capital, and investment in which would attract tax rebates and tax concessions for Super funds. It’s confusing, unwieldy and as usual, just meant to make a political point – which if you can cut through the morass, appears to be something along the lines of “there is an alternative to public debt”.

Robert Merkel discussed this announcement in a previous post at LP. There’s also a good deconstruction of this thing at Grog’s Gamut.

Leaving aside whatever can be made of the policy “detail”, I think what’s significant about this plan is that the Coalition really have done next to no genuine policy development, and any putative agenda for a Coalition government is just a product of whatever they think it will take them to win the election.

You can see why Tony Abbott doesn’t want to debate the economy.

Eva Cox, writing for Crikey, offers a score card for the social welfare policies of the two major parties during this election. The findings – after scoring the various policies, Eva finds the results to be quite scary:

Of the 90-odd social policy areas of need identified, at least 50 are yet to rate any mentions, 15 are negative divisive proposals and only about 30 of the actual policies on offer are possible contributors to social well being.

Read the whole article here.

Fiona Armstrong writes:

Growing disillusion with the absence of national political leadership on climate change prompted a group of health sector leaders to meet in Melbourne last week — and to establish a climate and health alliance.

Representing organisations and individuals, the alliance is based on the collective understanding that climate change poses a serious and increasing threat to human health. It also recognises that health stakeholders have an important contribution to make in advocating for policy action on climate change and environmental issues.

Last year experts warned (pdf) in the international medical journal The Lancet that climate change poses severe and increasing risks to global public health. The extent to which scientific evidence in both these policy areas is being disregarded by government is a cause for deep concern among health professionals, given that their practice is based on, and depends on, an acceptance of scientific evidence.

Many people were optimistic about a global agreement to reduce emissions and halt further global warming last year. While there was widespread cynicism about the chance of an effective global agreement in Copenhagen, few could have predicted the extent to which governments in Australia would fail to respond to the imperative for action.

In establishing this alliance, the health sector is tackling directly the need for leadership in a policy space that has effectively been vacated by our political leaders.

There is an important role for civil society in helping to fill this leadership vacuum. If political intransigence continues in parliament, it will also be necessary for other sections of civil society to step up and provide leadership on climate policy. Those in the health sector are being joined by people in the arts, churches, welfare groups, unions, farmers and business groups. But they all need to make their voices much, much, louder if their message is to cut through to the wider community with urgency.

Australia now faces an uncertain economic and energy future as our reliance on fossil fuels puts us at risk of economic shock when the carbon intensity of its exports becomes a trade barrier and oil prices rise further. Despite the powerful lobby of vested interests currently advocating for no action on climate change, future economic and energy security requires reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and switching to other natural resources, such as the sun and the wind, for our energy supply. However if our political leaders will not resist the overtures of those with a vested interest in the status quo and act in the national interest, it must fall to leaders in civil society, as well as individual members of the community, to make this position politically untenable.

Health professionals consider climate change to be an issue of public health and safety, and the alliance hopes to help build community support for governments to stand up to those vested interests.

The failure of our political leaders to display any signs of intestinal fortitude on this issue in the current election campaign, however, does not offer much cause for immediate optimism.

I’d just make one broader observation, building on a remark I made on Twitter during the Roxon/Dutton debate on health. In both these key policy areas, the Coalition’s policy stance is confused, lacking in detail, and prepared to privilege private interests over public purpose. It’s easy enough to knock Labor’s approach in seeking to take a co-ordinated view to big policy areas, but the dog’s breakfast on offer – part Howard restoration, part soundbite driven, from the Coalition is a *real* policy contrast.

Update: The debate is being live streamed here.

Update: Roxon is very impressive, across the detail. The thing is that health is a very complex policy area, and Labor *does* have an integrated approach. But that means not everything can be done at once. The Coalition’s approach is to cherry pick bits of health for headlines, and in response to the pressure of particular interest groups. The question is whether this trumps a very well thought out policy framework which seeks to get the settings right first, while putting in place the building blocks for a holistic approach to patient care.

There is, imho, a lot more difference on health than the “parties are the same” narrative would have us believe.

Update: You should be able to get a good sense of what was debated through looking at the Tweets using the #npc hashtag. It was actually a useful policy encounter, with Dutton performing somewhat better than may have been anticipated, but with Roxon demonstrating her great command of policy detail and the ALP’s integrated plan for health. To some degree, the interchange would have been improved by sharper questioning from the journos in the audience – for instance, there are many unanswered questions on how the Coalition’s local hospital boards would actually work, but he wasn’t pressed on this, or on the very reactionary move to cut funding for e health.

Elsewhere: Mark at The Drumroll on the Ministers’ debates.

It was interesting to watch, just now on ABC News 24, the press conference which followed the PM’s education policy announcements. I was somewhat heartened to see that all the questions focused on education policy, rather than on the usual “narrative” stuff. It was something of a rejoinder to Annabel Crabb’s claim that it was unduly difficult for journos to brief themselves sufficiently on policy, something I thought was far fetched, given that any intelligent listener who’s been following public debate can usually think up some salient lines of questioning (if they’re not too busy tweeting and texting).

Earlier, in the campaign, a post by GrogsGamut on the performance of the media stimulated an interchange between journos and bloggers on Twitter, something Mark wrote about here, and which journo James Massola reflected on in a piece published on Saturday.

There was less interchange on Twitter on Saturday, after a number of very forceful critiques were published in the blogosphere and alternative media of the appalling “body language”/Latham press conference in Brisbane (see Pavlov’s Cat’s guest post here, which entirely occluded any discussion of important announcements on seniors’ income support.

Some journos reacted defensively, but silence was largely the result.

I wonder, though, if the critique refracted by Twitter had some influence on the press pack improving its game today, and according to Bernard Keane, yesterday.

Update: Margaret Simons on the media’s coverage of policy.