It was interesting to read the acres of newsprint devoted to Budget specials today for two reasons - one to note that so much of the “interest group” reaction is typical - one headline - “teachers say more is needed for schools” - probably writes itself, and could be run nearly every year. That’s not to have a go at the teachers, but it might be more to the point if the media spent more time on doing specialist analyses of each portfolio (as New Matilda has been doing for a few) and less on highlighting understandable (from the point of view of those concerned) calls for more spending. An assessment of priorities and discrete policy initiatives might be more informative than a de facto assumption that the cake is of infinite dimensions - which it would almost have to be if every interest group were placated. In some ways, being Treasurer would be an unenviable task, and as I argued last night, the politics of the budget include a real attempt to persuade people to look at the collective public good rather than “what’s in it for me?”. Obviously people want to understand how they (and policy areas they care about) are affected, but the sort of “thinking” that goes into this sort of nonsense - “Yet again, Generation X gets screwed” - makes me wince, even as a member of said generation (not to mention the factual vacuum contained in that silly little article).
This leads me onto my other observation - the paucity of any reference to any views that the opposition might have. Shadow Ministers were clearly not - on the whole - interested, informed enough or motivated to release anything portfolio specific. So all we got was short shrift - at least in the print media - to the rather inconsistent and confused bleatings of Malcolm Turnbull and Brendan Nelson, who according to Trevor Cook, looked like he was “on life support” on the telly. A couple of paras on average across the two 30 something page budget liftouts I read. So, how do the attention deprived respond?
By musing (threatening might be far too strong a word) about blocking the changes to the baby bonus in the Senate. Continue reading ‘Opposition Budget politics, 2008 style’
Since I was concentrating on the politics of the budget in my post last night, it’s worth pointing out that there’s an interesting take on Wayne Swan’s first budget from market economist (and former Keating adviser) Barry Hughes at New Matilda this morning. It’s confirmation of some of the early reaction from other economists on Lateline Business that the policy settings in the budget are basically neutral, giving the government (and the Reserve Bank) wriggle room to respond if things take a quick downward turn in an environment of almost unprecedented international instability. But it’s worth remembering one thing. Unlike the previous government, this one actually does have a macro-economic policy:
Financial markets will be thankful for small mercies. Who knows what Howard and Costello might have done? Perhaps they might have finally learnt some economics. But on their past form they would have continued to party. Keeping a budget surplus around one per cent of GDP would have left high single digits of more billions of new spending and tax cuts. And financial markets will also be impressed that the ALP has been able to slot in its new spending without blowing any valves.
Think about that as you assess the economic value (if any) of anything Malcolm Turnbull and Brendan Nelson have to say about the “Labor budget for a nation”.
Update: Also in New Matilda, Ben Eltham on the rhetoric and the reality of budget cutting, an assessment of the “Education Revolution” and the infrastructure fund… And somehow an AFL metaphor slipped into the title of my contribution to the budget discussion the morning after.
Well, the rumour-mill is off and chugging again that Alexander Downer is about to quit, and some have drawn a similar inference about Peter Costello from his antics in a Budget-day interview.
At times like this, one could almost - almost - regret that the ALP turned away from Communism. Just think, it would be off to the salt mines now for Dolly and Tip!
But seriously, what will the former triumvirate of Howard, Costello and Downer do with their long retirements?
Continue reading ‘Post-parliamentary daze’
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
Unfortunately, I forgot to recharge my camera battery, so no pics this week. We’ll have to content ourselves with an image from Keating! The Musical, which I took my mum to see last night for Mothers’ Day (she’s a big PJK fan). Apparently, I’m not alone, as Paul Keating also took his mum to see it. I’d be really interested to know what non-Labor folks would think about it. They’d have been lonely in the audience at the QPAC Playhouse last night, surrounded by a gallery of Labor luminaries from Anna Bligh down. It’s also interesting to speculate whether a hypothetical Howard! The Musical would get much of a run - and I’m not sure Terry Serio would be cast in the eponymous role - his portrayal of Howard was cruel in its verisimilitude. Alexander Downer, in Rocky Horror style fishnets and corset, came off much better.
I also enjoyed catching up with a couple of friends who’d been at the matinee for a drink at The Point on Grey Street at Southbank first, always a good spot for a glass of wine or a cocktail, and while I’m doing recommendations, I went round to some other friends’ place for dinner on their back deck on Friday night and ate a very scrumptious lasagne concocted out of the pages of the Veganomicon - best. cookbook. eva! Today? Well, it’s been a lazy Sunday!
Howard’s talking again.
“Be proud of what we’ve achieved - don’t take any cheek from the other side.”
Andrew Elder wrote an interesting post the other day critiquing Gerard Henderson’s critique, and pointing to a fundamental problem the Liberals have:
The Liberals and Nationals do not take the intellectual debate seriously, which is why it is left to pinheads like Miranda Devine, Tony Abbott, Janet Albrechtsen or Gerard Henderson to carry the (empty) can of rightwing intellectualism. If you really want people to take on the challenge of right-of-centre intellectual development, create an environment conducive to it.
The point’s been made here a number of times that too much political commentary relies on stale analogies with the past, and a complete inability to grasp the challenges of the present. Perhaps that’s because no intellectual work goes into it. The Nelson/Turnbull mob have been talked into the view that they can’t “disown the legacy of the Howard government” lest they lose their advantage on “economic management”. Never mind the fact that ALP polling found last year that when the question was posed as “whom do you trust to manage the economy best for your family?”, Rudd was streets ahead. It’s the distinction between a “beautiful set of numbers” and paying attention to people’s actual financial struggles. In other words, you could simultaneously think the government was keeping the shine on the numbers, but managing the economy for the benefit of big biz and the top end of town. Howard understood that back in about 1996.
But the Libs are now stuck in some Shanahan of a universe where whatever wording Newspoll uses is gospel. Continue reading ‘Howard preferred PM on economic management. 4 Eva!’
… Maybe Kevin08 is one of those tricky housemates who tries to keep a low profile while attempting to snatch the big prize by doing nefarious work out of the gaze of the cameras.
I probably can’t stretch the Big Brother analogy too far, but one of the big concerns I had about the election of the Rudd government was that the momentum for campaigning around a whole range of vital issues would stall. That’s partly I think because elections provide a convenient end point - if you were horrified by what Howard was doing on refugees (for instance), the most immediate and pressing issue was to vote him out of the House. But it would be a fatal error to assume that’s the ball game.
Margaret Simons has a story in Crikey today reporting on the deep concerns the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre has about the exercise of Senator Chris Evans’ ministerial discretion on asylum seeker claims since the election. 42 claims have been processed, and 41 rejected, a 97.6% rejection rate which is the highest it’s been since 2001 (the year of the Tampa.) According to Pamela Curr of the ASRC, one of the claims rejected has been that of a woman who escaped captivity while her “owners” were in Australia on holiday - she was being held against her will as a sex slave. She was originally from Africa, and had been trafficked to the Middle East.
This may not be the intent of the Government. Continue reading ‘Under the radar’
I’m quite the fan of George Megalogenis’ journalism, for a number of reasons. Unlike too much of the instant analysis which passes for political commentary which almost always sticks to a singular press gallery script, Megalogenis has an eye both for longer term political trends, and a desire to connect psephological and political observation with social research. My caveat would be that his matching of census data with electorate level voting patterns is methodologically flawed in two ways. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, and the selection of particular variations doesn’t make them necessarily independent or even intervening variables. But, nevertheless, Megalogenis does two things which are praiseworthy - he tries to tell a bigger story than the horse race, and tries to relate the horse race to bigger changes. That’s actually something Paul Kelly used to do well, albeit with a big dash of neoliberal orthodoxy colouring his interpretations. These days Kelly appears to have well passed his use by date, so it’s good to see Megalogenis has taken the step from newspaper punditry to book level analysis.
But for all that, if you’ve already read his The Longest Decade, I wouldn’t recommend spending another 30 bucks for the revised edition, which promises to take the story up to the Rudd victory. You could save your pennies and click this link, because the essence of the few chapters Megalogenis has tacked on to the end of his story of the rivalry between Howardian and Keatingite versions of Australia is summed up in one relatively short blog post.
But there is one insight in the new bits of The Longest Decade that Megalogenis hasn’t excerpted in the shorter short version, which is a pity because I think it’s key to the difference between politics John Howard style and politics Kevin Rudd style. Continue reading ‘George Megalogenis and Kevin Rudd: Anti-culture warriors’
Former Howard Government minister Kevin Andrews and AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty seem to be continuing their attempts to blame each other for the Haneef debacle. You’ll recall a couple of days ago that a “source”, most probably Keelty or somebody close to him, claimed that Andrews had cancelled Haneef’s visa without bothering to tell the AFP. Now we have the bite back from Andrews. From the Oz:
FORMER immigration minister Kevin Andrews had no idea of powerful evidence of Mohamed Haneef’s innocence when he controversially revoked the visa of the then terrorism suspect last year. Mr Andrews will tell the Rudd government-ordered inquiry into the bungled case, which opens today, that Australian Federal Police did not inform him of evidence debunking allegations against Dr Haneef’s second-cousin Sabeel Ahmed - allegations that had led to the subsequent terrorism charge against the Gold Coast doctor.
These guys were supposed to be in charge of protecting us from Scary Terryrists - one, of course, still is. Thank your favourite deity that there seems to be so few actual Scary Terryrists in Australia, or we’d really be in trouble…
In comments on my thread about the beat up on the Griffith “madrassas” and subsequent own goal from Vice-Chancellor Ian O’Connor, Andrew Bartlett made a very telling point:
The sick irony is that The Australian’s anti-Muslim fear-mongering is being directed at an Institute that has sought to do precisely what heaps of hectoring politicians and pontificating media pundits (including a number from The Australian) have demanded Muslims do - get engaged in public debate, build links with the wider community and seek to honestly confront some of the challenges of Islam in the modern world. And yet they are prepared to run major pieces, most of them containing gross distortions, five days running, attacking this Unit despite not any evidence that it is actually promoting Wahhabism.
It’s very true that we heard an awful lot in the Howard years about the need to encourage “moderate Islam”. I don’t cavil with that, but I think it’s based on a fundamental misconception - that pluralism doesn’t exist in Islam, but rather there’s one essence of the faith that can be clung to either more fervently or less strictly. That ties in with all the claims that Islam is violent, etc. What it does is completely efface the diversity within Islam and Islamic communities, and actually plays into the hands of the Wahhabi mob who want to impose a unitary version (I almost wrote “unitarian” - heh!) of their views and reinvent Islam as a monolith. Perhaps The Australian should run a “shock! horror!” expose on itself. All that is a prologue to a link to a post at The Immanent Frame, written by John Bowen on Harvard Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na‘im’s new book Islam and the Secular State.
Continue reading ‘Islam and the secular state’
Channel Seven is being sued for defamation by Mercedes Corby.
The gravamen of Ms. Corby’s case is that Channel Seven’s Today Tonight program, in the persons of its presenter Anna Coren and reporter Bryan Seymour, had promised Ms. Jodie Power $100,000 and a trip to Canada if she made false statements on air implicating Ms. Corby in illicit drug dealing. The truth of the matter is ultimately for the court to decide, but the salient point is that the matter is only before the court because Ms. Power made contestable statements, and the station broadcast those statements, about a specific individual other than herself who has standing to sue.
An obvious question this case raises is whether the practice of paying interviewees to make sensational, misleading and/or false statements is widespread in the genre of tabloid current affairs television. I can think of two such interviews, both broadcast on tabloid current affairs programs, about which I have long held grave suspicions.
Continue reading ‘Coren’s (alleged) Cash for Crud, and moral panics about “welfare bludging”’
Perhaps our Christian Prime Minister has been reading Luke 8:18. I suppose we’re lucky that those who have little won’t find even the little they have taken away from them, but Andrew Leigh and Peter Martin are surely justified in asking why a fairly dodgy election promise to start with is being implemented in such a way as to disproportionately reward those who are already well off.
The redesigned scheme, due to come into effect on July 1, works like this: Every dollar that first home savers put into an account - up to a maximum of $5,000 - will be matched by a government contribution of 15 cents.
Except for Australians earning more than $80,000 per annum. They will get a government co-contribution of 25 cents for every dollar they invest. Really. …
Unless they earn more than $180,000 per annum in which case they will be blessed with a government contribution of 30 cents per dollar they invest.
That’s right.
Wayne Swan’s made much of creating incentives to save. I can’t for the life of me see why high income earners need public incentives. I thought we’d had enough middle class welfare under Howard. Now it seems we’re to get upper class welfare under Rudd.
Continue reading ‘To those who have, even more will be given’
If there’s any doubt remaining after the Haneef affair that what passes for justice in terrorism and law enforcement matters is nothing of the sort but a blatantly political bag of tricks, the comments from David Hicks’ prosecutor, Colonel Moe Davis, should lay it to rest.
The former chief prosecutor of the US military commissions at Guantanamo Bay said overnight he would not have pursued Hicks because the case against the Australian was not serious enough.
The ex-prosecutor, Air Force Colonel Moe Davis, told a pre-trial hearing for another Guantanamo Bay inmate he had “inherited” the Hicks case and wanted to focus on cases serious enough to merit 20-year jail sentences, with the Australian’s case not meeting that mark.
Davis also said the commissions were tainted by political influence and evidence obtained through prisoner abuse.
The mendacity of the Howard government - pushing for Hicks to be charged after he became a political problem, after letting him stew because doing so was a political advantage - stands exposed. Continue reading ‘The politics of Hicks’
The dense booklet, which was overseen by former prime minister John Howard, describes the uses of the stump-jump plough, the emergence of the Heidelberg school of art, the location of Phar Lap’s heart and depicts Australia’s first governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, as “firm but humane”.
It’d be nice if the Rudd government grasped the bit between its teeth and just scrapped the citizenship test. Do we really need a Rudd-era one to supplant the Howard-era farce? Would anyone care except Planet Janet?
Props to Petro Georgiou for speaking up on this again.
I’m fairly sure Chris Evans - the Immigration Minister - doesn’t believe it has any value. What will be gained by setting up a review panel? And, incidentally, why is there a “former Olympian” on the panel anyway? To put a word in for teh sport? To carry the torch for that warm and fuzzy feeling of the unity of humankind we get when we think about sporting contests? If there’s any political pain in getting rid of such a nonsense, surely taking it now rather than stretching out the debate would be good politics. After all, when you’re riding so high in the polls, you can afford to take a few decisions which might be right but not universally acclaimed.
And, just think - admirers of Sir Hubert Opperman and Walter Lindrum would no doubt applaud!
Elsewhere: Tim Dunlop says “Just dump it!”
It’s well known that the AFP harboured, and still harbour, strong suspicions about Mohammed Haneef. However, even if you make that assumption, the investigation and subsequent prosecution seems to have been stuffed up on several levels. Aside from the courtroom blunder that saw the criminal case against him collapse, I’ve been told by people who should know about these things that the AFP would have been much better off keeping him under surveillance - including in India, with the cooperation of Indian police - to see if they could turn up actual evidence that he’s anything other than a doctor with the misfortune to have the wrong relatives.
Today, a “source” is telling The Age that Kevin Andrews’ office prevented this from happening by revoking his visa, without even telling the AFP:
Senior public servants in a number of agencies in Canberra, including the police, were caught unawares when Mr Andrews suddenly announced that he was cancelling Dr Haneef’s visa.
“That spoiled it for the police,” the source said.
“It was done without any warning. The police knew that was an option but not that it was to be used so quickly or in such a cavalier fashion,” the source said.
One might be tempted to think this “source” is Keelty, or somebody close to him, making yet another attempt to blame somebody else. But, if accurate, the inescapable conclusion is that Kevin Andrews preferred political grandstanding in the leadup to an election over actually catching and convicting somebody who was genuinely thought to be a for-real terrorist.
You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for Griffith University Vice-Chancellor Ian O’Connor. His hamfisted attempts to defend Griffith against accusations of being a “madrassas” trawling for Saudi dollars have landed him in all sorts of bother, with his attempts to draw a fine distinction between “research by senior staff” (who apparently get all their briefing notes from Wikipedia) and correct citation in academic work being a classic case of digging yourself deeper into a hole. His self-justification reads more like the logic-splitting you might get from a student who’d been called for plagiarism. Revise and resubmit, of course, would not be an option in the sort of mediated culture war blowup the good Professor found himself in the middle of - and that’s the problem in a nutshell. He’d have done better, probably, to have ignored the frenzy of the press beat ups, released an anodyne statement and tapped someone with a brain on their shoulders to write him a measured response. Just some gratuitous pr advice…
What he’s succeeded in doing is obscuring the real issues, and playing the game on the turf of those who wanted to cast stones at Griffith. But he’s also succeeded in obfuscating the questions he does have to answer about Saudi funding for Griffith’s Islamic Research Unit.
Continue reading ‘A tale of woe’
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