John Menadue

  • John Menadue. What a dreadful week.

    Last week an important public debate on key issues facing Australia was sabotaged by Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and News Corp. The old scare campaigns were back again. Bill Shorten’s timidity did not help. Paul Keating commented ‘We have a political culture that has the ambition of a gnat’. He is right.

    Instead of a sensible discussion on climate change and carbon pollution, News Corp, via The Australian and the Daily Telegraph picked up a draft options paper on climate change which was being prepared for the ALP Federal Conference. This options paper suggested that the ALP is considering an emissions trading scheme. The paper apparently did not propose a carbon tax and it should be quite clear that an emissions trading scheme is not the same thing as a carbon tax. But that didn’t concern the Daily Telegraph which attempted to derail any sensible public discussion by depicting Bill Shorten as a zombie crawling from the carbon tax grave.

    It is worth noting that The Australian, together with the Australian Financial Review, is sponsoring a summit next month on policy reform. But what hypocrisy it is for News Corp to be sponsoring a summit whilst it is a major contributor to debasing public debate on climate change in Australia as it does also consistently in the US and the UK.

    Of course Tony Abbott couldn’t help joining in the ‘debate’ on an emissions trading scheme and a carbon tax when News Corp, as is the usual practice, gave him the lead in he wanted. We saw again the one-liners. He said ‘We’ve always said … that if Labor came back the boats would be back, the mining tax would be back and now we find that if Labor came back the carbon tax would be back’. He didn’t rerun his old one-liners on Labor increasing the deficit and the debt because his own policies have done just that.

    It was John Howard who first proposed an emissions trading scheme in 2007. Malcolm Turnbull supported Kevin Rudd’s carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2009 and crossed the floor to do so. Almost every reputable economist believes that a market mechanism like an emissions trading scheme is the best way to reduce carbon pollution. It is the lowest cost and most efficient way and one would think that it would appeal to a government that espouses a belief in market mechanisms. Neither News Corp nor Tony Abbott can help themselves in their politics of demolition on climate change. Only the previous week Tony Abbott had stepped up his attacks on renewable energy.

    The public wants something better in public discussion on climate change. The Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Council of Social Services have established an Australian Climate Round Table. They called for a ‘civil and constructive’ discussion on the subject. Clearly Tony Abbott and News Corp are not interested in such a discussion.

    It is ironic that last week The Australian and Australian Financial Review also announced that they would be sponsoring a summit ‘to fix Australia’ The agenda includes ‘reforms to the federal and state taxation systems that taken as a whole are both efficient and fair’. Yet Neil Chenoweth reported in the AFR on May11 this year the ‘the Australian Tax Office has only one company in its highest risk category for tax avoidance- Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation’. On April 9 this year Michael West in the Sydney Morning Herald wrote ‘Rupert Murdoch’s US empire siphons $4.5b from Australian business virtually tax free’. That may be efficient for News Corp but it does not sound fair for other taxpayers.

    Last week Joe Hockey told us once again that we needed tax reform. But he has already ruled out key reform measures like changing superannuation deductions and payouts. He has also ruled out negative gearing that even the Reserve Bank now says we must consider. The ALP has made some timid proposals in both these areas, but instead of treating them as a useful contribution to a public debate on tax reform, both Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey seized on it an opportunity for attack and ruled out reform in both these areas.

    Joe Hockey said again last week that we needed to reform the GST, but then ruled it out unless all the states and territories agreed. Surely national leadership on tax reform must come from the Australian Treasurer and not run for cover as soon as the states disagree. Joe Hockey shirked his responsibility.

    The only tax change that is now in prospect is bracket-creep which is increasing government revenue.

    During the week the Business Council of Australia president, Catherine Livingstone said

    ‘Within hours of the Treasurer outlining a compelling case for the need for fundamental tax reform and balancing of the tax mix, both major parties began ruling out key elements of sensible tax reform, including changes in the GST. Our political representatives are elected and paid by the community to implement policies that will best serve the country. Their leadership responsibility is to ensure that there is a constructive, well informed debate, leading to implementable outcomes; it is not to undermine the debate in the cause of party-political posturing. Leadership requires being open and honest with the community about the challenges we are facing. It requires the energy and conviction to take on difficult and complex reform imperatives.’

    Catherine Livingstone spelled out very clearly that we have had a very bad week.

    See link to the policy articles that Mike Keating and I have edited on the need for policy reform in Australia. https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/blog/?p=3719.

    As Ken Henry said in the foreword to the series

    ‘I can’t recall a poorer quality of public debate on almost any issues, that we have had in recent times in Australia.’

    Perhaps it is always darkest before the dawn!

  • Robert Manne. Laudato Si’ : A political reading.

    Robert Manne describes the Papal Encyclical as the first work that has risen to the full challenge of climate change. Robert Manne ads:

    There can be little doubt that the Papal Encyclical is the most consequential intervention in the discussion of climate change since Al Gore’s film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.  … Like Al Gore, indeed, like all rational people, Pope Francis accepts the consensual conclusions of the climate scientists.  … For Pope Francis the climate crisis is the most extreme expression of a destructive tendency that has become increasingly dominant through the course of industrialisation. … The Encyclical argues that we have become slaves both to what is called the technological paradigm and the theory of market fundamentalism. … In the Encyclical, the analysis of the condition of contemporary culture in turn provides the explanation for the most troubling puzzle of the modern era, our abject failure thus far to rise to the challenge of global warming. … Climate change denialism is the most obvious self-interest of the economically powerful voices of society who, in the words of the Encyclical “mask the problems … and conceal the symptoms”.

    This article by Robert Manne was published in The Monthly on 1 July 2015. For link to the article see https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-manne/2015/01/2015/1435708320/laudato-si-political-reading .

    John Menadue

  • Christopher Kennedy and Malcolm Fitzgerald. From sound bite to web bite.

    We are so used to pointing our fingers at the Chinese for their pathetic attempts to control the web we do not see the fundamental change in Western society and the relationship between the governed and the governing. For example; in the Victorian election internet, as defined by the term ‘social media’, was given credit for the amount of damage it did to the Liberal campaign; with the out-going premier blaming his loss on the social media.
    Another example is the prime minister recently degrading the net as electronic graffiti after it was pointed out that the Liberals had no social presence there and consequently was losing votes by the bucket-load.

    It is not only communist (or socialist ) societies that are finding it to govern with the net – many Western politicians have been unable to grasp the significant change in power structures; specifically being held responsible for the governments actions and the opportunity the web allows to ‘vote’ immediately on issues that effect us.
    We’re on the crest of a wave. At the moment the web is largely open to anyone with enough money to live next to reliable power supply. That obstacle to entry is being ameliorated by the number of mobile phones capable of interacting via web services, like twitter, instagram, etc. The number of mobile phones in all areas of the world is phenomenal. Very poor people have mobile phones. What we saw in Sri Lanka was that people who were too poor to own a phone had their own SIM. They would borrow your phone, pop your SIM out and push theirs in, make the call, switch SIMs back and return the phone.
    The interesting thing about that is that the access to the infrastructure is provided by companies who are usually profit driven. By that I mean that there is a point of difference between their agenda and the government agenda. We have already seen that large companies, keen to have access to markets, will allow the government to set the rules. SkyTV and Google did so in China. In some markets, the government still have effective control of the infrastructure. During the Arab Spring some countries were able to “turn off” the internet. It was more pragmatic than trying to stop individual access.
    What I think we’ll see is organisation around these platforms by groups attempting to sway opinion. The voice of the people is, according to the mood of the times, lauded or pilloried. Presently it’s tearing Syria apart. In Australia, at present the attitude is ambivalent. The Libs, and I’m sure Labor was doing this too, were producing a lot of material for youtube and trying to get it trending on twitter. The bits that I saw were too ham-fisted to be broadly attractive, they were preaching to the converted.
    The internet provides a focus for people to gather “outside space”. That is a part of its phenomenal power. We don’t have a physical boundary. There is a small amount of time shifting too, but it remains temporal in it’s most important aspects. A lot of the concern about the internet has been directed at the idea that things will be lost. People of the future will not have access to our writing. It is more apparent now that this concern is misplaced. However, it is triggered by a very noticeable phenomenon – the sheer quantity of information available. Yesterdays twitter is an ancient relic. This isn’t because it has lost relevance. It is because the quantity of material that is aggregated is so vast that we are constantly looking at the surface. Yesterday’s post are buried by today’s posts.
    There is a wait-and-see game being played. This happened with financial activity in the early days. The potential for micro-payments was envisaged as revolution in our behaviour. Transaction costs were essentially zero, so that meant that digital objects could be transacted for nominal values, eg, 1 cent. I saw a number of systems that were being developed and trialled. They were successful, except for one thing. The existing powers in the financial markets would not participate. Why would they? Transaction costs reduced to zero? Millions of transactions being performed without profit? Lunacy. The systems I saw were put in place but the revolution never occurred. The companies that delivered the systems take huge service fees. They charge content developers for access to the systems. They charge consumers for access to the system. The system is not really very expensive to setup or to maintain. However, they control all the gates and operate within an profitable oligopoly.
    The present threats to social activity on the web in Australia are the data retention laws (Are they being discussed) and the copyright laws. The data retention laws force the ISPs to record and retain all user activity for two years. Have they effectively outsourced the expensive work of the spy agencies? These censorship laws are used to dampen social behaviour. Are you looking at rude pictures? We’ll find out! Not today, we’re busy, but in a couple of years we might drag up the links and make an issue of it.
    The copyright laws are a part of the spectrum of censorship. There are certainly good arguments for fair-pay for fair-use. However, the content is distributed to markets segmented by geography and politics. There is no reason why the US market get to see a movie before the rest of the world. It can be distributed to the entire world simultaneously. The refusal to allow some markets to access the product is the issue. Why can “they” have it when “we” can’t? And why is there a cost difference? The home market (if we think about Hollywood) pays much lower costs than the rest of the world. Yet there are no distribution costs on the internet. So, we have to wonder at this. It raises two flags: censorship (refusal of access) and discriminatory practices ( foreigners enter through this door only. foreigners pay more ).
    These two things are blunt instruments but they have the ability to play carrot and stick. Copyright laws are the stick. You download a movie and we will allow the production company to sue you. Has a production company ever tried to sue someone who snuck into a theatre without paying or who recorded to VCR? No. However, our governments are standing beside the content producers. They should be telling them to get their shop in order. Make your product available (no censorship). Don’t discriminate. Learn to charge a fair price.
    The carrot is safety. Give up all your rights for safety’s sake. Terrorist lurk in the bushes, we must cut down all bushes. We must retain all your data and pass it to all governments ( except the baddies ). We must know what you are doing for your sake.
    And in the need will all this monitoring of the internet work? No, because the freedom of the internet allows the user to increase their productivity; their ability to understand issues and concepts. Knowledge is the true drug of the mind. A country that places sovereign borders around it’s internet will find itself falling backwoods in the long term as other countries increase their productivity.
    The mainstream media did not get up and fight for their rights in the recent change to the the metadata laws and they are going to pay for it. Part of the problem is the mainstream media’s slow loss of influence to the internet borne traffic as well as it’s desire to control copyright. As well as public opinion.
    Unfortunately you can’t champion free speech on one hand and not protect it with the other. As the net increases it’s power over politics the content providers who work within the system are going to find it harder and harder to justify their attacks on the freedom of the net.

     

    Malcolm Fitzgerald completed a BA with Hons first class in Literature and Communication, Murdoch University, 1989. Forced to learn to use a computer, he discovered the internet, taught himself to code and has been working as a web programmer since 1995.

    Christopher Kennedy completed a Bachelor of Asian Studies (Chinese major) at Murdoch University in 1989. He went on to become a journalist and moderated Australia Asia Internet for five years. Since then he has concentrated on fiction.

     

  • John Menadue. Refugees- from toxic politics to a humanitarian policy.

    The ALP Federal conference which will be meeting in a week’s time, will be considering refugee policy along with other major issues.

    I have re-posted below a post from 22 June on refugees .  

    Media reports suggest that boat ‘turnbacks’ will be a contentious issue at the conference. There are several issues that I think should be kept in mind on this issue.

    The first is that the dramatic drop in boat arrivals has not been due to turnbacks, but the decision by the Rudd Government announced on 13 July 2013, that any people arriving by boat in future would never be settled in Australia. That was the game-changer. Tony Abbott’s actions were quite marginal, including some turnbacks. These turnbacks had a great deal of publicity but they were not significant in curbing the flow of boats. 

    Second, turnbacks should only be considered as part of a regional agreement that importantly involves Indonesia, Malaysia and the UNHCR. Unilateral turnbacks should be rejected. 

    Third, the issue of turnbacks reminds us again how important it is to build trust and arrangements with regional countries. This will require considerable diplomatic effort and resources. It will take time. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the post below, we treat regional countries as fair-weather friends and go to them when we have a problem, but turn our backs when they have a problem.  John Menadue

    Refugees – from toxic politics to a humanitarian policy (repost from 22 June 2015.

    The old Irish story tells of the guide who spoke to a lost Irishman. If you want to get to Dublin I wouldn’t start from here.

    The same is true of refugee politics today. We are in a dreadful position at the moment but we need to be pragmatic and determined to get to a humane and generous policy.

    Before looking at practical ways to an improved future for refugees, there are several things that we need to keep in mind.

    First, the Australian public in my view will not support a generous refugee policy if arrivals are seen to be irregular and not under the control of the Australian government, particularly if the arrivals are being determined by people-smugglers.

    Second, the generous acceptance of Indochinese refugees in Australia thirty years ago would not have been possible if we had had the arrivals of boat people that we had in Australia in 2013. At one stage, boat arrivals that year were running at the rate of close to 50,000 p.a. At the height of the outflow of over a million people from Indochina in the late 1970s and 1980s, the largest number of people arriving in Australia by boat was 1423 in 1977-78. From my experience as Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs from 1980, I was very conscious that a large numbers of boat arrivals would have prejudiced the Indochina program. We put a great deal of effort into minimizing and downplaying boat arrivals.

    Third, the success of the Indochina program depended on two related features. The first was that countries of the region would hold asylum seekers for a period for processing on the understanding that, secondly, countries like Australia, the US, Canada and France would resettle large numbers of those refugees. It was called burden-sharing.

    Fourth, the collapse of the arrangement with Malaysia triggered the dramatic increase in boat arrivals in 2012 and 2013. People-smugglers realised that there was no effective Australian counter to their activities. The collapse of that arrangement with Malaysia was the result of the collaboration and joint action in the Senate by the Coalition, the Greens and supported by major refugee advocate organisations in Australia.

    Fifth, Tony Abbott did not stop the boats. As I set out in my blog of 8 December 2014 the decisive factor in stopping the boats was the decision by the Rudd Government on 13 July 2013 that no future boat arrivals would ever be settled in Australia. People arriving by boat fell from 4,145 in July 2013 to 1,591, 837, 339, 207 and 355 in subsequent months. The number had dramatically fallen by the time the Abbott government came to power. The new government attracted a lot of attention with turn-backs to Indonesia but these were really only minor operations with boat arrivals dramatically reduced by then. The decision of the Rudd Government on 13 July 2013 was the game-changer, not the Coalition rhetoric about ‘stopping the boats’. The media seems remarkably willing to accept Tony Abbott’s one-liner on the subject and refuses to examine the facts. The result of all this was Manus and Nauru. What a price we are now paying for the collapse of the arrangement with Malaysia with which the UNHCR was prepared to cooperate and which would have been an important building block in regional cooperation.

    Against that background, how should we now proceed? For further background see article by Peter Hughes,Arja Keski- Nummi and myself.

    The key to an acceptable future refugee arrangement is joint responsibility and burden-sharing with our regional neighbours. Countries of the region have severe problems with irregular people flows as we have seen recently in arrivals from Myanmar and Bangladesh. As co-chair with Indonesia on the Bali process, our foreign minister should have shown good faith by seeking to convene a meeting with affected regional countries to tackle people-smuggling and trafficking. But too often we are fair-weather friends with our neighbours, and show interest only when we have a problem. We say ‘nope, nope, nope’ when they have a problem We need to give high priority to building effective cooperation on refugees in the region, together with UNHCR.   It is in that context that turn-backs should be addressed and not through unilateral action.

    Regional cooperation is the only long-term arrangement that makes sense. But it will take a lot of time and trust. We are not really trying at the moment. We must accept that Manus and Nauru are not sustainable in the future.

    We should negotiate Orderly Departure Arrangements where possible to address problems at source. I would expect that Myanmar would be interested in Australia taking some Rohingya . Sri Lanka would also be likely to be cooperative in our taking of Tamils. In both cases the arrangements would be part of an orderly program.

    We should focus part of our aid and trade programs on regional countries that have persecuted or alienated minorities.

    We should increase our refugee increase to 20,000 plus. At the peak of the Indochina program we were taking about 35,000 refugees p.a., adjusted for our population increase since then.

    We should consider new migration pathways, e.g. 4-5-7 Visas, for vulnerable persons. There were over 800,000 temporary entrants, excluding tourists, in Australia at 30 September 2014.

    We should think again about blanket opposition to offshore processing. The important issue is not where the processing occurs, but is it fair and effective, and is it done in cooperation with UNHCR. Some years ago I was opposed to offshore processing, but I changed my mind in light of the dramatic increase in asylum numbers in 2012 and 2013 after the collapse of the Malaysian arrangement. A consequence of the collapse of that arrangement is that we are now faced with Manus and Nauru.

    We should formally end mandatory detention. It was introduced by the Keating government. It is very expensive, cruel and does not deter asylum seekers. With the near-end of boat arrivals, the numbers who are in Immigration detention has declined dramatically. We should formally end mandatory detention except for detention necessary for safety, security and health checks.

    We should set a time limit for the final processing of the 30,000 asylum seekers who arrived by boat and whose status has not yet been determined.

    The unfortunate souls on Manus and Nauru must be treated with dignity and respect and either repatriated if found not to be refugees or resettled as soon as possible in third countries with the cooperation of UNHCR.

    The key to resolving the political problem surrounding refugees is to insist that vulnerable people that we accept in future must be part of an orderly program. I see that as the best way to gain the support of the Australian community and develop refugee programs that we can again be proud of.

  • Stuart Whitman. Labor 2035

    This article is posted from Grassroots, The Local Labor Journal – Party Reform: Past Present and Future.

     

    It’s 2035, and Labor members from an inner suburb of Australia’s largest city are gathering in their local community centre to welcome the new Labor Prime Minister on her first official visit to the electorate. 

    The recently elected Prime Minister is returning to her childhood community to congratulate its Labor branch on their Community Action Programs and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the ALP National Conference that changed everything.

    Since the party reforms were passed at the 2015 ALP National ALP Conference, the Australian ‘Labor Party has been transformed into Australia’s largest grassroots activist and political movement of nearly 200,000 members with Labor branches overseeing sustainable neighbourhood projects coordinating everything from community gardens, to small cooperative businesses and neighbourhood literacy programs across the country, as well as being engaged in community dialogue and participation in the development of Labor policies and the election of Labor candidates.

    Tonight is an important opportunity for the Prime Minister to reflect on how her own life was changed by joining her local Labor branch, and how that experience might serve as a lesson to her party and her country about engagement and participation.

    This is her speech.

    “Men and women of the Australian Labor Party, my friends, comrades and Labor supporters.

    I feel I have returned home.

    You know, I grew up just a few streets away in government housing not long after my family arrived as refugees from South Sudan. I went to the state school just around the corner from this community centre.

    This is where it all started for me. This is where I found my sense of belonging in this strange new country that gave my family safety. This is where I was inspired to give back by serving my community and my fellow Australians in public life and this is where I was provided the opportunities to realise that dream.

    I am pleased that so many of my Labor friends and mentors from that time are here physically and virtually tonight to share this celebration.

    I am grateful that we are also joined by some veteran delegates of the 2015 ALP National Conference who were able to put their factional and personal differences aside long enough to embrace a new way of thinking for Labor, a higher standard for the way we conduct ourselves as a party and as a result breathed new life into our Labor cause for our times, changing politics forever in Australia.

    Who would have thought back in 2015, when Australia’s  prospects looked so bleak under the short-lived but destructive Abbott Government that we could have come so far as a nation. In those years we saw rapidly rising unemployment as our manufacturing sector crumbled under a Government that didn’t care while jobs flowed offshore. And just as the numbers of jobless were soaring they were removing the foundations of our world-renowned social safety net and increasing the burden on the most vulnerable of our citizens, while closing off     future job and education opportunities to our youth. And when the world’s scientists were warning us Australia would be the nation most impacted by climate change, our Government was doing everything possible to place obstacles in the way of our transition to a low carbon economy.

    Australia was at the cross-roads. We were faced by the dual challenges of being left behind by the third industrial revolution as countries that invested in digital infrastructure, education and innovation overtook us, and with a declining capacity to mitigate and adapt to the ravages of climate change. We needed an alternative government  that not   only understood the difficult choices to be made by our country at that cross-roads but that it would take the full engagement and participation of our people and their collective talent to chart a better way ahead. 

    The reforms that were passed at the 2015 National Conference unleashed the great, untapped potential of Labor members that for too long had been taken for granted by power blocs that sought only to sustain their own power. As a result, many other Australians were drawn to join the ALP because they saw it as an organisation that really acted on our commitment to social democracy and the empowerment of the powerless.

    You see the key to the success of any organisation or community is the extent to which members feel they belong. If the community embraces the individual, and values and empowers him or her to share their knowledge and experience, then the whole community thrives. It was the same for my family arriving in Australia at time when Australia did not have a good record on the treatment of refugees. But by being welcomed by my local community, and finding a home in my local Labor branch, I discovered my voice and my potential.

    At the 2015 conference we embraced the participation of our rank and file members across the country in selecting our federal and state leaders and key party officers, a greater say for local members in choosing their lower and upper house candidates over the will of the central machine, the resourcing of sustained community organising campaigns for local branches and supporters between elections, multiple ways of engaging with the party’s policy development, the engagement of our local communities in Labor pre-selection contests, and training programs for branch office holders and branch rebuilding initiatives.

    These reforms enabled us to become the party that we are today.

    In the age where technology allows participatory democracy on a scale unmatched in human history, we became the Labor Party for our times. The Australian people in all of their diversity responded in kind, many more voted for us and many more saw the value in joining us in our Labor cause.

    These reforms enabled us to become the party of participation.

    In the age where technology allows participatory democracy on a scale unmatched in human history, we became the Labor Party for our times. The Australian people in all of their diversity responded in kind, many more voted for us and many more saw the value in joining us in our Labor cause.

     

    The transformation of the Labor Party into a 21st century political movement and organisation has also transformed Australia into a proud republic with flourishing social capital that has overcome its fears and toxic politics and that is adapting to the great economic and environmental upheavals of the past two decades and has healed past divisions, not least the treaty we have signed with Australia’s indigenous people. The rest of the world now looks to Australia as an example of what can be achieved by a progressive and fair society that seeks to empower its citizens to solve problems for their common good.

    We look back with gratitude to the foresight of the delegates to the 2015 ALP National Conference, because their courage made possible a Labor Party that fully lives our values of democracy, fairness and empowerment, and as a result we have built an Australia where all of our citizens can politically, socially and economically participate in our local communities and national life. And we are the better for it.

    Stuart Whitman has been National Convener of Local Labor since 2011 and is a former Secretary of the Malvern branch. Stuart has worked as an electorate officer to Mark Dreyfus, Federal Member for Isaacs and he is currently assisting Senator Jacinta Collins in her work as Deputy Chair of   the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee.

  • Peter Blackrock. Germany in control.

    What is happening in the European Union and Eurozone? Clearly, there is a seismic shift underway. Here is one interpretation of what is happening.

    The key driving force behind the shift is the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble. He is the number two in the right-wing Christian Democratic Union, behind Chancellor Angela Merkel, although many say he really calls the shots. He is 72.  He’s a nationalist. He is a fiscal conservative. He doesn’t believe Germans should keep paying for the sins of their fathers by prostrating themselves before the European Ideal. He wants to leave behind a legacy.  Time is short.  He must move fast.

    His plan is to winnow out the dead-beat nations in the Eurozone (e.g. Greece) and create a Northern European Co-prosperity Sphere with close political integration and one fiscal czar. This will be a taut and terrific team under the control of a German coach and German captain.

    Indeed, the main reason why Germany refuses to give Greece (or other struggling Euro-nations) serious debt relief is because debt gives Germany tremendous political control.  It can squeeze out any nation it doesn’t want on the team (e.g. Greece) and force other states to agree to greater political integration (under the German coach and captain).

    In the recent negotiations over Greece’s debt, Schaeuble made it very clear that he wanted Greece to exit from the Eurozone. He was not bluffing or posturing. Indeed, he must be very surprised that the Greek Government (full of lefty types who believe much more strongly in Europe than Schaeuble does) were so desperate to accept the Carthaginian Peace on the table.

    However, Schaeuble will not be denied. He knows that, if he keeps squeezing, Grexit is inevitable, sooner rather than later. Then Germany will move on to expel any other weaklings in the Eurozone. Then those nations will be off the Eurozone’s books and there will be no more bail-outs or whining about diktats from Brussels.

    The French and Italians, of course, are desperate to join the first team that Schaeuble is building. That’s why, in the last few days, the French President, Francois Hollande, has started talking about greater political integration in Europe.  He can see the writing on the wall and wants to look like he led the charge to closer integration rather followed it.

    The United Kingdom is a separate case. It won’t be on the new team because it has an unruly democracy and isn’t a team player. It will soon drop out of the European Union all together.

    Greece should accept it will never be invited to join the first team and accept its inevitable demotion to the second division.  However, if it plays smart (and uses a pegged currency to maintain discipline) it might do rather well, eventually.

    Thus ironically the Eurozone, which was originally designed to control Germany, has become an instrument of Germany control.

     

     

     

  • James Button. A Moment of Unexpected Hope

    From the local Labor journal, Grassroots – Party Reform, Past, Present and Future.

    This should be a moment of unexpected hope for the ALP. Remarkable election wins in Victoria and Queensland, theopinion polls tracking well, another Liberal Government exposed as mean, tricky and out of touch…it all suggests that after the debacle of the last federal election Labor might be back in power far sooner than anyone could ever have hoped for. The climate of ideas should be on Labor’s side, too. The great policy challenge of the day – how to sustain economic and jobs growth while expanding opportunity and protecting the environment – is going to require smart, interventionist government; laissez-faire won’t do it. 

    “The world is waiting for the Labor Party,” said former Western Australian Premier Geoff Gallop when launching an Open Labor group in Sydney last year.Why, then, do ALP members an supporters  feel  so uninspired?

    Perhaps it is because the party’s recovery seems fragile, even a mirage. Eighteen months after our lowest federal vote in more than 100 years, the ALP is still in trouble. What we stand for, and whether we have the capacity for renewal on the basis of big ideas and a compelling platform, remains unclear. Even if disenchantment with Tony Abbott or his successor gifts Labor the next election, what then? What’s the long-term plan for changing Australia? Winning for its own sake is not enough.

    Bill Shorten has said he wants to rebuild the party and grow the membership to 100,000. He has set the scene for the July National Conference to enact reforms to make party structures and the preselection of parliamentary candidates more democratic.

    Shorten’s focus on party reform is admirable, and if he has a real shot it could place him with Labor leaders like Ben Chifley, Gough Whitlam and Bill Hayden, all of whom renewed the party from opposition, but will this Bill be bold? And if so, can he bring the factions with him?

    Based on the ideas of his reform speech in April last year, Shorten is likely to push for increased rank- and-file say in selecting candidates and delegates to National Conference, consideration of trials of primary-style preselections that involve Labor supporters as well as members, and lower fees and a one-click sign-up model to supersede the absurd obstacles that confront many people trying to join the party today. These are all worthy ideas, but unless Shorten’s ambition is greater than he has revealed to date, they fall well short of a substantial reform package.

    Reform matters for many reasons; for one, it might break down the mistrust that runs deep between the leadership and ordinary members, and renew hopes that there is still a place for ordinary people in politics beyond working the phones and handing out cards in election campaigns.

    The members mistrust the party professionals, whom they see, with important exceptions, as focused on personal advancement over principle and unwilling to share power with the rank-and-file. The leadership, for its part, mistrusts the members – they are too few, too old, too prone to fighting lost causes and too out of touch with the realities of Australian life to be entrusted with a real say in candidate selection or party policy. The mistrust is partly a predictable consequence of professionalised politics, yet it must end if the party is to flourish again. How?

    The onus is on the leadership to take a risk and to commit itself to internal democracy in the faith that a party in which ordinary people have a say will   be a larger, stronger and more representative party.

    Opening up preselections to members is a good place to start. For the Senate and state upper houses, which should be forums for Labor’s best policy thinkers not retirement homes for party functionaries, members should get 50 per cent of the vote now, and a commitment for the proportion to increase as party membership grows. Imagine the democratic potential of a statewide campaign for Senate places, candidates having to sell their platform to the people. Similarly, in lower house seats, the proportion of the local vote should gradually increase in line with membership increases in the electorate.

    A growing proportion of delegates to state and national conferences should also be directly elected from the membership.

    At the same time, the leadership needs to retain the capacity to intervene in local votes to ensure the selection of a particularly high quality candidate or when a vote looks like it will be compromised by low numbers or by mischief. But these should be the exception and when the leadership does intervene, it needs to be honest about why it has done so. At present it rarely is. Major decisions, such as central intervention in the Victorian Upper       House preselections in late 2013, or last year’s bringing forward of the Senate preselections of Kim Carr and Steve Conroy to ensure they are exempted from the party’s own unanimously endorsed affirmative action rules, are made behind closed doors and never explained to the membership.

    The party should be able to explain everything it does with a clear, honest statement on its website. If it can’t, the action is almost certainly something it shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

    Secondly, the ALP must begin the long and difficult conversation about reforming its relationship with the union movement. This should be an opportunity for democratic renewal on both sides. Unions affiliated to the party have a million members; another million belong to unaffiliated unions. Most of these people are natural Labor supporters; if Labor is to expand its franchise for selecting candidates for office, this would seem a good place to start. But it must be on the basis of one vote, one value, in elections conducted by secret ballot. The bloc votes wielded by a small number of union secretaries on behalf of their factions is indefensible in a party that professes to be democratic.

    A democratic party that respects its own people can’t run this way.

    Giving ordinary unionists a direct say in party processes could go a long way towards renewing not only the ALP but the union movement as well, as senior party figures John Faulkner and Greg Combet have written.

    Open Labor and Local Labor have also jointly proposed reforms that would enfranchise ordinary union members while removing the power of bloc union secretary votes.

    Among the four million Australians who voted Labor at the last federal election are many of the country’s smartest and most engaged people. Many of them, even after years of disillusionment, would welcome the opportunity to contribute to Labor policy. Imagine a party that engaged the country’s best minds to help it develop policy through an open process that included not only private advice but public meetings, online forums and wikis.

    Such a process could help Labor embed itself back in the community. While a growing membership is vital, at a time when most people aren’t joiners, the party must find other ways to draw on the ideas and energies of its supporters.

    None of this is easy or without risk.

    But the alternative – doing nothing – is a recipe for slow decline as the leadership and membership grow further apart, and the party becomes ever more closed off from the main currents of Australian life.

    There is a great opportunity for brave, democratic reform. The people who see the need for it – in the party, unions and the electorate – are dispersed but their number is growing. The time to act, though, is now. The world is waiting for the Labor Party. It won’t wait forever..

    James Button is a member of the operating group of Open Labor, a movement created in late 2014 to work toward a more democratic and open ALP and a braver, more principled politics in Australia. New supporters welcome: sign up to our mailing list at www.openlabor.net.au

  • John Menadue. Q&A – Why bother with Ministers?

    The ABC has tied itself into a knot in trying to appease the government and get ministers back on Q&A.  But why bother? If ministers aren’t allowed or don’t want to go on the program, so be it. They would not be missed and neither would most members of the shadow ministry.

    I must confess that I am only an occasional viewer of Q&A.  It is not for me. It unfortunately follows the adversarial and confrontational approach that is so debasing so much of public discussion in Australia on important issues.

    ABC viewers would be much better served in my view by hearing from experts in their own fields telling us the prospects on such important issues as climate change, infrastructure, regional relations, inequality, security and refugees. Unfortunately politicians now invariably obfuscate and confuse the issues, and dish out one-liners and clichés.

    For the ABC to suggest that it would shift Q&A from general programs to news and current affairs has been an invitation for editorial interference by the government. It should be resisted. Who is running the ABC, its board or the government? By suggesting that it would shift Q&A to another department it has given Tony Abbott an opportunity to get himself off the hook that he has impaled himself on.

    In the 1960s Gough Whitlam objected to the ABC insisting that on current affairs programs they would not allow an opposition leader to appear unless there was a minister to provide an alternate view. In the name of ‘balance’ the ABC in effect allowed the government, by refusing to have ministers appear effectively vetoed an opposition leader from appearing.  Fortunately, Talbot Duckmanton, the General Manager of the ABC, was persuaded that the government should not be allowed to veto appearances of opposition leaders.

    Neither should the ABC allow the government now to dictate to Q&A. If ministers don’t want to appear, that would be their loss. In most cases viewers would applaud.

    Tony Abbott said that heads would roll at the ABC over the Q&A spat. Where heads should be rolling is at ASIO for its incompetence over the handling of Man Haron Monis. He was a real danger compared with Zaky Mallah in the Q&A audience. Could there have been a series of more serious mistakes than we saw from ASIO, the AFP and other agencies over Man Haron Monis? Despite enormous increases in funding and powers, our security services escape effective responsibility and scrutiny.  Heads should roll at ASIO, but we needn’t hold our breath.

    There is one rule for the ABC and a different one for ASIO regardless of mistake after mistake.

  • Kerry Breen. The Australian Medical Association vs. The Medical Journal of Australia.

    Troubles at the Medical Journal of Australia and the birth of ‘Friends of the MJA’

    The Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) has been in existence for over 100 years and has become the most important national publication for every aspect of the health and health care of Australians. It is owned by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and is published by the Australasian Medical Publishing Company (AMPCo), a wholly owned subsidiary of the AMA. AMPCo makes a profit on its Medical Directory* but, like other journals of medical associations around the world, makes a loss with the MJA. The loss is subsidised by the annual membership fees of AMA members and the current subsidy per member is believed to be approximately $80 per member. Annual membership of the AMA costs up to $1446. [*The Medical Directory is the only available comprehensive listing of all doctors, with information about qualifications, special interests, practice addresses, publications etc.]

    In early May, 2015, AMA members, and the medical profession generally, learnt via the media that the AMPCo Board had sacked its Editor-in-Chief, Professor Stephen Leeder without warning and had contracted with international publishing conglomerate, Elsevier, to publish and subedit the MJA(see (http://www.smh.com.au/national/medical-journal-editor-sacked-and-editorial-committee-resigns-20150503-1myr8q.html). The reason for sacking Professor Leeder was stated to be his unwillingness to work with the AMPCo Board in the outsourcing move to Elsevier. The justification given for outsourcing was to reduce costs. No information has been provided about the terms of the Elsevier contract. The future of the entire editing and subediting staff of the MJA remains unclear. In response to the news, eighteen*of the 22 members of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the MJA resigned, along with two full-time deputy editors. [* A nineteenth has since resigned.]

    Senior members of the medical profession were astonished at these events and extensive media coverage resulted. Adverse coverage also appeared in Canada, USA, UK, India and France. In response to widespread concern within the medical profession, a group known as Friends of the MJA established a web site http://www.friendsofmja.net.au/ with the purposes of providing interested parties with all the available background information on this matter and of assessing the level of support for the actions of AMPCo.

    To date, over 350 people, including many senior members* of the medical profession and of allied professions who rely on the MJA, have used the website to sign on as ‘Friends of the MJA. These people are listed on the website. Not one has supported the AMPCo actions. [The group includes 124 full professors and 65 doctors who have been awarded Australian honours for services to medicine.]

    Initially, the dismay and distress over the actions of AMPCo centred on two aspects: (a) how such an effective and highly respected Editor-in-Chief could be not listened to by the Board of AMPCo and be summarily sacked and (b) the selection of Elsevier as a publishing partner. AMPCo responded by claiming that “due diligence” had been undertaken with regard to Elsevier but declined to comment on whether the four AMPCo Board members were fully aware of Elsevier’s track record (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cost_of_Knowledge and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier).

    While these two aspects are still of deep concern, a much more important issue has emerged, namely the effect of a working relationship with Elsevier on access to the research findings of publicly (taxpayer) funded research. Internationally, boycotts of Elsevier have been sponsored by researchers and even government in reaction to Elsevier’s pricing and related policies. (see http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist and https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=192). This issue, together with the lack of any reassurance that a future editor of the MJA will have editorial independence from the AMPCo Board, and that the AMPCo Board itself will be free of interference by the AMA leadership of the day, make many in the medical profession fearful for the future of the MJA.

    The Steering Committee of Friends of the MJA have asked that the AMPCo Board decisions be reversed, that a new Board be appointed and that an independent expert be commissioned to advise the new AMPCo Board on the best way forward from here. In the absence of any willingness of the AMA leadership to revisit these ill-judged decisions, the AMPCo Board must, at the very least, be restructured to bring in additional members with experience in medical publishing and a charter of independence for the Editor must be agreed upon. Without these latter two minimal steps, it is highly unlikely that a new editor* of standing will be recruited, making the future of the MJA bleak. [*Note: The MJA was expelled from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors after the previous editor was sacked in 2012. It has not been readmitted.]

    As at 10 July 2015, the leadership of the AMA and the AMPCo Board have been unmoved by these protests and instead have responded by criticising the Friends as being “mates” of Professor Leeder and being intent on harming the MJA.

    Dr Kerry Breen (convenor of the Steering Committee of Friends of the MJA) may be contacted via friendsofmja@friendsofmja.net.au . He is a Specialist Physician who has been a member of the AMA for fifty years and a regular contributor to and reviewer for the MJA. He currently holds a post of Adjunct Professor in the Department of Forensic Medicine at Monash University. He is a Past President of the Medical Council of Australia, a Past President of the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria and a Past Chair of the Australian Health Ethics Committee of the NHMRC.

    More information, including material issued on behalf of the AMA and AMPCo can be found at http://www.friendsofmja.net.au/ where readers can also register their view and sign on as Friends of the MJA.

     

     

  • John Howard on political Royal Commissions.

    Last September John Howard said

    ‘I am uneasy about the idea of having Royal Commissions or enquiries into essentially a political decision. … I don’t think you should ever begin to go down the American path of using the law for narrow targeted political purposes. I think the special prosecutions in the US are appalling.’

    See link below to John Howard’s comments.   John Menadue

    http://gu.com/p/4xhj7/sbl

  • Peter Day. Warning: role models may shrink

    Role models: We love them. We look up to them. We say we need them. We want to know them. We want to live through them. But who are they, and what purpose do they serve?

    In Australia they tend to be sportsmen and celebrities of note: young people who can kick a footy, smash a tennis ball, and generally do things much faster and better than the rest of us – and look good while doing so.

    And while there is something noble and edifying in admiring another’s feats, the cultural propensity to place another human being on a pedestal is both fraught and superficial. After all, when we do so aren’t we, in effect, saying: ‘You’re better than me; therefore you should behave differently, and be held to a higher standard?’

    Thus, not only must Nick Kyrgios – barely out of his teens- be a fine athlete, but also an exemplary citizen: morally upright and mature beyond his years ‘because my kids and I look up to you; we need you to be better than us’.

    There is something deeply unhealthy and oppressive in all this; not only do we sell ourselves short, but we place unreal expectations on others. It’s a form of escapism in which we project our unfulfilled hopes and dreams onto others and, on the way, manage to relinquish personal responsibility. Oh, and when things turn pear-shaped, when the poster boy gets caught-out, we have a ready-made scapegoat.

    Indeed, to impose upon anybody, especially young, inexperienced sporting celebrities, the epithet, ‘role model’, is unrealistic, unfair, and almost always guaranteed to end in tears.

    As a society, we have a collective appetite for moral leadership, for someone to look up to and inspire us. This is a laudable thing, but needs to be tempered by common sense and fairness. After all, sporting fame not only affords our champions great privileges and opportunities, it also imposes upon them a significant burden because, along with highlighting their abilities and successes, fame spotlights their frailties and failures as well – and very publicly. So when the one we looked-up to, the one in whom we invested our hopes and dreams stuffs-up; don’t we let them know it. Quickly the celebrity giant, the model-of-virtue, is headlined as a moral midget who has let us all down.

    The main difference between the likes of Nick Kyrgios and the rest of us is that whatever he does in his workplace is seen by millions: the dummy spits, the obscenities, the failures, the glories – all of it! Perhaps the rest of us should be thankful that we’re not being filmed when we’re having an off day or acting the goat at work.

    To hover in the shadows of others just because they happen to run very fast, or look beautiful, or enjoy a ‘good reputation’, is just another way of investing in the cult-of-the-celebrity. And, like all cults, membership entails handing over responsibility, embracing a false god, and living ‘my’ life through someone else’s.

    Indeed, by making ‘role model’ so overwhelmingly synonymous with someone else’s achievements, with someone else’s virtues, with someone else’s fame, we risk losing contact with our very selves, with our own unique beauty and capacity. Gosh, we risk making ourselves small.

    Surely, each of us can strive to lead, to be virtuous, to inspire: to be a good, decent, admirable citizen. Surely, by attending to the ‘good citizen’ within, we are much less likely to be conned into handing over our gifts to others, especially so called famous others.

    In the end, it behoves us all – athletes and spectators alike – to cherish the capacity of sport to change us, to make where we live a better place: to model goodness and decency and fairness. But to do so, not only must the champions be humble and grounded, so must the spectators as well.

    Being a role model is not just someone else’s responsibility.

     

     

     

  • Miriam Lyons. On inequality of opportunity

    The myth of meritocracy is today’s version of the divine right of kings, and it is playing much the same political function. Call it the divine right of King’s School alumni.

    Another week, another report on the growing gap between rich and poor. The latest, from ACOSS, reminds us that the top 10% of households has been racing ahead of the rest, with the result that almost half of Australia’s wealth is now in their hands.[1] Housing wealth is particularly skewed, a finding unlikely to surprise any first-time buyer who has tried to find a house in Sydney or Melbourne without bankrupting themselves. If Charles Dickens were to reincarnate in Australia, he’d probably make Ebenezer Scrooge a small-time property magnate from Mosman or Toorak, with a penchant for penning angry letters to The Australian in defence of negative gearing.

    The Coalition has made its position on this situation quite clear. Hockey’s latest advice[2] to those locked out of the housing market – “get a good job that pays good money” – is only the latest in a string of pearlers. It follows the same logic as last year’s helpful explanation of how he expected out-of-work young people to survive without an income: “I would expect you’d be in a job”.[3]

    Welcome to the world of lifters and leaners, where the haves and have-nots are all equally deserving of their fate. In this world it is pointless to mention that there are five people out of work[4] for every available vacancy[5]: when one of them does find a job they are to be congratulated for ‘lifting’ and the remaining four condemned for ‘leaning’.

    What does it mean when Hockey and others say that “governments must pursue equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome”[6] while vigorously pursuing greater inequality on both fronts? Last year NATSEM modelling[7] showed that the federal budget would significantly worsen income inequality, with the disposable income of the bottom fifth of households down 6.6% (for couples with kids) or 10.8% (for single parents) by 2017/18, while the top fifth would barely be touched.

    But the government backed down[8] this year right? Ahem. As of this year’s budget, NATSEM’s modelling[9] finds that Coalition policies would hit the disposable income of the bottom fifth of households by…wait for it… 7.1% (for couples with kids) or 8% (for single parents) by 2018/19, while the top fifth will still be pretty much unscathed. Our political conversation is so stunted[10] that a slight slowdown in the rate at which we’re screwing over single parents has been welcomed as progress.

    In this context, the real appeal of equality of opportunity as an idea lies not in its implementation but the aura of moral legitimacy it confers upon inequality of outcomes. As Bill Garner put it in his response[11] to the lifters and leaners speech, it is “the version of equality you claim to believe in when you do not believe in equality at all.”

    As a thought experiment, imagine the likely response of the Coalition (or most other parties for that matter) to the following proposals:
    *100% inheritance taxes (any leaner can be lucky enough to be born to rich parents – unequally distributed windfalls are a clear example of unequal opportunity)
    *Mandating anonymous shortlisting of job applications (one study found that candidates with a Middle Eastern name, for example, have to submit 64% more applications to get the same number of interviews as candidates with an ‘Anglo’ name,[12] while another found that a female fellowship applicant had to be 2.5 times more productive than a male applicant to be deemed equally competent.)[13]
    *Switching to 100% needs-based schools funding, with punitively high luxury taxes on fee-charging schools (surely equality of access to education from birth is ground zero for equality of opportunity?)

    Perhaps Milton and Rose Friedman had policies such as these in mind when they wrote “No arbitrary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those positions for which their talents fit them and which their values lead them to seek. Not birth, nationality, colour, religion, sex, nor any other irrelevant characteristic should determine the opportunities that are open to a person…”[14]

    If we genuinely believe that every human has equal worth at birth, then paying lip-service to social mobility is not enough. There is more than enough evidence to show that we live in a decidedly unmeritocratic world. In fact, this evidence is so strong that it justifies a shift in the burden of moral proof. Rather than assuming that an unequal world is fair unless proven otherwise, let us assume that an unequal world is unfair unless proven otherwise.

    Miriam Lyons is the former Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Development. With Ian McAuley, she has just co-authored ‘Governomics’ which has been published by Melbourne University Press. 

    
    [1] http://www.acoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Inequality_in_Australia_FINAL.pdf
    [2] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/joe-hockeys-advice-to-first-homebuyers–get-a-good-job-that-pays-good-money-20150609-ghjqyw.html
    [3] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/joe-hockey-tells-australians-doctor-fee-cheaper-beer
    [4] http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/latestProducts/6202.0Media%20Release1May%202015
    [5] http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6354.0
    [6] http://www.joehockey.com/media/speeches/details.aspx?s=133
    [7] http://www.natsem.canberra.edu.au/storage/2014-15%20Budget%20Research%20Note.pdf
    [8] http://www.afr.com/news/policy/tax/joe-hockeys-budget-backdown-20150204-136ebw
    [9] https://theconversation.com/worst-off-hit-hardest-by-coalition-policies-natsem-modelling-42300
    [10] http://www.canberratimes.com.au/business/the-economy/how-the-abbott-government-stopped-us-talking-about-natsems-modelling-of-their-budget-20150611-ghjm1u.html
    [11] http://www.theage.com.au/comment/lifters-and-leaners-why-the-idea-of-equality-of-opportunity-is-a-big-con-20140617-zsa6d.html
    [12] http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/job-hunt-success-is-all-in-a-name-20130303-2feci.html
    [13] http://www.albany.edu/~scifraud/data/sci_fraud_3943.html
    [14] Friedman & Friedman (1980), Free To Choose, p. 145

     

  • John Menadue. London Postcard-some impressions.

    We have just spent three weeks in the UK in Bath and London. But I kept the blog going with the help of friends.

    For years I have largely avoided the UK. When I first visited London in 1963, I was very conscious of social and economic class. It seemed quite unhealthy. Most people knew their place, particularly working people. In 1963 I found it quite a relief to go to Ireland that did not show the same obsession with class. That initial impression in 1963 was followed by the harshness, in my view of the Thatcher years.

    I sensed in my recent holiday that things have changed, at least in the places I visited. There seemed a new social mobility and vibrancy, greater openness and certainly more multiculturalism. The black kids were lively and attractive. There were many East Europeans working in restaurants and shops and they were much more helpful than I recall my experiences of British customer service back in 1963. People on trains were much more courteous than I am used to in Sydney. In short, I have had to revise my views on the UK somewhat.

    I enjoyed the National Gallery more than the Louvre. It was not as overpowering. The art was well selected and the gallery much less crowded. The British Library had a superb Magna Carta exhibition. The impact at the time of the Magna Carta has been exaggerated but it has had a substantial long-term influence around the world.

    With the Greek crisis I was keen to see the Elgin marbles at the British Museum. I hadn’t realised that the British Library was formerly housed in the British Museum where Karl Marx had researched and studied in the Reading Room for years. But the Elgin marbles were my main interest. They were more remarkable and stunning than I expected. I stood in a vast hall with the Elgin or Parthenon marbles on every wall’. And in the next room there were Greek sculptures that I felt were even better than those in the Louvre. .

    Not surprisingly, Gough Whitlam was a campaigner for the return of the Elgin/Parthenon marbles to Greece. The British Museum presents a threadbare argument that the ‘marbles’ in the British Museum ensures even better public access to them than would have been possible had they stayed in Athens! And to add to this threadbare defence of the British, the Museum asserted that they were obtained legally. That might be technically true, but in the early 19th Century when the marbles were removed, Athens was occupied by the Ottoman Turks.

    The early 19th Century was a period of enormous art theft particularly by the British and the French. When considering Greek debt today perhaps the British and French might consider how much they really owe the countries of the Mediterranean that they plundered 200 years ago.

    I have always been an admirer of the National Health Service and in London I found it as good as I had always believed it to be. As a university student in the 1950s, Nye Bevan had been a political hero of mine. The NHS has outlived and outperformed its self-interested critics. It was no surprise that the NHS was the prime feature at the opening ceremony of the recent London Olympics

    In London the public transport system is in good shape and carries an enormous number of passengers each day. We could learn much from the London underground. But despite public transport, London still has major road traffic problems. It illustrated to me again that more and more express and toll roads will largely induce more traffic and will contribute little and at great cost to improving urban living. That is the experience of all major cities but the motor and construction lobbies want us to waste more and more money for their benefit. Good public transport must be associated with effective road-user charges that reflect the real cost, particularly in peak periods that we each impose on other users of the road system. Road tolls and road congestion taxes may be difficult politically but they are essential for urban living in big cities. More and more roads are not the answer.

    Our UK visit was just a few weeks after the general election with the return of the Conservative Party to government with a narrow majority in its own right. The Conservative Party gained 36% of the vote but with the vagaries of first-past-the-post polling, it won 51% of the seats in the House of Commons. The real wipe-out was the Liberal Democrats across the country and the Scottish National Party taking 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland with massive swings. Scotland, had always voted overwhelmingly Labour until this election. The UK Independence Party, which campaigned against continued UK participation in the European Union polled 12% of the vote but only won one seat.

    The Cameron Government may yet reap a bitter harvest from the last election. It has promised a referendum by the end of 2017 on whether the UK should exit the EU. This will give vent to the parochialism that I had hoped the UK had left behind. For the next two years, the issue of UK remaining or leaving the EU will be the focus of political attention and distract from many other key issues. If the UK decides to turn its back on Europe, I think the UK and Europe will be the losers.

    Additionally, if the UK decides to exit the EU, that is likely to trigger a new referendum in Scotland and encourage a Yes vote for Scotland to leave the UK.

    The Scots have little to thank David Cameron for. A major thrust of his recent election campaign, encouraged by his Australian advisers, was to warn the English that if they voted Labour, they could finish up with a Labour Party/Scottish coalition government. Cameron strongly played the anti-Scotland card in England. That deliberate and successful tactic meant that the Conservatives won well in England. The message was clear. Beware of the Scots.

    History may yet reveal that the significance of the UK election was that the UK left the EU and that was followed by a breakup of the UK itself. The Scottish Labour Party is committed to the United Kingdom but the Scottish National Party seeks separation from the United Kingdom. Gordon Brown, a Scot and former UK Prime Minister has warned that as a result of Conservative tactics the United Kingdom may be on ‘life support’

    In London there was understandable outrage over the deaths of over 30 UK tourists in Tunisia. In response and like Tony Abbott, David Cameron described IS as an ‘existential threat’. Clearly it is not. The existence of neither the UK nor Australia is threatened by IS. It is one thing for David Cameron and Tony Abbott to promote fear about the terrorism threat for political purposes. It is much harder to combat the causes of terrorism and IS in particular. Yet it is the policies of the UK, Australia, the US and others in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya that have mainly served to worsen the terrorism threat. The history of Western aggression, exploitation and colonisation over centuries in the Middle East has played into the hands of extremists. Our policies have created anarchy in the region. We side with the despots like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies. Australia and the UK recruits to IS are transiting through Turkey. But we don’t want to offend Turkey by insisting that it closes these transit routes.

    I was reminded again in the UK that we will not begin to contain IS unless we first accept that our policies in the region have been counter productive to our own security as well as the security of the people in the Middle East. We need to build strong partners in the region and that includes Iran.

  • Warwick Elsche. Heads must roll at ABC, but not at ASIO

    “Heads must roll;” words from the Prime Minister Tony Abbott. And in case you missed them he said them twice – on national TV.

    He was talking of the ABC and presumably some executives who failed to detect the “threatening” presence of a convicted Islamist sympathizer Zaky Mallah in the audience of popular current affairs program “Q&A”.

    Tony dislikes the ABC because it is not as imaginatively sycophantic as the Murdoch Press. He has branded it on this and other occasions as cruelly politically biased – despite the fact that the Head of his own media office was recently recruited from this source.

    For those unfamiliar with the now accepted dictum in politics that for Tony “things are not what they are, they are what Tony says that are” – he actually believes this – such public anger from the Prime Minister on a virtual non-event could indeed be puzzling.

    The ABC, after all, is not a security organization. It is merely a major national media outlet and the man whose appearance on the program so outraged the Prime Minister, has appeared more than a dozen times in other media, including Abbott’s favoured Murdoch newspapers and the most hopelessly pro-Government Sydney Radio Station 2GB without a murmur of protest from the zealous Tony. Indeed some of those reports had indicated a significant change of heart by the man in question.

    But despite the fact the ABC has no role in security detection or prevention, weeks later Tony remains righteously outraged and continues to rattle on about the ABC’s failure and the threat which Tony thinks was posed by Zaky’s appearance for the first time in one of its studio audiences.

    Consequently, according to Abbott, “heads have got to roll.”

    The Australian Security Intelligence Organization – unlike the ABC – is a security body; Australia’s most senior where internal intelligence and subversion are concerned. It is much-loved by Prime Minister Abbott.

    ASIO had dealings with an Iranian refugee from whom they hoped to gain intelligence on the running of a country which seems to be an implacable enemy of the United State and therefore of Australia under Tony. Contact continued with this Iranian for a good long time. Like the man who slipped under the ABC radar, this individual had two convictions for offences which might indicate profound terrorists sympathies. He sent abusive mail to parents of Australian soldiers who had died fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. He was also on bail as an accused accessory in the stabbing and burning murder of his wife. He was also on bail on no fewer than 40 serious sex charges. He had landed in Australia fraudulently, and over the period of a fortnight ASIO, Federal Police and other so called security bodies had received more than a dozen individual calls warning of threats this man might pose. Yet no action was taken.

    The ASIO contact was Man Haron Monis. At the end of that two week period of warnings the contact held up some 20 hostages in the Lindt Coffee Shop in Sydney’s Martin Place in a 17 hour siege which resulted in three deaths including his own.

    When asked how this murderer escaped the special attention which might have prevented the Martin Place tragedy, the Chief of ASIO explained simply “he did not come up on our radar.” It was later also learnt that Man Haron Monis had written to Australia’s most senior law officer, Federal Attorney General George Brandis, virtually seeking permission to contact the leader of ISIS, the terrorist organistion in the Levant to which Australian Air Force and Army forces are opposed. He seems to have slipped under this law officer’s radar also. Brandis later explained the letter seeking the ruling on contact with ISIS leaders indicated no support for either side despite the background of the author. And it seems he slipped under the radar of Senator Brandis’ office and departmental staff again, because despite misleading statements to Parliament, information about his desire for a contact with the terrorists was not even provided to the joint Federal-State enquiry into Man Haron Monis and the Martin Place siege. Once the Parliamentary deception was uncovered it took a full three days until Parliament was informed on the misinformation – and then only after the possibility of revelation by one of the principals in the enquiry became a threat.

    Extraordinarily, Abbott has had nothing to say about these spectacular failures by security and supposedly legally responsible organizations while continuing to berate the ABC – as if it matters.

    The game now is to cover up, despite demands from the New South Wales Coroner probing the Martin Place deaths as to how the killer with his background and convictions and his string of pending charges remained on bail. The Feds seem desperate to keep it covered up – they went so far as to pressure the New South Wales DPP to keep concealed the reasons that a man facing such charges could be bailed. Who are they saving from embarrassment? Tony doesn’t seem to care or want to know – not while the ABC is there to be attacked.

    One wonders at the competence, the political judgement and maybe even the honesty of a Prime Minister whose values seem so hopelessly skewed. Far more serious failures which led to the raid and deaths seem to have attracted no comment at all from the man who spends a good part of his public time rattling on about threats and security.

    Not a word about rolling craniums in ASIO, not one either about George Brandis, his office or his department.

    The real threat, to Tony, remains the ABC. They must be punished.

    Remember! Tony really believes that in politics ‘Things are not what they are. They are what Tony says they are’.

    It might also be worth asking what one might have to do, given Man Haron Monis’ record, to actually come to the attention of the super sleuths of ASIO.

  • John Menadue. Is the European Project finished?

    Perhaps the Greek crisis will force a fundamental rethink and Europe will find the way to rekindle again the idealism and hope that gave rise to the European Project in the aftermath of WWII.

    By any means ‘Europe’ has been a remarkable success in social development, human rights, economic growth, the mobility of people and capital – but most importantly of all, a seventy year period of peace. After centuries of war, mainly religious wars, followed by WW1, Hitler, the Holocaust and Stalin, Europe has been at peace.

    The founders of the European Project spoke with great idealism of ever-closer union in Europe.

    But the signs are not good today. This is highlighted particularly by the political and moral gap between the ‘hard-working’ Germans, the ‘lay-about’ Greeks, with France looking more insipid every day. The early success of Europe depended on France to balance the power, strength and even threat of Germany.

    Germany’s reputation and its development in almost every way have been remarkable since WWII. That success has been in part due to its own efforts, but also through the generosity of the US and others in forgiving Germany its sins and its debt. The allies learnt from Versailles after WWI that punishing a defeated Germany only produced more tragedy.

    Unfortunately today Germany shows all the signs of bullying Greece for its mistakes and repeating the mistakes of Versailles.

    In an interview a few days ago with German newspaper Die Zeit, Thomas Picketty called for a major conference on European debt and emphasized that Germany in particular should not withhold help from Greece. Picketty said

    ‘My book (Capital in the 21st Century) recounts the history of income and wealth, including that of nations. What struck me while I was writing is that Germany is really the single best example of a country that, throughout its history, has never repaid its external debt. Neither after the first nor the Second World War. However, it has frequently made other nations pay up such as after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt.’

    In the current fevered atmosphere the signs are not good with the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF, together with Germany, bullying Greece to comply with their austerity program.

    The European Project has been littered in recent years by serious mistakes and problems

    • The Euro is a major problem. It is very difficult to envisage how a monetary union can work effectively without a fiscal union. The result has been that Germany and Northern European countries have benefitted from a weak Euro at the expense of Greece and other Southern European countries.
    • There is widespread unemployment particularly in Southern Europe which has been foisted on the Greeks, Spanish and others in the name of budgetary reform and austerity. The message has been clear both explicitly and implicitly to the Greeks – change your policies or we will destroy your government.
    • In the last few days the European Central Bank has cut off Greek access to additional funds and helped precipitate the panic in Greece. The Greek Central Bank has worked in league with the European Central Bank.
    • It wasn’t just irresponsible borrowing by the Greeks that caused the problems. Ther was irresponsible lending by the banks and companies such as Goldman Sacks that helped Greek debt-managers manipulate the debt figures. The financial sector must be contained.
    • Political extremism on both the Left and the Right is today flourishing in Europe. It is no surprise.
    • Quite contrary to what Presidents Regan and Gorbachev agreed, NATO has extended itself eastwards to the Ukraine and the border with Russia with inevitable dangerous consequences. Have Europe and NATO forgotten WWII and the tragedy and losses on the Eastern Front?
    • The ‘Little Englanders’ in the UK are now reasserting themselves with David Cameron proposing a referendum in 2017 on possible UK exit from the European Union and with the UK Independence Party polling 12% at the last general election.
    • Hungary is planning to build a fence along its border with Serbia.

    The fraying of Europe is obvious. It shows not only in political but also has a moral dimension. The Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, recently commented on Europe’s failure to properly address the difficulties of thousands of refugees coming to Europe. He said ‘If this is your idea of Europe, keep it to yourself … You do not deserve to call yourself Europe. Either we have solidarity or we are wasting our time.’

    The Germans seem to have ignored the advice of former German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, three years ago when he said ‘If we Germans allow ourselves to be seduced into claiming a political leading role in Europe or at least playing first among equals, based on our economic strength, an increasing majority of our neighbours will effectively resist this. The concern of the periphery about an all too powerful European centre would soon come racing back. The possible consequences of such development would be crippling.’ That crippling is occurring today and Angela Merkel doesn’t seem to understand.

    Can we dare hope to see again the moral and political leadership that we saw from people like Helmut Kohl, Helmut Schmidt , Francois Mitterrand and many more. None of them had forgotten the horrors of WWII and set about with idealism and hope to build a new Europe. The current generation of leaders has never known the travail that these earlier leaders experienced.

    This is about much more than Greece and its debts and austerity. But hopefully this crisis will force European leaders to show the courage and foresight that its forbears showed decades ago. The European Project is in trouble, but it is worth renewing. Will the bankers and small-minded get out of the way? With no vision from their leaders, the people of Europe are suffering.

  • Greek Crisis

    See below links to two interesting articles.

    The first is by Paul Krugman, ‘Ending Greece’s Bleeding’ in the New York Times.

    The second is by Thomas Picketty ‘Germany has never repaid’ from the German newspaper Die Zeit.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/opinion/paul-krugman-ending-greeces-bleeding.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman

    https://medium.com/@gavinschalliol/thomas-piketty-germany-has-never-repaid-7b5e7add6fff

  • Failure in Afghanistan. We don’t want to talk about it.

    On the 24th June, I posted a link to a review from the London Review of Books.  (See  https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/blog/?p=3957) In referring to the UK involvement in Afghanistan, it was headed ‘Worse than a defeat: shamed in Afghanistan’. The review by James Meek said

    ‘The extent of the military and political catastrophe [in Afghanistan] it represents is hard to overstate. It was doomed to fail before it began and fail it did, at a terrible cost in lives and money. How bad was it? In a way it was worse than a defeat because to be defeated an army and its masters must understand the nature of the conflict they are fighting. Britain never did understand and now we would rather not think about it.’

    We have had few independent examinations of the Australian failure in Afghanistan in which 40 Australian soldiers were killed, 261 wounded and with untold tragedy for the Afghan people. Operation Slipper was our longest war in history and cost $7 b. to $8 b.

    Few and certainly not our major political parties want to talk about this failure for which they were responsible. In particular, the Coalition parades its credibility on security matters and prefers that we forget its military disasters from Vietnam to Iraq, to Afghanistan, and now to Iraq again. Ministers and a succession of Generals and ‘advisers kept telling us nonsense about the progress we were making in Afghanistan. Honesty would have been helpful then and now.

    The SMH on 4 July sheds some light on our failure in Afghanistan. Sune Engel Rasmussen reports that ‘Despite an eight year mission costing billions of dollars, unrest and instability remain.’ (See http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/all-that-remains-our-questionable-legacy-in-afghanistan-20150702-ghpley.html)

    Rasmussen is a freelance journalist based in Kabul. He writes for the SMH, The Guardian, The Economist and other media organisations.

  • Pearls and Irritations Policy Series

    Link to Fairness, Opportunity and Security.
    Policy Series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. 

    https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/blog/?p=3719

  • John Menadue. The Greek crisis and regime change.

    Current Affairs

    A lot of the blame for the present crisis should be borne by many countries and institutions, but the one group that is least responsible is the present left-wing government of Greece, Syriza.

    The major blame must rest first with the previous Greek governments that mired the Greek people in corruption and cronyism. The second group that must bear immediate responsibility is the incompetence of the Troika – the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF, led very much by the German Government. The austerity campaign inflicted on Greece has resulted in the GDP shrinking by 25%, accompanied by unemployment of 25%, and youth unemployment of 50%. Such a situation is unacceptable and is likely to result in extreme outcomes. Something just has to give in Greece.

    In this situation there are now suggestions reported by the London Times that ‘Germany will demand the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, resign as a condition for a new Eurozone bailout.’ If this is correct it sounds very much as if regime change is being engineered. Is the object of such a plan to break the Greek Government so that the austerity plan of the northern European countries can continue? Such a plan is outrageous. These austerity plans have caused not only major social problems in Greece, but also in Spain where an election is due in December this year.

    In retrospect, the Euro looks a bad idea, particularly when it links such diverse economies as Germany and Greece. Germany has gained economically from a weak Euro caused largely by the weak economies of southern Europe. It may not be overstating it to describe the Euro as really the Deutsche Mark in disguise. The Euro has given considerable benefits to German business and exporters. In turn, it has made southern European countries less competitive.

    The austerity driven by the Troika with German leadership has resulted in political extremism of both the Left, as in Greece, and the Right, as in France.

    For over a decade sensible economic management in Greece has been frustrated by widespread corruption and cronyism. Tax avoidance on a wide scale became acceptable by previous Greek governments. Urging Greece today to raise taxes to meet its budget deficits does not make a great deal of sense when so much tax is avoided. The crony friends of previous governments have become rich at the expense of the Greek economy and society.

    The banks in Europe and in Greece have behaved irresponsibly with their loose lending. Just as it was incorrect to blame low paid Americans for accepting sub-prime mortgages, so the blame for borrowing by the Greek people cannot be sheeted home to poorly paid Greeks who needed credit to survive. It is noteworthy that in the present negotiations the banks have refused to include debt-relief as part of a settlement package.

    Escalating public debt has been made worse by the irresponsible behaviour of that doyen of international finance, Goldman Sacks. In 2002 Goldman Sacks helped Greece to mask its true debt. Goldman Sacks persuaded the Greek debt managers that they could avoid Maastricht rules on budget deficit limits. The result of the Goldman Sacks device was that $1 b. did not show up in the Greek debt statistics.

    The overbearing attitude of the victors after WWI imposed a severe burden on the defeated Germany which it never forgot, with appalling consequences. In the US, the US Treasury decided to let Lehmann Bros fail to teach the market a lesson. The Troika in northern Europe seems intent on teaching the Greeks a lesson.

    Instead of their resolve to crush the Greek upstart government, the Troika in Germany should look at their own failures and also the long-term future of Europe. What has happened to ‘European values and solidarity’ that inspired Europe in the past? The Troika has a lot to answer for in the current crisis. Hopefully a resolution can be found that respects the rights of the Greek people and places Europe on a continuing path of development.

    Surely in the cradle of democracy the Greeks will want more control over their own destiny!

    See link below for an account by Jeffrey Sachs. He describes the behaviour of the Troika and others as ‘petulant, naïve and fundamentally self-destructive’. He adds that many of Greeks citizens are hungry, with conditions reminiscent of those in Germany in 1933.

    Jeffrey Sachs is Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management, at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General on the Millennium Development Goals.

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-debt-crisis-how-goldman-sachs-helped-greece-to-mask-its-true-debt-a-676634.html

     

  • Bob Kinnaird. China FTA ‘labour mobility’ fight looms

    Current Affairs

    The ALP National Conference at end-July will likely have before it an urgency motion demanding changes to the foreign worker provisions in the China FTA as a condition for supporting the agreement, according to The Australian (‘Change or block unjust trade deals, MPs told’, 26 June 2015).

    Driving the move is a cross-factional group of eight unions concerned about the impact on Australian workers of FTA provisions mandating easier access to Chinese 457 visa workers, in some cases unrestricted access.

    On top of that, it has now emerged that an FTA side-letter removes mandatory skills assessments for Chinese 457 workers in ten trades including electricians and the main construction trades. This directly contradicts Abbott government assurances in November 2014 that Australia had committed only to ‘improving access to skills assessments” in the China FTA.

    Opposition Leader Bill Shorten wants Parliament to scrutinise the FTA and “the government to come clean on potential downside for Australian jobs and Australian safety and labour standards” (‘Union trying to cause a diversion: Robb’, The Daily Telegraph 29 June 2015).

    Trade Minister Andrew Robb has said the government would not change the provisions in the deal “one wit” (sic) – presumably The Daily Telegraph meant ‘whit’. He was sure that unions opposing the deal ‘don’t understand’ the China agreement.

    The unions increasingly understand what the China FTA labour mobility provisions actually mean for Australian workers, blue-collar and white-collar alike, but no thanks to Mr Robb. Instead of explaining and justifying these momentous provisions, Mr Robb and other Coalition Ministers have done everything to conceal the truth from the Australian community.

    Immigration Minister Dutton or Assistant Immigration Minister Cash issued three media releases on the China FTA between 17 June when the deal was signed and 26 June – ‘New pilot visa to boost Australian tourism’, ‘New visa measures generate international buzz’ and ‘Minister Cash to visit China’.

    In none of these statements do the Immigration Ministers even mention the momentous immigration concessions by Australia in the China FTA or their broader implications. The 457 visa program does not rate a mention, let alone that the China FTA removes the ability of all future Australian governments and Parliaments to apply labour market testing to all Chinese citizens in the standard 457 program.

    Nor do the Ministers bother to even mention two other unprecedented immigration concessions by Australia in an FTA, or even outside an FTA: the ‘Infrastructure Facilitation Arrangements’ (IFAs) agreement with China allowing concessional 457 visas for skilled and semi-skilled Chinese workers, and the non- reciprocal ‘Work and Holiday’ visa agreement that provides ‘up to 5,000’ 462 visas each year for young Chinese to live and work in Australia for a year (extendable) with no reciprocal visa arrangement allowing any young Australians to visit and work in China, let alone 5,000.

    These releases instead are mostly puff-pieces about the benefits for the tourism industry of changes to visitor visa rules for Chinese people, making it easier for Chinese tourists to visit and stay in Australia.

    Minister Cash’s latest release informed us that in China this week she ‘will undertake meetings with Chinese government counterparts, industry stakeholders, and China-based Australian businesses’. This ‘is particularly timely given the historic China Australia Free Trade Agreement’ (among other things), her release said.

    No further information was given about the Minister’s agenda for these China discussions. It may be that Australia’s Assistant Immigration Minister is, cap in hand, seeking Chinese approval for how the Australian government proposes to implement its FTA commitments on the IFAs in favour of Chinese 457 workers. The Australian Parliament will surely have a view about governments making Australian immigration laws in this way if it is presented with a fait accompli by the Minister when she returns.

    Hopefully before the ALP National Conference the government does ‘come clean about the potential downside for Australian jobs’ in the China FTA, as the Opposition Leader has called for. If this was an honest government, it would admit two more downsides to its China FTA concessions that are fatal to its claims to be in Australia’s national interest.

    First, the FTA 457 concessions give China increased scope to export some of its unemployment to Australia if things go bad in the Chinese economy, eg by pressuring Australian firms wanting Chinese market access or investment to take on Chinese workers over qualified Australians. By removing any legal obligation on employers to even look for Australian workers, the Abbott government is opening the door wide to this abuse of the 457 visa program.

    Second, removing the ability of all future Australian governments to legislate in favour of Australian citizens and residents over Chinese citizens in the standard 457 visa program greatly increases the risk of future Australian job losses. It removes a vital policy tool Australia will need to manage future economic shocks including those arising from our increased exposure to China. On this ground alone it is reckless and irresponsible.

    Bob Kinnaird is Research Associate with The Australian Population Research Institute and was National Research Director CFMEU National Office 2009-14.

     

  • Europe’s attack on Greek democracy.

    See below link to article by Joseph Stiglitz in Project Syndicate. Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel Laureate in Economics and University Professor at Columbia University. He was also Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank.  John Menadue.

     

    http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greece-referendum-troika-eurozone-by-joseph-e–stiglitz-2015-06

  • Ross Kerridge. GP Remuneration.

    Current Affairs

    I understand that at the recent National Conference of the AMA there was general support for a move to help funding systems other than just fee-for-service. Ross Kerridge examines this issue below. John Menadue 

    Healthcare Heroes. How to reward GPs for what they do best: a hospital specialist’s proposal

    There is an old saying in healthcare: –   “If the GP is good, a specialist may be able to help. If the GP is bad, nothing will help.”  

    The Junior Doctor has asked my advice about a 78 year old woman who has been booked for a hip replacement next week. She has the features common for her age – touches of heart disease, diabetes, emphysema, and her husband died three years ago. Children interstate. She’s maybe a bit forgetful. Not really sure about her regular medication, but says she is still living independently. “Seems a nice old lady and quite active but it’s a bit hard to be sure from just meeting her today.” 

    Preparing her properly needs more information. So does planning her postoperative care. The GP is the key to sorting it out….. “OK, who is her GP?” I ask.

    “She doesn’t have a regular GP any more. She goes to the 24-hour medical centre. We have two different versions of her medication and little information about her visits to specialists. She’s a bit vague about where she’ll go after discharge. The family situation might not be as good as she said at first….”

    Heart sinks. Groan. Oh dear….

    I start… “OK. She needs proper assessment. Can we get someone from General Medicine to check her over? What about Geriatrics? Has she had spirometry from the respiratory team? Does she need a cardiologist? Social work will need to be involved for discharge postop. We need results of bloods, echo, any other tests from the last year or two. Need to clarify the home and family situation. We could get caught here with her stuck in hospital and not able to go anywhere. Hmmm. This is going to take a while to sort out. We’d better postpone her op. Hopefully we can get someone else to take her place on the list…… I just wish patients understood why they need to get a proper GP.”

    I feel a failure. But the system of Medicare payments has failed our patient.

    Modern medicine can perform extraordinary things. But the major challenge of healthcare in the 21st century is coordinating all the ‘simple’ tasks: managing the evaluation, treatment and coordination of multiple chronic conditions in the elderly.   While patients and families must play a role, a single health professional needs to coordinate what is going on. And they should be paid for the value of that role. In Australia, the General Practitioner is the key to achieving this increasingly complex challenge. But Medicare does not support this role, and is increasingly undermining it.

    Medicare is based on Fee-for Service payments. Services are defined on the Medicare Benefits Schedule. So a patient seeing a GP for a standard consultation can claim a standard rebate. For one-off patient problems, the Medicare system has worked well, and provides a baseline level of access to medical services. But patients have sets of inter-related problems. Bizarrely, Medicare does not reinforce the most important and valuable service that a GP can provide – that of co-ordinating and supervising all the various interventions by hospitals, clinics, specialists, allied health professionals and so on. The GP is not rewarded for providing a clear overview of what is going on, both FOR the patient, and ABOUT the patient (with their permission) to all those treating her/him.

    Our health system is like a large collection of highly talented musicians all attempting to play a complex symphony. The GP should be the conductor of the healthcare orchestra, but they are not recognised (nor paid) for their crucial role of keeping everyone playing together. It is little wonder that the healthcare system often fails to function effectively or efficiently.

    Some suggest that the whole Medicare Fee-for-Service structure should be completely reorganised and redesigned, with staff employed on salaries.   It is entertaining to talk about what a ‘perfect’ system would be like. But it is also nice to dream of peace in the Middle East.

    Attempts have been made to provide special payments for the long-term management of particular (complex) conditions such as diabetes. These initiatives are a step in the right direction, but their aims have been seen as cost-cutting, rather than quality-improvement. Regardless, these schemes are fundamentally flawed because the complexity is not so much the disease itself, but the multiple ‘simple’ problems that occur together in the same patient. Or as William Osler, the ‘Father of Modern Medicine’ said, “The most important thing to know is not the disease that the patient has, but the patient who has the disease”.

    Every system has advantages and disadvantages. Our current Fee-for-Service based Medicare system works well for simple one-off consultations.   It also has the advantage of being relatively easy to understand and administer.   The improvement most needed for Medicare is to modify the existing MBS schedule to provide recognition and payment for the Service that patients need.

    There needs to be a new Fee (i.e. an MBS Item number) for ‘Supervising and Coordinating care’ for an extended period of time, over and above the current system based on separate episodes of care.

    What would be the features of such a Fee?: –

    • The item would be paid to a single GP nominated by a patient (with the GPs agreement) to be their ‘Supervising Practitioner’ for an extended period (e.g. twelve months).
    • The new item would pay for an initial ‘health care planning consultation’, and then ongoing supervision of the patient’s care for the twelve months. Assuming both patient and GP are happy, the role would then continue as long as the patient was ‘on the books’ of that GP.
    • ‘Normal’ (one-off) consultations would continue as now, with the patient able to choose anyone to attend, but with a requirement that any service provided under Medicare would include providing a report to the ‘Supervising Practitioner’.
    • The Supervising Practitioner would be responsible for maintaining the patients record (i.e. receiving and filing the above) and (with the patient’s consent) providing necessary information to other appropriate practitioners.
    • The fee would be scaled for increasing clinical complexity. More complex patients may require a ‘Planning Consultation’ more frequently, such as three-monthly. There could also be a loading for rural, remote, frail elderly or ‘challenging’ patients.
    • An ‘old-style’ GP practice, providing the valuable service of coordinating and supervising a patient’s long-term health care, may be able to derive (say) 20% of their income from this payment.  A medical centre providing single-consultation without ongoing commitment would not gain the coordinating fee.

    This plan would reinforce the strengths of Australia’s existing system of GPs being the foundation of the healthcare system. It rewards GPs who attract patients who are healthy and use self-maintenance to avoid medical consultations.  It provides a framework to encourage GPs to move to underserviced areas where they will gain income for having patients ‘on their books’. It acts to shift the balance away from high-activity clinics focussed on short-term one-off consultations.  It reinforces the status and importance of good patient-centred medical care.  It might also encourage GPs to develop models of care less dependent on requiring the patient to physically attend the consultation.   This may particularly help complex patients such as disabled, frail aged, or residential care patients.

    The cost of this new item could be offset by removing some of the current ‘add-on’ programs that are costly to administer and do not necessarily or systematically encourage long-term supervision of care.  It would also result in a reduction of waste because it would reduce duplication and provide a single place of reference about the patient’s health care.  Treasury would be delighted to know that this particular part of the healthcare budget was fixed – each Australian could only generate one fee annually.

    The system would enhance the status, rewards, and professional satisfaction for ‘traditional’ GPs as the foundation of the healthcare system. This may encourage more young doctors into general practice, by formalising a position of the ‘supervisory GP’; the GP’s involvement in high-stakes decision-making (such as planning complex surgery, or care at the end of life) would be established. This would clarify decision-making in hospitals considerably.   Most importantly, it would improve long-term patient care.

    This modification to Medicare maintains the positive aspects of the Fee For Service system, but rewards important long-term patient care that is not funded by the current system.  It can be implemented as a modification of the current system without major redesign, but would nevertheless have major positive ramifications.

    The Medicare system is imperfect. Some dream of major reform and wholesale redesign. Maybe that can happen in the long-term.

    But in the meantime, who is your GP?

    Associate Professor Ross Kerridge is an Anaesthetist and Perioperative Physician at John Hunter Hospital, a large teaching hospital in Newcastle. He is Associate professor at University of Newcastle and a member of AMA NSW State Council. These are his personal opinions.

     

     

     

  • Walter Hamilton. Why I am an Australian citizen

    Current Affairs.

    Amid all the howling about terror, treason and the ABC, Australians seemingly have lost the ability to stop, listen and think. Everyone is in such a hurry to outdo the next person in vilifying and repudiating the ‘other’, whether it is a Muslim Australian, a political opponent or a commercial rival. I can’t remember when the fabric of public debate has been so tattered by prejudice, ignorance and a determined refusal to listen to the other point of view.

    I am not a regular watcher of ABC-TV’s Q&A; I don’t like the format, and I feel sometimes it has been part of the problem in the way issues are debated and analyzed in this country. So this is not a defence of a particular program or a particular voice on that program. What I want to say, however, is that if we prefer silence to allowing the expression of opinions that annoy or exasperate us therein lies a terrible danger. Only totalitarian states prefer the elevator music of perfect agreement.

    Let me just say this about the individual concerned. Critics constantly remind us that he is a convicted criminal, as though any citizen who has been punished under the law is no longer entitled to a voice. This idea should be anathema in a democracy, and yet it plays straight into the government’s campaign to curtail the citizenship rights of a specific group of people through the use of powers that emanate from outside the judicial progress.

    The ABC’s managing director Mark Scott made an important point this week when he emphasized the distinction between a public broadcaster and a state broadcaster. The ABC was part of Team Australia, he said––repudiating Tony Abbott’s slur––because it played the necessary role in a democracy of providing a forum for debate free of political interference.

    As further evidence that people don’t listen, a member of the Greens then criticized Scott for allegedly sacrificing truth to patriotism. He had missed the point completely: the ABC should not, and does not, stand outside Australian society; its role is to strengthen the social fabric by giving expression to all its parts.

    And then there’s the debate over how the families of dead ISIL fighters from Australia should be treated.

    I was astonished to hear Labor’s Bill Shorten join the ugly chorus of ‘I wouldn’t let my kids near him’ in reference to the seven-year-old boy coaxed by his father into posing for a photograph with a severed head in Syria. The boy was seven, Bill. Talkback radio has been full of voices repeating the same mantra: shun him; we don’t want them back; let them fetch for themselves. Unclean, unclean!

    Once upon a time Australia used to be referred to as a Christian country. Even today, beneath the intolerance for the Muslim veil and beard is an affirmation of ‘Christian’ superiority. What became of the central Christian principle of forgiveness? What became of the core Australian principle of fairness? Should we not be reaching out to those Australians, wherever they are, whose lives have been marred by the actions of others, fanatical fathers and possibly mothers?

    Tony Abbott says they will be treated just the same as the families of other criminals. Of course, none of these ISIL fighters has been convicted of anything in a court of law––though perhaps that’s too nice a point during this time of bludgeoning debate. In any case, as I have already pointed out, being a convicted felon (and having served your time), according to some people, is now sufficient reason for the ABC to need to exclude your voice from the airwaves. Perhaps all ex-cons should be stripped of their citizenship? What are the limits of the politics of vilification?

    Perhaps you heard in the news this week that the city of Kobane, near the Syrian border with Turkey, was cleared of ISIL by Kurdish militias after months of fighting. Western news media entering the city found a scene of total destruction: not a building intact, a vast grey pile of rubble. Within a day, ISIL elements were back in the city on a savage rampage against the civilian remnants.

    In this sort of contest, there is no ‘to the victor, the spoils’; total warfare means total destruction. For liberal societies such as ours, the challenge we face is not to be the first to don fatigues and lay waste (rhetorically or otherwise) to any and every perceived opponent, before he ‘gets’ us. The challenge is to preserve the reasons for our opposing violence, intolerance and oppression, and live out those reasons every day in the way be conduct our civil society.

    We must not tear down the institutions and the laws that protect us from within, as we attempt to mount a defence against perceived and real threats from without. Pause, listen and think.

    Walter Hamilton reported for ABC for more than 30 years.

     

  • Mark Scott. The ABC belongs to all of us.

    Current Affairs.

     Address by Mark Scott
    Centre for Corporate Public Affairs’ Annual Corporate Public Affairs Oration
    Thursday 25 June 2015

    From time to time, I’m asked to speak to journalism students about what it’s like working in a news room.

    I often reflect that for all the planning you can do around big news events—an election, a budget, The Olympics—almost by definition, the biggest stories are those you can’t predict, you didn’t know were about to erupt.

    These kinds of stories are sometimes fascinating, sometimes appalling. But they get the adrenaline running in the newsroom.

    Thinking about it now, I suspect that those of us running corporate affairs, as you do—or running a corporation as I do—don’t hanker for the adrenaline rushes quite so much!

    But things happen. As Harold McMillan said when asked what were the greatest challenges a leader faces in public life, “Events, my dear boy, events.”

    So, given the events of the week including the government’s announcement of an inquiry into the events surrounding Monday’s Q&A plus the commentary and questions that have erupted about the role of the ABC, I thought it would be appropriate to address some of these issues with you tonight.

    As you know, Monday night’s Q&A triggered very significant debate and controversy. A man who had been tried and acquitted of planning a terrorist attack, who pleaded guilty to threatening to kill ASIO officials, applied to be in the studio audience and to ask a question.

    It is not as though this man was unknown to the media. He’d appeared on numerous occasions previously across a number of networks. He’d been in the Q&A audience before.

    As someone said to me this week, free speech arguments would be easier if you were always defending Martin Luther King. At times, free speech principles mean giving platforms to those with whom we fundamentally disagree.

    It was the crux of the Charlie Hebdo argument last year and of course, the source of the maxim that was used to describe Voltaire’s beliefs—“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

    Media organisations often give airtime to the criminal and the corrupt. To those who express views that run contrary to accepted public values. You have to set the bar very high before you begin to exclude certain views or perspectives.

    We still need to hear in order to gain insight into thinking, into motivation. To understand the root cause of behaviours and actions that we might find confronting and alarming, or worse.

    The man who appeared on Q&A had been given considerable space by numerous media outlets in recent years. If giving him space or time to express his views is an act of sedition, then the round up of the seditious will take some time and include, I should add, The Australian newspaper which ran an extensive article on him in 2012, charting his journey from when terrorism charges were first laid against him. He also graced the pages of The Courier-Mail.

    However, as we said at the ABC on Tuesday morning, other issues were triggered by giving this man a forum on live television through Q&A that are not free speech issues. I can see circumstances where a question asked by this man could have been broadcast, just as other controversial figures have asked questions on Q&A before, like Julian Assange.

    The risks and uncertainities of having him in a live programming environment weren’t adequately considered before the decision was made to accept his application to be in the studio audience.

    It’s one thing to pre-record an interview and exercise editorial judgment on the content before you put it to air. But live television doesn’t give you that option. And in Q&A’s case, it took place with a large studio audience present. The ABC’s immediate statement, on Tuesday morning, made this clear.

    These things needed to have been thought through carefully and referred up internally. We have detailed upward referral on editorial judgment at the ABC to help guide thinking in complex or contentious matters.

    We’re also aware of potential security issues and are, in fact, talking to the AFP to ensure they are completely appropriate for the program.

    Now there are some ABC staff, present and past, who argue that to make any concession in the face of criticism is to buckle. Who say it’s a sign of weakness. Respectfully I disagree.

    It’s not weakness to say you made the wrong call. We have no problem with that. People who are equally well-meaning will often make different judgments. The judgments that count in this matter are the ones made by those paid to make them. Those at the program, and those in the editorial chain-of-command above them that leads to me, reporting to the Board.

    The ABC is reviewing the decision-making processes around Q&A in light of this experience. This is happening internally, now. And the Board had previously determined that Q&A would form part of this year’s series of independent editorial reviews it commissions.

    It will be undertaken by someone external to the ABC and will look across all aspects of the program across a range of episodes. Its considered findings will be released later in the year.

    The ABC will co-operate with the Government’s snap inquiry, which is to report back next Tuesday.

    We know that live television is dangerous. That it can be unpredictable and compelling. Part of the success of Q&A is that the audience knows it’s live. It’s event programming. And viewing numbers increased significantly when the show commenced broadcasting live tweets on the screen. Many in the audience leaned in, got even more involved.

    Q&A has a lot of moving parts—pulling together the panel, bussing people in from all over the place, getting a balanced studio audience, selecting the questions and tweets. It’s hardly a straight-forward proposition, and that’s further fueled by the electricity of the live production.

    I admire those who accept what can be the ultimate challenge of being on the panel, to test their arguments and their wit, live in front of a million people. The studio crowd can be rowdy, vocal, unforgiving. It is easy to find excuses not to come on the panel, but to say yes, to turn up—you need ticker. It’s a Todd Sampsonesque piece of heroics. You’re on the high wire without a net. And that’s not just the panel—it’s the same every week for the host and the senior producers.

    As we know, Q&A engages audiences and it triggers a response from them too. People will not be happy with every panel or questioner or tweet. Not every editorial judgment made will be right. The show generates passion like few others. No program is more heavily scrutinised by audiences and critics.

    I feel that Q&A has all the potential of being a 20+ year franchise for the ABC, so we need to treat it with care. Like Four Corners, it’s a show that should endure when all current management and production teams are long gone, an enduring part of Australian public life. Those of us who have responsibility for it now are trustees for its future.

    Amidst this week’s controversy, I don’t want to lose sight of the terrific achievements of Q&A. Extraordinary programs on mental health and AIDS. The remarkable program from the Garma forum. Shanghai. Delhi. Those times we felt we were having a really intelligent, engaging national conversation around the things that matter most.

    And while we remember these special episodes, it is also worth remembering that our highest rating Q&A episodes are often the regular ones where politicians and community leaders thrash out the issues of the week. It has become a staple in the lives of many Australians, every Monday night.

    We will reflect on the events of this week, have the program independently reviewed and look to ensure that it pursues and delivers its potential to be public broadcasting at its best – to inform, to educate and to entertain.

    The media firestorm that has erupted around Monday’s Q&A was ferocious, but as a public broadcaster, the ABC goes through these from time to time. At times I have felt that, compared to our Commonwealth public broadcasting cousins in the UK and Canada, we go through relatively few.

    But even for the ABC, things seemed to have been taken to a new level when on Wednesday we scored four covers on one day in the News Limited tabloids, complete with photoshopped ABC flags being waved by jihadi protestors. Not all parties to the conversation have seemed vested in pursing a rational discourse.

    A question was posed this week. Whose side is the ABC on? It’s not the first time it’s been asked. Menzies, Hawke, Neville Wran—they all asked it in their own inimitable ways.

    It’s a good question. And while it’s often asked with a rhetorical flourish, a question about the role and nature of the public broadcaster in these highly polarized and partisan times, it’s a fair one.

    Sometimes it seems questions like this are framed to cause doubt. To challenge what we have always felt. And while rhetorical questions are designed to be posed and not answered, I want to answer this one.

    It’s important.

    Whose side is the ABC on?

    Well in any team, you can be playing on the same side, but often you will be playing in a different position, with a different role and responsibility. You’re on the same side, but with a different job to do. You do your bit and you work together to make the team successful.

    The ABC is clearly Australian, it’s on the side of Australia. The A in ABC is for Australian. And the part we play, what we do for the side, is a vital one, central to our culture and our democracy – that of being an independent public broadcaster.

    The ABC’s Charter covers our responsibility to Australians who live in this country and also Australians living overseas. Our wide, diverse programming reaches Australians everywhere across the land.

    Inside the ABC, we talk about wanting to be the independent home of Australian conversations, culture and stories.

    Central to the legislation establishing the Corporation is the independence of the public broadcaster. Funded by Government, accountable to the public for its performance, governed by a Board of eminent, independent Australians.

    And of course, it’s precisely this independence that shapes the ABC as a public broadcaster, not a state broadcaster.

    A state broadcaster is the communications arm of the Government. Its role is to communicate the messages of the Government—and certainly not to do anything that undermines the Government.

    I hope no-one seriously wants the ABC to be a state broadcaster.

    We know the examples. North Korea and Russia. China and Vietnam. There are many others.

    But that has never been the role of a public broadcaster here, a public broadcaster formed in the tradition set out by Lord Reith the first head of the BBC, who spoke of a duty to inform, educate and entertain.

    The Reithian tradition shapes the history of the ABC. Its independence enshrined in legislation and entrusted to the Board.

    The ABC Act does not envisage the ABC as another branch of Government public relations. Instead, it asks the ABC to provide an independent national broadcasting service. And the Board is asked to maintain that independence.

    The ABC’s Editorial Policies state that “the trust and respect of the community depend on the ABC’s editorial independence and integrity. Independence and responsibility are inseparable.”

    The first editorial policy says to maintain the independence and integrity of the ABC.

    There are good reasons for independence from Government, just as there are good reasons for an independent judiciary.

    Australians cherish freedom of expression, and they cherish debate. They cherish the role of the ABC in facilitating both.

    When we were planning television in Australia sixty years ago, we came up with our own model, an Australian model that offered us the best of both worlds.

    When it came to the public broadcasting side of it, we didn’t do what the British had done when they made the BBC a monopoly.

    We didn’t what the Americans had done, creating public television only later on, almost an afterthought of the Johnson presidency.

    We didn’t do what Italy had done, with three national channels allocated to three leading political parties. Nor did we follow the French example, where the top jobs at the public broadcaster would change when the party in Government changed.

    In Australia, when Governments change, we could change the public broadcasters with them, align them to more positively reflect the Government’s agenda, to do the Government’s bidding.

    But you would have to change the ABC Act.

    And you would have to destroy the ABC as we have known it for eight decades.

    Instead, Australia has an independent ABC and that independence is key to its credibility. It’s why trust in the ABC is streets ahead of commercial media. The Essential Poll conducted earlier this week demonstrates that far more Australians put their trust in ABC TV news and current affairs, than other media outlets.

    It’s why the ABC is one of the most trusted institutions in the country, along with the High Court and the Reserve Bank.

    I think you’ll find that in Australia, as in every country where public broadcasting exists, “The most trusted public broadcasters are those that are perceived as closest to the public, and most distant from the government”, as the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard noted in its review of NYU’s research paper Public Media and Political Independence.

    The history of the ABC is a history that shows the anger and frustration of Government at ABC broadcasts from time to time. Ken Inglis’ two histories of the ABC document these stoushes at length.

    Those of you with longer memories will recall the harsh criticism dished out by the Hawke Government over the ABC’s coverage of the first Gulf War.

    In my nearly nine years at the ABC, when we’ve had Governments both Labor and Liberal, there have been ABC stories that generated the wrath of the Government of the day. Monday’s Q&A is but the most recent example.

    Of course there will be stories that frustrate politicians. Of course there will be coverage that’s not of their choosing. But my experience has been that most politicians have understood the importance of the independence of the public broadcaster from political pressure and interference. It’s a mark of the maturity of our democracy.

    Most—though some, aren’t reluctant to turn up the heat now and again to see what happens.

    Long may that independence continue.

    And as it does, it is vital the ABC appreciates that independence and responsibility are inseparable.

    The ABC is not perfect, and while it sets high standards, it won’t always meet them. There will be poor journalistic practice or poor editorial judgment shown occasionally, and criticism of the ABC will be well founded.

    Good journalism is strengthened by setting the record straight. That’s a responsibility as well. The finest media outlets are those who, in taking accuracy and the truth seriously, willingly concede error. And then put things right.

    Of course, there are times when someone thinks a story is inaccurate when it’s simply speaking an inconvenient truth. Other times stories will cause frustration and embarrassment—to Government, to business, to unions, to leading social institutions. That’s what public accountability is all about.

    Stories that people would rather not have been told. Stories that are immediately attacked, but over time are revealed to be right and of overwhelming public importance.

    Witness the Royal Commission into the institutional response to child sexual assault. The ABC was at the forefront of uncovering the stories that led the establishment of the landmark review. Look Four Corners and Lateline’s coverage of endemic poverty and appalling living standards in Indigenous communities.

    Journalism served the public interest in bringing the corruption in Queensland under Premier Bjelke-Peterson to light. In revealing the appalling treatment of customers by financial planners at the Commonwealth Bank, cruelty in the greyhound industry, the callous behaviour of James Hardie, the deception of cash for comment in commercial radio.

    The ABC serves the public interest in this way through hundreds of stories a week, from the biggest cities to small country towns.

    These are the contributions made by an independent public broadcaster. Independent from pressure by advertisers or proprietors. Independent from the need to maxmise sales or advertising. Independent from a Government dictating the coverage it wants or needs.

    Independent from these pressures but responsible under the ABC Act to deliver journalism that is accurate and impartial to the recognised standards of objective journalism.

    It’s journalism that means speaking truth to power. Pushing for disclosure and transparency. Seeking to verify that which we are asked to take on trust. Asking difficult questions. And bringing to light views that are very different to ours, being challenged and confronted—to increase our understanding and insight, if not our acceptance.

    The stakes don’t get any higher than when reporting on national security. Not just in keeping citizens safe, but keeping our nation sound as well as safe—our privacy protected, our democracy robust, ensuring the integrity of our institutions, the honesty of our politicians and that our rights as citizens are being respected.

    In doing this important work in our journalism, the ABC is also held to account for our decisions and our performance.

    The ABC’s accountability mechanisms are more robust than those of any other media organisation in the country.

    The Annual Report details the operations of the independent complaints division run by the ABC that looks into every material complaint submitted by audiences. The A.C.M.A. can review decisions made by that complaints division.

    At least three times a year there are public Senate hearings where, along with other ABC Executives, I answer a vast range of questions for hours —and hundreds of others are put on notice.

    Detailed reporting on the ABC’s expenditure goes to the Department of Finance in Canberra.

    Even our own program, Media Watch, casts a critical eye as intently over the ABC as it does other media outlets.

    The ABC Board is now commissioning its own independent reviews of editorial content to go alongside the extensive financial auditing process. These reviews are just part of the Board’s response to its editorial responsibilities under the Act.

    It is unparalleled compared to any other media organisation in the country, and rightly so. We are spending taxpayers dollars and with the right to practice our craft, comes responsibility and accountability for performance.

    Much of what I have discussed tonight goes to our journalism – a vital part of what we do. But it is only part. Only part of the role we play.

    I have sometimes had to say to politicians that they do seem to get obsessed about 2% of the ABC’s content—usually the part that’s about them or the issues their polling currently says is important.

    But the ABC is for all Australians and it’s much bigger and broader and richer than that.

    Political content certainly gets the attention of our audiences. They engage with Q&A, Insiders, 7.30, AM and PM.

    But if you look at the numbers, this is but a small fraction of the audience’s ABC experience across radio and television, online and mobile. From Play School to Charlie Pickering, from Matt and Alex to Mad as Hell, to our famous medicos, Dr Norman Swan and Dr Lucien Blake—they represent the ABC for millions of Australians for hours every week.

    We celebrate Australia at the ABC. We celebrate important national events and the lives of Australians. The great, the unknown.

    Witness our coverage on Anzac Day. Dawn Services around the country, marches in capital cities, commemorations from Anzac Cove and Lone Pine.

    And on Australia Day, bringing the stories of the Australians of the Year and the National Flag Raising and Citizenship Ceremony.

    Having national conversations on absolutely crucial matters like mental health during our Mental As week.

    Bringing Australians together to raise $5m in just a few days for relief efforts in Nepal.

    We have been doing this kind of work for years and years.

    In November we commemorate 70 years of The Country Hour. Next year marks 20 years of Australian Story. Since 1932 on radio we have had local voices, telling local stories to local communities.

    As The Sydney Morning Herald noted when the ABC turned 75—you would still have an Australia without the ABC, but it wouldn’t be this Australia.

    This Australia owes much to the ABC. Because the ABC is an indispensible part of Australian life and part of the lives of millions of Australians each day.

    That’s why well over 80% of Australians believe the ABC provides a valuable service.

    It’s valuable when it discovers brilliant new Australian musical talent that will conquer the world through triple j unearthed.

    Valuable when we listen to the beautiful work of ABC composers recorded by the ABC Classics label.

    Valuable when we hear Jim Maxwell, in the dead of night, calling the Ashes from England.

    Valuable when we’re listening to the birdsong on Macca on a Sunday morning.

    When we’re absorbed by the best television drama of the year—The Secret River. And the most compelling docudrama for a decade, The Killing Season, which led to the cry during Question Time last week, “Thank you to the ABC”.

    The work of the ABC, what it adds to our lives, reminds me of the words of the US physicist Robert Wilson. Wilson had been called to testify at a congressional hearing in the late 1960s. He was being challenged by Senator John Pastore about the rationale for the government spending $250m on a new scientific investment. Pastore asked whether Wilson’s work had anything to do with promoting “the security of the country”.

    Wilson said it didn’t—none at all. But he then pointed out this kind of work “only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. . . . It has to do with whether we are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. . . . It has nothing to do directly with defending our country—except to make it worth defending.”

    And that is the key answer to the question about the role ABC plays in Australia, the part we play on the team.

    For we are the independent home of Australian conversations and culture and stories.

    Reaching Australians everywhere on radio and television, online and mobile.

    Celebrating achievement. Sharing discoveries. Uncovering truths.

    Talking about the things that matter. A place where Australians can come to talk and listen, to watch, to share.

    Helping us understand each other and this country better.

    To help make Australia, Australia.

    And that’s how we fulfill our part on the team.

     

  • Rod Tiffen. Murdoch’s declining influence.

    Current Affairs

    Labor might not have noticed it yet, but Rupert Murdoch’s capacity to influence the outcome declines with each passing election. Over the past eight months, Victoria and Queensland have voted out first-term Liberal governments despite the best efforts of the Murdoch press in those states. Their slanted front pages, unfair coverage and combative editorials only highlighted their growing irrelevance to the electoral process.

    The central reason for this decline in influence is the radically shrinking reach of News Ltd’s newspapers. Last year, the total circulation of all Australian daily newspapers was a little over 2.1 million, fully one million lower than it was at the turn of the century.

    If we factor in the growth of the Australian population, the picture is even more dramatic. Not long after the second world war, in 1947, roughly two copies of a metropolitan daily newspaper were sold for every five people in Australia. By 2014, the figure was one for every fourteen people, reflecting a decline in penetration from 38.6 to 7.2 per cent. And the decline was accelerating: between 1996 and 2014, penetration halved from 14.1 to 7.2. Murdoch papers, with roughly a 60 per cent share of Australian daily circulation, are now bought by about 4 per cent of the Australian population.

    Not only do newspapers have a shrinking readership, they also have an ageing readership. Older people, already disproportionately Coalition voters, are more settled in their political preferences and outlooks. The key to a Labor victory will be how the younger age groups, perhaps especially those under forty, will vote, and these groups are not reading Murdoch’s newspapers.

    Among regular Murdoch readers, there may not be many more Labor voters left to convert. The papers’ anti-Labor propaganda line has been consistent for quite some time; if their readers were going to switch from Labor the overwhelming likelihood is that they would have done so already. What could these papers do that they haven’t already done to convince continuing Labor voters to change their allegiance?

    Not much, probably, because readers of the Murdoch tabloids also seem to regard the papers with a healthy scepticism. In recent years Essential Research has used a series of surveys to find out how much trust Australians have in the paper they regularly read. Among the six papers included, the three “quality” papers – the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and theAustralian – rank the most highly, all with 60 per cent plus, and the first two sometimes registering over 70 per cent.

    The three Murdoch metropolitan tabloids, meanwhile, come in at the bottom. In August 2014, 51 per cent of Daily Telegraph readers said they trusted it; for the Herald Sun the figure was 53 per cent and for the Courier-Mail 54 per cent. In other words, nearly half their readers don’t trust these papers. There’s worse: in three of the five polls, the Telegraph’s level of trust dropped below 50 per cent, and after the 2013 election it dipped to 41 per cent. All this suggests that many people may be attracted to these papers for their sporting coverage or their entertainment value, and take their political coverage with a large grain of salt.

    So, in terms of direct consumption, the Murdoch papers are reaching less than 10 per cent of voters (assuming each paper sold is read by just over two people). This is probably about half of their reach when they supported John Howard in the 2001 election. Among this disproportionately elderly tenth of the population, more than half already vote against Labor, and most are probably fairly settled in their political attitudes and largely immune to the papers’ persuasive efforts.

    There are two partial qualifications to this general picture of declining political relevance. First, because they often set the agenda for other media, newspapers’ influence extends beyond those who read them. Insofar as the Murdoch press influences the priorities and tone of television news – which still draws a sizeable number of viewers not firmly committed to one major party or the other – it will have some influence.

    But the main medium that picks up on the tabloids’ coverage is commercial talkback radio, which then amplifies the papers’ sense of outrage even further. It should be remembered, though, that their elderly listeners are quite similar to the readers of the tabloid newspapers. Together, the two media form a self-aggrandising and self-referential noise machine, and their volume and bluster should not be mistaken for outreach.

    The second qualification is that, on the face of it, the radical drop in print sales of newspapers is matched by the rising readership of their websites. Of all the media, though, tabloid newspapers are perhaps the most challenged by the digital revolution. The most successful transition has been made by the British Daily Mail, which has become a global leader among newspapers for web traffic. Interestingly, the content mix of that paper’s website is quite different from its print edition, with far more celebrity news and less sport, crime and politics. The British newspaper is vociferously right-wing and populist in its print pages, but that tone and presentation would look silly on the internet. Online, its right-wing political coverage is more sparse and less strident.

    It is true that there is considerable traffic to Australian newspaper websites. But whereas a reader of the print edition of the Daily Telegraph might have spent fifteen minutes a day reading the paper, most visits to the website are much more fleeting, often thirty seconds or less. “Readership” here means something much less than it used to. Not only is it hard to imagine these visits attracting strong advertising revenue, it is also difficult to believe they will have much political impact.

    Labor first suffered a Murdoch onslaught in 1975, after the proprietor decided that the Whitlam government had to go. The negative coverage continued through the 1977 and 1980 elections. But Labor’s return to office under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in 1983 led to a rapprochement between Murdoch and the party’s leadership. Murdoch and Packer are the only mates we’ve got, Hawke famously told his cabinet during a deadlocked discussion of media policy reform.

    It was during this period that Murdoch, with the help of Labor’s eventual rule changes, acquired the Herald and Weekly Times group. By the end of the party’s reign in 1996, the reach of Murdoch-owned newspapers had increased from just under a quarter of daily circulation to around 60 per cent. Hawke’s short-term pragmatism made Murdoch’s anti-Labor bias a much more serious problem for his successors. At nearly every election since 1993 the weight of coverage in the Murdoch press has been against Labor, sometimes overwhelmingly so, and its large share of circulation meant considerable potential for impact.

    The hostility is not surprising. Murdoch’s own political views have been fixed since the mid 1970s, when he embraced the nostrums of the conservative wing of the American Republican Party – more recently embodied in a Tea Party agenda that is quite alien to Australian and British political traditions of a mixed economy with a strong, socially constructive public sector. When it’s been clear that a party of the left would win an election, Murdoch has sometimes been prepared to modify his right-wing instincts, marrying the business incentive to be on side with the incoming government with the journalistic advantages of riding a populist wave.

    His Australian newspapers split their editorial support in 2007 when it was clear that Kevin Rudd and Labor would win, but by 2010 and 2013 were fully back behind the Liberals. “Kick This Mob Out” proclaimed the editorial covering the front page of his Daily Telegraph, setting the tone for its coverage of the 2013 campaign.

    The eighty-four-year-old Murdoch now seems less ready to bend his views for the sake of political pragmatism. Several of his former editors have said that their first thought about any big story was always “What would Rupert think of this?” The result is an unhealthy level of conformity in the upper editorial levels of the organisation.

    As well as a hardening of the political arteries, there is an increasing sense of editorial desperation among the Murdoch papers as their commercial plight worsens. Like a one-trick pony, they try ever-bigger versions of the old sensationalist ploys. Politically, the result is even less willingness to report fairly on parties and views they don’t support. Where there was once a populist touch, now there is just a grinding predictability. Where there was once a profitable balance between sensationalism and credibility, now the confected outrage and the beat-ups rarely hit home.

    Labor can expect the full Murdoch treatment at the next federal election. The papers’ stable of largely interchangeable and wholly predictable columnists will pour out their anti-Labor analyses. Embarrassing trivia (such as Kevin Rudd’s not saying much to a make-up artist before a TV debate) will be pursued relentlessly and breathlessly magnified. Photoshop and crude caricatures will be used extensively to demean the party’s leaders. But the more interesting question is not how the Murdoch press will cover the election, but whether it will have much effect.

    Two decades ago, political pragmatism dictated that Labor would seek to ingratiate itself with such a large press oligopolist, grateful for any crumbs thrown its way, but that logic is rapidly disintegrating. On top of that, the two Australian policy issues in which Murdoch’s corporate interests have the greatest stake are both ones where public opinion is very much on the other side. First, News Ltd has become the number one target in terms of evading Australian taxation. Second, for decades News has lobbied against the anti-siphoning rules, whereby free-to-air television gets first option for many popular sporting events. Abolishing this rule would please Foxtel but would annoy those who could no longer watch for free events they have been long accustomed to viewing without charge.

    The reputation for power often outlives its objective basis. The decay of the news media as a means for reaching the electorate, and its decline as a central forum for political debate, brings its own problems for the quality of our democratic processes. But one of the benefits of the rise of digital media and changing media habits among young adults is that they are breaking down the power of the old gatekeepers. The decline in press circulation has reduced Murdoch’s power to make mischief.

    Rodney Tiffen is Emeritus Professor, Government and International Relations, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney. He is the author of ‘Rupert Murdoch: A Reassessment’ (NewSouth, 2014). This article was first published in ‘Inside Story’ on 23 June, 2015.

  • Is the European Central Bank looking after the Greek people or the banks?

    Current Affairs.

    In London I have been reading this interesting piece in The Telegraph, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, (link below) on the ‘Greek problem’. It was published on 19 June 2015.  John Menadue.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11687229/Greek-debt-crisis-is-the-Iraq-War-of-finance.html

  • John Menadue. Triple-dipping by Big Pharma.

    Current Affairs

    The major pharmaceutical companies in Australia, almost all foreign owned, keep pushing their luck at the expense of Australian consumers and taxpayers.

    In my series on health reform, I pointed to a minimum of $2 b. p.a. that we could save in drug costs if we had a government purchasing system like the New Zealanders. In the last budget the Minister for Health made a few changes around the edges but the high prices charged by Big Pharma will continue.

    It is the same story around the world. Many American consumers find it worthwhile to cross into Canada to buy pharmaceuticals.

    It is no surprise to know that Big Pharma is also highly influential in the secret negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It is quite a scandal that we are kept in the dark on a trade arrangement which could have quite serious consequences for Australia.

    Apart from the secrecy there are major concerns. As Choice Magazine has pointed out ‘The leaked chapters of the TPP indicate that the agreement may contain an investor-state dispute settlement clause(ISDS), which allows foreign corporations to sue Australia’s government for loss of future profits.’ Dr Matthew Rimmer, Associate Professor at the ANU College of Law, has said ‘Australian consumers have been betrayed. The intellectual property chapter of the TPP is a monster. The proposals in respect of copyright law, trademark law, patent law and data-protection would hit Australian consumers hard’.

    There is major concern that the Australian government could become more vulnerable to law suits from multinational companies and particularly, Big Pharma. As Choice has pointed out, after the introduction of tobacco plain packaging rules in Australia, cigarette companies unsuccessfully challenged the new laws twice in the High Court and lost. Philip Morris then announced its decision to challenge plain packaging again, this time under international law by invoking a 1993 bilateral investment treatment that included ISDS provisions between Australia and Hong Kong.

    And we know from experience, that US corporations have massively disproportionate lawyering power compared to our legal defence resources in Australia.

    Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist, told us recently on the ABC about the benefits to the drug companies of TPP. He said ‘I talked to all the other trade negotiators involved in the drug provisions [of the TPP] and we know that the US is negotiating for a position that would make it much more difficult to get access to generic medicines and that would drive up drug prices.

    Then there is the problem of tax avoidance. The Australian Parliamentary Library told a recent Senate Committee that in total the top five pharmaceutical suppliers to the PBS in Australia received $2.8 b. in public money. Their total Australian sales were $4.8 b. But research found their combined profits were only $50 m. They paid $53 m. in tax between them, or roughly one cent in tax for every dollar earned in Australia. For a full report by the SMH for June 15, see link here. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/pharmaceutical-companies-called-on-to-explain-tiny-tax-contribution-20150602-ghf59s.html

    We are really in triple-dipping country here – high prices for Australian consumers, attempts through TPP to weaken Australia’s bargaining position and widespread tax avoidance.

    I think we are being taken for a ride.

  • David Charles. Innovation in Australia.

    Policy Series. 

    Australia is currently facing a challenging situation in which the economy needs to transform from one very largely driven by investments in the minerals and energy sector to one which has a wider spread of investment drivers. The overall economic growth rate, while still reasonably strong by OECD standards, is below the long term rate of about 3 to 3 and one half per cent per annum. 

    The famous three Ps – productivity, population and participation – all need to play their part if Australia is to get back to its long term growth path. 

    Arguably rather too much attention is focused on lifting productivity by the usual list of microeconomic reforms, including greater labour market flexibility. While these matters deserve a place in a comprehensive strategy, they need to be complemented by action designed to improve Australia’s innovation performance and in particular its performance in terms of technological innovation. Raising the rate of technological change is central to competitiveness and long term economic growth. 

    At the outset it should be said that innovation is not just about stimulating knowledge flows. In order to create new business opportunities and lift economic performance there must be economic actors who can exploit new knowledge. The importance of individuals and the innovation system as a whole is sometimes overlooked by central agencies of government who tend to think in terms of more macroeconomic frameworks. They are also too willing on occasions to trade off good long term policy for short term budgetary savings. 

    How has Australia Performed? 

    The optimistic view expressed in some parts of the Australian innovation literature is that we have done remarkably well over the course of last 200 years in terms of adding value to our latent minerals and primary resources. It is not hard to identify major innovations that enabled mineral resources and primary products to be taken to world markets. 

    Beyond mining and primary production, there are also some outstanding examples of innovation in the medical and telecommunications fields which have gone global. 

    The pessimistic view is based on the reality that with a small, developed country most of the innovations that set the framework of our daily lives tend to come from elsewhere. Australia’s performance as an exporter of high value added products and services is modest at best. 

    Of greater concern is the fact that many Australian innovators have had to move to the United States and elsewhere to tap the capital and complementary resources they need for global success. 

    Moving from the anecdotal to a more evidence-based approach to measuring the effectiveness of the Australian innovation system, the Global Innovation Index finds that Australia is placed 17th but well behind the top 10 (which include countries like Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands). Australia is more a tail light rather than a leading light among the top group. We should and must do rather better if we want higher living standards in a much more challenging world for commodity prices. 

    One of the data points that gives real cause for concern is the relatively low level of collaboration between researchers in Australia’s universities and publicly funded research agencies and business. Given the relatively large investment of public funds involved improving this situation offers real potential for improving the impact of our research and innovation system. 

    Given the importance of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Australian economy – it is from this group the future Hidden Champions will emerge, lifting collaboration will of necessity mean improving the connectivity between Australia’s SMEs and the research community. This is no small thing. 

    Key Requirements for Innovation Success 

    The literature suggests that there are four dominant requirements that must be present for sustained and widespread innovation success. 

    The first requirement is the presence of a highly educated and skilled workforce. The world leading sources of innovation all have strong school and university systems. They all place a strong emphasis on so-called STEM skills (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). 

    The second requirement is the capital available to support innovation. This is not just a question of the availability of financial capital but just as importantly the availability of what might be called “smart” capital, ie, entities and individuals who understand innovation and markets and the likely time horizons for success. 

    The third requirement is a high degree of connectivity between university and publicly funded research entities and business. World class research by itself is no guarantee of successful innovation. The successful innovation nations have all found ways of strengthening connectivity between researchers and business. 

    The fourth requirement and in some ways the most challenging is to encourage the development of supportive eco-systems generally focused on particular emerging technologies. Silicon Valley is the parade example in the IT field but there are many other examples in the US and elsewhere of clusters of excellence centred on a range of fields. 

    How does Australia Rate? 

    Australia does well on the first requirement. We possess a highly educated and skilled workforce. Depending upon the measure used, six to eight universities in the global top 100 speaks for itself for a nation Australia’s size. We cannot rest on what has been achieved to date. The bar is being raised all the time. 

    The Chief Scientist has rightly identified STEM skills as being highly important and an area where Australia needs to do better. Fundamentally we need to at least maintain our global position and if possible improve it. 

    The other positive sign is that Australia has thought leaders in at least some of the fields from which disruptive technologies with great potential impact are emerging. 

    Australia’s performance in terms of the availability of capital for innovation is something of a mixed bag. The global mining companies have demonstrated over long periods that they are able to marshal the capital to support innovation in their businesses. Capital has also been forthcoming for innovations related to the provision of new internet enabled services provision businesses. Sometimes these have come from wealthy individuals with a strong understanding of the potential of these businesses or multinational companies. 

    Where performance has been less impressive is for innovations outside these areas where there is a lack of “smart” investors with deep pockets. This either puts pressure on Australian innovators to go offshore or to proceed to early to an IPO to tap equity capital markets. Efforts have been made to kick start a venture capital sector in Australia but it is clear more needs to be done. AVCAL points out that Australia only invests a small amount in new businesses compared to the US and Israel. 

    As pointed out in many studies on Australia’s innovation system, Australia rates poorly in terms of research collaboration involving both research entities and business. Efforts have been made to address this weakness, most notably through the long running Co-operative Research Centres program, and gains have been made in some areas but much more needs to be done. 

    Apart from the notable eco-systems that exist around Australia’s leading minerals and primary production industries, it is much harder to detect the presence of effective eco-systems in other areas of potential strength to the Australian economy. A lot of effort has been directed to building the conditions for strong clusters to emerge but for the most part they have not been notably successful. 

    Building eco-systems remains important to future innovation and competitiveness and has recently received serious attention from the Commonwealth Government. 

    What is to be done? 

    For the optimists and the commentators who believe that innovation is purely a matter for the private sector, the answer is either nothing or at most identifying and removing regulatory barriers. 

    For the less ideologically driven amongst us, there are a number of things that need to be done by governments, research and education organisations and businesses if the full potential of Australia’s innovation system is to be realised. Some of these matters are now being addressed, but there are others which need to be given attention. 

    The Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda announced by the Commonwealth Government in October last year represents an important step forward in encouraging innovation and improving the national innovation system. The main measure is designed to establish five industry growth centres in:

    Food and agribusiness;

    Mining equipment, technology and services;

    Oil, gas and energy resources;

    Medical technologies and pharmaceuticals; and

    Advanced manufacturing sectors. 

    $188.5 million has been provided to fund these industry-led centres which are expected to foster better use by industry of Australia’s world class researchers so that the community sees stronger commercial returns from the $9.2 billion annual Commonwealth investment in research. 

    The industry growth centres are expected to be in operation by the second half of this year. Chairs of the five industry growth centres have already been announced. These bodies have the potential to contribute to both building the relevant eco-systems and strengthening collaboration between researchers and business. 

    The Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda also announced measures to encourage employee share ownership and to promote STEM skills in schools.

    Subsequently, it has been announced the Ministers for Industry and Education will look into ways of tweaking University block grants to strengthen university researchers incentives to connect with business. Better aligning researcher incentives with business is a key to strengthening Australia’s innovation system. 

    The other important announcement of the Commonwealth Government concerns the response to the Miles Report on the future of the Co-operative Research Centres program. This important program is to be continued but with reforms to ensure it is in fact industry-led and subject to a streamlined system of administration. Clarity around the relationship between the CRCs and the industry growth centres has been achieved which should ensure they work together in a complementary manner. 

    The industry Minister announced on 26 May this year funding of $74 million over 7 years for two industry-led Cooperative Research Centres, namely, the CRC for Optimising Resource Extraction and the Innovative Manufacturing CRC. Both have clear links to a number of the Industry growth centres. 

    While all these measures are welcome and are pointing in the right direction, the main criticism of them is that they don’t go far enough and leave some important areas untouched. 

    The explicit aspiration to obtain a better return on the $9.2 billion annual Commonwealth investment in research is certainly right but the suspicion is that the measures announced to date fall short of what is needed to achieve nationally significant impact. 

    This reality becomes all to palpable when regard is had to the size of the resources countries in Asia Pacific are devoting to boosting their innovation systems and competitiveness. We need look no further than Singapore to see the efforts being made by the Island State. While every nation has their own place and structures to deal with, there do seem to be some consistent threads to the strategies adopted by the winners. We need to be prepared to learn from others where we can. The Miles Report does point to the German Fraunhofer Institutes as an example Australia could do well to learn from. Other examples in Asia Pacific readily spring to mind. 

    When push turns to shove effective innovation systems turn on education/skills and finance. At this stage Australia’s efforts in relation to providing “smart” capital for start ups and businesses with the potential for global growth are not really world class. 

    We need to bring to the development of innovation policy the sort of mindset that is crucial to successful innovation more generally, ie, a willingness to experiment and to shake up old ways and institutions. But at the same time a degree of certainty for planning purposes is needed with long running innovation policy measures. Bipartisanship is therefore important. 

    A point that should be made is that to this stage the focus has really been on supply-side policies for innovation. The literature in Europe and the really innovative countries in Asia strongly suggests that demand-side policies also need to be considered. These are particularly relevant when it is necessary to create space in the market for new technologies which provide high external benefits and the promise of game changing reductions in costs over time. 

    It is virtually impossible to think about innovation without recognizing the debt we all owe to Joseph Schumpeter. He put innovation at the centre of economic growth and recognized the crucial role played by the entrepreneur – the person that recognizes the market potential of emerging technologies. Part of the challenge to raising Australia’s innovation performance is to strengthen innovation entrepreneurship. This is a task that has more to do with our management education institutions than its does with Government policy. But as in most things, to raise Australia’s innovation performance to world leading we need a balanced portfolio of mutually reinforcing actions by governments, business and our research and education institutions. 

    The pay-off from getting things right can be very large indeed. We are facing a situation characterized by the emergence of potentially disruptive technologies in fields as diverse as 3D printing, robotics, energy technologies, genomics and large scale data analysis systems. Exploiting these technologies for business and health applications offers huge possibilities for Australia. 

    David Charles was the Chair of the Advanced Manufacturing CRC and will be a Director of the recently announced Innovative Manufacturing CRC. He is a Director of Insight Economics Pty Ltd.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • John Menadue. Facts on the $11b per annum private health insurance industry subsidy.

    The Minister for Health and Ageing, Sussan Ley has said she wants to canvas community and expert views on PHI (private health insurance).

    If she does consult the community on this issue that will be a welcome change, for consideration of the PHI is usually a private discussion with the vested interests – the PHI industry, doctors and private hospitals.

    I am not holding my breath about real consultation with the community. So much ‘consultation’ is purely token. Furthermore the community is genuinely confused about the range of look-alike policies that are very hard to understand until the patient has to pay. (more…)

  • Bob Kinnaird. China FTA ‘labour mobility’ fails the national interest test

    Current Affairs.

    Prime Minister Abbott said nothing about the ‘labour mobility’ provisions in the China Australia FTA (ChAFTA) package when releasing the FTA text last week. There will be a strong community reaction once these provisions are understood.

    The Federal Labor Opposition set two benchmarks for the China FTA ‘labour mobility’ provisions to pass the national interest test: ‘retention of labour market testing or comparable safeguards on temporary migration’; and they must enhance, not constrain, job opportunities for Australians.

    The Abbott government concessions on ‘labour mobility’ in the China FTA comprehensively fail both benchmarks and undermine the Coalition’s claim that 457 visa workers are ‘supplementary to’ Australian workers.

    Australia implements its FTA obligations on ‘the movement of natural persons’ for longer-term work stays through the standard or non-concessional 457 visa program. In 2013 Labor amended the Migration Act 1958 to require labour market testing (LMT) by sponsors in specified 457 occupations (skill level 3, engineering and nursing), with Ministerial discretion to expand LMT into all other 457 occupations.

    In the standard 457 visa program, the China FTA removes the ability of all future Australian government and Parliaments to apply ‘labour market testing or any economic needs test or other procedures of similar effect’ to all Chinese citizens. That includes Chinese nationals already here in Australia on other temporary visas like overseas students and graduates, visitors, and backpackers.

    All 457 sponsoring employers (not just Chinese companies) can engage unlimited numbers of Chinese citizens on 457 visas in all eligible 651 ‘skilled’ occupations (trade, technical and professional), with no legal obligation to prove qualified Australian workers are not available.

    Chinese citizens currently comprise around 7 per cent of all 457 visa grants, but much more – 16 per cent – of all temporary visa holders in Australia. They are the largest and fastest-growing group, increasing 15 per cent annually.

    The FTA also excludes any ‘comparable safeguards’ (to LMT) in the standard 457 visa program. Australia cannot cap the number of 457 visas for Chinese citizens and has limited ability to change the 457-eligible occupations list. The prohibition on any economic needs test or ‘other procedures of similar effect’, combined with FTA market access provisions, closes off these options.

    As well, the Australian Parliament will no longer be able to legislate preference for Australian workers over Chinese 457 visa workers in redundancy situations, eg as a construction project winds down. ‘National treatment’ obligations in the China FTA require the Australian government to treat China FTA workers on standard 457 visas ‘no less favourably’ than Australian workers ‘in like circumstances’.

    The FTA ‘national treatment’ obligation will therefore take precedence over the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975 which permits employers to discriminate in favour of Australian citizen and permanent resident workers over temporary visa holders in redundancy situations.

    ChAFTA also binds Australia to extend the same new rights being granted to Chinese citizens in the 457 program, to all foreign national employees (not just Chinese citizens) of all businesses in China transferring to their Australian branch – ‘intra-corporate transferees’.

    The second area involving the 457 visa program is the ‘Infrastructure Facilitation Arrangements’ (IFAs). These allow ‘infrastructure development projects’ in Australia with total capital expenditure of $150 million or more (and only 15 per cent Chinese participation) to access 457 visas on non-standard or ‘concessional’ terms, below standard 457 minimum requirements, for Chinese and other nationals.

    That means workers nominally in ‘skilled’ occupations but who for example have substandard English skills; and most significantly, workers in ‘semi-skilled’ or sub-trade occupations like concreters, scaffolders, and grader operators, who can also be approved with substandard English skills.

    Including semi-skilled workers in any FTA package is unprecedented for Australia.

    IFAs will be approved with no upfront labour market testing or any assessment whatsoever of projected shortages of Australian workers. Employers engaging the 457 workers for project work likewise have no mandatory legal obligation to LMT.

    IFAs are not formally part of the China FTA treaty but are covered in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the governments of Australia and China. China’s agreement (but not the Australian Parliament’s) is needed to change the MOU. The Abbott government is handing joint control of a sensitive part of Australia’s immigration policy to a foreign government – China.

    The combined ChAFTA 457 visa concessions mean that the entire skilled and semi-skilled workforce on IFA projects could be Chinese 457 visa workers, employed with no legal obligation on the project owner or employers to undertake the legislated 457 LMT.

    Far from ‘enhancing’ job opportunities for Australians, the ChAFTA labour mobility provisions directly challenge these opportunities. As well as direct job losses through the 457 program, they will feed community resentment and distrust about deeper Chinese involvement in Australia. That in turn will threaten job growth in two ‘super-growth’ industries from China trumpeted by the Abbott government itself – international education and tourism.

    Growth in these sectors depends on large and growing numbers of Chinese citizens in Australia on temporary visas. That growth will be threatened, if the community believes the primary job rights of Australians are not adequately protected.

    The China FTA will also have knock-on negative job impacts. It sets the precedent for all other FTAs Australia is negotiating including the TPP. Every developing country will demand the same or better access to the Australian job market as China, through the standard 457 visa program and IFA-style agreements. This includes India, the largest country in the 457 program with 24 per cent of all visas. Concluding the India FTA in 2015 is the Coalition’s next self-imposed deadline.

    The Coalition will be glad to oblige. The China FTA exposes the Coalition’s pretence that 457 visa workers are ‘supplementary to’ Australian workers. FTAs guarantee under international law that 457 visa workers compete with Australian workers. That’s the dirty little secret in the China FTA.

    Bob Kinnaird is Research Associate with the Australian Population Research Institute and was National Research Director CFMEU National Office 2009-14.