Yesterday Dee Cee put in a passionate plea for ideas that are truly new and go beyond the industrial age as we know it, especially in relation to the business of mitigating climate change.
I don’t know how he rates the idea that US scientists have come up with of coating glass panels with a vegetable dye to make solar panels. Cheap solar panels that are more reliable and capable of generating up to ten times more electricity.
They are heading for commercialisation, it seems, but if you have the same idea here forget it unless you have a pile of cash.
Continue reading ‘Clever country on hold’
Given the Opposition is playing silly buggers on the emissions trading scheme, it’s important to consider the politics of the new Senate on the matter. Recall that if the Opposition votes against a bill, the government needs the votes of the Greens, Nick Xenophon, and Steve Fundies First Fielding to get something through.
So let’s look at what the Greens want:
“That requires a rigorous and comprehensive scheme which not only lowers Australia’s 1990 pollution levels by 40 per cent by 2020 but which also turns down the growing rate of emissions by 2015 - seven years away,” he said.
Continue reading ‘Bob Brown on the ETS’
Oh, the joys of a commodity currency in a commodities super cycle. When you combine a nasty recession, a dilapidated US dollar, and the usual summer sales, a day’s shopping in San Francisco got me some very nice goods at ridiculously low Australian dollar prices. And the Australian government might just get similarly lucky on its biggest ever defence purchase.
Labor has decided to continue with the purchase of the interim “Super Hornet” to allow the early retirement of our elderly F-111 fighters - the one that Brendan Nelson announced to considerable controversy last year. A review into the replacement of the F-18 Hornet continues, with the question of whether the Joint Strike Fighter, the preferred long-term option for the RAAF, would be available in a timely manner, at an affordable price, and have sufficient capabilities. Well, courtesy of the strength of the Australian dollar, the head of the military procurement department, the Defence Materials Organization, says we’ll get the things at an affordable price.
“I would be surprised that we would be paying more than about 75 million Aussie US dollars a copy for the aircraft, measured in 2008 US dollars,” he told a parliamentary committee…Dr Gumley said there was much confusion about the likely JSF price and it all depended on what variant of the aircraft Australia actually purchased in what year and at what foreign exchange rate.
Continue reading ‘Cheap shopping for war toys’
Last week it was Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon advocating the abolition of State governments. This week Tony Abbott is calling for constitutional reform which would give the Federal Government the power to assume any powers it wished from the states at any time:
I will be arguing for a constitutional amendment to establish that, where it so wishes, the Commonwealth can pass laws to override the states - not just Section 51 as it is now, but in all areas.
We need to face the fact that we are a nation today, not a federation of states [my emphasis - PN], and we need to clearly establish in law that, when it comes to the crunch, the federal government is in charge.
It’s been a long 25 years since the High Court deeply pained Australian conservatives by upholding the Hawke Government’s use of its Section 51 powers! But what are we to make of Abbott’s proposal?
Continue reading ‘Abbott’s non-minimalist reform of federalism’
Irfan Yusuf has the money quote on all the World Youth Day imbroglios, writing in today’s New Matilda:
I guess it really boils down to values. Cardinal Pell once accused Muslims of having difficulty separating Church from State. Unless he openly distances himself from (and not just denies involvement in) increased police powers designed to protect pilgrims from annoyance, his own secular credentials might look compromised.
On Lateline last night, in the context of new revelations about the crimes of Father Terrence Goodall, and George Pell’s casuistry in dealing with clergy abuse victim Anthony Jones, and his avoidance of any admission of culpability and therefore responsibility for the consequences of his actions, host Tony Jones interviewed prominent Catholic journalist and author Robert Blair Kaiser.
And I think that model can be applied to modern times and we can be a much more responsible, accountable church in a local situation where the bishop is not appointed by the Pope but elected by the people.
In referring to the democratising forces unleashed by Vatican II, Kaiser was suggesting that the root cause - not just of clergy abuse but also of cover-ups and grossly inadequate responses to its “horror” - is a deeply authoritarian tradition and its accompanying mindset and culture. George Pell is one of the leading lights of the Catholic “restorationists” who want to put all the genies of Vatican II back in the bottle, and return to a “Father Knows Best” model which has given us Catholics a Church marred and contaminated by misogyny and authoritarianism. Pell’s attitude to political power (which has been on show with World Youth Day) and his treatment of those whom some priests and brothers have monstered is cut from the same cloth - a desire to protect the institution and its power above all else. Continue reading ‘Annoyed! III’
What the hell is with the New South Wales government? Down here in Victoria, our state government is at least trying to grapple with serious issues like how we’re going to move ourselves around our rapidly growing state capital. Meanwhile, in New South Wales, the government seems to be far too busy fighting itself and the NSW union movement to do anything much. Not to mention backbenchers publicly slagging off the entire front bench.
About the only policy output coming out of them right now seems to be Treasurer Michael Costa running his mouth off at the Garnaut Review in The Oz. As typing is not activism points out, it’s moronic.
Is there any prospect whatsoever of the NSW Labor Party getting itself sorted out and concentrating on dealing with that state’s considerable economic and social problems at some point between now and the next election?
This post isn’t quite as long as I thought it might be, and I think that’s a good thing. There’s no doubt the Garnaut Report [link to pdf] is seriously big as well as eminently serious, and I suspect a lot of the blogosphere’s climate change wonks are waiting to digest it rather than rushing in to write insta-commentary. Although the report is a very serious piece of policy work, its release is also a political event par excellence, and taking the time to understand the report’s arguments and proposals is a template that could usefully be applied to other big political happenings - including but not limited to the Budget - even if it goes against the grain of the 24/7 media cycle. It’s also worth noting that these sort of issues really lend themselves to the power of aggregating distributed knowledge - given the number of seriously informed people out there participating in the climate change debate - and therefore the comments threads are possibly more important than some of the posts themselves - which informed the approach we took at LP on Friday by posting an open thread.
So, what has the blogosphere had to say about the Garnaut Climate Change Review interim Report? Continue reading ‘Garnaut: the blogosphere reacts’
Queensland Liberal members voted by a large majority to accept the Nationals’ takeover bid for their allegedly insolvent party, and the deal is all set to be consummated at a constitutional convention. So all is peachy in the Pineapple Party? Maybe not.
There’s been previous speculation that Mal Brough, the former federal Minister and recently elected Liberal President, may be positioning himself in the medium term for entry into state Parliament. There’s been speculation that the Santoro forces in the state Libs might be doing the numbers to oust Lawrence “The Borg” Springborg from his perch. Brough was elected in order to get a better negotiating deal for Liberals than his predecessor, Gary Spence. Now Spence is putting his hand up for the presidency of the Liberal National Party and current Nats president, Bruce McIver, hasn’t ruled out throwing in his hat. All federal MPs and Senators have been bought off by guarenteed preselection, but - rather ironically - Warren Truss says it would be undemocratic to pre-empt the question of the presidency. Will Brough be dumped? Is this payback for Brough’s negotiating stance and a pre-emptive strike at a possible leadership contender?
Continue reading ‘Mal Brough gets the rough end of the Pineapple’
Update: For anyone having trouble getting to the Garnaut Review website, which obviously failed to anticipate the amount of traffic that would be heading its way, the report can be downloaded from the SMH. In pdf form, huge file.
I have no doubt some of our resident regular climate change bloggers will be offering some commentary when it’s released, and the contents digested, but here’s a thread for anyone who wants to discuss the interim Garnaut Report in the interim. It’s out at 12.30am, and I imagine it will be viewable at the Garnaut Review’s website. I think everyone would agree that it’s a most significant event, particularly since, as reported earlier this week, it would appear that Kevin Rudd will make his climate change response the signature issue of this term.
Peter Martin explains the process:
Continue reading ‘Open Garnaut Report thread’
It’s getting a bit tedious writing posts like this, but perhaps there’s a continued need to do so. The cumulative Newspoll for the first six months of the year across all states (and with a demographic breakdown) is out [table in pdf form], and poor old Dennis Shanahan is reduced to writing things like:
The biggest drop in satisfaction for Mr Rudd was in South Australia, from 68 per cent in the three months to March to 63 per cent in the three months to June.
Continue reading ‘Honeymoon, over, etc.’
Published in Authoritarianism,
Culture,
Economics,
Education,
Ethics,
Government,
International,
Media,
Policy,
Politics,
Sociology and
The Web .
When I read about Andrew Leigh’s departure from academia into the pointy end of the social policy world on secondment to Treasury for six months, my first thought was that it was a mixed blessing - no doubt Andrew will do good things in the public service, but taking him out of the mix of commentary in the blogosphere and the pages of the Fin deprives us of one of the far too few provocative and interesting and informed writers on public affairs we have in this country. My second thought, having attended Richard Allan’s presentation at the CCi conference last week was that it didn’t need to be this way. Tim Watts got there before me - pointing to the much more enlightened view taken on public servants contributing to public debate in the Old Blighty. Once the home of the “Official Secrets Act” and all things backstage and hidden, Westminster is doing an awful lot better in promoting open government and facilitating public debate than we are in this country. And British citizens are doing a lot better at finding ways to talk back to power via the web. Worth thinking about why that might be so.
Continue reading ‘The public’s gain is the public’s loss’
Published in Activism,
Authoritarianism,
Crime,
Ethics,
International,
Law,
Lesbian and Gay,
NSW Government,
Politics,
Religion,
Sexuality,
Sydney and
Urbanism .
To be fair to Morris Iemma and his bunch of clowns masquerading as a government, New South Wales isn’t alone in imposing risible and over the top security regulations for major “public events”. We’ve seen similar things in finance talkfests with Melbourne and CHOGM in Queensland saw Peter Beattie invent preventive detention for “known public nuisances”, as well as going to ludicrous lengths to prevent protest. But Iemma’s mob seem to have made it an art form, perhaps because as I’ve speculated before, their sense of authoritarianism compensates for their total ineffectuality in governing just about anything else than public events. (Compare - “public services”.) But the latest bunch of regulations for the Pope Fest really take the cake. It’s more or less private governance. Where’s the public benefit in preventing pilgrims attending World Youth Day in Sydney this month from being annoyed? Will their world really come to an end if someone hands them a condom or wears a t-shirt with an anti-homophobia message? What possible public justification does the NSW government have for denying basic rights to freedom of expression at the instance of the fragile petals in Cardinal Pell’s hierarchy?
Continue reading ‘Annoyed!’
The new Senate won’t formally sit until 26 August, but scrutiny of the Greens Senators, Family First’s Stephen Fielding and South Australian Independent Nick Xenophon has already been ramped up, since they all now collectively hold the balance of power. Props to my CPD colleague Ben Eltham for interviewing Xenophon and thus introducing him and some of his policy positions to those of us who aren’t familiar with South Australian politics.
While the Greens’ policy positions are well known, or if they’re not, they’re reasonably accessible, and thus transparent for those who take the time to look, Xenophon’s disclaimer of any left/right ideological commitment and indeed the relatively narrow range of issues on which Fielding has taken a prominent stand raises an important question. Unfortunately, we’ve lost our most prominent blogging Senator - from the Senate, that is, not from blogging. One of the Democrats’ more laudable stances was accountability to their membership (although aspects of that commitment - particularly the low threshold for a leadership challenge - were also probably a large contributor to their downfall), and Andrew Bartlett carried this level of accountability to a broader public through blogging the work of the Senate, which also allowed for public input into his legislative and policy decisions.
Continue reading ‘Open Senate?’
It’d be interesting to go back and trace the first appearance of the “Kevin Rudd will be a one term PM” narrative - I suspect it coincided with about the fifth round of declarations that “the honeymoon is over”. Lyn at Public Opinion helpfully summarises today’s MSM commentary so we don’t have to read it:
Gippsland one day, the nation the next. Newspoll via Possum says 55 - 45, back to the 10 points off primaries at 44 - 39. At last, the honeymoon is over, the chickens have come home to roost, the electorate has woken from its slumber and the narrowing is narrowing. Kevin’s down from 68 to 64 and Brendan has gained a whopping 2 points at 15.
In a post about Rudd’s decision to make an emmissions trading scheme the centrepiece of his government’s reform agenda, Brian provides us with some sensible commentary on the Newspoll numbers [pdf], while the redoubtable Possum Comitatus observes:
91% of all polls for the government are historically below 55%.
In other words, governments do things and some people get unhappy. But they can still go on and win. Continue reading ‘Oncer?’
The “media narrative” we’ve seen the first taste of today in the wake of the Gippsland by-election couldn’t be more predictable. Brendan Nelson’s contributed a theme of his own - that polls aren’t as meaningful as the “only poll that counts” - an election, or in this case a by-election. Never mind that one gives us a reading on the state of opinion in one electorate under conditions which are quite unique and the other seeks to measure opinion across the nation using a representative sample. There’s an echo there of Christopher Pearson’s line from last year - the specious distinction between “national polls” and putative local trends. The actually meaningful distinction is between dynamics in by-elections - particularly those in regional seats - and public opinion more broadly. Nevertheless, the opposition and the punditariat have given themselves licence to ignore the poll they “own” and to continue constructing a constant barrage of confected chaos and crises.
By the way, the Gippsland tsunami barely got a mention in the Brisbane Sunday Mail. Just as the dynamics in Gippsland shouldn’t be extrapolated too readily to the country as a whole, we should realise that whatever the national media obsesses about doesn’t necessarily carry that much weight outside the redoubts of the political class. Although the dynamics of the discourse will be quite different tomorrow, there’s no reason to assume that one of the most astute readers of public opinion, Rod Cameron, isn’t as right now as he was on Friday night’s Lateline that Kevin Rudd enjoys a genuine popularity “in the suburbs” and that much of that is attributable to voters being impressed with the government having actually kept its promises.
Continue reading ‘Send Canberra a message!’
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