Archive for the 'Policy' Category

If you’re Liberal and you know it, bash a teacher

Published
by
Mercurius
1 day, 21 hours ago
in Budget 2008 and Education
. 48 Comments

When I first sat down to write a reply to Nelson’ Budget reply on education, I felt like one of the judges in the first round of So You Think You Can Offer a Cogent Critique of the Education System. The Marcia in me wants to pat earnest Dr Nelson on the head. The Dicko in me is forced to send him home to learn the words, and the music, and how to dance.

To be honest, I’ve sometimes enjoyed the laid-back, anecdotal style of Brendan Nelson’s testifyin’. Journalists call it “homespun”. Ain’t that sweet?

Well, the education section of the Budget reply speech crossed the line from homespun into fabricated. It was a grab-bag of myths and plausible-sounding but incorrect assertions that go straight for parents’ worry-glands and bypass the brain.

Continue reading ‘If you’re Liberal and you know it, bash a teacher’

Killing solar PV softly

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 days, 14 hours ago
in Budget 2008, Climate change, Energy and Politics
. 73 Comments

Possum’s analysis of the broad policy objectives being played out in a subtle, piecewise fashion shows the political strategy of the Rudd government in the large. Be that as it may, there’s plenty of evidence of raw political cunning as well; I’d just like to point to a little policy announcement in the budget that demonstrates it. The policy in question isone that directly impacts my own upcoming spending plans - that is, to put some grid-connected solar panels on my roof, subsidised by the Photovoltaic Rebate Programme, which gives a subsidy of up to $8000 on such systems.

As discussed on a couple of previous LP threads, the rebate, while great for the beneficiaries, is in my opinion woeful public policy. To summarise, solar cells are currently way more expensive than just about any other renewable option, including wind, utility-scale solar thermal and CSP, small-scale hydropower, biomass, possibly geothermal and especially energy efficiency - you name it, it’s better value. But even if you specifically want to subsidise solar panels on roofs, it’s dumb policy, because it encourages them on the wrong roofs. For the same amount of money, you can put a lot more solar panels (and the extra support gear required) on the roofs of factories, schools, and offices, and generate a lot more power, than you can with domestic-size installations. Furthermore, if you look at what other forms of generation rooftop solar is likely to displace, it’s not coal or gas. It’s those other, arguably more promising, forms of renewable generation, because of the vagaries of the real, substantial incentive in place for renewable energy, the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target.

Whether you personally agree with that or not, it seems that there are plenty in the government who do, and decided they’d like to spike the program. But - as any thread on the topic at LP reveals - there are plenty of people who like solar energy, and like the idea of incentives to see it deployed on rooftops. So how to square the desire to stop this perceived waste of resources, with the desire not to have the supporters of solar panels - many of whom inhabit the political territory between Labor and the Greens - get too publicly upset?

Continue reading ‘Killing solar PV softly’

Burma: a case for humanitarian intervention?

Published
by
Kim
3 days, 5 hours ago
in Developing world, Disasters and International
. 38 Comments

Surely the bedrock responsibility of any state is to protect its citizens in the case of natural disaster. The bungling and incompetence shown in New Orleans was the lever for Bush’s free fall in the opinion polls. Far graver is the appalling regime in Burma, which has never shown any interest in doing so, and which held an absurd constitutional referendum to entrench itself in power and ban Aung San Suu Kyi from ever holding office even as many of its citizens were being devastated and killed by Cyclone Nargis and its aftermath. Its military is more interested in oppressing ethnic minorities than in disaster relief, and attempts at aid are failing because of the regime’s strict insistence on its border security and sovereignty.

Interestingly, there have been calls for humanitarian intervention from French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, from dissident Burmese media and Gareth Evans. The legal basis for such calls is disputed, although it may have legitimacy from the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine adopted by the UN in 2005. [The case for the invocation of this doctrine is discussed here.] But, while lip service is being paid to their own responsibility by the “international community”, will anything happen?

Offending national sovereignty is apparently fine when it involves oil, opium, Islam or a macho yearning to boast “regime change”. It is not to be contemplated when it is just a matter of saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

Guest post by Possum Comitatus: The real Rudd unveiled

Published
by
Administrator
4 days, 4 hours ago
in Budget 2008, Health and Media
. 113 Comments

LP has often been critical of the standard of mainstream political commentary in Australia, arguing that it concentrates too much on day by day horse race piffle framed by a narrow range of possible narrative scripts. We’re pleased to be able to bring you what we think is the best of the independent media coverage of the 2008 budget, a piece by Possum originally published in Crikey and reproduced at his blog - Possum looks beyond the headlines and delves deeper into Rudd’s governing style, and its implications.

Hands up who’s thoroughly sick and tired of reading about how Kevin Rudd is John Howard lite, a bloke that substitutes spin for government activity in those times when he’s not actually doing the big “Me-Too”?

Finally, hopefully, we can all now put that piffle to bed.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Possum Comitatus: The real Rudd unveiled’

LPG and money on the footpath

Published
by
Robert Merkel
4 days, 12 hours ago
in Budget 2008, Economics, Energy and Transport
. 45 Comments

Flicking through the Fin Review at lunch today, there was all manner of interesting tidbits about the budget. For instance, the means testing of the baby bonus will scrape back a lot less revenue than the scrapping of an obscure tax exemption on the byproducts from natural gas production - a form of light crude oil called condensate. And disappointingly, the FBT concession for company cars stayed, so we’ll continue to have the spectacle of people driving around in circles, burning fuel and releasing CO2, just to collect a tax rebate.

But there’s one little program that was rumoured to get the axe, but didn’t - the LPG vehicle scheme. This scheme provides a rebate of $2000 to get your car converted to run on LPG, and $1000 if you buy a pre-converted vehicle from a manufacturer. Even without the rebate, if you drive a reasonable-sized car around the average distance, it pays for itself in a couple of years. With the rebate, it seems to be a complete no-brainer - it pays for the remaining cost of the conversion within a year, and saves around $1000 per year, every year after that.

Which brings me to a simple question, which relates to adapting to higher energy prices. If LPG is such a no-brainer - particularly after the government bribe - why isn’t everybody installing it?
In my case, the answer’s simple - I commute on a motor scooter, which not only saves me fuel but even more on parking, and Rex is a high-powered indulgence which gets driven relatively little. But, LP readers, why aren’t you? Do you all drive very little? Worried about the effect on the reliability and resale value of the car? Think that the lower fuel economy will take away all the advantage of the cheaper fuel (from all reports, it does use substantially more fuel, but the costs aren’t that bad). Don’t want to lose any engine power? Or is it simply not worth the hassle of doing the conversion for you?

A tiger tale

Published
by
Paul Norton
4 days, 13 hours ago
in Education and Life-Levity
. 10 Comments

The following is a work of fiction and any resemblance to an actual Australian university is purely a coincidence. :)

********************

A group of researchers at an Australian university, inspired by Olaf Stapledon’s novel Sirius about an intelligent dog, decided to attempt to genetically engineer a tiger with human intelligence.

They succeeded in breeding a tigress who could read, write, speak several human languages, and program computers. To their great delight, the tigress subsequently gave birth to a litter of four cubs, all of whom inherited her abilities.
Continue reading ‘A tiger tale’

A balanced budget

Published
by
Mark
4 days, 15 hours ago
in Budget 2008, Economics, Howardia, International and Markets
. 2 Comments

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.

So how about that credit crunch?

Published
by
Kim
4 days, 17 hours ago
in Economics, Markets, Media and Sociology
. 86 Comments

Terms like “securitisation”, “derivatives”, “longitudinal diversification” and “dynamic hedging” would make most of our eyes glaze over, I suspect. Yet all this arcana is now having an impact on us - vie the subprime mortgage crisis and the shock waves it’s set off in the world economy. There are at least two factors which mitigate against discussion and examination of causes and solutions - the arcane nature of the math and language used by the finance wonks, and the reactive press coverage - attuned more to reporting on what pollies and regulators are saying or doing than assessing causes and debating the way forward. So I’d thoroughly recommend taking the time to read author and sociologist Robin Blackburn’s article The Subprime Crisis. It took me about half an hour to read, but I think it was time well spent, as Blackburn takes great care to demystify the nature and history of the crisis, and thus provides a basis for thinking about its implications which is far better than skimming spin laden or impenetrably written articles.

Continue reading ‘So how about that credit crunch?’

Liveblogging Budget 2008

Published
by
Mark
5 days, 12 hours ago
in Blogging, Budget 2008, Economics, Media and Polls
. 31 Comments

I’m going to have a go at it. I’ll leave comments closed on this post until 7pm-ish. Until then, comments can be left on Rob’s speculation thread. Once the liveblogging starts, remember to refresh periodically to see the updates, and please leave your own updates in comments.

A thought to start off with - the lack of a “budget bounce” for the Coalition in recent years led to (accurate, I think) commentary that the importance of the budget as a political event had been massively overplayed. This year, everyone knows the tax cuts are coming, and it’s a much more complex messaging/communications event - as Bernard Keane captures in this piece at Crikey, noting that the leaks have been finely targeted to particular publications covering particular demographics (for instance, “soak the rich” going to the tabloids, climate change for the Sunday Fairfax papers):

Crikey and others have been lamenting the Government’s mixed Budget messages, but we were missing the point. The messages were only mixed for the commentariat itself, which analyses everything the Government says. The media diet of most people is far more limited, and they would’ve only heard what the Government targeted at them.

Similarly, speculation that the budget will establish or damage the Rudd government’s “economic management” credentials is another elite preoccupation. As demonstrated by Kim in this post, that famous phrase is a piece of bad polling anyway - literally asking the wrong question, with endless narratives built on something that has nothing to do with how people vote. It’s much more likely that people are awaiting evidence that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan will do their utmost to protect them from economic uncertainty, than that there’ll be some sort of collective scoring exercise on what is increasingly a very niche piece of political theatre. The Opposition probably know this as well - though they’re caught in the headlights having set Brendan Nelson up as a bunny who’ll need to perform or face the consequences. They should be much more worried about the polling that demonstrates that “welfare for all, not just the poor” is going down like a lead balloon even among their own voters.

Elsewhere: Riffing off Kim riffing off Zoe’s crystal ball liveblogging, tigtog proposes a budget drinking game. Demonstrating the odd time sense that surrounds budget night, Zoe reports on reports of struggling working families with babies earning more than $150000 already bemoaning how they’ll find it hard to make do without the nanny state. And Trevor Cook deconstructs some of the spin about the budget that’s been going on for quite some time already.

Update: GreensBlog will also be liveblogging from 7.30pm.

Further update: Comments now open. Liveblogging will start below the fold at 7.30pm.

Continue reading ‘Liveblogging Budget 2008′

More complacent denigration

Published
by
tigtog
5 days, 15 hours ago
in Culture Wars, Health, Indigenous, Media, Poverty and Race
. 34 Comments

Last year Paul Norton wrote with some sadness and much asperity “Is David Burchell brain-dead?”

Referring to the particular column which prompted the post, Paul contrasted ex-communist Burchell’s stance with the positions taken by anti-communist Robert Manne thusly:

David Burchell’s column, by contrast, repeatedly trivialises left-liberal positions on those issues and complacently denigrates those who hold such views.

Well, Burchell appears to be at it again, holding up as if it is an entirely new concept that the panoply of social ills afflicting many indigenous communities are more a product of poverty than of racism per se, because many of the same problems afflict the non-indigenous urban poor.

It’s true that some remote Aboriginal communities, caught in a morass of isolation, neglect and joblessness, have sunk to levels of dysfunction unknown to white Australians.

Yet dysfunction is remarkably colour-blind. If, as we did until relatively recently, you put white families, preselected for their turbulent family histories, into welfare ghettoes on the fringes of the main cities, they will struggle to hold their lives together, too. And then, exactly like indigenous families, they will weave narratives of defeat and despair to console them for their marginality.

Unlike Burchell, I’m not a literary academic writing in the area of public policy, and have only a few undergraduate course credits in social studies from the early 80s under my belt, yet I’d be amazed if he could point to one, single, solitary social studies course which did not identify poverty as the primary component of social disadvantage in blackfella communities here in Australia (as well as in communities of colour amongst our immigrant population and in other nations as well). That correlation with poverty, and particularly de facto ghettoised poverty, has never been in contention. The question he studiously avoids is - why is there such a strong correlation in so many countries between socioeconomic class and the melanin content of one’s skin?
Continue reading ‘More complacent denigration’

The budget rituals

Published
by
Robert Merkel
5 days, 17 hours ago
in Budget 2008, Climate change and Economics
. 25 Comments

I’m clearly getting old and cynical. But it seems that the pre-Budget media leaks have followed the conventional pattern even more than normal. We’ve had a couple of weeks of tax rises, such as the T**t Fuel Tax (my SO’s name for the stuff, not mine…), the Toorak Tractor Tax, and the means testing of the baby bonus.

Now, as we get closer to the budget, we get softer pieces on new expenditure, like money for climate change - though it’s just the implementation of election commitment at this stage, with no new policy AFAICT. Not to mention the adjustment of the Medicare surcharge threshold.

Anybody want to place a bet on there being a couple of “surprise” spending initiatives in the Budget speech? Perhaps a major education announcement?

Continue reading ‘The budget rituals’

Oil marches on…

Published
by
Robert Merkel
6 days, 11 hours ago
in Energy and Markets
. 34 Comments

The price of oil continues to set records - it’s now reached nearly $126 US Dollars. While some of that can be attributed to the Pacific Peso-ization of the greenback, by most measures the oil price has reached a record. Against the Euro, it’s still a record. Inflation-adjusted, it’s still a record.

But there’s still one measure by which the oil price isn’t a record - against the purchasing power of the average Western consumer, apparently. According to today’s Fin, it would have to reach somewhere around $135 per barrel to match the peak price of oil by that measure. But it seems like there’s every possibility it might continue to go up in the short term. Indeed, some guy from Goldman Sachs is predicting that oil will reach $200 per barrel in a few months’ time. Continue reading ‘Oil marches on…’

Medicare levy thresholds and private health insurance

Published
by
Mark
1 week ago
in Budget 2008 and Health
. 155 Comments

I’m no expert in health economics, but there’s been a lot of commentary over the years from some who are suggesting that the artificial lifeline given to private insurers and hospitals has done just about zip to “take the pressure off the public hospital system”, while nicely fattening pay packets and profit margins for some. At enormous cost to the public purse.

These comments from the Doctors’ Reform Society seem apposite:

Insurers are angry and say 400,000 people will drop private coverage, but Dr Tim Woodruff says they should not expect the current level of tax support to continue.

“I’m not worried about how much whinging they do. [I am] just pointing out that it is whinging because of self-interest, because they’ve got a vested interest in keeping as much money from the taxpayer rolling into their coffers as possible,” he said.

“They’ve got every reason to complain but it’s not a reason that should deter the Government from doing what they’re doing.”

Continue reading ‘Medicare levy thresholds and private health insurance’

Guest post by Terry Flew: Is America going backwards economically?

Published
by
Administrator
1 week, 1 day ago
in American election 2008, Economics and USA
. 13 Comments

Another dispatch from LP’s Indiana correspondent:

Aside from the Democrat primaries, the major talking point in the U.S. this week is whether the United States is losing ground in the global economy. This is different to the question of whether or not the U.S. economy is in recession (or ’slowdown’ as GWB prefers to put it), but is rather about whether the U.S. is losing the competitive race against the emergent economies of East Asia and the Middle East, and indeed to Europe.

Two triggers to this have been Thomas Friedman’s ‘Who will tell the people’ article in the New York Times, and the launch of Zareed Fakaria’s book, The Post-American World and the various articles and TV appearances he has made around that. Both are arguing that as much of the world has adopted a free trade, pro-globalization agenda - as the U.S. campaigned for them to do throughout the 1980s and 1990s - the ability to compete successfully in the global market is understood mostly in terms of its threat to the U.S. economy.

Fakaria likes to use examples of ‘big things’ to make his point (Where’s the world’s biggest mall? - Beijing). Friedman compares the slow death experience of time spent at a major U.S. airport to the resort/business club experience of spending time at Hong Kong International Airport or Changi airport in Singapore. But both are saying that, having mostly won the arguments about globalization and freeing up international trade, the U.S. polity has largely failed to consider the implications for the U.S. itself of a more competitive global trading regime.

I am struck by how this debate differs in the U.S. to how it plays out in Australia. Continue reading ‘Guest post by Terry Flew: Is America going backwards economically?’

Burma donation appeal at Troppo

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 week, 1 day ago
in Developing world, Disasters and Donation challenge
. 1 Comment

The exact magnitude of the effects of Cyclone Nargis on the people of Bruma remain unclear, and will likely be so for some time. But what we do know already is it’s the biggest natural disaster in the region since the Boxing Day tsunami, and without sufficient and timely aid it will get far worse.

In the aftermath of that earlier disaster, the blogosphere did its bit to help out, notably through the efforts of the good Professor Quiggin, who matched his readers’ donations one-for-one, raising nearly $5000. This time around, Club Troppo and the Professor are trying their hand again:

He is doing the same thing again, this time in collaboration with Club Troppo. We are hoping to persuade readers to give generously in the knowledge that every dollar of disposable income sacrificed translates to nearly four dollars of aid. John will donate fifty cents for every dollar pledged in the comments threads for this post, the comments thread for the twin post at his own site, or by email to John or me. Club Troppo contributors will put in another fifty cents.

Go over to Troppo to find out how to donate. I’m going to put in $100. How about you?