Tag Archive for 'Rudd government'

Economic and political disconnects (and the sociology of knowledge)

Published
by
Mark
1 day, 23 hours 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)’

Kevin Rudd and the “D word”

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 1 day ago
in Economics
. 36 Comments

No doubt because Malcolm Turnbull has demonstrated his stunning grasp of economics yet again by claiming that the Commonwealth budget going into deficit is some sort of yardstick of economic failure, there’s been an immense amount of commentary on Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s willingness to utter the word “deficit”. The latest instalment in the saga is documented by Peter Martin here - Rudd’s conceded that Australia may have to sustain a “temporary deficit”.

Just as Turnbull is privileging politics over economics, so too the Rudd government’s tactics are - in part - about politics. I’m surprised, though, that there hasn’t been a lot of sensible discussion about what they are up to politically. Guy Beres provides a corrective:

In short, Kevin Rudd’s personal approach to the economic situation as Prime Minister seems to revolve around straight talking, with a cautiously pessimistic bent. If things could get worse, then the Prime Minister seems to want to make it clear to everyone that they should be prepared for things getting worse. Rather than trying to create an oasis of blissfully ignorant confidence at the head of government - something the Howard Government probably would have done in the same position.

Gillard’s new IR laws and the business response

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 2 days ago
in Industrial Relations
. 82 Comments

Julia Gillard is certainly capable of a sophisticated negotiating strategy, and it’s been interesting to observe that the process of formulating the legislation to implement Forward With Fairness and replace WorkChoices - while managed largely behind closed doors - was accompanied over the year by a fair bit of crowing from business that they’d extracted more concessions than in the two documents released before last year’s election. However, the ALP caucus and the ACTU also belatedly secured more of what they wanted - particularly in last resort arbitration, multi-enterprise bargaining for low paid workers, good faith bargaining and union entry and records inspections rights. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if such changes were always contemplated, and certainly explicit attention to the needs of workers with poor bargaining power spread across a number of work sites (for instance cleaners or employees in light manufacturing) was part of the election policy. What is entirely predictable is the tenor of the business reaction, which you can get a sense of quickly by reading this story from yesterday’s Australian. Unions are back and the sky will fall in! In fact, the points business objects to really just serve to underpin bargaining. There’s an element of balancing equity with efficiency, which has always been part of the IR framework in Australia, but we certainly haven’t “gone back to the future”. In many ways, the legislation could legitimately have gone further in redressing some of the imbalance of power in the bargaining process.

If, although as one would imagine there’s some equivocation going on, the opposition allow the laws to pass substantially unaltered, the business whining will be futile. That in itself may push the opposition into a more negative stance. The passage of the laws through the Senate early next year could get interesting.

Rudd one year on

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 3 days ago
in Government, Howardia, Policy and Politics
. 111 Comments

Well, having opened a thread that perhaps proves that Ute Man is still out there but not actually supporting Emo Man, it behoves me, I guess, to have a bit of a say about the tenure of the Rudd government to date. To some degree all these sorts of anniversaries are somewhat artificial, as you can easily see in the United States with the fetish of the “first hundred days”. Governments will eventually be judged by the electorate in due season, as Kevin Rudd would say, and as almost all politicians intone (particularly those who are dissatisfied with their contemporary popularity), in the end they will be judged by history - whose verdict is perhaps as mythical as the Judgement of Paris, but never mind that. However, as I was suggesting, if politics and public discussion is cruelled by the vagaries and obsessions of an ever shorter media cycle, a year really is a long time in government, and it is worth taking stock.

It can also be interesting to compare first term governments at this stage of the electoral cycle, and here the obvious contrast - despite all the media beatups - is the absence of major scandal and ministerial resignations compared to both the Hawke and Howard governments. That doesn’t, of course, imply that all the Labor ministers are fabulous, but it is worth observing.

One of the things that’s interested me in the discussion that had already began quite a while before we reached the actual milestone is that in both comments on this blog and in conversations with some friends I’ve seen the sentiment expressed that simply avoiding hearing a daily litany of horrors from the Howard crew is Rudd’s greatest achievement. It might, and no doubt will, be objected that - “lefties would say that, wouldn’t they?” But I think there are a couple of points here. First, there is no doubt that a government with a more humanitarian tinge and an appreciation of propriety and ethics is to be welcomed, and that sentiment - along with the promise keeping - will be a contributor to Labor’s continuing lead in the polls. Secondly, I think The Howard Years has been interestingly timed to stimulate some comparison and to reinforce the whole sense of relief that we don’t have that turgid mob to kick around any more.

But, again, one thing that wore out the Coalition’s welcome with the electorate was the constant “rabbits out of the hat” and the whole bag of divisive tricks, along with the internal ructions and the cockiness of ministers. I agree that the Liberals are still playing at the same game in many ways. John Howard was elected in 1996 as a safe pair of hands and the Libs were “the party of order”, if you like. By the end of their fourth term, they looked like the risky and unsafe proposition and Kevin Rudd’s calm demeanour undoubtedly contributed much to Labor’s victory. WorkChoices was also probably the biggest single mistake the Coalition made, and the related apprehension that worse would follow and more leadership instability also condemned the Howard government to defeat.

But what of policy, and that shibboleth beloved of the punditariat, “the narrative”? Continue reading ‘Rudd one year on’

Open Rudd government first anniversary thread

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 4 days ago
in Politics
. 46 Comments

I’m sticking to my no politics on the weekend rule, and have a busy day tomorrow, so I’m going to save up my thoughts on the first anniversary of the defeat of the Howard government and the election of the Rudd Labor government for later on. But there’s no doubt that there will be a fair bit of discussion about it, so please feel free to use this thread for posting links, and making any observations you may have. I think it is a useful milestone to place the government’s performance in some sort of perspective that’s deeper and less transient than the everyday trivialities of most political commentary.

Update: Here’s my take, focusing more on politics than policy. Graham Young looks at the deficit issue. An Onymous Lefty emphasises the Not Howard issue. At Crikey, Bernard Keane wishes everyone a Happy Kruddiversary and readers weigh in, and Scott Bridges writes in New Matilda.

Update: Andrew Bartlett notes the anniversary and the fact that it happily coincides with the long over due removal of statutory discrimination against same sex couples.

Spend, spend, spend! It’s your patriotic duty… or something

Published
by
Mark
2 weeks ago
in Disasters, Economics, Markets, Sociology and USA
. 90 Comments

The stock market has lost 51% of its value since its peak, a decline we’re told now exceeds the destruction of value seen in 1987. On the ABC News tonight, Alan Kohler grimly pointed to an index (tradeable, I think, but don’t quote me on that) of future sentiment which is apparently dire, and which apparently depressed that reified hive mind “the markets” even further. On Lateline Business, a British fellow in a very smart three piece pin stripe suit bemoaned the fact that all rationality in terms of valuation had departed from equities market, and what was left was “pure human sentiment” which apparently “isn’t pretty”. I think John Maynard Keynes might have had something to say about all that.

The stock market’s fall may also have had something to do with evidence of a growing deflation in consumer prices in America, or so opinionators opined. Well, I guess we don’t have the “inflation dragon” to kick around anymore.

And we’ve had another outpouring of deficit aversion, bipartisanship at last (!), in response to Glenn Steven’s expression of the belief that the government had a responsibility to “borrow to invest”.

And, yet, we’ve had a piece of prime silliness - to put alongside all these other signs of the times - in Crikey’s editorial:

There’s not a lot politicians can do. The Government handing money to low income earners who’ll have virtually no choice but to spend it makes sense, but there’s only a limited number of times a $10b heart-starter can be administered to the economy. Even the Opposition has been doing its bit lately, prefacing virtually every statement on the economy with the mantra that Australia is best-placed to weather these difficulties.

And there’s not much businesses can do without demand. It’s actually up to us consumers to realise Australia’s economic fate is in our hands, and act accordingly.

Righteo. Continue reading ‘Spend, spend, spend! It’s your patriotic duty… or something’

Guest post by the Search Foundation: The global financial crisis

Published
by
Guest Poster
2 weeks, 2 days ago
in Activism, Economics, International, Markets and Sociology
. 33 Comments

MB writes: The Search Foundation, working with Professor Frank Stilwell of Sydney University, has prepared a short statement on the global financial crisis and possible responses. The idea behind the statement is to stimulate thought about a progressive agenda among unions and progressive organisations, and the Foundation itself will be working on an agenda for concrete reform proposals directed at refocusing the economic debate on the “the core needs of working Australians”. I don’t necessarily endorse the whole of the statement, but I think it’s well worth posting here to stimulate debate.

The global financial crisis

The global financial crisis has dominated the headlines for months and has affected countries all around the world. Although national governments have stepped in to prevent the collapse of the financial system, the world is heading for a major recession. Australians nearing retirement have seen the value of their super fall dramatically while workers face the prospect of job losses and falling house prices as the financial crisis hits the rest of the economy. So, how did this happen and what can we do about it?

Continue reading ‘Guest post by the Search Foundation: The global financial crisis’

LP sets the media agenda on Turnbull!

Published
by
Kim
2 weeks, 2 days ago
in Howardia and Media
. 16 Comments

That’s a bit of irony, by the way! But I was interested to see Crikey come out with this:

But you get the sense Turnbull also gets worried whenever he’s out of the headlines for any length of time. In politics, sometimes a low profile can be useful. Sometimes it’s best to let attention focus on your opponents. But Turnbull may not have worked that out yet.

That’s actually what we’ve been saying for a very long time, most recently in this post.

What I’d add to it is that Malcolm also doesn’t realise that people aren’t all that enamoured of politicians constantly being in their face. That was one of the big things that played against Howard last year - people finally got sick of all the ranting and raving, the constant “changes of the national conversation”, bombastic personal attacks, etc, etc. This is why Kevin Rudd’s measured and calm style works politically - he’s positioned as the safe pair of hands, and the opposition come across as the permanent politicians. And guess what? (As KRudd might say) - Australians don’t like politicians as a rule.

What should your local council do with Rudd’s money?

Published
by
tigtog
2 weeks, 3 days ago
in Economics, Government and Sociology
. 52 Comments

And what will they actually do?

Govt to unveil $300m infrastructure plan (part of the overall economic stimulus package)

Mr Albanese said it was important that the money be spent this financial year.

“This has to be stamped into this current financial year,” he said.

“The government’s made an assessment that this is a realistic figure which can be spent and achieve very positive outcomes as well.”

KevinPM

Published
by
Kim
3 weeks, 1 day ago
in Politics and The Web
. 17 Comments

Labor’s long awaited followup to Kevin07 in new media outreach is now up - KevinPM.

Musings of an inappropriate woman and Stilgherrian discuss developments, including Kevin Rudd’s apparent sign up to Twitter.

Labor states on the nose!!!

Published
by
Mark
4 weeks ago
in Federal Elections, Media, Polls, Sociology and State/Territory Elections
. 58 Comments

I’ve written before about why I think that the “media narrative” masquerading as psephological analysis that there’s some sort of automatic fall in support for state Labor parties because of some putative desire among voters to have different parties governing at different levels. I suspect the proximate origin of this meme is actually the “wall to wall Labor” scare the Liberals ran in last year’s election. As Kim was suggesting the other day, this is a political tactic that normally indicates despair among incumbents, and it’s completely wrong to assume it reflects some sort of psephological law or reality in voting behaviour. Anyone familiar with the political science literature knows that attempts to demonstrate any posited strong correlation between state and federal partisan choices over time falls down very quickly - even in New South Wales where it’s long been political myth that the strongest case can be made. In part that’s because there are two few cases of actual partisan change in elections over much of the postwar period - something that becomes immediately apparent when you think about the fact that the federal government didn’t turn over at all between 1949 and 1972.

There was another outbreak of this guff on Monday in The Australian, apropos of quarterly newspolls in New South Wales and Victoria. There was the usual news story and two op/ed pieces to ram home the point. It was intriguing to see the frame applied to the comments of ABC election analyst Antony Green: Continue reading ‘Labor states on the nose!!!’

Taxation without representation is Federal Government policy on student services

Published
by
Paul Norton
1 month ago
in Authoritarianism, Education and Government
. 30 Comments

The Federal Government is going to restore the ability of universities to levy a compulsory student services charge of up to $250 per student per annum.

However, according to Federal Youth Minister Kate Ellis, student organisations or unions will not be managing the funds and the services to be funded:

Ms Ellis said university administrations were better placed to manage services like health, childcare, counselling and club funding.

Continue reading ‘Taxation without representation is Federal Government policy on student services’

The politics of debt and liquidity

Published
by
Mark
1 month ago
in Economics, Markets and Media
. 25 Comments

We’ve had almost a week now of the press gallery writing about the alleged effects of the bank guarantee deposit on managed funds. With lots of alarums… Commentators who were praising Kevin Rudd a couple of weeks ago for “decisive action” to address the financial crisis are now bemoaning “policy on the run”. Is this as good as it gets when it comes to serious analysis of the economy and of Australian politics?

It’s crystal clear that the government was never going to offer a guarantee to bail out investors in market-linked funds. There’s no surprise here - Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd both said so days ago, yet we’ve had the media either speculating on whether they will or attacking them for not being clear about their intentions for days. Nor was the offer to allow managed funds to become banks some silver bullet. It was obviously something of a feint to urge the big banks, who in many cases are the owners of such funds, to provide liquidity and capital and/or rejig their corporate structure. Meanwhile the government has been exploring the possibility of allowing ASIC to grant permission to such funds to allow redemptions in the case of urgent financial need, something that is currently restricted because of legislative requirements to treat all investors equally. But the tone of the commentary is that was meant to have been done yesterday.

Of course, if it had been, it would have been “policy on the run” and dire “unintended consequences” would no doubt follow as night follows day in the meaningless 24/7 media cycle. And you’d need to have been reading the Fin Review to know that there are current regulatory and legislative barriers to action. The rest of the press gallery apparently think there are a stack of magic wands lying around in Treasury.

Malcolm Turnbull blew this story out of the water by his admission that he’d bailed out of his own property fund investments - before the bank deposit guarantee supposedly distorted the market. Not so much because of the attack line Wayne Swan used - though there is actually some truth in pointing out that he’s radically inconsistent and supremely opportunistic in his rhetoric on the financial crisis - but because it reinforces the point that you have to have a fair bit of dosh in the first place to be an investor in such funds. Toffee voiced members of the haute bourgeoisie popping up on the news to complain that they won’t be able to afford their contemplated holidays on the Riviera (I kid you not…) haven’t helped much either in popularising the opposition and media’s “struggling retirees with millions of dollars they can’t access because of teh Government!” narrative.

So there should be no great surprise that Kevin Rudd’s been throwing out a bit of a “we feel your pain” lifeline to folks with big credit card debts instead, prompted by Sydney University research finding that one of five workers are struggling to meet personal debt and mortgage repayments. Continue reading ‘The politics of debt and liquidity’

We’re all rooned!

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
in Economics, Markets, Media and Sociology
. 36 Comments

Malcolm Turnbull, whose peregrinations around themes on economic management I documented earlier, might actually be revealing some method in his madness. Possibly the regular calls for bipartisanship always follow the beatups and ranting and raving over alleged government incompetence. It may be designed to suggest that he’s always willing to assist, and it’s only the partisan refusal of his expertise by the government that is the root of every conceivable problem. On the other hand, I might be reading a lot more into Turnbull’s frenetic pontificating than is justified - simply by reading too much reportage of his endlessly expressed views. Maybe he’s picking up some bad habits from Twitter?

In any event, it’s been interesting to see some more clarity emerging about the issues surrounding various types of investment funds freezing withdrawals - including the fact that there are 190 000 Australians with such investments. Turnbull has certainly been carrying on as if the problem is of much greater dimensions than that. Bernard Keane raises one salient issue in Crikey:

The demand by cash management funds and mortgage trusts that they also get a government guarantee is one of the more shameless try-ons in an era of particularly refined rent-seeking. Why don’t we guarantee all listed companies while we’re at it? It would be heartlessness of titanic proportions to dismiss the concerns of shareholders about their investments.

It’s also becoming clearer that some of these investment vehicles have been in some trouble for quite some time, though it’s worth noting that in most instances, investors still have access to distributions and dividends even if their capital is temporarily not liquid. But it does look as if the “all the fault of the government and that bank guarantee” narrative is - at best - vastly overstated. Meanwhile, as Keane also observes, the News Limited papers are full of heart-tugging stories about hardship which conveniently support the opposition’s “narrative”. Continue reading ‘We’re all rooned!’

The spectre of Hayek haunts the land

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 1 week 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’