John Menadue

The only argument about housing prices seems to be whether they will crash or fall slowly.  Paul Keating warns of a possible “Minsky moment” – a sudden and spectacular crash. A paper published by Ben Phillips and Cukkoo Joseph of ANU, going into regional detail, finds that there is already an oversupply in some inner-city regions, but suggests that oversupply in itself is unlikely to reduce prices to any significant extent in the short term. Core Logic reports that auction clearance rates in Sydney and Melbourne have been on a noticeable downward trend over the last twelve months.

Wayne Byrnes, Chairman of The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority has given a speech warning: “The broader environment of high and rising leverage, encouraged by historically low interest rates, requires ongoing prudence. It is easy to run up debt, but far harder to pay it back down when circumstances change”.  Those seeking a summary of Byrnes’ speech will find one by Clancy Yates, writing in the Fairfax Press.

Wage growth, or the lack of it, is in the news. The ABC has three related but separate stories: Carrington Clarke “Cost cutting hurting workers and the economy” summarising a speech by Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe; Stephen Letts and Michael Janda “Wage growth mired near record lows”, citing the ABS Wage Price Index; and Michael Janda “Australian workers gift $130b to employers through unpaid overtime”, based on work by Jim Stanford of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

Ross Gittins points out that, as a source of economic advice, Treasury’s power has been waning, with more influence coming from the Productivity Commission and the Reserve Bank, institutions more in touch with the real world. Labor, if elected, would boost the influence of the Parliamentary Budget Office.

A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll has found that those identifying themselves as “Christians” are far more likely than “non-Christians”  to blame poverty on individual failings rather than people’s circumstances: “46 percent of all Christians said that a lack of effort is generally to blame for a person’s poverty, compared with 29 percent of all non-Christians”.  Among “white evangelicals” 53 percent blamed the individual.

In defiance of media predictions that Labor would retain the seat of Northcote in a Victorian state by-election, the Greens had a convincing victory. With 45 per cent of the primary vote, against 35 per cent for Labor, they easily cruised through on preferences. The Liberals did not contest the election in a metropolitan seat that Labor has held for aeons,  but even though those who were disinclined to Labor or Green had the choice of another 10 candidates, they secured only 20 per cent of the vote between them. (Figures from William Bowe’s Poll Bludger.)

Richard Butler wrote in this blog that nuclear war is becoming ‘thinkable ,again’. This article shows a US Marines F-35 squadron is training to fight through nuclear war against North Korea – Business Insider.

Twelve Australians of the Year write an open letter to the PM on Manus Island.

Infographics in The Conversation show exactly what Adani’s Carmichael mine means for Queensland.

The owner of the Carmichael project can’t walk away from mine without descending further into distress, says an energy expert in The Guardian.

With the mining boom spent, the big infrastructure spend on the gas industry gone, and the east coast housing boom in its final phase, it seems there’s little ammo in the locker left to help fire up a wages lift any time soon – but there’s a silver lining, writes Ian Verrender. Read the full story

Richard Denniss explains that the coalition is unpopular because it has unpopular policies (Canberra Times)

Tim Hollo explains that Australia’s ageing constitution is past its ‘best-by’ date (Canberra Times)

When we contemplate the hopelessness of our national (and state) politics now, we are tempted, like John Menadue, to think that tinkering with the machine will turn a clapped out jalopy into a Roller. It is more likely the quality of the driver that is the problem. (more…)

The marriage equality survey has re-enforced the tribal type divides that now seem increasingly endemic in our socially defined political differences. Like most Western democratic nations, we are finding that the traditional views about voters as predictable blocs of left and right or class based voting groups are becoming increasingly less relevant. The growth of factions and fraction are displacing the comfortable labelling of party loyalists or simple categories. To add to the confusion, categories such as radical and conservative have also become less useful to define what people are thinking. (more…)

Adani’s lobbyists resigned recently after a job well done.

Key points:

• Lobbyists made 33 contacts with Queensland politicians or their staff for Adani
• 60 per cent of meetings the Queensland Premier held with lobbyists were for Adani
• Adani lobbyist played key role in Labor’s 2016 federal election campaign

(more…)

Trumps attack on the media and truth are disturbing, says Joseph Stiglitz (the Guardian)

Paul Keating warns that, without imagination, the economy is lost. (Mark Kenny – the Canberra Times)

Writing in the Canberra Times last weekend, Crispin Hull reminds us of the history of upheaveals – from the French Revolution to the recent support for far-right populists – when “the wealthy elites fail to pay a reasonable share of taxes so that the broad mass of society gets decent education, health and housing.”.  Capitalism must be saved from its own self-destructive forces.

Qld Labor ups the ante on renewables, with more ambition and new technology, writes Giles Parkinson in RenewEconomy

The citizenship crisis has shown Turnbull in his usual, dreadful form, says Jack Waterford in the Canberra Times.

Last Saturday, 11 November, we published on Pearls and Irritations Douglas Newton’s contribution “Armistice Day – narrow nationalist naiveties and voodoo vindications of war”. On the same day, on Geraldine Doogue’s Saturday Extra, writer and broadcaster Jeff Sparrow recounted the sordid reality of the Dardanelles campaign: it wasn’t about securing freedom or any other noble goal. Rather its goal was to hand over that territory to Czarist Russia, at that time the “most oppressive regime in the entire world”.

Also, lest we forget, 11 November was the anniversary of the dismissal of the Whitlam Government. Christopher Pollard outlines “five facts” about the dismissal. He reveals extraordinary breaches of the Australian Constitution and of parliamentary conventions by those determined to destroy the Whitlam Government.

Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books writes on the “bomb power” of the US presidents

Ross Gittins explains that something has gone badly wrong with teaching.

Catherine Pepinster in her new book, The Keys and the Kingdom reveals that a British diplomat hosted a party of cardinals from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean to support the Bishop of Buenos Aires who would later become Pope. Cardinal Pell was not invited. She is interviewed on the ABC’s Religion and Ethics Report

Jim Molan is in line to take a NSW Senate vacancy.  He was very active in the Abbott government’s asylum turn-back policy. In 2004 he supervised The Coalition attack on Fallujah in Iraq. See link to earlier post of John Menadue

Tamie Fraser tweets a challenge to Peter Dutton over Manus Island

Will someone please provide Malcolm Turnbull with a fiddle; something to occupy our leader while his party and possibly his government burn. (more…)

National history is the story that binds ‘us who make up the nation’ into a single entity with a collective memory. It has a purpose and as such we can choose what historical events and realities to put into that story, whilst forgetting the rest. Of the four main current contenders for our national history, I think we should pick ‘Advance Australia Fair’ as the only truly useful one. (more…)

I want to apologise for a failure going back to the Bicentenary in 1988.  The very fact that 26 January continues to cause controversy is possibly the best reason for keeping it as the national day. The ambiguity of its meaning obliges us constantly to re-examine our modern origins. The new round of debate drew from Malcolm Turnbull the wisdom that it “stands for Australian values”. He managed to say much the same thing at Beersheba of all places. So we are to seek “Australian values” from Botany Bay to Beersheba. All this took place in the middle of the self-imposed fiasco in which his own Deputy Prime Minister (and by extension a huge proportion of us all) is in a legal limbo about his citizenship.  (more…)

Sorry, but Medicare needs to change” writes Ross Gittins. A fee-for-service model fitted with the nation’s needs in 1974 when the Whitlam Government introduced universal publicly-funded health insurance, but over a half-century our needs have changed. We should be putting more resources to preventing and managing chronic conditions and reducing the need to call on specialists and hospitals, with a policy focus on patients rather than the interests of service providers.

Japan and North Korea may be arch foes but there’s a school in the Japanese capital for Koreans that have remained loyal to the North’s three Kim regimes to learn their language, culture and heritage.  Another perspective on the same school system can be found here.

With Brexit, Britain seems to be embracing an introverted irrelevance, says Steven Erlanger in the New York Times International Edition.

There is nothing wrong with Catalonia becoming independent, says Colm Toibin in the Guardian.

Who bears the brunt of corporate tax cuts asks Kimberley Clausing

What next for the refugees and failed asylum seekers on Manus Island? asks Harriet Spinks

It was not so long ago that the functions of more social democratic nation states were legitimated and visible because they represented wide public ownership of many physical resources and delivered many essential and community services.  Whether that form has elements in it that  would allay current problems and improve future governance needs to explored. What is clear is the need to reverse and reform the causes of deep distrust.   (more…)

Good democratic governance requires those in power to both be seen as both trustworthy and representing voters , effectively and fairly. Those ostensibly in control need to provide evidence that they are delivering, or ensuring access to those services and resources that are seen as public responsibilities. The disappearing common wealth and rising focus on individualised self-interest benefits need to be seen as causing the rising anti-elite, populist politics that undermine social cohesion, rather than  just blaming the changes on  limited economic flaws, e.g. the GFC. If we are to restore trust in good democratic processes, we need to recognise and address the social effects of citizens being redefined as customers in the shift to market models, as well as  the increased invisibility of public good and goods.    (more…)

Life is an equation in hydrocarbons was a favourite aphorism of the late RFX Connor, Minister for Minerals and Energy in the Whitlam Labor governments of 1972-1975. The phrase belied a deep understanding by Connor of the Australian petroleum and natural gas industry at the time together with a suggestion of big ideas waiting to be explained. One big idea that Connor had was the need to develop Australia’s natural gas deposits to maximise their economic return in the international market and secure sufficient gas reserves to satisfy Australia’s domestic requirements, both domestic and industrial, for the foreseeable future. (more…)