John Menadue

  • Bob Kinnaird. Turnbull Government buries the FTA bad news

    The Turnbull government has proved just as determined as the Abbott government to hide from the Australian community the truth about what their FTA deals mean for the 457 visa and other temporary work visa programs.

    Under the Turnbull administration, the conclusion of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations was announced on 6 October 2015 and the TPP text released on 5 November 2015. The China FTA (ChAFTA) entered into force on 20 December 2015.

    In both cases, the Turnbull government has treated the Australian community like the proverbial ‘Mushroom Club’.

    The TPP

    Three months after releasing the TPP text, no Turnbull government Minister has yet admitted publicly that it has once again negotiated away Australia’s sovereign right to regulate key temporary visa programs in crucial areas.

    Australia has committed not to apply labour market testing (LMT) or caps (quotas) in the entire 457 visa program to all citizens of Canada, Peru, Mexico, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam; or to all foreign nationals who are employees of businesses in Canada, Peru and Mexico who transfer to an Australian branch of that business (‘intra-corporate transferees’).

    On top of that, Australia has also made a standing offer to do the same for the three other TPP countries without a total 457 LMT exemption (the USA, Peru and Singapore) if they provide access to limited categories of ‘Australian business persons’ down the track.

    The ChAFTA concession not to apply LMT to ‘installers and servicers’ of machinery and equipment on 400 visas has also been extended to eight TPP countries – Brunei Darussalam , Chile, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, Canada, Malaysia and Mexico.

    The only public admission of Australia’s real TPP commitments on what FTA-jargon calls ‘the Movement of Natural Persons’ (or MNP) was extracted from an official of the Department of Trade in Senate Estimates by Labor Senator Penny Wong in October 2015.

    Ms Elizabeth Ward, First Assistant Secretary, Office of Trade Negotiations in DFAT had this exchange confirming LMT ‘waivers’ for various categories of persons from several TPP countries:

    Ms Ward: In this particular agreement what we have done is provide MNP on a category-by-category reciprocity basis. If parties offered to us, then we offered to them. Many of them already have had LMT waived as a result of previous FTAs. The additional LMT waivers, as a result of the TPP, are intra-corporate transferees for Canada, Peru and Mexico and contractual service suppliers for Canada, Peru, Mexico, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam.

    Senator WONG: We reserved policy space for LMT in the Malaysia free trade agreement. Has that been removed by the TPP?

    Ms Ward: That has.

    Ms Ward was not asked why the DFAT TPP ‘Fact Sheet’ failed to mention that Australia had committed to ‘waive’ LMT in 457 visa program and the 400 visa program for the various TPP countries.

    The best that DFAT could do was: ‘Australia’s TPP commitments are consistent with Australia’s existing immigration and workplace relations frameworks and the approach taken in other free trade agreements’.

    Apparently the drafting instruction was ‘Don’t mention we’re removing 457 labour market testing’ after the bruising ChAFTA experience.

    ChAFTA

    The main effect of Australia’s ChAFTA obligations on the 457 visa is that from 20 December 2015, Australia has given up the right to apply labour market testing or quotas in the standard 457 visa program to all Chinese citizens or nationals; and to all foreign nationals who are employees of businesses in China and transferring to an Australian branch of that business (‘intra-corporate transferees’).

    There was no official announcement of this important change by Trade Minister Robb, Immigration Minister Dutton or any Turnbull government Minister when ChAFTA entered into force.

    This was despite Trade Minister Robb putting out two media releases (on 9 and 20 December 2015) announcing that ChAFTA would enter into force on 20 December. Both neglected to mention the 457 visa program changes in the list of claimed ChAFTA ‘benefits’.

    On Friday 18 December 2015, the Immigration department quietly updated its 457 visa website to incorporate the ChAFTA 457 obligations described above, with a link to the relevant legislative instrument. Neither the Immigration Minister nor his department made any public announcement of the update.

    The Immigration Minister also had nothing to say publicly on 4 December 2015 when he signed the formal legislative instrument listing the categories of ‘natural persons’ for which ‘the imposition of labour market testing would be inconsistent with international trade obligations of Australia arising under the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement’. This ‘Determination’ is the only regulatory change needed to implement all of Australia’s temporary work visa obligations under ChAFTA.

    The instrument was simply posted on the Comlaw website along with all others made that day.

    The Turnbull government’s silence on ChAFTA and the 457 visa program follows the same pattern set by the Abbott administration. When the Korea and Japan FTAs entered into force in 2014, there was no public announcement that they removed 457 LMT for all ‘citizens/nationals/permanent residents of Korea’ and ‘citizens/nationals of Japan’; and for all foreign employees of businesses in Korea and Japan transferring to an Australian branch.

    The Immigration 457 website was simply updated, with a link to the relevant legislative instruments.

    In fact, the department’s email advice to Registered Migration Agents on the removal of 457 LMT in the Korea and Japan FTAs even warned that ‘this information is not for external distribution or publication’!

    Apparently the Immigration department wanted migration agents to play their part in keeping the Australian public in the dark about how these FTAs removed labour market testing from the 457 program – or, more likely, their Ministers did.

    The Department also told Senate Estimates in December 2015 that it would communicate any impact of ChAFTA to ‘relevant stakeholders’ – which apparently does not include the general Australian community.

    Conclusion

    The Federal Labor Opposition, having voted for ChAFTA in the Parliament, is not likely to draw attention to the Turnbull government’s efforts to hide the truth about ChAFTA, other FTAs and the 457 visa program either.

    The irony is that it is only because of Labor’s 457 reforms to the Migration Act in 2013 that the Australian community has faintest chance of knowing anything about the impact of FTA obligations on the 457 visa program.

    Labor’s June 2013 457 amendments provide for the Immigration Minister to make a publicly-available legislative instrument setting out the categories of persons in FTAs and other international trade agreements for which ‘the imposition of labour market testing would be inconsistent with international trade obligations of Australia’ (s.140GBA of the Migration Act 1958).

    As a result, the Immigration department must now also publish information on its website and elsewhere about the precise 457 LMT exemptions due to Australia’s international trade obligations, as determined by the government of the day.

    Before Labor’s 2013 amendments, Ministers and bureaucrats had no legal obligation to disclose this information, did not voluntarily disclose it and obfuscated when asked.

    Labor’s decision to support ChAFTA means it is now less likely to hold the Turnbull government to account when it fails in its duty to inform the Australian community about what proposed FTA obligations mean for the 457 and other temporary visa programs.

     

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

     

     

     

  • Brad Chilcott. I donated a kidney to my son. Don’t tell me not to make it ‘political’.

    In early December, I went into surgery to give my eight-year-old son Harrison my left kidney. He heard me groaning in recovery as the anaesthetist put him to sleep a few hours later so that he could receive it. The operation was the first of my life and Harrison’s 13th. He’d experience his 14th general anaesthetic two weeks later when surgeons removed the vascular catheter that had been used to connect the dialysis machine into his heart three times a week for the five months leading up to the transplant.

    After a successful surgery, Harrison had a number of complications that meant an eight-day stay in the intensive care unit of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide, followed by another six days in the surgical ward. Daily blood tests, a Christmas Day virus that precipitated an extra five days of hospital hospitality, and then on Sunday, 3 January, our family enjoyed our first hospital-free day in well over a month.

    As is my wont, I covered the process extensively via my social media outlets, interspersed with the occasional comment on the social and political issues of the period – a Myefo update committed to balancing the budget on the backs of the poor here and abroad; welcoming refugees and asylum seekers; supporting my brilliant friend Wawira Njiru’s work in Kenya making sure kids don’t have to go to school on an empty stomach; protecting penalty rates from being cut by people wealthy enough not to be forced to rely on them.

    On Christmas Day, before the infection set in that evening, I took Harrison into hospital for an 8am blood test wearing the full Santa suit I’d donned to give our three children their presents early that morning. I figured if we had to be in hospital on such a day, we should at least make it memorable. We handed out candy canes to taxi drivers waiting at the rank outside, orderlies cleaning the halls and other families having a similar experience to our own. Driving home, I filled the car with petrol in full costume while commuters took photos and small children gawked in confusion. Harrison loved every moment.

    On Christmas Day, before the infection set in that evening, I took Harrison into hospital for an 8am blood test wearing the full Santa suit. That afternoon, resting after a hearty Christmas lunch with the in-laws, I posted on social media: “Trip to hospital – saw Drs, nurses, cleaners, servo staff, RAA and more helping folks enjoy Christmas. Of course they deserve penalty rates” to which one person responded, “Enough politics for the day”.

    It’s easy to understand the sentiment – why sully the joy of Christmas with “politics” when there’s backyard cricket to play and pudding to consume? But if you’re any kind of activist or political advocate, it’s a familiar response.

    Children spending their third Christmas in immigration prisons; Australian Aid set at the lowest level in Australia’s history; health and education budgets being slashed by billions of dollars; one in three Australian pensioners living below the poverty line; climate change; sexism; racism; recognition of Australia’s Indigenous people … the easiest way to avoid thinking too deeply about any issue that arises around the barbecue on the beach is to dismiss it as “politics”.

    This is nothing new – people have always employed the word “politics” in the work of absolving themselves of personal responsibility for addressing inequality, injustice and the exploitation of the earth and its people.

    For our family, however, there’s no amount of using the word “politics” that can distance us from the truth that government-funded healthcare has not only kept Harrison alive for eight-and-a-half years but has also enabled him to thrive despite a range of other physical challenges.

    He’s required a huge volume of medical supplies and medication that have been provided free of charge or heavily subsidised; publicly-funded in-school support services have allowed him to keep up with his peers educationally; 14 operations and more-than-regular appointments with physicians since birth would’ve attracted a financial cost I can’t even comprehend, entirely borne by the public purse.

    So, while it might be easy to dismiss $15bn of cuts to the annual health budget as “politics” when you read it as a headline in the paper, the reality is that those are dollars that may have been spent on a child like Harrison. Forcing people to pay for pap smears and other preventative procedures is either “politics” or it’s a change that will mean some people won’t have their illness diagnosed early or accurately enough with huge impact on them and their families.

    Similarly, cuts to the education budget and the cancellation of the Gonski funding model are either an ideological minefield to be avoided in polite conversation – or it’s $196m that won’t be spent in my electorate alone on making sure that every Australia child receives a quality education . It’s either “politics” or it’s some children missing out on the opportunity to achieve their full potential because of the economic circumstance of the family they were born into.

    For the nurses, service station staff, cleaners and other workers that helped millions of Australians, including Harrison and I, have a good Christmas, penalty rates can’t be dismissed as mere “politics”. They’re students, single parents, new Australians and more who rely on every dollar to make ends meet.

    Children in immigration prisons, women enduring the violence of men, pensioners below the poverty line, parents who can’t afford child care, Muslim Australians being vilified by politicians and abused in our streets, Aboriginal people being forced from their communities – while others treat their experiences as abstract, impersonal political concepts, these people have no such convenience. That which is derided as a topic that should not interrupt the Christmas cheer invades their lives without their consent.

    Harrison and I went back in to hospital last week for blood tests. He’s on a huge amount of anti-rejection medication. We’re in the hands of the best medical practitioners in the field, the nursing and other support staff at the hospital are wonderful and Harrison has all the social scaffolding he needs to thrive. But this situation didn’t happen by chance – throughout Australia’s history progressive people fought for this outcome, so successfully that it would be culturally unacceptable for us to be paying for this level of care. Australians naturally assume it’s what sick children deserve.

    We are living, and grateful, beneficiaries of those who valued other people enough to make politics personal.

    Brad Chilcott is the Founder of Welcome to Australia. This article was first published in The Guardian on 16 January 2016.

  • Stan Grant. The Australian Dream!

     

  • Anand Kulkarni, Travers McLeod. Battle of ideas on innovation.

    We’re now in a race to the top on innovation. Better late than never.

    Liberating ideas could reboot Australia’s economy, as we argued a year ago.

    Now it seems there are more ideas about how to generate ideas than ever before in Australian policymaking. Both the Liberal-National government (“Welcome to the Ideas Boom” and the National Innovation and Science Agenda) and Labor opposition (“Powering Innovation” and “Getting Australia Started”) have put down markers around innovation in the lead-up to this year’s federal election.

    The Coalition and Labor pronouncements have much in common:

    • growing awareness that our innovation future lies beyond national boundaries – for example, “launching” and “landing pads” linked to innovation hubs abroad, connecting the Aussie diaspora overseas, and new visas for entrepreneurs;
    • support for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) studies, which includes reducing gender disparities;
    • facilitating access to finance for start-ups and innovative enterprises through tax breaks and the like;
    • enhancing digital capabilities, which includes teaching kids to code;
    • fostering greater collaboration, especially between industry and research bodies;
    • new bodies to oversee innovation, science and technology: Innovate Australia (Labor) and Innovation and Science Australia (Coalition); and
    • action on government procurement.

    A common goal, but key policy differences

    Yet within this apparent new spirit of bipartisanship are some key differences. Some are subtle, others are not so. That is before one starts haggling over whose purse is bigger than the other’s.

    The Turnbull government’s package is pitched further down the value chain, notwithstanding measures to promote STEM studies. It presumes a core capability in the economy: the assumption is that what’s missing is the key to unlock and leverage this capability. Coalition policy includes, for example, reforming Australian Research Council linkage projects and connecting industry to innovation infrastructure.

    Labor seeks to build foundational capabilities from the ground up. It puts more emphasis on teaching computer coding in schools, preparing small to medium-sized enterprises to access government procurement, developing a national digital workforce plan and incentives for graduates to start businesses.

    Interestingly, in a political role reversal, the Coalition’s plan has more of a selective orientation by technology and institution. This is reflected in the Biomedical Translation Fund, the Cyber-security Growth Centre and the CSIRO Innovation Fund.

    Labor is more about generic capabilities across the board. This distinction, however, is not black and white.

    Labor emphasises the innovation ecosystems view of the world. It plans to create regional hubs, with university-based accelerators at the core of this approach, and a national entrepreneurship support network. It speaks of an Innovation Investment Partnership to bring together venture capital, superannuation funds and start-up stakeholders to promote new business.

    A distinguishing feature of the government’s package is its emphasis on an innovation culture. Reforming insolvency laws to reduce the stigma of failure is its centrepiece.

    Also noteworthy is a revised approach to measuring research impact. That includes engagement with industry metrics. This is in the spirit of breaking out of research silos.

    Both parties have a “challenges program”.

    The Coalition has nominated five national policy and service delivery challenges. Businesses are invited to submit proposals to address them, with winning ideas to receive grants. The most successful could be accelerated to prototype or proof of concept.

    Labor’s approach is more grassroots-oriented, like in the US. It proposes a portal for government agencies to propose challenges for the public to respond to.

    What more can be done?

    There is strength in diversity and much to commend in both plans. Yet more could be done in the following areas:

    • explicitly linking domestic challenges to corresponding global problems, thereby positioning Australia as a “solutions hub” and a leader in scaleable open-source projects and the internationalisation of ideas;
    • promoting community-driven innovation – greater intergovernmental co-ordination could scale up local solutions to local problems to a regional or national level where appropriate;
    • stronger emphasis on spreading knowledge through the economy, with university “impact” measurement expanded beyond excessive reliance on books and journals, or even commercialisation;
    • a “beyond STEM” approach to innovation, recognising the interdependencies of scientific research and non-research forms of innovation such as design and organisational systems, together with the social sciences’ pivotal role in driving prosperity within innovation ecosystems;
    • defining a stronger role for particular agents and locations – not least cities, women and girls – in the process and outcomes of innovation; and
    • a stronger ”lifecycle” view of innovation and entrepreneurship, going beyond the traditional emphasis on start-ups to include later growth stages in a seamless approach to innovation and wealth creation.

    We need a transforming, global vision

    Finally, to be credible, innovation policymaking must be located within a long-term vision of the structure of the Australian economy we should aspire to. It also demands honesty about the scale of the transformation required.

    So the glass is half-full and rising. There are international precedents more like pints than pots.

    China’s innovation hub, Chengdu, has partnered with European Union companies and organisations to share innovations among small and medium businesses and universities. The US has launched next-generation manufacturing hubs. Even one of the world’s oldest universities, Oxford, wants to be more agile in developing and translating ideas conceived in the dreaming spires.

    Ideas have started to travel the world over. Australia has barely reached base camp in the race to the top.

    Still, it’s encouraging to see Australian policy proposals breaking free of archaic and stifling debates about protectionism and picking winners. The world of ideas knows no boundaries.

    Anand Kulkarni is Senior Manager, Planning & Research, RMIT University. Travers McLeod is Honary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. This article first appeared in The Conversation on 18 January 2016.

  • Robin Room and Michael Livingston. Alcohol companies target the 20% of Australians who drink 75% of the alcohol.

    Researchers have known for a long time that alcohol consumption is quite concentrated in a small part of the population. They argue about the exact distribution, but there is substantial agreement that, so long as alcohol sales are not heavily restricted, consumption is distributed in a quite predictable way. That is, there are many light and moderate consumers, along with a long tail of those drinking at heavier levels.

    In Australia, the top 20% of the drinking-age population in 2013 consumed around three-quarters of all the alcohol consumed. The top 5% consumed more than a third.

    The concentration of alcohol consumption among the heaviest drinkers has actually increased in recent years. The top 10% of consumers accounted for 49% of the consumption in 2001, and this had increased to 53% in 2013.

    The heaviest-drinking 20% of the population reported consuming a daily average equivalent to 43 grams of pure alcohol – a bit over four standard drinks. This is a substantial underestimate of their actual drinking.

    The total amount of drinking reported in such surveys is calculated to be about 55% of the alcohol sold in Australia, so their actual daily average is likely to be about 7.8 drinks. This is nearly four times the low-risk limit of two standard drinks per day recommended by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

    The dangers of alcohol

    If you drink enough alcohol, you get intoxicated, making you unfit for a lot of everyday activities. This includes, for instance, driving a car, most kinds of work or looking after children. Apart from these issues of injury and social functioning, alcohol also carries longer-term health risks.

    At an average of four drinks per day, the chances of dying of an alcohol-related cancer or other chronic disease are two in 100 for men and 2.5 in 100 for women. At 7.8 drinks a day, the chances are about five in 100 for men and eight in 100 for women.

    Adding in risks of dying from alcohol-related injuries more than doubles the risk for men, and increases the risk for women by more than 50%. Just considering the risks of health and injury harms, alcohol is by far the riskiest commodity that a majority of us regularly consume.

    The current guidelines “to reduce health risks from drinking alcohol” set upper limits calculated on lifetime death risks from drinking. These are around four times the rate National Road Safety Strategy aims for as an upper limit of lifetime rate of deaths from traffic collisions. They contrast, for instance, with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines on water safety, which aim to keep the risk of death from contaminated drinking water below one in a million.

    Alcohol marketing

    Those in the business of selling alcohol have long known about the skewed distribution of alcohol consumption in the population. In meetings among people in the industry, those at the top end of the distribution are called the “super consumers“, and they are vital to maintaining or increasing sales.

    If all the “super consumers” reduced their drinking to the two-drinks-a-day average recommended by the NHMRC as an upper limit, it has been calculated, based on self-reported consumption, that alcohol sales would fall by 39%.

    In its public face, the alcohol industry takes the line that it is only seeking to protect and promote “responsible drinking”: how to “drink properly”, minimising risks of harm.

    But, in its internal discussions of the need for retailers to “identify and target super consumers”, the industry is acknowledging a large part of its sales are to drinkers who are taking substantial risks with their own lives and the lives of those around them. If all drinkers in Australia were to drink within the government guidelines for low-risk drinking, the alcohol market would shrink substantially.

    If governments want to reduce alcohol-related harms, they can’t rely on the industry’s commitment to responsible drinking. It’s directly against the industry’s interests for the heaviest drinkers (who make up the majority of their sales) to drink less.

    Given this inherent conflict, policymakers should focus on well-evaluated policies such as reduced late-night trading hours for pubs and nightclubs and smarter taxation of alcoholic products. Most importantly, governments should be sceptical of working in partnership with an industry whose interests are diametrically opposed to public health.

    Robin Room is Professor and Director, Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, Latrobe University.  Michael Livingston is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, Latrobe University. This article was first published in The Conversation on January 20,2016.

  • What do we owe each other?

    In this opinion piece from the New York Times, Aaron James Wendland draws on work by Emmanuel Levinas in response to the surge of refugees around the world and particularly into Europe. Levinas describes the allergic reaction to refugees. In response he suggests three things. First, an appeal to the ‘infinity’ in human beings, that other people are always more than our categories can capture.  Second, faces confront us directly and immediately. Thirdly, hospitality involves curtailing our enjoyment of the world when confronted with another’s wants.

    See link to article below:

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2016/01/18/what-do-we-owe-each-other/

  • Evan Williams. Film Review: Carol.

    I’m not alone in rating her the best actress in the world. Or as some would prefer to say, the best female actor in the world. Or more precisely, the best female English-speaking screen actor working in mainstream cinema. And yes, I’m talking about our Cate – up there with Garbo, Hepburn, Streep, destined for legendhood (if I may use that word) – and currently starring in Carol, an absorbing romantic drama directed by Todd Haynes.

    She’s in her usual impeccable form. A critic once said that Cate Blanchett has “the kind of beauty – svelte, ravaged, angular, irresistible on screen – that combines sternness with vulnerability … acutely sensitive, finely nuanced, every twitch and head toss perfectly judged.” Who wrote that? Well, I did, actually – reviewing Rowan Woods’ 2005 film Little Fish, in which Blanchett starred with Hugo Weaving. Her performance was the best thing in the film. Indeed, every one of her films seems to demonstrate some new aspect of her power and versatility. A couple of years after Little Fish, in which she played a reformed junkie in Sydney’s western suburbs, she turned up with a cultivated English accent to reprise her role as the first Queen Elizabeth and won an Oscar. And she’s won a string of Oscars, Globes and similar baubles since.

    But to say that she’s best thing going in Carol may be a little unfair to Rooney Mara, who plays Therese, Carol’s lesbian lover. Mara won an Oscar nomination for her performance, with Blanchett conspicuously passed over, probably on the grounds that she’d won more than her fair share already. And speaking of fairness, why is the film called Carol and not Carol and Therese? The characters have equal weight, the performances are comparably fine. It’s as if Thelma & Louise, Hollywood’s last great all-girl romantic escapade, had been called Thelma, or if someone had made a film of Romeo and Juliet and called it Romeo. I could go on, but it’s time to get serious.

    Haynes’s beautiful and sombre film is drawn from a novel by Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt, from which Phyllis Nagy has adapted the screenplay. By all accounts, Highsmith based the character of Therese Belivet on herself, after an affair she had with a woman in 1948 while working at Bloomingdale’s department store in New York. Carol is set in New York in 1952 (Eisenhower has just been elected) and, as in all the best period adaptations, no relevant background detail is forgotten or out of place. Gleaming Packards cruise the streets, gas stoves are lit with matches.Haynes’s last film, the excellent Far From Heaven, was another story of illicit love set in the 1950s, in which a middle-class suburban housewife has an affair with her African-American gardener. Carol is the better film, and the more daring. Lesbian love is still a no-no for the big studios, and I think I’m right in saying that this is Blanchett’s first venture into full-on sexual passion. Certain male admirers may also be interested to note that it’s the first film in which she gets her gear off, though unlike her great contemporary, Nicole Kidman, in Eyes Wide Shut,s he doesn’t give us the full Monty.(Sorry about that.)

    Carol has been through a difficult divorce from her thoroughly unlikeable husband (Kyle Chandler), and Therese, an aspiring photographer, is coping with a devoted boyfriend (Jake Lacy), whom she doesn’t much care for. The women meet by chance in the toy department of a store called Frankenberg’s (real name?), and are reunited when Therese discovers a pair of Carol’s gloves left (accidentally?) on the counter and mails them back to her. The progress of their doomed affair is chartered with a depth and sensitivity wholly in character with the social constraints and polite inhibitions of the time – routine courtesies become sympathetic gestures, then something more serious, the lightest touch of a hand on another’s shoulder conveying a lingering erotic charge.

    At just under two hours it’s a bit too long, considering that little actually happens and what does happen is largely predictable. There’s a violent twist about three-quarters of the way through which seems oddly jarring at the time but delivers some much-needed dramatic impetus. In its miserable way Carol is a wonderful and truthful work, superbly shot in the best Fifities tradition on 16mm stock by Edward Lachman. The ambience of the time is charmingly recaptured, though someone should have told Todd Haynes that respectable gentlemen never wore beards in those days, no one could take photographs in available light indoors without a flashlight, and that someone as rich as Carol could surely afford to have her piano tuned. According to my life’s companion, “It sounded terrible.” But I suppose that even the best pearls have some minor irritations.

    Carol, rated M, is showing in selected cinemas nationally. Three and a half stars.

    Evan Williams has reviewed films in The Australian newspaper for 33 years. He is a Life Member of the Film Critics’ Circle of Australia for services to film criticism and the film industry.In 2015 he received the Geraldine Pascal Lifetime Achievement Award for critical writing.

     

     

     

     

  • Steve Georgakis. The unholy trinity of sports advertising in Australia – betting agencies, junk food and alcohol.

    Why we shouldn’t be surprised that tennis is implicated in match-fixing.

    The first day of the Australian Open was marred by revelations alleging widespread match-fixing and cover-ups in men’s tennis stretching back more than a decade. World number one Novak Djokovic confirmed he was approached with a reported offer of US$200,000 in 2006 to throw a match.

    Hyper-commercialised sport in the 21st century has resulted in a number of benefits for athletes and spectators. Athletes are able to make significant amounts of money; spectators can enjoy excitement of the highest order without having to leave their lounge rooms. But it is naïve to think that all changes have been beneficial.

    In recent decades doping has consistently been the most-visible negative consequence of commercialised sport. So much pressure is now exerted on athletes that they are tempted, for whatever reason, to take performance-enhancing substances.

    While the Australian public demands a level playing field, Australian athletes and sports have been caught up in doping. For the most part, though, Australian sports are heavily regulated and proactive in addressing doping. But the same cannot be said about gambling.

    Gambling and sport are entwined

    Online and live sports betting has become much more prevalent in recent years.

    All major sports in Australia now have some kind of a relationship with sports betting agencies. Online bookmaker William Hill is the “official betting partner” of the Australian Open and – in a first for a Grand Slam tournament – it has been allowed to advertise inside stadiums.

    For television and pay-per-view providers, sports betting agencies provide significant advertising dollars. Betting agencies, alongside junk food and alcohol, form an unholy trinity of sports advertising in Australia.

    Gambling, particularly on poker machines, can be destructive. So too has sports betting been responsible for creating a new breed of problem gamblers. Sports gambling is accepted as a rite of passage for many Australian males.

    However, sporting authorities are cautious about upsetting their sponsors. Tennis officials largely dismissed the revelations of match-fixing as old news.

    Why tennis?

    Tennis is a sport very suitable for corruption in this hyper-commercialised era. Here’s why we shouldn’t surprised that match-fixers have targeted the sport:

    1. Tennis is a one-on-one sport. If you wanted to manipulate an outcome, you would avoid team sports such as rugby league or netball. Too much can go wrong. Individual sports are different; corruption is easier to organise.
    2. It is very difficult to prove a tennis match has been fixed: a player withdraws in the second set “injured”; a player double-faults on crucial points; a player makes a number of unforced errors.
    3. Tennis players are taught and coached from an early age that they are professional and that they have only a limited time in the game. Money is a considerable concern for players and a great motivator. Those outside the top-ranked players would make more money by match-fixing than by playing on the tour.
    4. Betting markets on tennis matches provide gamblers with an opportunity to wager on a host of “exotic” markets, not just head-to-head betting. This includes markets such as whether there will be a tiebreak set, who will win the next game, or the total number of games played.
    5. It would seem that the authorities are keen not to address the issue. Sporting bodies, for publicity issues, are always keen to deny – just look at the recent FIFA scandal and allegations of widespread doping in Russian athletics.
    6. The lifestyle of professional tennis athletes brings with it lots of down time and boring periods in hotel rooms in foreign countries.
    7. In the commercialised world of tennis, sport has a different meaning. Kids are told about sport’s educational benefits, but they notice in the real world that it is really about making money.
    8. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, sport is a commodity. People’s involvement largely revolves around financial remuneration.

    Steve Georgakis is senior Lecturer of Pedagogy and Sports Studies, University of Sydney.  This article was first published by The Conversation on January 19, 2016.

  • How ‘Crazy’ are the North Koreans?

    Joel S. Wit writes about how the North Koreans have played their cards extremely well despite the appalling nature of their regime.  See link to an article in the New York Times, by Joel S. Wit, who is a Senior Fellow of the US-Korea Institute at John Hopkins University.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/opinion/sunday/how-crazy-are-the-north-koreans.html

  • Peter Day. Professional sport needs more ‘Pats’.

    Despite all the feel good talk, the rags to riches stories and wonderful qualities that people like to associate with professional sport, when all is said and done, what really shapes and drives it are these three things:

    1. Results 2. Results 3. Results.

    Winning is everything, and self-interest, the “jockey”. In such a hyper competitive environment, gaining an advantage, any advantage, becomes the Holy Grail. Even a one per cent edge can be the difference between winning and losing, between keeping your job and looking for another. No wonder clubs aggressively pursue all sorts of human expertise: corporate heavyweights, nutritionists, scientists, dieticians, psychologists, lawyers, motivators, and so on.

    It is a terribly costly exercise that demands a 24/7 focus and a whatever it takes mentality. Within this milieu, risk-taking becomes an essential requirement. The temptations are enormous as administrators and participants weigh-up the pros and cons of pushing boundaries to the limit, of ‘tasting that forbidden fruit’. For some, pushing boundaries means relegating athletes to the status of machines to be optimised. When this happens, all sorts of supplements – legal and illicit – are introduced in order to get the ‘best’ out of a player’s body and to enhance performance.

    Thus, sport is reduced to a kind of Machiavellian project where the ends justify the means.

    It is de-humanising. It is dangerous. It is likely to end in tears – just ask Essendon.

    But amidst this brutal, winner-take-all, corporate back-drop, there is another face of sport; a human face that needs to be seen and heard …

     

    You could barely see her amongst the thousands of other supporters, but she was there. She was always there, wearing her club beanie and scarf, waving the team flag and proudly donning her prized t-shirt graffiti-ed with player autographs.

    Pat had followed the club for 50+ years. She was a tiny lady, “Five foot one, dear.” The tape measure disagreed, “Four foot 11 … and that’s it!” There was no argument about her weight, though: fifty kilos ringing wet. But tiny Pat was a giant within the club. She stood like a beacon, shining forth unmatched spirit and loyalty. The players and training staff all knew her, and respected her. Over the years she’d been involved in a host of voluntary activities including organising sausage sizzles for the fans, helping make match day banners, and even washing the odd jersey for “that homesick youngster who still needed ‘mum’ around.”

    Not only that, Pat had been to every match they’d played since 1960; she even turned up without fail on Thursday evenings to watch the boys train. She did concede, however, that there was a little 18 months break when she nursed her husband, Bert, through cancer. “He was my first love,” she said. But other than that, Pat turned up every match day (and Thursday evenings) rain, hail, or shine.   “Just to encourage the boys, mind you; not to pester ‘em,” she’d insist. “I’m no football groupie. Sure, I love these boys, but I don’t want to go clubbing with them, and I certainly don’t want to marry them.”

    Now this day was special for the club. It was their last training session before the Grand Final. Supporters had come out of the woodwork – thousands of them from near and far. What a year it had been: “A miracle”, the papers were saying. A bunch of young upstarts, predicted to finish in the bottom three, now in the Grand Final. The experts were shaking their heads. Pat wasn’t. She didn’t have much time for the experts. As far as she was concerned “They were a bunch of well dressed, overpaid blokes who get it wrong half the time.” Not only was the club a match away from being premiers, but membership had topped 33,000 – the previous best was 25,000 in 1975. Happy times indeed.

    Well, that was two years ago. Today it won’t be so hard to pick-out tiny Pat amongst the crowd. They’ll be no crowd. It had been an awful year for the club. They’d won just six games; worst season in their history; wooden-spooners for the first time. The press had crucified them all year, while many of the supporters tore-up their memberships in disgust. Not only that, the coach was sacked and five players were asked to move-on. But amidst the misery and panic, there she was, tiny Pat, faithfully at the club’s last training session of the season. She was the only one at the ground, save for the players, support staff and the interim coach. It was a “bloody” cold day, too. Never mind, Pat had her thermos: four teaspoons of coffee, a tablespoon of sugar, and a nip of medicinal brandy. This was her thirty-second consecutive year of watching the boys’ Thursday evening training.   She always sat at the edge of the fence behind one of the goal posts. And from her faithful lips you could hear the familiar words of encouragement, words that had echoed around the ground for three decades: “Good mark, young fella; c’mon boys, keep runnin’, keep workin’. Make me proud!”

    A journalist got a surprise when he asked Pat why she continued to be so faithful in such miserable times. “Ya know,” she said, “that Jesus fella knew a thing or two. People loved it when he was workin’ those miracles. Even his best mate, Peter, only wanted the highlights package. But he made it pretty clear, didn’t he: ‘If ya wanna come for the ride, if ya gonna love me, you’ll have to accept that along with grand finals come wooden-spoons too.’   It’s a bit like marriage, isn’t it? My husband and me had a wonderful honeymoon, kinda like winning a grand final; wished it’d never end. But life ain’t like that. He also got sick, got cancer … and it killed him. That was like gettin’ the wooden-spoon; that was a heavy Cross to carry. But it was during that time that I really learned about love, about how to love and how to be a true supporter. I reckon ya need wooden-spoon moments to be a better person.

    “Son, this ain’t just a club; this is my family – it’s my community. I’ve mixed with all types since I’ve been here: rich and poor; VIPs and ordinary folk; and, ya know what, I hadn’t even met an aboriginal before I got involved in footy; what a blessing that’s been.

    “This club – along with Bert, of course – has taught me lots about being there in good times and bad. People need you most when they’re doing it tough, don’t they? When my Bert died, it was this club that paid for his funeral; even held a fundraiser to help with some of the bills.

    “I just love this place … It makes me feel like I belong. Not sure whether you’re too familiar with the Good Book, but there’s a passage I’m especially fond of; it’s the one where our Lord says, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’. I’m no scholar, but I think He was trying to teach us about the importance of staying close and connected. That’s how I feel here: close and connected, like a little branch clinging to its vine … my club.

    “Anyway, son, next year we’ll be a stronger club. We’ve learnt a lot about ourselves this season; can’t wait ‘til training starts again in a few months. Might see you there? Gotta go now, son. God-bless-ya.”

    Fr. Peter Day is a Catholic Priest in Canberra.

  • I stand at the door and knock.

    Pope’s Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees

    January 17, 2016

    Dear Brothers and Sisters,

    In the Bull of indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy I noted that “at times we are called to gaze even more attentively on mercy so that we may become a more effective sign of the Father’s action in our lives” (Misericordiae Vultus, 3). God’s love is meant to reach out to each and every person. Those who welcome the Father’s embrace, for their part, become so many other open arms and embraces, enabling every person to feel loved like a child and “at home” as part of the one human family. God’s fatherly care extends to everyone, like the care of a shepherd for his flock, but it is particularly concerned for the needs of the sheep who are wounded, weary or ill. Jesus told us that the Father stoops to help those overcome by physical or moral poverty; the more serious their condition, the more powerfully is his divine mercy revealed.

    In our time, migration is growing worldwide. Refugees and people fleeing from their homes challenge individuals and communities, and their traditional ways of life; at times they upset the cultural and social horizons which they encounter. Increasingly, the victims of violence and poverty, leaving their homelands, are exploited by human traffickers during their journey towards the dream of a better future. If they survive the abuses and hardships of the journey, they then have to face latent suspicions and fear. In the end, they frequently encounter a lack of clear and practical policies regulating the acceptance of migrants and providing for short or long term programmes of integration respectful of the rights and duties of all. Today, more than in the past, the Gospel of mercy troubles our consciences, prevents us from taking the suffering of others for granted, and points out way of responding which, grounded in the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, find practical expression in works of spiritual and corporal mercy.

    In the light of these facts, I have chosen as the theme of the 2016 World Day of Migrants and Refugees: “Migrants and Refugees Challenge Us. The Response of the Gospel of Mercy.” Migration movements are now a structural reality, and our primary issue must be to deal with the present emergency phase by providing programmes which address the causes of migration and the changes it entails, including its effect on the makeup of societies and peoples. The tragic stories of millions of men and women daily confront the international community as a result of the outbreak of unacceptable humanitarian crises in different parts of the world. Indifference and silence lead to complicity whenever we stand by as people are dying of suffocation, starvation, violence and shipwreck. Whether large or small in scale, these are always tragedies, even when a single human life is lost.

    Migrants are our brothers and sisters in search of a better life, far away from poverty, hunger, exploitation and the unjust distribution of the planet’s resources which are meant to be equitably shared by all. Don’t we all want a better, more decent and prosperous life to share with our loved ones?
    At this moment in human history, marked by great movements of migration, identity is not a secondary issue. Those who migrate are forced to change some of their most distinctive characteristics and, whether they like or not, even those who welcome them are also forced to change. How can we experience these changes not as obstacles to genuine development, rather as opportunities for genuine human, social and spiritual growth, a growth which respects and promotes those values which make us ever more humane and help us to live a balanced relationship with God, others and creation?
    The presence of migrants and refugees seriously challenges the various societies which accept them. Those societies are faced with new situations which could create serious hardship unless they are suitably motivated, managed and regulated. How can we ensure that integration will become mutual enrichment, open up positive perspectives to communities, and prevent the danger of discrimination, racism, extreme nationalism or xenophobia?

    Biblical revelation urges us to welcome the stranger; it tells us that in so doing, we open our doors to God, and that in the faces of others we see the face of Christ himself. Many institutions, associations, movements and groups, diocesan, national and international organisations are experiencing the wonder and joy of the feast of encounter, sharing and solidarity. They have heard the voice of Jesus Christ: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (Rev 3:20). Yet there continue to be debates about the conditions and limits to be set for the reception of migrants, not only on the level of national policies, but also in some parish communities whose traditional tranquillity seems to be threatened.

    Faced with these issues, how can the Church fail to be inspired by the example and words of Jesus Christ? The answer of the Gospel is mercy.
    In the first place, mercy is a gift of God the Father who is revealed in the Son. God’s mercy gives rise to joyful gratitude for the hope which opens up before us in the mystery of our redemption by Christ’s blood. Mercy nourishes and strengthens solidarity towards others as a necessary response to God’s gracious love, “which has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). Each of us is responsible for his or her neighbour: we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, wherever they live. Concern for fostering good relationships with others and the ability to overcome prejudice and fear are essential ingredients for promoting the culture of encounter, in which we are not only prepared to give, but also to receive from others. Hospitality, in fact, grows from both giving and receiving.

    From this perspective, it is important to view migrants not only on the basis of their status as regular or irregular, but above all as people whose dignity is to be protected and who are capable of contributing to progress and the general welfare. This is especially the case when they responsibly assume their obligations towards those who receive them, gratefully respecting the material and spiritual heritage of the host country, obeying its laws and helping with its needs. Migrations cannot be reduced merely to their political and legislative aspects, their economic implications and the concrete coexistence of various cultures in one territory. All these complement the defence and promotion of the human person, the culture of encounter, and the unity of peoples, where the Gospel of mercy inspires and encourages ways of renewing and transforming the whole of humanity.

    The Church stands at the side of all who work to defend each person’s right to live with dignity, first and foremost by exercising the right not to emigrate and to contribute to the development of one’s country of origin. This process should include, from the outset, the need to assist the countries which migrants and refugees leave. This will demonstrate that solidarity, cooperation, international interdependence and the equitable distribution of the earth’s goods are essential for more decisive efforts, especially in areas where migration movements begin, to eliminate those imbalances which lead people, individually or collectively, to abandon their own natural and cultural environment. In any case, it is necessary to avert, if possible at the earliest stages, the flight of refugees and departures as a result of poverty, violence and persecution.

    Public opinion also needs to be correctly formed, not least to prevent unwarranted fears and speculations detrimental to migrants.
    No one can claim to be indifferent in the face of new forms of slavery imposed by criminal organizations which buy and sell men, women and children as forced labourers in construction, agriculture, fishing or in other markets. How many minors are still forced to fight in militias as child soldiers! How many people are victims of organ trafficking, forced begging and sexual exploitation! Today’s refugees are fleeing from these aberrant crimes, and they appeal to the Church and the human community to ensure that, in the outstretched hand of those who receive them, they can see the face of the Lord, “the Father of mercies and God of all consolation” (2 Cor 1:3).

    Dear brothers and sisters, migrants and refugees! At the heart of the Gospel of mercy the encounter and acceptance by others are intertwined with the encounter and acceptance of God himself. Welcoming others means welcoming God in person! Do not let yourselves be robbed of the hope and joy of life born of your experience of God’s mercy, as manifested in the people you meet on your journey! I entrust you to the Virgin Mary, Mother of migrants and refugees, and to Saint Joseph, who experienced the bitterness of emigration to Egypt. To their intercession I also commend those who invest so much energy, time and resources to the pastoral and social care of migrants.

    To all I cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing.

     

  • John Duggan. Advice from expert clinicians or the AMA

    For those interested in the cost of health care the recently released interim report by the Medical Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review “obsolete MBS items track one” demonstrates the dawning recognition that there are procedures and tests that do not justify their existence or federal funding.

    The story begins with the decision of Ms Sussan Ley, Minister for Health to form the Medical Benefits Schedule Review taskforce, with a mandate to review the schedule in its entirety. The Task Force is ‘an expert clinician led Medicare Benefit Schedule (MBS) review … established to lead an accelerated program of MBS reviews to align MBS funding services with contemporary clinical evidence and improve health outcomes for patients’.

    The taskforce, chaired by Professor Bruce Robinson, Dean of the Sydney University Medical School, is an expert clinician-led group whose main duty is to align MBS funded services with contemporary clinical evidence and improve outcomes.

    One role of the taskforce of 13 members is to appoint chairs and members of working groups to progress the work using evidence based reviews and data and assessment of literature. Priority areas will include safety, clinically unnecessary service provision and accepted clinical guidelines. It also has the power to recommend adding new services to the MBS.

    Of the host of clinical committees created several have already reported on obsolete items – an interesting group. The strictures about kidney x-rays (MBS item number 58705) illustrate the problem and variety of obsolete and useless procedures recommended for abolition. The gastroenterology group reviewed the practice of treating gastric bleeding by infusing refrigerant fluid into the stomach, discarded soon after its initiation about 60 years ago and which was only used eight times in the last 11 years.

    It is evident to any medical scientist that the review is overdue and can only benefit both patients and the budget.

    Whether the AMA feels happy about the review will be reflected in its attitude to the recommendations of the Task Force.

    John Duggan is Conjoint Professor, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle.

  • Dennis Hemphill. Essendon Football Club

    Their club failed them, but Essendon players can’t excape blame for doping ban.

    Fingers are pointing again at the Essendon Football Club for its failures in the long-running supplements fiasco. This follows the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) decision to ban 34 past and present players for one year for contravening the World Anti-Doping Code.

    A club’s coaches and other officials are supposed to have a duty of care to ensure a safe working environment and practices that are compliant with the anti-doping code. But the club’s failings in this area have already been dealt with. The AFL penalised Essendon heavily in 2013 for health and safety shortcomings that were judged to bring the game into disrepute.

    But what of the players’ liability?

    What does the code say?

    One might be forgiven for thinking that the players were unwitting victims in this saga. They claim to have questioned the supplements regime and believed they were administered thymosin and not the banned thymosin beta-4.

    The 2009 World Anti-Doping Code’s principle of strict liability makes athletes ultimately responsible for what goes into their bodies. It states:

    It is each athlete’s personal duty to ensure that no prohibited substance enters his or her body. Athletes are responsible for any prohibited substance or its metabolites or markers found to be present in their samples. Accordingly, it is not necessary that intent, fault, negligence or knowing use on the athlete’s part be demonstrated in order to establish an anti-doping violation …

    Whether the athletes believed they were receiving thymosin when they were actually receiving the banned thymosin beta-4 is not the question. The mere presence of banned doping agents in the athlete’s system is sufficient for the World Anti-Doping Agency to deem it an infraction.

    The code also makes it clear that in exceptional circumstances (for example, proven unintentional doping) the sanction for the rule violation may be reduced or eliminated, but the infraction stands.

    Some might think the principle of strict liability is too harsh. But the players unfortunately may be barking up the wrong tree if they think they are innocent victims.

    Players implicated

    The CAS decision disclosed material that further implicated the Essendon players. Despite having undergone anti-doping education programs, the players agreed to injections they knew little about, made no enquiries about them, kept the injections from the team doctor and failed to declare them during routine Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency (ASADA) testing sessions.

    Following the decision, ASADA CEO Ben McDevitt said:

    At best, the players did not ask the questions, or the people, they should have. At worst, they were complicit in a culture of secrecy and concealment.

    On this account, it is one thing for players to have trusted team officials and unwittingly taken a banned substance, but quite another not to have consulted the team doctor or disclosed the supplement use to ASADA. Taking this evidence into account, CAS would appear to have no reason to reduce or eliminate sanctions for the anti-doping rule violation.

    One of the take-away messages from the latest stage in the supplements saga is that players will need to be more confident and courageous to challenge the conditions under which they are expected to perform. This could involve collective agreements on the full disclosure of benefits and risks prior to the introduction of cutting-edge performance-enhancement measures and methods.

    At the same time, the bar will need to be raised about duty of care and informed consent. Clubs contemplating the implementation of innovative performance-enhancement methods will need to be especially diligent in understanding their performance, health and integrity implications and ensuring that athletes are made fully aware of them.

    Team officials and high-performance managers might also need to be aware of the power differential between them and players. This can sometimes compromise a player’s ability to question – let alone say no to – what might be considered dubious performance-enhancement regimes.

    All this needs to come in a sport culture where there are high expectations, as well as financial and social pressures and rewards, for playing well and winning.

    Dennis Hemphill is Associate Professor of Sports Ethics, Victoria University. This article was first published in The Conversation on 13 January 2103.

  • Evan Williams. Film Review: Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘Youth’

     

    Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, Youth is a film for the young at heart – or at least for those aspiring to that happy condition. The main characters are a couple of blokes on the wrong side of 70, and it was noticeable at my screening that most of the audience weren’t too far behind. Youth may not have been the best title. For all its undoubted charms, this isn’t a film for the 18-to-24 demographic, much targeted these days by the major studios. That makes it something of a rarity – and a pleasure.

    Sorrentino is keen on the idea of oldies discovering their inner selves and coming to terms with the passing years. His best known film, The Great Beauty, winner of all sorts of awards a couple of years ago, gave us a 65-year-old who has spent most of his life revelling in the fleshpots of Rome before hearing some nasty news. Among other odd characters, the film featured a self-styled “dwarf” and a nun with two crooked teeth. Among other odd characters, Youth gives us a grossly obese sunbather, a naked Miss Universe, a faded Hollywood star (nicely played by a faded Jane Fonda), and an assortment of less than glamorous geriatrics rich enough to stay at a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps. The shadow of Fellini looms large.

    Fred Ballinger (a morose and taciturn Michael Caine) and his old friend Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) are among the hotel’s many disconsolate residents. Fred is a retired orchestral conductor and composer, famous for a one-hit wonder called “Simple Songs”, which he no longer performs in public because, as he somewhat enigmatically explains, it was written for his wife, who can no longer sing. Not even an emissary from Queen Elizabeth herself can persuade Fred to perform the piece for Prince Philip’s birthday. Mick is a film director working on what he believes will be the crowning masterpiece of his career – his “testament”, as he calls it – though judging from the assortment of actors and screenwriters assembled for the project, one doubts that the film will be the triumph Mick is hoping for. Perhaps Sorrentino will enlighten us in a future instalment.

    Youth is described in the blurbs as a “comedy-drama” – a term that always fills me with foreboding. You will have gathered that it is seriously weird – weird, but fascinating, not to say beautifully acted , and above all, quite ravishingly photographed and designed. Sorrentino’s cinematographer, Luca Bigazzi, who also shot The Great Beauty, has a wonderful eye for lush landscapes (or snowscapes) combined with a taste for bizarre, often surreal, compositions. He can find beguiling patterns and shapes wherever he points his camera – hotel corridors, symmetrical archways, rows of reclining sun-seekers.

    The “comedy-drama” consists of long passages of moody introspection relieved by occasional jokes, most of which are funny. There’s a delicious scene when Fred and Mick are relaxing in the hotel pool when a naked Miss Universe slips into the water beside them. Miss Universe is played by an actress called Madalina Diana Ghenea, who appears to have been well chosen for her wordless role. And I liked the scene when one of Mick’s actors (Paul Dano), sporting a little black moustache and an all-too-realistic Hitler uniform, takes a seat in the hotel dining room and proceeds to eat in solitary silence, much to the alarm and indignation of other guests.

    It is a film full of little puzzles and unanswered questions – I’m still not exactly sure what happened to Fred’s lost wife – but the total effect is strangely moving. There isn’t a great deal of cohesion and narrative drive, but Youth is never dull, and whenever things get a little vague or perplexing we are given a lovely piece of visual wizardry. The film is a beautiful affirmation of the power of pure cinema. Of course you won’t see it at multiplexes. Try the art houses instead and you should be lucky. But hurry.

    Youth, rated MA, is showing in selected cinemas.

    Evan Williams has reviewed films in The Australian newspaper for 33 years. He is a Life Member of the Film Critics Circle of Australia for services to film criticism and the film industry.

     

  • Eric Walsh. Tribute to Brian Johns.

    The death of Brian Francis Johns, 79, in the early hours of New Years Day marked the end of one of the most impressive Australian media careers of the last half century.

    During this period Johns engaged in and excelled at the top level of almost all aspects of media affecting the lives of everyday Australians.

    He distinguished himself as a political journalist on The Australian when he was that papers first political correspondent. He then filled similar roles on the now-defunct Weekly, The Bulletin and was later chief of the political office of The Sydney Morning Herald. He went on to fill executive news management positions on that newspaper.

    In 1975 he was recruited to a senior position in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet where he remained for some years under the Whitlam and Fraser Governments.

    Having made a significant mark in newspapers he was to enjoy a similar success in literature as Australian publisher for the overseas Penguin Group for seven years. He greatly increased the number of Australian titles produced locally by this well-known international publisher, becoming a widely respected figure in Australian publishing.

    He was next to impress in the field of broadcasting when he was somewhat surprisingly made Head of Australia’s SBS television and radio networks. He excelled here as an administrator, greatly strengthening SBS by first introducing limited advertising to boost its budget.

    From here his administration skills were recognized and he was appointed to head The Australian Broadcasting Authority. It now seemed inevitable that he would graduate to the top job in Government broadcasting, becoming General Manager of the ABC.

    Johns made his presence felt in all three of these non-newspaper appointments.

    He had had a surprising entry in the field of mainstream journalism.

    Two journalistic giants Maxwell Newton, who turned The Australian Financial Review into a highly successful daily newspaper and Tom Fitzgerald finance editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and founder of the influential political and cultural fortnightly, Nation, were jointly responsible for launching the career of a then largely unknown media star.

    Johns had come to Sydney from Queensland as a boy and won a scholarship to prestigious
    St Joseph’s College where he had a stellar career as a student. On leaving he spent more than two years studying for the Catholic priesthood. He left to become a journalist.

    His career, started quite unspectacularly on the bi-weekly country newspaper, The Queanbeyan Age. Through church contacts he escaped that boredom and gained a position with the Australian Government publicity unit, the Australian News and Information Bureau – by no means the home of Australia’s leading journalistic talent.

    He overcame his frustration and his employment’s limitations by making notable contributions on political and cultural issues – mainly political – for Tom Fitzgerald’s fortnightly Nation.

    In 1964, years later, when Max Newton was hand-picked by Rupert Murdoch to be Editor of his ambitious new National Daily, The Australian, he was aware that significant political journalists in existing media were comfortable and were unlikely to take a risk on the questionable new venture of the then unproven 32 year old Murdoch.

    In conversation with Fitzgerald who had gained a high opinion of Johns from his frequent contributions to Nation, Max was persuaded to take a chance on a young man virtually unknown outside the columns of Nation. He had no cause to regret his gamble.

    A highly successful media career began from here.

    Having later climbed the heights in journalism, literature, administration and broadcasting it was fitting that his career should begin its close by teaching.

    For more than two years he was engaged as Adjunct Professor of Journalism at Queensland University of Technology where he made many friendships and won admiration and gratitude from scores of students. His final days, cut short by his unexpected and ultimately fatal illness, was spent once again in organisation and administration.

    He was Chairman of the Australian Copyright Agency and also Chairman of that body’s cultural foundation, a role he particularly enjoyed as it involved the funding of young writers. He served on the Board of Melbourne University Press and The Southern Phone Company.

    His death marked the end of what was a very well-rounded era of accomplishment by Brian Francis Johns.

  • Peter Drysdale. Taiwan’s Political Choice.

    On Sunday, Taiwan will elect its next president, the successor to President Ma Ying-jeou from the Kuomintang (KMT) party who has been in power for the past eight years and is ineligible to run for another term. The vote will almost certainly record a decisive choice for political change.

    In the run up to the election, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, appears to be heading towards a runaway victory — with polls suggesting that she has about 45 per cent voter support. This puts her far ahead of the ruling KMT party candidate, Eric Chu, with around 20 per cent, and the smaller People First Party (PFP) candidate James Soong with 10 per cent. Around 25 per cent of voters remain undecided. With three-quarters of a million more voters this election than last time, the many young, first-time voters are likely to vote for non-mainstream parties or the DPP.

    A series of political stumbles — with the governing KMT forced to change presidential candidate midway through the election — and a steady trend towards independent-mindedness, especially among the younger generation in Taiwan, has left the KMT government struggling to mobilise its support base. The polls suggest that the KMT might also lose control of the Legislative Assembly for the first time in Taiwan’s history.

    The coming election result will be widely, if wrongly, read as a referendum on cross-Strait relations. President Ma has focused on improving relations with China and negotiated a succession of agreements with the mainland that have seen relations between Beijing and Taipei at their most cordial since the end of the Chinese civil war. The opening of cross-Strait economic relations was given a major fillip in 2008 after the election of Ma and the return of a KMT majority in the Taiwanese legislature. There followed a series of high-level exchanges between then Chinese and Taiwanese leaders that laid the foundations for steps that saw a major breakthrough in the relationship with the eventual signing of Cross-Straits Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) on 29 June 2010.

    But implementing follow-on arrangements to give effect to the agreement wasn’t all smooth sailing. The passage of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement through the Taiwanese legislature was disrupted by the emergence of the Sunflower Student Protest Movement in 2014. The movement gave vent to concerns about incomplete disclosure regarding the nature and potential costs of the agreement, as it related to telecommunications and other issues. And the backing it gained, from the opposition DPP and among students and young people, exposed the underbelly of anxiety about the deepening economic relationship with Beijing and its political implications. Taiwanese are glad to see tensions with Beijing reduced. But many also fear the Ma administration and the KMT might have made Taiwan too economically dependent on the mainland; that might lead to loss of independence and inability to fend off pressure one day to reunify with China on unfavourable terms.

    In fact, the profound political shift in Taiwan is more closely associated with the economy’s failing struggle to re-invent itself. With per capita income around US$22,000, Taiwan is above the middle income threshold, but it has been unable to emulate its neighbours like South Korea and Japan in Asia in climbing up the income scale. Its export-dependent manufacturing sector faces competition from South Korea from above and emerging economies, like China, from below. GDP grew a measly 1 per cent in 2014; wages are stagnating and unemployment, at 4 per cent, is considered high. The irony is that Taiwan’s tortured, ‘one-sided’ economic relationship with China — which Ma had been trying to correct — might well be a core element in Taiwan’s economic woes. While direct trade has opened up across the Strait, Taiwan has continued to restrict Chinese imports and investment, essential to enjoying the fruits of fuller integration into the regional and global economy. South Korea has imposed no similar burdens on its international competitiveness.

    This week’s lead essay from Mark Harrison points out that while the KMT government may have overstayed its welcome domestically, Taiwanese affairs have looked very different internationally. While the Ma–Xi meeting last November seemed merely to confirm the voters’ view that the KMT had lost sight of Taiwan’s democratic ideals and their everyday concerns, internationally it looked like an historic moment in cross-Strait relations and a step towards resolving one of modern history’s longest-standing ideological conflicts. Indeed, one conception of China’s diplomatic intention in agreeing to the meeting was that it was designed to lay down new benchmarks in cross-Strait relations in preparation for working with a DPP leadership.

    ‘Should Tsai be elected president, managing these two very different perspectives will be a key task for the incoming administration’, says Harrison. ‘As president, she will need to take heed of the international view of Taiwan and communicate the reasons why the electorate have voted for a more circumspect relationship with Beijing. Tsai’s task will be complicated by memories of the last DPP president, Chen Shui-bian, which still rankle foreign ministries around the world. At the same time, the United States and Japan have both become far warier of China’s assertive regional policies and a Taiwanese government that is less accommodating towards Beijing may suit their policy responses and leadership inclinations’.

    It’s true, as Harrison says, that from an international perspective, policymaking in Taipei by a government that will base its legitimacy on its openness to public debate and political activism may appear less reassuring than the policies of accommodation with Beijing under Ma. Certainly Washington was anxious to be reassured that Tsai was not going to disturb the status quo on that front. But this is the tide of Taiwan’s modern political history. Beijing has shown respect for the process and provided a bridge to Tsai and an incentive to meet in the middle. And the policy outcomes that open government can deliver on China and other issues will ultimately stand on stronger foundations of political legitimacy.

    Professor Peter Drysdale is Editor ANU East Asia Forum. This article was first published in the East Asia Forum on 11 January 2016.

  • Mark Gregory. Turnbull’s NBN Mess

    It has been an inauspicious beginning to 2016 for NBN Co and the year only promises to go from bad to worse as the rest of the world moves ahead with NG-PON2 Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) rollouts and Australians slowly realise that the spin from Turnbull about how his NBN was going to be fast, affordable and here sooner is nothing more than a bad joke.

    If you’re a critic of the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Multi-Technology Mix (MTM) National Broadband Network (NBN) then you’ll have to get in line to be heard as there is going to be a constant stream of criticism about how Turnbull’s MTM NBN provides slow connections that are fraught with technical problems, suffers from poor performance, does not have enough capacity and has hobbled Australians with nothing more than basic broadband at significantly higher prices than what is paid in other countries competing for the global digital economy dollar.

    And yes it is time that we acknowledge Turnbull’s ownership of the MTM NBN mess, and the broader malaise that beset the telecommunications industry during his tenure as Minister for Communications. Backhaul prices between 100 to 200 times higher than in competing countries, data retention fiasco, legislative and regulatory black holes including the perennial favourite that is mandatory data breach reporting.

    To make matters worse Turnbull appears to be listening to people that definitely had too much Kool Aid in 2015 and rather than fix the telecommunications market mess he appears to be pushing for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to be stripped of its monopoly infrastructure regulation role. Now if this gem actually appears in legislation it will akin to the silly idea to raise the Goods and Services Tax to 15 per cent rather than address the underlying problems with the taxation system, for example, getting the multi-nationals to pay a fair amount of tax on turnover in Australia would be a good start. And we can all remember the Coalition telling us at the 2013 election how they would have the budget back in the black in the blink of an eye.

    What is of immediate concern is the question why NBN Co, a government business enterprise, has adopted such a negative, defensive and at times openly adversarial position. NBN Co needs to look carefully at how its senior managers use social media and to ensure they do not appear to be taking a partisan position in the debate about the merits or otherwise of Turnbull’s MTM NBN.

    Yes, there is a debate and at this point the government is doing a sterling job of stonewalling the media, redacting where-ever possible anything that might provide information about what is actually occurring at NBN Co and using the get out of gaol card that is “commercial in confidence” at any whiff of a question about the NBN.

    It is expected that there will be some rough and tumble along the way. The NBN debate commenced in 2009 with the Labor government’s decision to intervene in the telecommunication industry and went into overdrive in 2013 with the Coalition government’s decision to vandalise the NBN by re-introducing obsolete copper technologies.

    Both sides of politics have sought to use the NBN for political advantage rather than seeing the NBN as a nation building project vital for the nation’s future as a leader in the global digital economy. Along the way politicians have been forthright in their public criticism of anyone that disagrees with their views or statements. It is not for a politician to worry about being technically accurate and you’ll be “foolish” if you call them out for reinventing established science.

    It is vital that NBN Co be a passive participant in the NBN debate and remain open to answering questions from the media and academia. Failure to be responsive to the media and academia will lead to more leaks from within NBN Co, an increase in the number of disgruntled employees and inevitably increased criticism in the public domain.

    2016 will be a tough year for NBN Co and it will be important to offset the growing realisation that over a ten-year period the copper access network technologies will cost far more than what the cost for an all-fibre access network would have been. Over the typical ten to fifteen-year life-time of a fixed access network technology the cost for the copper access network component of the NBN will be tens of billions more than the cost of overbuilding and operating an all-fibre access network.

    So we should expect an announcement in early February that the Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) charge is to be reduced from $17.50 per Mbps per month to $15 per Mbps per month effective in from 1 June. This will give the embattled NBN Co something to spruik about in the lead-up to the Federal election and of course, the Minister for Communications and the Arts Mitch Fifield will be out and about telling all and sundry how the price reduction is a direct result of the government’s MTM NBN approach.

    And most of us would have thought it was because of the ongoing data usage explosion brought about by NetFlix entering the Australian market and opening the door to improved low cost media streaming services. And as we know the silly sausages at NetFlix were anticipating the Australian broadband network to progressively become all-fibre thereby making the delivery of high quality video possible. Oh well, the fuzz that we see around anything moving faster than a snail isn’t really so bad after all is it?

    But there will be no getting around the rollout problems for NBN Co and the need to push people living on the urban fringe that currently enjoy ADSL onto fixed wireless or in some cases onto satellite. It’s all about the science of why Fibre to the Node (FTTN) is a second rate obsolete technology that was never going to adequately cover the existing ADSL footprint.

    At least the genie is out of the bottle regarding the furphy that the MTM NBN would be completed sooner than the originally planned NBN. The NBN was always going to be completed, whether it is or not, by mid-2020 so that its future can be determined by whomever is in government at the time. NBN Co’s future appears to be either sale as a single entity or as a number of disaggregated networks.

    This year NBN Co will need to step-up the rollout significantly, if for no other reason than to head-off what would be very bad news for the government in the lead-up to the Federal election. And as more FTTN is rolled out there will be a slow but steady growth in the criticism of FTTN performance and a key facet of the public face of NBN Co in 2016 will be diverting attention onto more positive outcomes.

    What would throw a spanner in NBN Co’s wheel would be one of the many councils around Australia that own and operate telecommunications networks deciding to rollout FTTP in the high value business centres and inner urban areas within their municipal boundaries. As municipalities in the US have found, it is a good business decision to extend their existing telecommunication capability because not only will FTTP bring in much needed revenue but the council will be able to rollout machine to machine communications (see the Internet of Things) and offer free Wi-Fi without becoming beholden to a Telco.

    2016 promises to be a very big year for the NBN, especially with the first satellite coming online, and the management team at NBN Co will be well aware that any mis-steps will not be welcome news to a government that wants to wash its hands of the NBN as quickly as possible.

    Mark Gregory is Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering, RMIT University. He is Managing Editor, Australian Journal of Telecommunications in the Digital Economy, and Managing Editor, International Journal of Information, Communication, Technology and Applications.

  • Edmund Campion. Homily for the funeral service of Brian Johns.

    Family, friends, colleagues of Brian Johns.

    The other morning, after Brian had died, it came to me, so this is the end of a conversation that endured for more than sixty years. Then I recalled that one name had dominated our earliest talks together, all those years ago, the name of Dorothy Day. Dorothy Day? Who was she? She was an American Catholic radical who, when she died in 1980, was given lengthy obituaries in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books and all the other leading papers. A significant figure in American culture. I can tell you her life in one sentence: she believed literally in those words of the Lord Jesus I have just read from the 25th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel: feed the hungry; give a drink to the thirsty; clothe the naked; give the poor a home; visit them when they’re in hospital or prison. It’s Christianity in its purest form. So during the Great Depression she did just that; set up houses of hospitality (as she called them) where the poor could find a home and food and drink, houses of hospitality that spread across the United States; she started a monthly paper, The Catholic Worker and a movement around it. She did jail time for protesting against American militarism and promoted an ethic that said everyone was worthwhile. Dorothy Day.

    When we were young, Brian and I came across a long article about her that ran across two issues of The New Yorker. It began: ‘Many people believe that Dorothy Day is a saint, and that one day she will be canonised.’ She said: ‘You can’t dismiss me as easily as that.’ But for Brian she became a seminal influence, his idea of a Catholic saint, someone who took the Lord’s words seriously and followed them until they hurt.

    Did you notice something about those words of his? Jesus was a Jew, of course, and he’s quoting from one of the great books of the Hebrew scriptures, the Book of Isaiah (read for us by Ben Patfield). You must have noticed how Jesus takes Isaiah’s words and transforms them into a mystical identification between himself and the poor:

    ‘I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, I needed clothes…. As often as you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

    That identification between Jesus and the poor gives a religious energy to the corporal works of mercy (as we call these activities).

    Here’s something else about the corporal works of mercy: they are not only individualistic – here’s a piece of bread, here’s a cup of cold water, here’s a pair of trousers… oh yes, we must do those things – but we must also work hard to change our society:

    • Give bread to the hungry? Yes, but also create social and political structures that reduce poverty and give the marginalised respect;
    • Drink to the thirsty? Yes, but also take the decisions together that ensure clean, unpolluted water, particularly in the Third World, and act to restore a balance to the world’s ecology;
    • I was naked? Yes, clothes are needed, but think also of those stripped psychologically bare in our society or prone to be addled in our drug culture;
    • I was in prison? Notice that Christ doesn’t say, ‘I was in prison unjustly,’ he says, ‘I was in prison’ – justly or unjustly. Think too of those oppressed by other forms of imprisonment: domestic violence, sexism, racism, class distinctions… We need to change societal attitudes on those fronts too.
    • The homeless: ah, refugees, asylum seekers, the unwanted, those different from us…

    So Christ’s summons to the corporal works of mercy is a call not only for individual responses, it is also a call for radical changes in our society and our world, to make them fairer and more just. It is a call for social justice.

    Brian learned this, years ago, from Dorothy Day and he based his life on it. She gave him his compass points to steer towards what he became – the champion of a better Australia. Which is why we salute him today.

    This was the homily that Fr Edmund Campion delivered at the funeral service of  Brian Johns at St Canice’s Church at Elizabeth Bay on 7 January 2016.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The forgotten war – Chinese resistance to Japan.

    Repost from 17/09/2015

    WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 — Few in the West remember the fact that China was the first country to enter what would become World War II, and it was an ally of the United States and Britain from just after Pearl Harbor in 1941 till Japan’s surrender in 1945, an Oxford expert said.

    In an article titled “Forgotten ally? China’s unsung role in World War II (WWII),”circulated on U.S. TV network CNN’s website Tuesday, Rana Mitter, a professor of modern Chinese politics and history at the University of Oxford, elaborated China’s role in WorldWar II.

    As China will hold a major parade in Beijing on Thursday to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, “China’s memory of the war is becoming more, not less, important,” he wrote.

    “Chinese suffering during the war is not in dispute,” he added, referring to the fact that during China’s resistance against Japanese aggression from 1937 to 1945, the fire of war scourged half of the Chinese territory, with around 260 million Chinese involved in the war and more than 35 million people killed or wounded. The direct economic loss reached some 100 billion U.S. dollars at then price.

    The United States and China were allies during WWII and more than 250,000 Americans served in what was known as the “China-Burma-India” theater, many photos showed.

    On July 7, 1937, Japanese troops attacked Lugou Bridge, also known as Marco Polo Bridge, a crucial access point to Beijing. This was the beginning of China’s eight-year warof resistance against full-scale Japanese aggression. A year later, by mid-1938, the Chinese military situation was desperate.

    Many cities of eastern and central China, including Shanghai, Nanjing and Wuhan, fell in Japanese hands. Many foreign observers assumed that China could not hold out, and a Japanese victory over China was most likely.

    Nonetheless, China refused to surrender, retreating inland to carry on resistance. “This decision changed the fate of Asia,” Mitter said.

    If China had surrendered in 1938, Japan would have controlled China for a generation or more. Japan’s forces might have turned toward the Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, or even India, the article reads.

    The European and Asian wars might never have come together as they did after Pearl Harbor in 1941.

    As Chinese hung on, and after Pearl Harbor, the war became genuinely global. The western Allies and China were united in their war against Japan.

    China’s contributions were very important to the war efforts. China held down huge numbers of Japanese troops on its territory and acted as an example to other non-Western countries, showing that it was possible to fight with hegemonism and strongly oppose imperialism, Mitter stressed.

    This article was first published in Xinhua, The Chinese Daily, n 2 September 2015.

  • Bob Kinnaird. Foreign worker exploitation.

    To reduce foreign worker exploitation, enforce employer sanctions laws

    2015 produced a never-ending stream of stories of exploited foreign workers on all kinds of temporary visas. They include overseas students, working holiday and 457 ‘skilled’ visa-holders. Nearly all temporary visas and some permanent residence visas are implicated.

    A Senate committee on Australia’s temporary work visa programs is due to report by end- February 2016.   Changes are needed in many policies and practices.

    In an earlier blog (9/10/15), I argued for changes in ‘government international education and visa policies that are feeding the growth in Australia of a vast underclass of temporary visa holders desperate for work and ripe for exploitation’.

    This blog shows that strengthened employer sanctions provisions of the Migration Act 1958 put in place by the former Labor government are not being adequately enforced by the Coalition government. These came into effect in June 2013. They would deter much exploitation of visa workers if more effectively enforced.

    Background

    Fairfax investigative journalist Adele Ferguson exposed the staggering scale of wage fraud at 7-11 convenience stores. 7-11 has now agreed to fund up to $25 million of wage fraud claims. If the claims exceed $25 million, franchisees will pay the next $5 million with anything more split equally between franchisees and 7-11 head office.

    The 7-11 case and many others involve allegations that overseas students have to work beyond the maximum hours permitted by their visa conditions (40 hours/fortnight during term, unrestricted hours outside term). Their employers then use this visa non-compliance against the students, threatening to report them to Immigration and have their visas cancelled unless they accept even more substandard wages and conditions. The practice has been going on for years.

    Nearly all these employers engaging overseas students to work in breach of their visa terms are committing an offence under the employer sanctions provisions. Strangely there has been little or no public discussion of these and other relevant laws that can and should be used to penalise these employers and deter the practice. This includes the Senate committee on temporary visas, whose October 2015 interim report did not mention these laws.

    As the 2010 Howells review of employer sanctions laws said, the absence of an effective deterrent to these practices has serious consequences. They include ‘the vulnerability of such workers to severe exploitation, the distortion of the labour market and the tendency for their presence to be associated with cash industries and abuses of Australia’s taxation, employment and welfare laws.’

    Targeting the employers who exploit foreign workers is central to effective deterrence.

    Every Coalition Immigration Minister repeats a version of the mantra that their government is as tough on employers exploiting visa workers as it is on people-smugglers. This includes the current Immigration Minister Dutton:

    “Australians can be assured that we are committed to being as tough on those who seek to rort our migration programmes as we are on those who arrive illegally by boat. We will devote the same resolve, resources and commitment that is necessary to get the job done,” Mr Dutton said. 

    “Under the Coalition Government, immigration compliance teams are not just targeting illegal workers but also employers who are doing the wrong thing. The Government will actively pursue substantial fines to deter further illegal work practices.” (Minister Dutton media release, ‘17 illegal workers detained in Woody Point Brisbane’, 29 April 2015).

    But the evidence shows the Coalition government is nowhere near as ‘tough’ on these employers. Contrary to Mr Dutton’s claims, it is not pursuing the ‘substantial fines’ against them available under Labor’s strengthened employer sanctions provisions.

    The key provisions created a new ‘no-fault’ or strict liability civil offence for employers and others (eg labour hire companies) of allowing or referring ‘illegal workers’ to work. ‘Illegal workers’ here means foreign nationals working in breach of their visa conditions, or those with no valid visa (‘unlawful non-citizens’, mainly visa ‘overstayers’).

    There is no need to prove that a business knew of (or was reckless as to) the person’s visa status. The provisions also establish liability for principal contractors and others who ‘participate in an arrangement’ but are not themselves the direct employers of the illegal workers. Criminal offences and penalties including prison time were also maintained for more serious breaches.

    The 2013 legislation provides very substantial maximum penalties for the ‘no-fault’ civil offence of employing illegal workers – $16,200 for ‘individuals’ (eg a sole trader) and $81,000 for companies. Note that these penalties apply for each illegal worker. So a company found with say three ‘illegal workers’ is strictly liable for a maximum penalty of $243,000.

    The provisions also allow for lesser sanctions: an’ Infringement Notice’ fine – maximum $3,240 fine for sole traders and $16,200 for companies, and ‘Illegal Worker Warning Notices’ (carrying no fine at all).

    Enforcement under the Coalition

    The Coalition’s enforcement of the employer sanctions provisions can only be described as derisory. In 2014-15 there were:

    • No prosecutions at all for the civil or criminal offences, and hence no penalties.
    • Only 8 ‘infringement notices issued to non-compliant employers, with fines totalling $62,730’ – less than the maximum civil penalty for a single company with one illegal worker ($81,000), and an average of only $7,840 per employer.
    • 655 ‘Illegal Worker Warning Notices’ (carrying no fine) issued ‘to educate businesses about their responsibilities when hiring non-citizens and (warn) them of the consequences of continued non-compliance with legislation.’ Of these, 210 notices to businesses related to visa holders working in breach of their visa conditions.

    (This information is from the DIBP Annual report, 2014-15 and DIBP email to author, December 2015)

    This is an incredibly low level of serious activity when considered against the scale of the practice of employers allowing or referring illegal workers to work, and the government’s claim that it is seriously committed to ‘pursuing substantial fines’ to deter the practice.

    There is no official data on the total number of ‘illegal workers’ or the number of employers that they work for. A December 2015 Auditor-General’s report concluded that even today ‘the extent of non-compliance with other visa conditions, for example visa holders working illegally, is not well understood’ by DIBP.

    My best estimate is that there were at least 140,000 ‘illegal workers’ in Australia, and around 49,000 or so employers of these ‘illegal workers’ in 2014-15.[i] This means there are more ‘illegal workers’ than 457 primary visa-holders (104,000), and more employers of ‘illegal workers’ than of 457s (36,500).

    Even the 655 employers served with ‘Illegal Worker Warning Notices’ – the least effective sanction available – represent a mere 1.3 per cent of the estimated 49,000 or so employers of ‘illegal workers’ in 2014-15.

    The Coalition’s ‘softly-softly’ approach to employer sanctions enforcement is not surprising. The LNP vehemently opposed Labor’s 2013 employer sanctions bill from Opposition.

    The Coalition’s real intentions are revealed in the 2015-16 Budget papers. They are merely to ‘promote voluntary compliance by Australian employers with employer sanctions legislation through the provision of targeted education and engagement activities’, where ‘voluntary compliance is maintained as the primary approach to resolving breaches’.

    The Coalition government also appears less than enthusiastic about enforcing other Labor legislation relevant to the more extreme forms of employer abuse of temporary visa workers.

    Labor also introduced new laws in 2013 creating new criminal offences of ‘forced labour’ and ‘servitude’ (outside the sex industry) under the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995, alongside the existing ‘sexual servitude’ offence.

    As at end-2015, there have been no prosecutions under the new ‘forced labour’ provisions and only one has commenced under the ‘servitude’ provisions. The ‘servitude’ case involves allegations that 24 young Taiwanese on working holiday visas were locked in rented Brisbane houses by Asian crime gangs and forced to participate in phone scams extorting Chinese nationals.

    Conclusion

    This week Senator Cash,the Employment Minister told The Australian that ‘when there is an effective regulator who enforces laws with meaningful penalties,people will think twice before breaking the law’.

    The government should acknowledge that its ‘voluntary compliance’ approach to the employer sanctions provisions has not been an effective deterrent against employers engaging ‘illegal workers’.

    It should now give priority to serious enforcement action under the civil penalty provisions. Any future claims that its actions are deterring the practice of employers engaging ‘illegal workers’ should be backed up with evidence, the collection of which is long overdue.

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

    [i] The 2010 Howells review of the employer sanctions regime found there could be over 100,000 ‘illegal workers’ in Australia, not including overseas students working more than their permitted weekly hours. It did not estimate the number of employers of these workers. My employer estimate assumes the same employer profile as for 457 visa-holders – an average of around 3 per employer – and is conservative.

  • Julianne Schultz. Tribute to Brian Johns.

    Brian Johns: A critical Australian romantic

    Brian had a gift for friendship. I first got to know him in the late 1970s; I know that many of you knew him for longer.

    Over the years as some of his closest friends passed away, he made time to get to know others and share their dreams, ambitions and stories.

    That speaks to his gift for friendship – his curiosity and empathy drove him to make connections, to find the good in people. He used to say to me that the best structures and systems in the world wouldn’t work without the right people – irrespective of gender, creed, or background. Never underestimate the importance of people of quality to bring ideas to life, he would say.

    I was struck, in the days immediately after his death, how quickly social media filled with stories of his acts of kindness, of empathy and insight, of words of advice that shaped a career or pointed to new directions.

    It helps of course if those you gave a hand up to along life’s journey included some of the best writers, editors, thinkers and artists in the country. So the stories were good – funny, self-deprecating and rich in detail. No doubt more will flow today.

    It will take some time to winkle them all out, because Brian was also a very private man. He was not one to sing his own praises, to grandstand or draw attention to himself.

    Even in his dying days as he fretted about unsolved problems on his boards, he said, but I don’t want to have to make a speech. Sarah lovingly assured him that that was something he didn’t have to worry about any more.

    Over the past week much has been said about his professional achievements. His was the original portfolio career. Although, more often than not he was the boss.

    Career is the wrong word to describe the contributions Brian made through the work he did – work that gave him great satisfaction, but work that enabled others to get closer to achieving their potential and to leave a tangible benefit.

    Most of us would be happy to have one of these achievements on our CV:

    To have been arguably the best political reporter of his generation at the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian, Bulletin and Nation, breaking stories that took citizens behind the veil of official secrecy and in the process inspiring younger journalists, well before Watergate spawned a new generation of reporters;

    Or to have operated at the highest levels of government, respected by both the Brahmin prime ministers of the 1970s, Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. There he learnt the quiet, persuasive ways needed to get things done behind the scenes in Canberra. Still he managed to discreetly leave his fingerprints on policy innovations that changed this country;

    Or to have reinvigorated Penguin Books and provided new opportunities for Australian writers, editors, booksellers and readers, and in the process to foster new publishing ventures;

    Or to have helped SBS realise its vision and bring this country’s contemporary multiculturalism to life on radio and television. To provide opportunities for Australians to engage with the rich diversity of non-British public broadcasting, programs and news in languages other than English and sports that hadn’t previously been televised here;

    Or at the Broadcasting Authority to find ways that ensured the commercial broadcasters accepted their responsibilities to put resources into telling Australian stories; and be fair and accountable, as custodians of the public spectrum that made their businesses possible and profitable;

    Or to have encouraged Prime Minister Paul Keating to articulate a vision for a creative nation, and a nation in which the tyranny of distance could be circumvented by broadband and technology;

    Or to have pushed the ABC to be more ambitious and innovative, to be less fearful of the future, to look out rather than in, to include more of the full diversity of the country on the airwaves and online. To mysteriously use his impeccable Canberra skills to head off a crippling efficiency dividend, to turn a potentially hostile inquiry into a ringing endorsement, and to prepare the Corporation for the digital future – while battling an bewilderingly hostile political environment that threatened to undermine a cherished national institution;

    Or to have ensured that more of the copyright income from the publishing business found its way back to creators through CAL’s cultural fund, so they could produce more and better works, to make a bigger impact, to aim higher.

    In all of these roles Brian sought to broaden the understanding of what being Australian meant, and how it could be expressed – what made us unique, what we could do better, what we could adapt and learn from others, and how we could express it in the most beautiful and memorable ways.

    As Tony Maniaty noted, Brian was an Australian romantic. He was of the generation that grew up after the Second World War, as the shackles of colonialism were being thrown away. A new global system emerged, shaped in large measure by Franklin Roosevelt’s defining four freedoms, of speech and religion and from want and fear. Over time this country too was transformed – and as a result a poor Catholic boy from Cairns got to occupy some of the most influential offices in the land.

    Brian came of age at a time when questions of national identity were increasingly actively explored – without apology or self-consciousness: in journalism, literature, art, music, film, TV, politics.

    And in the process that very sense of identity changed, it became richer, more nuanced, more open – better able to engage with the world.

    This occurred, thanks in no small measure to the articles that were written, the books commissioned and published, the films produced, the television shows broadcast, the art gathered in national and state galleries and leased through Artbank. More often than not, Brian was there at the pivotal moment – talking, writing, encouraging, cajoling, making connections, putting people and ideas together.

    He was not uncritical, but he loved Australians and the idea of Australia.

    But he was not simply an Australian romantic. He brought a pragmatic, critical hardheadedness to all the things he did. As a working class boy, he knew the value of money – he was not one who thought an artist starving in her garret could produce her best work. He knew that money mattered, that building an audience mattered and that if that audience also engaged with something of quality that was distinctively Australian, so much the better.

    He was culturally ambitious, long before it became the Australia Council’s mantra.

    So at Penguin he worked hard to disrupt remnant colonial arrangements and ensure that Australian authors could be distributed and find readers in other countries, even if New York and London editors complained that they wrote with ‘an Australian accent’. While at the ABC he tried hard to try to convince the BBC to buy Australian-made programs – he was not happy that we just bought theirs in bulk.

    He really believed that content was king long before that became a cliché. This was not a romantic notion. He wanted to make sure that the operators of the new digital platforms paid for the content that he knew would drive their businesses. He knew that without an economic structure that returned income to producers and creators, it would be hard for a small English-speaking country to continue to make original programs, stories and works of art, that could be enjoyed here and shared with the world.

    There is still no bigger challenge in the creative cultural sector, though Brian did more than his bit to chip away at it.

    He wasn’t content to wait for someone else to come up with a solution. He knew that was one of the benefits, and responsibilities, of having your hands on big levers, you had to be brave enough to pursue original ideas that others hadn’t got to yet.

    Many of his insights came from his prodigious reading. He was a literary omnivore. He read widely, he made unlikely connections, he was curious. So at the end in his room at the Wolper there were books on the bedside table, the beautifully redesigned Meanjin, an advance copy of Griffith Review Fixing the System and poems by the great Seamus Heaney.

    When life was just too busy in those demanding jobs, he used to say there was always time for poetry. A few minutes with a great poem could provide the creative, emotional and intellectual nourishment to keep you going. And it did – until the very end.

    As you all know, his favorite greeting was, What are you reading? It was a good conversation starter for a sometimes shy, and private man. But he was always interested in the answer and generally had something to add.

    So my final word of tribute is to say, Keep Reading. Should we meet him again, you know his first question will be: What are you reading?

    And he won’t be satisfied if you say, A bit of this and a bit of that.

    Julianne Schultz is Editor and Professor, Griffith Review.

     

  • Malcolm Turnbull’s NBN.

    The evidence continues to build that Malcolm Turnbull’s version of the NBN is failing on almost all grounds.

    Analysis by Monash University researcher, Richard Ferrers, shows that the fibre to the premises option would actually deliver better value than the fibre to the node alternative which Malcolm Turnbull has been advocating.

    In his latest newsletter, Renai LeMay draws on this research by Richard Ferrers. See link below:

    https://delimiter.com.au/2016/01/04/detailed-analysis-of-nbn-cos-finances-shows-fttp-better-value-than-fttn/

  • Crony capitalism, lobbyists and markets.

    In the AFR today, John Kehoe writes about the power of lobbyists and crony capitalists who are killing faith in markets. He refers particularly to the US where ‘crony capitalism’ is sapping vitality out of the US economy. He adds that

    ‘If you analyse the very richest Australians, beyond lucky inheritance, many have built their enormous wealth in industries heavily influenced by government regulation. Media, gaming and real estate development dominate the c.v.s of the upper echelons of the BRW rich list.’

    See link to John Kehoe’s article: http://www.afr.com/opinion/regulation-crony-capitalists-are-killing-faith-in-the-markets-20160104-glyr2q

    I am also reposting an article I wrote in May this year for our policy series. It was entitled ‘Vested interests and the subversion of the public interest‘.

     

  • John Quiggin. Piketty and the Australian exception.

    Over the past forty years, leading developed economies, most notably the United States have experienced an upsurge in inequality of income and wealth. Most of the benefits of economic growth have accrued to those in the top 1 per cent of the income distribution. Meanwhile, living standards for those in the bottom half of the income distribution have stagnated or even declined.

    Piketty’s work, published in reports and academic journals, has documented these trends. His book, Capital, not only brought the issues to the attention of a broader public, but presented an analysis suggesting that worse is to come. Piketty argues that we are in the process of returning to a ‘patrimonial’ society, in which income from inherited wealth is the predominant source of inequality.

    Piketty’s work has previously focused mainly on the United States, but the research presented in Capital points to similar trends in the United Kingdom. Although inequality has grown much less in France, the third country on which he has detailed data, Piketty argues that the same trend will emerge unless there is a substantial change in political conditions.

    To the extent that there is a general trend of the kind described by Piketty, we would expect it to emerge first in the English speaking world, where the shift to market liberalism and financialised capitalism was earlier and more complete. And, indeed, a sharp increase in inequality may be observed in other English speaking countries including Canada and New Zealand.

    Australia, on the other hand, looks like a counterexample. On most measures of inequality Australia looks more like France than like the rest of the English speaking world. Although Australia’s have experienced an increase in inequality on most measures, the general picture is one of broadly distributed improvements in living standards, as illustrated by Peter Whiteford’s contribution to a recent seminar on Piketty published by the Australian Economic Review (AER). As Whiteford notes:

    Income growth was highest for the richest 20 per cent of the population, at close to 60 per cent in real terms, but even for the poorest 20 per cent, real incomes grew by more than 40 per cent between 1996 and 2007.

    Other measures such as the Gini coefficient and the ratio of median to mean income tell a similar story. Inequality has increased over the period since the 1980s, but only modestly and with frequent reversals.

    Turning to the top 1 per cent of the income distribution, evidence from tax data, presented by Roger Wilkins in the AER volume suggests that the share of income accruing to this group has risen, but not to the same extent as in other English speaking countries This is consistent with the observations of Piketty himself, who notes:‪

    the upper centile’s [top 1 per cent] share is nearly 20 percent in the United States, compared with 14–15 percent in Britain and Canada and barely 9–10 percent in Australia.

    Much of the credit for this comparatively benign outcome must go to the Labor government that held office from 1983 to 1997 and implemented a relatively progressive version of the market liberal reform agenda. Labor managed a reform of the Australian tax and welfare system that shielded low income Australians from the worst effects of the market liberal revolution that swept the English speaking world in the 1970s and 1980s.

    In most countries, policies of financial deregulation, privatisation and microeconomic reform were accompanied by regressive changes to the tax and welfare systems. By contrast, Labor introduced broadly progressive tax reforms including a capital gains tax and a crackdown on tax avoidance.

    Rather than treating welfare payments and tax policy as separate, the restructuring sought to integrate the two, taking account of the combined impact of means tests and tax policies to optimise the balance between efficiency and redistribution.

    These changes weren’t sufficient to prevent growing inequality of income and wealth, and some of them were eroded over time. Nevertheless, in broad terms, a redistributive tax–welfare system was maintained under the succeeding conservative government, even as it was being eroded in other English-speaking countries.

    Labor returned to office in 2007, just in time to make its next big contribution: the fiscal stimulus that allowed Australia to avoid the recession generated by the Global Financial Crisis in nearly every other country. In combination with previous successful pieces of macroeconomic management, such as the Reserve Bank’s handling of the Asian Financial Crisis in the 1990s, the result has been an economic expansion lasting nearly 25 years, unparalleled in Australia’s economic history, and scarcely equalled anywhere in the world. The strength of the labour market has encouraged a broad spread of prosperity not seen elsewhere.

    Together these factors explain why Australia has avoided the drastic increases in inequality seen in other English speaking countries. On the other hand, although Australia’s a long way from the plutocracy that already characterises the United States, there is no room for complacency.

    Australia’s relatively equal distribution of income and wealth depends on a history of strong employment growth and a redistributive tax–welfare system. Neither can be taken for granted. The end of the mining boom has inevitably resulted in slower growth which bears hardest on those at the bottom of the income distribution. And, as elsewhere, the political pressure to take burdens from the rich and shift them to the poor is never-ending.

    Moreover, Australia has not proved itself immune to the political dynamic, noted by Piketty, by which increasing personal wealth allows the wealthy to dominate politics, then enact policies that protect their own wealth. The archetypal example is Silvio Berlusconi in Italy but the situation in the United States is arguably worse. The majority of members of the US Congress are millionaires, with not much difference between Democrats and Republicans.

    Given the pattern of highly unequal incomes, and social immobility observed in the US today, we can expect inheritance to play a much bigger role in explaining inequality for the generations now entering adulthood than for the current recipients of high incomes and owners of large fortunes. Inherited advantages in the patrimonial society predicted by Piketty will include direct transfers of wealth as well as the effects of increasingly unequal access to education, early job opportunities and home ownership.

    The move towards a patrimonial society already happening in the US is evident at the very top of the Australian income distribution. As in the US, the claim that the rich are mostly self-made is already dubious, and will soon be clearly false. Of the top 10 people on the Business Review Weekly (BRW) rich list, four inherited their wealth, including the top three. Two more are in their 80s, part of the talented generation of Jewish refugees who came to Australia and prospered in the years after World War II. When these two pass on, the rich list will be dominated by heirs, not founders.

    The same point is even clearer with the BRW list of rich families. As recently as 20 years ago, all but one of these clans were still headed by the entrepreneurs who had made the family fortune in the first place. Now, all but one of the families are rich by inheritance.

    So, Australians have no room for complacency. In an economy dominated by capital, and in the absence of estate taxation, there is little to stop the current drift towards a more unequal society from continuing and even accelerating.

    On the other hand, Australia’s relative success in using the tax and welfare systems to spread the benefits of economic growth provides grounds for optimism elsewhere in the world. Australia’s experience belies the claim that any attempt to offset the growth of inequality must cripple economic growth. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that there is plenty of scope for progressive changes to tax policy that would partly or wholly offset the trends towards greater inequality documented by Piketty.

    This article was first published on John Quiggin’s blog on 2 January 2016.

     

     

  • Pope Francis’ frightening invitation to freedom.

    I found this article very good reading for Christmas and the holiday season.  It gives a very good account of where Pope Francis is heading.  The article highlights the often-quoted comment from the Scriptures that the Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath.  The author Tom Roberts is Editor at Large of the National Catholic Reporter in the US.  John Menadue

    http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/francis-frightening-inviation-freedom

  • Victoria Rollison. The WorkChoices Zombie

    Let’s put aside the irony of a Liberal government, the preacher of the ills of ‘big government’, spending $45 million to reach its expensive Royal Commission tentacles into the operation of trade unions. Let’s put aside the obvious political nature of such a witch-hunt, designed to reduce the power of unions to negotiate on behalf of workers, a seek and destroy mission with the pincer-movement aim of a) benefiting employers at the big end of town, b) reducing unions’ capacity to contribute funds to Labor election campaigns and c) to discredit Labor MPs with union backgrounds. For now, putting these contradictions and political trickery aside, which are so wholly obvious to us but strangely not apparently obvious nor interesting to commentators in the mainstream media, let’s instead look at the Trade Union Royal Commission’s findings in relation to the lives of those people the commission paradoxically claim to represent the interests of; workers.

    Using my own situation as a worker and union member as a representative case study, I note with alarm that the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has proclaimed the findings of the Trade Union Royal Commission (TURC) as justification to fight an election over industrial relations. Clearly Turnbull thinks that there is a large enough problem in the trade union movement, a movement just as separate to the operations of government as a private company, that he’s pushing this problem to the top of his government’s agenda. The handful of bogey-man union officials who have been cited in the TURC findings as having acted not in the best interest of workers, are now the government’s enemy number one. As a union member, I don’t like to hear about my union funds being used to fund union officials’ extravagant lifestyles, nor do I appreciate reports of criminal activity, which appear to be almost entirely confined to rogue elements in construction unions. But, as a worker and a member of a young family, a woman, a parent to a young child who has childcare and then her whole education in front of her followed by a job search, a mortgage holder, a South Australian, a buyer of groceries, a daughter of aging parents, a wife to a husband who works in the manufacturing industry and a member of a society experiencing the scary and increasingly apparent effects of climate change, I must admit, the conduct of a few dodgy union officials in industries I don’t work in, whose conduct hasn’t been proven to adversely impact the conditions of workers they represent, is about as high on my list of ‘what is the government doing about this?’ priorities as the fate of Johnny Depp’s girlfriend’s court case over the illegal entry of small dogs.

    And even if I did care deeply about the conduct of some dodgy union officials in the construction industry (which I don’t), I care a thousand times more deeply about those union officials having the freedom to do their job to help safeguard the safety of workers on construction sites. I’m pleased there are union officials stopping work when they see risks to workers, because it’s blatantly clear that if the union officials didn’t care, no one would. This is because it’s obvious that many construction employers care far more about the speed of their profit making than they do the safety and wellbeing of their employees. So if it wasn’t for the unions stepping in to insist on safety, far more accidents and deaths would occur. I would have thought a responsible government would be more concerned about safety on construction sites than the isolated actions of a few bad apple unionists. Especially after that very same government were so upset about the deaths of four insulation installers that they held a Royal Commission into a government program that funded the private companies whose unsafe work practices led to the tragic deaths of workers. Another Royal Commission aimed at hurting the Labor Party; do you see a pattern forming here?

    I notice a day after the release of the TURC findings, the ABC News Radio poll asking ‘In your experience, are unions riddled with ‘deep-seated’ and ‘widespread’ misconduct?’, after 3,466 votes have been cast, found 74% said ‘no’.

    This result suggests I’m not alone in my perception of the TURC findings as more of a political statement than the experience of union members.

    As a worker, it would be wholly irrational for me to congratulate, or indeed vote for a government vowing to smash the power of unions. As a worker in an economy with stagnant wage growth, it would be counterproductive for me to encourage my government to give employers, who already hold an elephant-on-a-seesaw-unequal position of power in the Goliath-capital battle with David-the-workers, any more power to define my working conditions. Because let’s face it, not every employer wants to pay the minimum wage, without penalty rates, minimum entitlements and no chance of a pay rise. But enough employers do (take a look at 7-eleven) so that the entire wage structure of the country would be pulled down without unions pushing back against the floodgates. When former PM Tony Abbott said WorkChoices was dead-buried-and-cremated, workers always knew that it would only take a second-term Liberal government 5 minutes to resurrect the WorkChoices zombie from the grave; a zombie who’s bite is fatal to workers’ rights.

    Therefore, if Turnbull wants to play this game and if he is really serious that dodgy union officials are the biggest threat facing our country, and his highest agenda item in an election, I echo Bill Shorten’s words on hearing Turnbull’s plans: BRING IT ON. And so say all of us.

    Victoria Rollison is a political blogger, working in marketing and communications.

  • Wayne McMillan. Rewriting the Rules: Lessons for Australia

    The Roosevelt Institute’s Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz a Nobel Economics prize winner in his own right, has come up with a block buster report on the social and economic problems facing American society. This115 page report which was published as a book in November 2015 was put together with valuable assistance and input from a broad cross-section of people under the stewardship of Stiglitz. Notable economists such as Brad De Long and Robert Reich were among the consulting researchers.

    Stiglitz’s team of researchers have revealed that the USA is in big trouble and at the heart of it are misplaced rules, laws and economic policies, based on faulty economic theory. If you combine this with an over-arching, pervasive, narrow minded neo-liberal ideology, then you have a recipe for economic and social disaster.

    American neo-liberal ideology and orthodox economic thinking have produced income and wealth inequality of immense historical proportions. Lowly paid workers are in the majority whilst the greater percentage of income and wealth is transferred to an ever decreasing smaller number of people.

    “Over the last 35 years, America’s policy choices have been grounded in false assumptions, and the result is a weakened economy in which most Americans struggle to achieve or maintain a middle-class lifestyle while a small percentage enjoy an increasingly large share of the nation’s wealth. Though these lived experiences and personal challenges are important, they are only the tip of the iceberg that is the crisis of slow income growth and rising inequality. To fully understand the scope of the problem, we must also examine the array of laws and policies that lie beneath the surface—the rules that determine the balance of power between public and private, employers and workers, innovation and shared growth, and all the other interests that make up the modern economy.” Dominant economic frameworks over the past 35 years—like “trickle-down” economics, and the idea that markets work perfectly on their own—paved the way for an onslaught of policies that decimated America’s middle class. This paper presents an evidence-backed alternative framework:

    • Markets are shaped by laws, regulations, and institutions. Rules matter.
    • The rules determine how fast the economy grows, and who shares in the benefits of that prosperity.
    • Concentrated wealth can hurt economic performance. Under the right rules, shared prosperity and strong economic performance reinforce each other. There is no trade-off.
    • A tentative, piecemeal policy response to help the neediest will not suffice. We must rewrite the rules of the economy with a focus on restoring a balance of power between the competing interests that make up the modern economy” p.7

    What should and can Americans do to rectify this appalling predicament? According to Stiglitz and his researchers they must:-

    1. Ensure that the financial sector becomes responsive to consumer needs, by removing hidden financial charges and fees. Bring in rules that penalises risky investments.
    2. Make full employment the goal.
    3. Introduce legislation to protect vulnerable workers. Allow workers to organise and strengthen their right to collective bargaining.
    4. Change the tax system to make it fairer, by removing corporate welfare tax expenditures and raising taxes on capital gains and dividends. Introduce a financial speculation tax to deter short-term trading and encourage long-term investment.
    5. Ensure some reasonable level in the remuneration of chief executive officers with ordinary salary/ wage earnings.

    The most dramatic recommended changes were to:-

    • Overhaul American social security, by introducing a universal Medicare and affordable health care.
    • Expand Social Security with a supplemental public investment program modelled on private Individual Retirement Accounts, and raise the payroll cap to increase revenue.
    • Invest in young children through child benefits, early education, and universal pre-kindergarten.
    • Increase access to higher education by reforming tuition financing, restoring protections to student loans, and adopting universal income-based repayment.
    • Expand access to banking services through a postal savings bank. Create a public option for the supply of mortgages.

    The lessons learnt from the USA are there as a warning to Australia. Australians should be very careful now about allowing the present government to focus on deficit reduction via fiscal cutbacks, instead of new job creation. Full employment for anyone who wants to work is the keystone for any just and healthy society and should be the number one priority for any government. In addition, workers should be on guard where they have no union coverage or their union protection is whittled away by new industrial legislation that prevents unions from operating effectively in workplaces. Reducing deficits and worker protections during economic slumps will only impoverish workers, the unemployed and the poor and should be resisted vigorously by all ordinary Australians.

    The Anglo-American variety of neo-liberalism has been a dismal failure in the UK and the USA, where it has caused only hardship and poverty for the populace, Australia should take the right steps not to make the same mistakes.

    [Wayne McMillan is a keen follower of current economic trends and policies. He has been studying Economics for over 30 years, he lives in Whalan NSW.]

  • What is the driving force behind Jihadist terrorism?

    In this article, (link below) Olivier Roy identifies the patterns of radicalism which have led to terrorism. He describes these patterns

    • Frustration and resentment against society seems to be the only psychological trait they share.
    • The majority of the radicals come from second generation Muslims born in Europe
    • Many have histories of petty delinquency and drug-dealing.
    • It is clearly a youth movement.
    • Very few of them have a history of militancy, either political or religious.
    • There is an unusually high proportion of converts.
    • The more recent pattern is the recruitment of young women to marry jihadists.
    • The main motivation of young men joining jihad seems to be the fascination for a narrative.
    • The revolt is expressed in religious terms.
    • Radicals have a loose or no connection with the Muslim communities in Europe.

    Olivier Roy suggests that the aim of policies should be to accentuate the estrangement of radicals from the Muslim population and to dry up the narrative of Islam as the religion of the oppressed.

    I first saw this article reproduced in ‘Inside Story’ on 18 December 2015.

    http://insidestory.org.au/what-is-the-driving-force-behind-jihadist-terrorism

  • ISIL is really a revolt by young Muslims against their parents’ generation.

    In Quartz on 7 December 2015, Australian journalist, Emma-Kate Symons, shines a particular light on young Muslim terrorists. She argues that ISIL is really a revolt by young Muslims against their parents’ generation. We have seen that many times on numerous issues – younger people who reject the values and materialism of earlier generations.

    See link to article below.

    http://qz.com/562128/isil-is-a-revolt-by-young-disaffected-muslims-against-their-parents-generation/

  • Magical thinking about ISIS.

    Adam Shatz is the contributing editor at the London Review of Books. He lives in New York. In this article he says

    ‘The attacks in Paris don’t reflect a clash of civilisations, but rather the fact that we really do live in a single, if unequal world, where the torments in one region inevitably spill over into another, where everything connects, somethings with lethal consequences.  … For all its medieval airs, the caliphate holds up a mirror to the world we have made, not only in Raqqa and Mosul, but in Paris, Moscow and Washington.’

    See link to article below.

    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n23/adam-shatz/magical-thinking-about-isis