John Menadue

  • Tony Doherty. Removing the wrapping and ribbons from Christmas.

    Do you know the story of the birth of Jesus?

    What a silly question!

    At this time of year, it is impossible to escape it.

    Children remind us in their charming Christmas plays. Shopping centres play carols until we could scream. Television programmers dust off their 1950’s biblical dramas. Churches decorate cribs – the odd donkey even appears in more adventurous parish churches.

    But how much of this story comes from the four gospels?

    Let’s unwrap some of the shiny paper and see what’s really inside.

    Mark, the writer of the first gospel, doesn’t mention Jesus’ birth at all. His story begins with Jesus as an adult. John offers a soaring poem about the Word of God – but no birth. Matthew and Luke tell the story of the nativity, but each from their own particular perspective.

    Matthew tells of Joseph’s understandable disquiet about Mary’s pregnancy, but the moment of birth is almost an aside. He gives us the visit of the Magi following a mysterious star, a wicked king with designs on killing the infant, and the refugee escape of the family to Egypt.

    Luke tells the story of an angel visiting the young Mary of Nazareth and her faithful acceptance of a puzzling and unknown future; of the girl Mary’s elderly cousin Elizabeth and her future son, John; of Mary’s journey to Bethlehem and the birth of her baby attended by the farm animals; of shepherds and angels; of the baby’s circumcision; and later, of how the boy Jesus is presented in the Temple and subsequently lost.

    Intriguing accounts and even more intriguing anomalies. But where do they leave us?

    Simple stories are remembered better than complex ones. But sometimes they miss the subtleties. So over time, the remarkable differences between these gospel stories have been scrambled together into one heavily edited – and romanticised – story.

    But wait! There’s more. Matthew actually begins his story with an endless list of mostly strange names, the genealogy of Jesus – a sort of first century Ancestry.com.

    Remember the (very male) chant – Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac fathered Jacob, Jacob fathered Judah, Judah fathered Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez fathered Hezon, Hezon fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab… and so on. This is about the place I usually drop off to sleep.

    This genealogy, which we frequently ignore, is a remarkable story showing that the family of Jesus arose from a line that included quite dubious and colourful characters, more disreputable than a group of drunken uncles at a Christmas dinner.

    If you take the wrapping off some of these stories you find liars, murderers, prostitutes, power-grabbers, corrupt officials – sinners of every sort. Humanity at its worst. Jacob did steal his brother’s birthright. Judah did sleep with his daughter-in-law. David did commit adultery and murder to cover it up. No wonder we protect the kiddies from this part of the Christmas story.

    The moral behind the genealogy – if I might stretch myself to suggest one – seems to be that out of this sorrowful saga is born a miracle of grace.

    That’s not the whole story, of course. Before the nativity, there were women and men of vision and courage; passionate searchers. There was the sublime poetry of Isaiah, the determined leadership of Moses, the courage of prophets like Elijah who spoke truth to power, and the delicate wisdom of the psalms.

    It was from this background that the story emerged of a young homeless couple’s baby born in the filth and stench of an animal shelter. A baby who would soon be part of a refugee family looking for a home.

    The Christmas story, as told in the gospels, never avoids the gritty reality of genuine human lives. It never whitewashes its history. Nor should we. We tend to idealise and spiritualise the story – understandably, I suppose. There’s no need to be a total grinch and take the fun, beauty and romance entirely out of the story, but remember – it is a tale told by a Church populated by struggling, bruised, confused and searching human beings. It was ever thus.

    Today we need to go no further than honestly face the sea of sexual abuse stories and the damage this has caused in the lives of so many.

    Christmas asks us to be open to recognising the sacred in the commonplace, even inside the darkest corners of our lives – the bombed-out cities, families in refugee detention centres, and the marginalised with little food and water, struggling to survive. On Manus Island, in Beirut, in Paris, in Nigeria. In a little boy washed up on a Turkish beach.

    Is there no limit to the darkness?

    When you untie the ribbons from the story, drop the tinsel and unwrap the shiny paper, Christmas is about a light being seen through the darkness of a very bleak world. It’s about the miracle of grace shining through such brokenness, in the person of a tiny baby.

    Monsignor Tony Doherty is parish priest at St Mary Magdalene, Rose Bay.

  • How a photographer of refugees finds the stories that get left behind.

    ‘I feel an obligation to give something back to the people I photograph.’

    See link to stories and photos from the Huffington Post.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alessandro-penso-interview_5672f66fe4b0648fe3028939?ir=World%253Fncid%253Dnewsltushpmg00000003

  • Andrew Leigh. Putting the spotlight on company tax dodgers

    Every year, the International Tax Review nominates its ‘Global Tax 50’ — the people and organisations who are most influential in improving tax systems around the world. Two years ago, David Bradbury made the list, for being “a vocal and proactive voice on a variety of tax issues”.

    One of Bradbury’s award-winning reforms was tax transparency — laws that required the tax office to report the tax paid by firms with total income above $100 million. The Liberals didn’t like the change, and voted against it at the time. After winning government, they set about trying to repeal it — first by warning of kidnap risk, and then by suggesting that it might embarrass some firms if the public knew how little tax they paid.

    Farcically, the government said that it wouldn’t pass its own multinational tax package unless the parliament agreed to wind back secrecy. In effect, Scott Morrison was holding a gun to his own head, but the Greens fell for it. On the last day of parliament for 2015, the Greens Party agreed to amendments that kept two in three private companies out of the tax transparency net.

    This week’s release of tax transparency data has shown the value of letting the sunlight in. The 1300 economic groups covered by the report had a combined taxable income of $170 billion, and contributed $40bn in tax towards funding Australia’s schools, hospitals and roads.

    Worryingly however, the tax office report also reveals that one in four of these companies paid no tax despite earning over $100m in revenue. In the energy and resources sector, 57 per cent of multinational firms paid no tax, while in the banking and financial sector the figure was 45 per cent. The companies concerned will no doubt want to explain these figures further to their customers and the Australian community.

    Tax transparency matters because without it, we have no way of knowing if big companies are paying their fair share. There are plenty that do, and their contribution deserves acknowledgment.

    More importantly, though, it is clear some firms don’t. When companies are paying tax at a fraction of the standard rate, Australians should ask why. At a time when the government is talking about raising the GST to 15 per cent — a decision that would hit low-income Australians hardest — it is right that we should look closely at whether all taxpayers are making a fair contribution.

    While Labor has supported the Government’s baby steps on multinational tax, we don’t believe they are enough. We are particularly concerned about the government’s unwillingness to address the practice of companies loading debt into Australia to artificially inflate their tax deductions.

    Thanks to the ongoing corporate tax inquiry — particularly the work of Labor senators Sam Dastyari and Chris Ketter — we know that some big companies are transferring money into their Australian arms and dressing this up as a loan, even though it’s really just shifting money from one pocket to the other. In paying back these artificial loans, companies can send their profits overseas while pocketing a tax deduction at the same time.

    That’s the problem Labor’s package zeros in on. By moving to a worldwide gearing ratio approach, companies would only be able to claim deductions against the average amount of debt they owe to banks around the world.

    Labor’s plan is grounded in careful OECD work, and costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office. By closing loopholes, we recognise that Australia needs a tax system that rewards the productive, the innovative, the resilient, the clever and the competitive. Not a tax system that rewards those willing to push the envelope the furthest.

    We need a plan to win investment from the world, yes. But this plan should work because big firms think it is worth buying into Australia — not because our government thinks they have to cut special deals that sell us out. A plan that leverages the ingenuity of the Australian workforce, the strength of Australia’s institutions and the quality of Australia’s infrastructure.

    Our plan for winning investment from the world should not be premised on how big a tax break companies can get here, because that is not a competition we’re ever going to win. If we want to join the countries at the top of the global league table, we need to invest in growth, not engage in a race to the bottom with our tax loopholes.

    In recent weeks the OECD has handed down the final set of deliverables for its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Action Plan. This plan has been more than two years in the making and lays out a comprehensive 15-point agenda to close the loopholes that have opened up in the tax net due to changing technology and an increasingly global business environment.

    The 15 items on the action plan tackle everything from the taxation of intangible goods to hybrid instrument rules and the creation of a multilateral tax instrument to allow more rapid co-ordination of rules between OECD countries in the future. Australia is making progress in some of these areas — for example, the effort to extend the GST to digital downloads, which was supported by both Labor and Liberal state and territory governments. But there is still a lot of work to do.

    The Treasurer has the OECD’s blueprint, and Labor’s costed proposals. He must now choose between his regressive measures and our progressive proposals. Unlike a 15 per cent GST, closing multinational tax loopholes won’t impede growth, worsen inequality or make housing less affordable. There should be no more excuses and no more delays when billions of dollars in tax revenue are potentially at stake.

     

    Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer. This article first a appeared in the Business Spectator on 17 December 2015.

     

     

     

     

  • John Duggan. The effect of healthcare privatisation on patient outcomes

    Recent actions by the Federal Minister of Health and her predecessors indicate the government’s aim to shift hospital care from the public to the private sector. Associated with this is the   developing perception that private hospitals are superior just as private schooling is increasingly held to be superior to publicly funded schooling.

    However, while there are massive data available comparing standards and outcomes in the school system, public, private and Catholic, there are virtually no Australian data comparing the two hospital systems; the only study found is a Productivity Commission report outlining the equal inefficiency of both systems.    http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/hospitals/report

    The Federal, State and Territory Health Departments are treasuries of relevant data awaiting the will, finance and logistics to convert data to information and information into knowledge.. The absence of such  data comparing quality of care and outcomes in the two healthcare systems, contrasting with educational data may be attributed to apathy or to the power of vested interests ,.However, studies from the US and , Canada indicate that it can be done,. recognising that in Australia, as the Productivity Commission reported,, the data sources are multiple and ill-coordinated. and that both systems function at 20 % below best practice,.,

    To interpret the US data, it is necessary to understand that, at least until the Obama legislation, there were several hospital systems and funding mechanisms. There were the not-for-profit hospitals often run by religious or community//civic groups , for- profit institutions, generally investor owned and part of a chain, and thirdly, those owned by cities or universities.

    A detailed analysis of 14 studies in the US, totalling 36 million admissions to 26,399 US hospitals 1982 – 1995 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12054406 .compared  for-profit versus not-for-profit hospitals .It showed  a small but statistically significant 2% elevation in mortality in for-profit hospitals. Six of the component studies showed a statistically significant advantage for not-for- profit institutions; while only one study           showed a similar advantage in for-profit hospitals. The only obstetric study, that of 1,642,002 patients in 241 hospitals showed a highly significant 9.5% increase in mortality rates for babies in for-profit hospitals.

    In another study the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration studied data on 3100 hospitals, adjusting for differing patient characteristics. Lower mortality rates were associated with teaching hospitals, a higher proportion of board-certified medical staff (specialist qualifications), a higher proportion of registered nurses and higher payroll expenses i.e. staffing levels. A higher mortality rate was associated with for profit and public (in Australian parlance state-owned) hospitals compared with not-for-profit hospitals .http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=NEJMED++19

    The U.S. Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organisations and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services studied data submitted in 2004 to the American Hospitals Association on coronary occlusion, heart failure and pneumonia. Detailed statistical analysis showed that “for-profit hospitals consistently underperformed not- for-profit hospitals”. The conclusion reached was that “Patients are more likely to receive high quality care in not-for -profit hospitals and in hospitals with high registered nurse staffing ratios and more investment in technology”.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=landon+in+Arch

    Of several studies of specific conditions, one of the largest compared outcomes in for-profit and not-for-profit renal dialysis centres in the U.S http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=195538. In a review based on 500,000 patient years from 1973 to 1997 in 1342 facilities, six of the eight studies showed a statistically significant increase in mortality in for-profit facilities, one only suggested the same and one suggested lower mortality in for- profit institutions. The authors conclude that “there are annually 2500 (with a plausible range of 1200-4000) excess deaths in U.S. for-profit centres”.

    Another study examined the evidence for performance differences between for-profit and not-for-profit psychiatric inpatient facilities since 1980. All but one of these

    studies found that not- for- profits performed as well as or better than the for-profit psychiatric organisations. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12556598

    In view of the Federal government’s push for cost savings through efficiency we should compare health care administration costs in the U.S. and Canada (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa022033) .While the two countries share many social characteristics with excellent databases, their health care systems are quite different. Canada had a centrally funded health care system and a single payer – the government, while the U.S, .like Australia, had a multitude of health insurance systems with multiple payers. In 1999, health administration costs were at least   $1059 per head in the US compared with $307 per head in Canada. Thus, administration accounted for 31% of health care expenditure in the US but only 16.7% in Canada. In the 30 years to 1999 administration’s share of healthcare labour force expenditure went from18.2% to 27.3% in the US whereas in Canada it rose from 16.0% to 19.1%.

    Privatization also uses more doctor’s time. A recent study of treating doctors in the U.S. showed that they devote an average of one sixth of their time to administration; psychiatrists top the bill at 20% whereas paediatricians only spend 14%.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25626223

    Only one study comparing Quality of Care issues in investor owned and not-for-profit Health Maintenance Organisations in the U.S. has been found. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10411197 Data from the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s Quality Compass on 329 HM0 plans showed that the 248 investor owned plans had lower scores for all the quality of care indices than the 81 not- for- profit plans.

    There is, however, one aspect of the U.S. studies relevant to Australia. A recurrent theme there is the association of better outcomes with medium and large size hospitals, and for procedures performed by experienced doctors with specialist qualifications.http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0907130 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa012337 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa035205

    Whether there is significance in the fact that there are in NSW 380 public hospitals but more than 600private hospitals remains speculative.

    Overall, while the U.S. findings are relevant to the U.S,  their application to Australia is debatable; unfortunately we lack any data to indicate that the deplorable US system is replicated here. With the enormous and growing cost of Healthcare in Australia, surely the time has come to consider an analysis of the costs and patient benefits of the various healthcare systems in Australia , such as has been done in North America..

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

     

  • Walter Hamilton. The Great Wall in the South China Sea

    As Australians enter the end-of-year ‘doze zone’ they would do well to take time to watch a report, available online, prepared by the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, which lifts the curtain on China’s bid to permanently militarise the South China Sea.

    Wingfield-Hayes and his crew defied threats from the Chinese Navy in order to video construction activity at several disputed coral reefs currently being turned into military airfields and bases through massive dredging and construction operations. The BBC report shows scores of ships moored around what previously were largely submerged atolls.

    This is the modern equivalent of the Great Wall of China going up before our eyes­­––except that it’s not easy to train our eyes, or our cameras, on specks of land in a distant sea. China is counting on that.

    The Spratly Islands are variously claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and, of course, China. Beijing is intent on resolving this long-running territorial dispute unilaterally, by chasing its rivals out of the area and using its engineering and military muscle to illegally transform several of the atolls into exclusion zones.

    Wingfield-Hayes states the case succinctly:

    China is bound by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which it has ratified. The law states that sub-sea structures, such as reefs, cannot be claimed as sovereign coastline, and that building artificial structures on top of them does not turn them into sovereign territory either.

    A country that owns a natural island can claim a 12-nautical-mile territorial limit around it, both on the sea and in the air. But artificial structures do not confer any such right. In other words, we would be able to fly our aircraft right up to China’s new islands without breaking any international laws, and China should not interfere with our flight.

    But interfere China did. As the BBC-chartered aircraft flew even within 20 nautical miles it was bombarded with radioed warnings: ‘Unidentified military aircraft [the aircraft was a single-engine Cessna, about as civilian as you can get] in west of Nanxun Reef, this is the Chinese Navy. You are threatening the security of our station! In order to prevent miscalculation leave this area immediately!’ Nanxun Reef, also known as the Gaven Reefs, naturally comprise 150 hectares of coral outcrops less than two metres above sea level at their highest point. Furious reclamation activity since last year has turned it into another fortress in the new Great Wall.

    The biggest construction project, however, is at Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys, which, according to reports, is being turned into an artificial island twice the size of the US military base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. At Mischief Reef, just 140 nautical miles from the Philippines coast, a new runway is also under construction. The BBC cameras caught a view of ‘the lagoon teeming with ships large and small. On the new land, cement plants and the foundations of new buildings’.

    The United States and its allies do not recognize China’s bid to assert sovereign rights over virtually the entire South China Sea by means of this island-building exercise. The US military has undertaken well-publicised cruise and overflight operations to uphold ‘freedom of navigation’ principles. Australia, on the other hand, is attempting to steer a middle course––exercising the freedom, but on the quiet. The BBC chanced upon an RAAF aircraft traversing the area and sending out the following radio message:

    China Navy, China Navy, we are an Australian aircraft exercising international freedom of navigation rights in international airspace in accordance with the international civil aviation convention and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea––over.

    The BBC said the message was not acknowledged. But neither was any warning directed against this Australian military aircraft, as it had been against the BBC’s civilian plane even after it identified itself.

    The RAAF overflight, conducted several weeks ago, was not publicised at the time by the Defence Department in Canberra. Only after the BBC report disclosed the incident did the Chinese acknowledge it. Beijing’s position is that it ‘resolutely opposes any country using freedom of navigation and overflight as a pretext for harming China’s national interest’. For now, however, it doesn’t want to draw Australia into the squabble and thus is content to play along with the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ gambit being run out of Russell Hill.

    There is a big game being played out here from which Australia cannot hide. If our rights and interests are being impinged by China, as clearly they are under the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, we should not hesitate from forthrightly defending them. Instead, we invite a Chinese entity, the Landbridge Group, which has close links to the PLA and the Chinese Communist Party, to operate the strategically important port of Darwin, and quietly watch as the new Great Wall goes up across the South China Sea, the main pathway to Darwin.

    When Japan sent ships into the southern ocean to hunt for whales, Australia took it to the International Court of Justice to uphold its rights under the International Whaling Convention. It was a high profile, hard-fought case on a principle. China asks: Why should Australia involve itself in the South China Sea dispute when its ships and planes are still allowed to travel through unimpeded? Japan asks: Why should Australia object to another country catching an unthreatened species of animal that Australians don’t even eat? To both of them, the answer is the same: You signed up to be a good international citizen, behave like one.

    Walter Hamilton is a former ABC Tokyo correspondent.

     

     

     

  • The Refugees and the New War.

    In the New York Review of Books, Michael Ignatieff draws a link between failure of Western policy in the Middle East, it’s failure to counter ISIS and the resulting refugee flow into Europe. He says

    ‘ISIS wants to convince the world of the world’s indifference to the suffering of Muslims; so we should demonstrate the opposite. ISIS wants to drag Syria even further into the inferno. … The US needs to use its refugee policy to help stabilise its allies in the region. … If Europe and the US show them a way out, refugees won’t take their chances by paying smugglers using rubber dinghies.’

    John Menadue.

    Michael Ignatieff is Edward R Murrow Professor of Practice at Harvard Kennedy School. He was formerly Leader of the Liberal party of Canada.  See article link below.

     

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/refugees-and-new-war/

  • Rod Tiffen. Chris Mitchell at The Australian.

    Chris Mitchell’s place in Australian journalism history is secure. The newspaper he edited lost more money during his tenure than any other paper ever has or will be allowed to again. Mitchell was editor in chief of The Australian for 13 years, and while News Corp is studiously coy about how much profit or loss the paper has made each year, it has certainly been losing money in recent years and probably on a grand scale. News Corp’s star columnist Andrew Bolt said recently The Australian was losing $20 million a year.

    The parade of tributes from News Corp personnel about Mitchell’s genius would make Kim Jong-Un blush, but strangely this record goes unmentioned. Of course, Mitchell’s losses are not on the scale of his Australian colleague, Col Allen, whose losses on the New York Post are rumoured to be around $100 million annually, while Robert Thompson, the global chief executive of News Corp, once told Michael Wolff that the London Times was losing a similar amount of money.

    At least at this stage of his life, Rupert Murdoch’s favoured publications are no longer subject to the disciplines of the market place, perhaps he is more interested in their political impact or the clout they give him with governments, or just past caring.

    The key to Mitchell’s longevity was not his entrepreneurial ability or his commercial success, but rather that he produced the type of newspaper that his proprietor and patron wanted.

    Before coming to The Australian, Mitchell had edited the Courier-Mail. The worst blunder of his time there was the paper’s claim that one of Australia’s most eminent historians, the late Manning Clark, was a Soviet agent. The paper devoted pages to this claim, even though it essentially rested on the fact that Clark had worn a memorial badge he had received in the Soviet Union to a Soviet Embassy function. Mitchell had allowed his prejudices, and perhaps his love of controversy, to over-ride the lack of credible evidence. In many news organisations, this egregious error would have been career-ending, but not in News Corp.

    Mitchell said that the low point of his career was convincing Murdoch to support Kevin Rudd in the 2007 election. Murdoch’s Australian press split down the middle in that election. Whatever conversations the editors had with Murdoch, the Murdoch press would have exposed their ineffectualness if they had all supported Howard. Rudd was going to win anyway whatever Murdoch newspapers, and especially whatever TheAustralian, did. To win in the face of Murdoch opposition would not only have damaged the proprietor’s myth-making, but also given him no leverage with the new government.

    The most notable feature of The Australian during Mitchell’s tenure has been its intellectual decline. Its previous editors Paul Kelly and David Armstrong had maintained an intelligent newspaper, not only in its comment columns, but in its reporting. Mitchell has made the paper much more one-sided, and also less intelligent.

    Matthew Ricketson and Andrew Dodds looked at the paper’s Media Section, introduced by Kelly, and at first it was a very useful and informative addition to Australian public life. The years since have seen a long decline, and now it is principally a vehicle for News Corp propaganda, praising itself and allies and attacking enemies. Over several years now, the paper’s coverage of the ABC has bordered on the moronic, never acknowledging the broadcaster’s achievements, outdoing itself in rhetorical denunciations of any alleged transgressions. You would never guess from the paper’s coverage how much higher the national broadcaster stands in the public’s esteem than the Murdoch press.

    For a project a couple of years ago I looked at its coverage of climate change issues. Robert Manne did an analysis of their editorial positions for his Quarterly Essay Bad News, but I think the judgements of newsworthiness are more revealing and more important. One aspect that stood out to me was that scientific reports were rarely reported straight, but often framed in terms of political controversies surrounding the issues. Important stories that favoured action were downplayed; while stories thought to be adverse were highlighted and visited again and again.

    Since I finished that work, the paper has given front page and extensive coverage to quite ridiculous claims about the Australian Bureau of Meteorology falsifying historical records to make global warming look more severe, plus a study of two couples, self-selected, complaining about the damage wind power was doing to them. The bizarre judgements of newsworthiness meant that anyone seeking to follow the issue through the pages of the Australian would have had a very distorted view.

    Although the tedious, repetitive commentary columns occasion the most criticism, the paper’s erratic judgements of newsworthiness and the declining accuracy of some of its reporting are Mitchell’s principal legacy. 

    Rod Tiffen is Emeritus Professor, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney.

     

     

  • Gabrielle Appleby. What say do our elected representatives have in going to war?

    The authorisation of military force is one of the most serious and consequential powers that governments possess. This power should be exercised with appropriate caution and, where circumstances allow, considered deliberation. Governments should be publicly accountable for its exercise.

    Across the world, debates have emerged around the extent to which the legislative branch should be involved in – and even have the final say on – authorisation of military deployment. So what are the debates, and current practice in, three key Western nations grappling with the threat posed by Islamic State (IS) – the UK, the US and Australia?

    In these three countries, the legislature’s involvement in decisions to use force has little connection to explicit constitutional or statutory provisions. Rather, it is governed by practice and convention, and the ongoing political commitment to such practices by both the government and the legislature.

    The UK: convention requires parliamentary approval

    In the UK, the power to make war, deploy military force and declare peace forms part of the “prerogatives”. The government of the day can exercise these powers without any obligation to consult, or seek authorisation from, parliament.

    Like Australia, the UK operates under a parliamentary system. As such, the government’s exercise of its powers is always subject to scrutiny by the parliament through Prime Minister’s Questions (known as Question Time in Australia) and committee inquiries, or subject to override or control by legislation.

    The government’s exercise of its powers is also often constrained by constitutional “conventions” – established practices that have strong political and moral force, even though they may not be legally enforceable.

    In the last 15 years, a constitutional convention has developed that the government will consult the House of Commons and seek its approval before deploying military force. The practice was first invoked in 2003, when then-prime minister Tony Blair asked for parliamentary authorisation for Britain to enter the Iraq War.

    Parliamentary approval for use of force is not required by any constitutional or legislative provision in the UK. But, by 2011, the government acknowledged that – except in cases of emergency – convention required it to provide the House of Commons with an opportunity to debate and authorise military force.

    There have been some calls to pass this practice into law, or at least formalise it in a parliamentary resolution. But there has been little movement to clarify it, or protect its status in this way.

    Nonetheless, the force of this convention has proven remarkably strong. In August 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron accepted the outcome of the House of Commons vote against further use of military force in Syria. Last week, Cameron again felt obliged to seek approval to expand the British military’s role in Syria. The House of Commons passed the motion after ten hours of debate.

    The US: constitutional requirement is largely inconsequential

    Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution provides that:

    Congress shall have power to declare war.

    On its face, this provision places responsibility to initiate war in the legislature’s hands. However, since the second world war there have been no formal declarations of war. The constitutional requirement is now largely inconsequential.

    But, in 1973, following the unpopular involvement in Vietnam, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution. This requires – with some emergency exceptions – the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing American armed forces to hostilities, and congressional approval to continue that commitment beyond 60 days.

    Despite these provisions, as a matter of practice Congress has ineffectively constrained and scrutinised the president’s power to deploy the military. Bill Clinton committed forces to the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo without seeking congressional authorisation, beyond pointing to congressional authorisation of military funding for the campaign.

    Barack Obama committed American forces to Libya in 2011 without seeking congressional approval. The president claimed that the commitment fell short of hostilities that would engage the War Powers Resolution. Congress issued Obama with a rebuke for not complying with the resolution, but brought no further sanctions against him.

    Obama’s deployment of forces in Iraq and Syria against IS reveals that the responsibility for the failure to obtain congressional approval may at least partly lie with Congress itself. That is, while presidents might be inclined not to seek authorisation, Congress has also been inclined not to insist upon it.

    Obama’s initial decision to deploy forces to Iraq and Syria in September 2014 purportedlyrelied on previous congressional authorisations to use force following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. But by February 2015, Obama attempted to obtain new congressional authorisation. Congress, unable to agree on whether to expand or constrict the campaign, has yet to consider it.

    Australia: calls for reform grow louder

    The Australian Constitution makes no mention of the government’s power to declare war and deploy military forces overseas. Rather, this forms part of the executive powers contained in Section 61 of the Constitution. Their extent and restrictions are considered to mirror the UK government’s foreign affairs prerogatives.

    In direct contrast to the US Constitution, there is no requirement in the Australian Constitution for parliamentary authorisation – or even a requirement to consult parliament – before these powers are exercised.

    Historically, however, there was a practice that following the declaration of war or the deployment of forces, the government would inform parliament and a debate would occur. It did not amount to authorisation. But this practice was consistent with fundamental tenets of Australia’s parliamentary system, where the government’s actions should be reported to and scrutinised by parliament.

    Since the commitment of Australian forces to Afghanistan in 2001, this practice has fallen away. In contrast to the increased parliamentary involvement in the UK since 2001, in Australia there has been a general resistance across both major parties to greater parliamentary involvement by allowing more substantial debate, let alone authorisation.

    The Greens and independent MPs (and before them, the Australian Democrats) have consistently called for the deployment of military force to be preconditioned on parliamentary debate and authorisation. But government decisions to deploy the military generally receive strong bipartisan support.

    Thus, neither the government of the day nor the parliament has sought or insisted upon greater transparency or parliamentary scrutiny.

    However, there are some signs this might be changing. In October, Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek moved a motion that parliament be given an opportunity to debate the government’s strategy in Iraq and Syria.

    Since taking office, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has made repeated promises to increase the level and openness of public debate over government policy. This is yet to materialise with respect to use of military force. But these statements provide promising signs for reconsideration of Australia’s current practice.

    Gabrielle Appleby is Associate professor, UNSW Law School. This article was first published in The Conversation on 10 December 2015P

  • Andrew Ailes. Does Charity Begin At Home?

    Christmas comes but once a year,
    When in the northern hemisphere,
    The cold winds blow, the sun goes down,
    Now every day some children drown.
    The Christmas story’s full of hope,
    Yet life and death hang by a rope.
    It’s not the sword of Damocles,
    It’s shipwreck in the angry seas.

    The icy waves show no remorse.
    But terror is the driving force.
    Ten million people, maybe more,
    Are out there knocking at our door,
    For years we’ve boasted of our wealth,
    Yet cannot fund the nation’s health.
    We cannot house our country’s poor,
    And so we guard the nation’s shore.

    What’s Christmas if we cannot cope.
    With those who have arrived in hope?
    But what about the people here:
    The old and needy live in fear,
    The wards are full, the care homes few,
    Classrooms crowded, and thousands queue
    At shelters, hostels and the food bank?

    This question always draws a blank.

    Now terror stalks the Paris streets:
    Diners murdered in their seats.
    This carnage comes from overseas,
    But doesn’t come with refugees.
    My heart cries out for charity;
    My head thinks of reality.
    And what is worse I feel so hard,
    Should I think ‘Not in my back yard’.

    Andrew Ailes is a British foreign news veteran living in London. 

     

  • The end of the NBN – missed opportunity for the innovation agenda?

    In BuddeBlog, Paul Budde again outlines the major problems that the NBN faces. In this article he draws attention to reports that the government may be considering selling the NBN. He points out that it was remarkable that the NBN did not feature in Malcolm Turnbull’s Innovation Statement.

    See link to BuddeBlog below.

    http://www.buddeblog.com.au/frompaulsdesk/the-end-of-the-nbn-missed-opportunity-for-the-innovation-agenda/

  • Peter Day. God: tiny, unassuming; lying at our feet

    To some of us it’s a time to pause, to reflect, to stand in awe. But to the vast majority of us it’s the silly season: a time of over-eating, drinking, buying, selling, worrying, partying, beaching, and pressured family gatherings.

    And don’t the silly season preachers love it; out of hibernation they come to herald their version of the good news – news that is best delivered away from pulpits and outside of Sundays.

    And what a persuasive, well-packaged homily it is: a seductive narrative that draws so many in:

    “CHRISTMAS IS A TIME FOR GIVING.” 

    (Sub text) And boy, have we got the very things your loved ones need.

    “SPOIL THOSE YOU LOVE THIS CHRISTMAS; SHOW THEM HOW MUCH YOU CARE.”

    (Sub text) Buy, buy, buy, and when you think you’ve finished … c’mon, buy some more!

    So the pressure to spend is on. We walk kilometres, zig-zagging in and out of stores; standing toe-to-toe with fellow shoppers competing for the best deals – and the quickest way out. All the while lamenting the pace of it all, oblivious to what we’ve become: manic consumers.

    And how this millstone of consumerism weighs us down leaving us tired, hassled and empty: presents replacing presence; the secular bullying the sacred.

    As for that birthday infant, the One whose name we daren’t mention lest we cause offense; well, he tends to remain tucked-away somewhere in the basement of our collective hearts: crying, smiling; longing to be cuddled and loved and fed … Happy Holidays, anyway.

    Yet it is this nameless One, this silenced One, who gives voice to the longings of those of us who cannot compete in a world that says, keep-up, or else: the frail, the lonely, the infirm, the strange.

    And as powerful and as noisy as the silly season preachers and Happy Holidays Grinch are, the Christmas child can still be heard whispering gently, persistently: “I-am-with-you: tiny, unassuming; lying at your feet.”

    It is a whisper that alerts us to the beauty and majesty of our humanity; exhorting us to delight in those who cannot keep-up.

    It is to them to whom Christmas belongs.

    Peter Day is a Catholic Priest in Canberra.

  • Andrew Willcocks. The multi-billion dollar trade agreement you’ve never heard of.

    In less than a week trade ministers from across the globe will come together at the 10th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Nairobi, Kenya.

    The meeting follows more than a decade of stalled global trade negotiations since the WTO’s Doha Round of talks in 2001.

    Dominating the Nairobi discussion is the expectation that an impasse will continue over the scope and future of the multilateral Doha trade agenda, particularly given the influence of large newly-minted regional trade agreements.

    Given the slow movement of the WTO talks since the Doha Round in 2001, many country members have forged ahead and conducted so-called “mega-regional” trade agreements amongst themselves, designed to be “WTO plus”.

    These agreements – including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – commenced life as draft propositions between government negotiators, generating little public interest until they burst onto the world stage and into the public lexicon.

    Like many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Australia has also taken part in a growing number of mega-regional and bilateral trade agreements. These include more recently the TPP and free trade agreements with China, Korea, and Japan.

    Each agreement promises to deliver substantial benefits to goods and services exports worth billions of dollars, and each has generated significant media interest and political debate.

    However, in June, to little fanfare, Australia formally accepted a pending treaty that will be part of the Nairobi talks worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually to global trade, known as the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA).

    The TFA is a rescued component of the original Doha Round, concluded at the last WTO Ministerial in Bali in 2013. Once in force, it will benefit global trade through harmonisation of customs procedures, improved cooperation between customs and trade authorities, linkages on facilitation between the private sector and Customs, and a raft of capacity development programs for Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

    The economic benefit to global trade arising from full implementation of the TFA is simply staggering.

    Research undertaken by the OECD has found that in some African countries, estimated revenue losses from inefficient border procedures exceed 5% of GDP. Full implementation of the TFA would stem such losses, reducing trade costs by 16.5% in low income countries, by 14.6% in upper-middle income countries, and by 11.8% in OECD countries.

    A World Bank study in March 2015 estimates that the global trade cost savings from full implementation of the TFA will conservatively amount to US$210 billion per year. To put this in perspective, that’s a gain of US$33.31 per year for each and every person residing in a WTO member country.

    And yet despite its imminent extraordinary global impact, the TFA has earned barely a mention in the international discourse on trade, compared with the attention afforded to the mega-regional trade agreements such as the TPP and TTIP.

    This suggests that the TFA has been dramatically undersold in the lead-up to Nairobi, with the influence of the mega-regionals serving to dominate and further split the discussion on achievements and direction.

    Resulting speculation as to the relevance, scope and future of the WTO’s Doha trade agenda has gripped the Nairobi dialogue. In a recent speech, US Trade Representative Michael Froman called for “credible” results in Nairobi. This may indicate a normative expectation – is the scope of the TPP the new credible?

    Across the Atlantic, the European Parliament has pushed for an ambitious but “realistic” result in Nairobi that takes into account the needs of LDCs. Is the TTIP, on which the EU is presently focused, the new global realistic?

    However, in the same way as the mega-regional agreements grew from small contractual propositions into influential normative actors, so too has the TFA begun to take hold amongst members, suggesting that the WTO’s normative power is far from decrepit.

    To date, 53 countries have already ratified the deal, with that figure growing every month. The TFA will enter into force once two-thirds of WTO members have completed the ratification process.

    Each time a country ratifies the TFA, they are obliged by Article 13 of the Agreement to form or designate a National Committee on Trade Facilitation (NCTF). These committees have already been set up in many countries, and will facilitate implementation of the TFA between domestic Customs, industry, and other stakeholders.

    The NCTF customs-to-stakeholder interaction on facilitation is arguably where the rubber hits the road for ratifying governments, and where the real delivery of benefits will occur. The World Customs Organisation will act as a key player in this space, and some of this work has already commenced.

    The emergence of the Trade Facilitation Agreement onto the world stage should be a core focus of public discussion in the lead-up to the Nairobi Ministerial. It is without doubt a real and tangible success story for the WTO in recent years, limiting popular arguments that the WTO agenda is at risk of being blunted by mega-regional agreements.

    The rapid ratification rate of the TFA also demonstrates members are voting with their feet, further underscoring the argument that although mega-regional agreements dominate present discourse, there are substantial areas of global trade regulation over which the WTO necessarily retains normative primacy.

    Andrew Willcocks is PhD Candidate, ANU Centre for European Studies, ANU.  This article was first published in The Conversation on 10 December 2015.

  • David Charles. The National Innovation and Science Agenda – Will it be different this time?

    The Prime Minister and his government are welcoming us to the ideas boom. Showing a great sense of timing the innovation statement was made almost at the same time that Atlassian was listing on the NASDAQ. The Statement points to Atlassian as being valued at over US$3 billion. Today the company is valued at close to US$6 billion making billionaires out of its founders Mike Cannon-Brooks and Scott Farquhar and millionaires out of many of their co-workers.

    Perhaps it is true that there has never been a more exciting time to be an innovator in Australia. But as the Atlassian example demonstrates, becoming an overnight sensation has taken them 14 years of effort.

    With the long running resources boom having passed its peak and commodity prices tumbling, Australia needs to make a transition to a different kind of economy that will be driven by services and high value added manufacturing. Success in these areas is based on innovation.

    Prior to the recent change in Prime Minister there was no great sense of confidence that the transition could be made without Australia going through a rough period with low or even perhaps negative economic growth. Part of the reset brought about by Malcolm Turnbull’s government has been to build confidence in Australia’s ability to compete and succeed in the emerging global economy whose features are being redrawn by waves of disruptive technological change, new businesses, new business models and new supply chains.

    The innovation statement has been well received with the main quibbles being about its size compared to the opportunities and challenges ahead and the feeling that some are being left out – the statement is primarily perceived as being about start-ups and new business formation and heavily based on STEM skills which doesn’t leave much of a role for the humanities.

    For the old hands there is a bit of sense of déjà vu. Haven’t we lived through a number of high profile innovation statements over the last 20 years but in some way the challenges remain the same. For example, the one put out by the Keating Government in December 1995 spoke about Australia adding value to the IP we create. Even more notable was the innovation statement of the Howard Government in January 2001 Backing Australia’s Ability which provided $2.9 billion over 5 years.

    The question arises: what is different this time? Is there really something new going on or is this just another worthy effort that will be forgotten in 5 years?

    The Innovation Statement

    There is about $1.1 billion in initiatives over 4 years provided in the innovation statement. The initiatives are spread across 25 individual measures.

    The National Innovation and Science Agenda focuses on four points:

    1. Culture and capital
    2. Collaboration
    3. Talent and skills
    4. Government as an exemplar

    As pointed out, the Agenda comes on top of the investment of around $9.7 billion in research and development in 2015-16.

    The measures that have received the most media attention are those relating to start-ups. These range from new tax breaks for early stage investors who will receive a 20% non-refundable tax offset based on the amount of their investment as well as a capital gains exemption, to reform of the insolvency laws, to the establishment of two funds designed to assist start ups: the new $200 million CSIRO Innovation Fund and the new Biomedical Translation Fund to co-invest $250 million with the private sector.

    Less attention has been given to the additional commitments for building world-class research infrastructure. These measures are important and give greater long term funding certainty. Over the next decade $520 million will be provided to the Australian Synchrotron, $294 million to the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope project while the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy will receive $1.5 billion.

    Other measures involving financial commitments are included but arguably of greater importance are the changes that have been introduced in the governance of innovation. One of the key concerns has been the tendency for instability in support arrangements for innovation and science and the lack of real priority accorded to these areas. An important goal should be to ensure that all arms of government are singing from the same hymn sheet and that the music is not changed mid stream.

    A Cabinet Committee for innovation and science will be established chaired by the Prime Minister. A new independent statutory authority, Innovation and Science Australia, is also being established supported by a chief executive officer accountable through the Industry Minister to the Cabinet Committee. One of its first jobs will be to review the R&D Tax Incentive to improve its effectiveness and integrity.

    Importantly, the innovation statement makes clear that the Government will be open to adapting and changing course if things don’t work.

    The Ghosts of Innovation Statements Past

    Australia has had quite a number of innovation statements over the last 20 years or so. Rather more, if we take into account the introduction of the 150% R&D Tax Concession in 1985,the Cooperative Research Centres program in 1991 and various attempts to kick start a venture capital sector.

    There has been a longstanding recognition that while Australia performs reasonably well in terms of its support for public sector research in the universities and bodies like CSIRO, the return on such investment when measured in terms of the creation of technology intensive businesses based on Australian developed ideas has been less impressive.

    The 1995 Keating Government statement on innovation provided about $400 million over four years for a range of measures designed to strengthen Australia’s innovation and science capability. Like the recent innovation statement, the measures supported both the commercialisation of ideas and the science base itself. About $64 million was earmarked for major investments in science facilities. At the time the Australian government was spending about $3.5 billion on support for R&D.

    Perhaps as a case of history repeating itself, the then leader of the Opposition claimed the Keating innovation statement was full of ideas stolen from Coalition policy. Perhaps in innovation policy there is something to be said for being a rapid adopter. It has considerable historical precedent.

    The next major innovation statement came in January 2001 in the form of Backing Australia’s Ability delivered by the then Prime Minister John Howard. In the statement the government committed $2.9 billion over 5 years to a range of innovation and science initiatives.

    The initiative for the statement came from the Innovation Summit held in 2000 in response to urging by the Business Council of Australia who at the time were seeking the restoration of the 150% R&D Tax Concession. While they did not get the answer they were looking for, the government did introduce a wide ranging set of spending commitments in innovation and science. One of the more important, accounting for $736 million, was the doubling in ARC grants to match the earlier decision to double NH&MRC grants.

    Reflecting the increasing awareness of the importance of new developments in communications and IT for future economic growth, the National ICT Authority was established.

    Two further innovation statements much closer to us in time should be mentioned. Both in their own ways reflected the thought that eco-systems are increasingly important to success.

    First, the Gillard Government ‘s “A Plan for Australian Industry and Jobs – Industry and Innovation Statement” of February 2013 which set aside $1 billion for the establishment, amongst other things, of a number of industry precincts.

    Second, the Abbott Government’s Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda of October 2014 which allocated about $200 million to a number of measures including the establishment of 5 growth centres which was its centre piece. The language around the statement was in terms of improving collaboration between industry and researchers and lifting commercialisation.

    The Business Council of Australia played an important role in preparing the ground for the growth centres initiative.

    What is different this time?

    While a case can be made that over an extended period the basic objectives of lifting Australia’s innovation performance and building the science base have remained, and hence a lot of the surrounding political rhetoric sounds similar, the reality is that the circumstances facing Australia and the global economy in which it is placed have changed a lot requiring policy settings themselves to change.

    What are some of these realities to which policy makers have had to respond?

    By and large, Australia has not been a leader in the formulation of policies for innovation and science. Individual initiatives have achieved international recognition (eg the CRC program) but on the whole these have been notable exceptions. As the globalization process has progressed so has Australians awareness of what other countries are doing in these fields. Notable examples in recent times have been the set of innovation policies introduced by the UK Government which have strong echoes in Australia’s recent decisions. The Growth Centres owe a lot to the Catapult Program and the tax breaks for early stage investors to the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme.

    Governments in Israel and Singapore have placed a huge emphasis on creating an environment supportive of start-ups. Again, Australian policy has drawn on their experiences as knowledge of them increased.

    The potential impact that a more successful approach to encouraging start-ups can bring has been brought home by some spectacular examples such as that with Atlassian which have received very wide media exposure. Start-ups are no longer seen as an interesting but relatively small phenomenon. Much of the growth in the market value of listed enterprises in China is associated with companies like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent – all IT based companies of recent origin.

    Successful policy generally requires that it is running with the grain of economic developments rather than against it. Australia is now starting to see enough examples of successful tech-based start-ups to break through the recognition gap both of entrepreneurial inclined young people and parts of the capital market. A serious effort will be made to support the needed cultural change in terms of the toleration of the risk of failure. While the direction of earlier innovation statements was broadly right, important parts of the underpinnings for success were lacking. The innovation statement has the powerful advantage of building on underlying momentum and giving things a strong additional push.

    It is not perhaps something the media has picked up on, but the fact that the Turnbull innovation statement includes important supporting governance arrangements is different from previous experience and gives greater confidence in steadier and more predictable policy making. Turning support on and off is highly disruptive.

    People are always important and on this occasion it is notable that key people such as the Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, the CEO of CSIRO, Larry Marshall, and the Chair of Innovation and Science Australia, Bill Ferris, all have a strong background in new business creation and financing.

    All things considered, a case can be made that this time it may well indeed be different.

    What lies Ahead?

    Innovation and science are now seen on both sides of the political divide as crucial to the successful transition of the Australian economy and to lifting productivity. Hopefully that will result in a workable, if not a high, degree of bipartisanship.

    The innovation statement makes it clear that close attention will need to paid to the initiatives that have been taken to ensure that any shortcomings are addressed and that initiatives that are failing to meet their objectives are closed down. As in most areas of policy, a more evidence-based approach is needed.

    While the focus of this statement is on start-ups (although it is recognized that some important things have been done to give greater certainly to longer term investments in the research infrastructure), at the end of the day start-ups are by no means the whole innovation story. Attention will need to be continued to be directed to improving the innovation performance of existing businesses. Non science elements such as design should perhaps be given greater attention as they are in successful innovation based economies.

    The innovation statement is a valuable start and a strong expression of direction. This is not to be underestimated as we know that industry policy is about 90% psychology. But it should not be seen as the last word on innovation and science, especially at a time of very raid change. More will almost certainly have to be done if Australia is to be globally competitive.

    In a difficult fiscal environment there will no doubt be times when parts of government are tempted to ensure innovation and science programs bear there share of the savings burden. This will be a real test of the new governance arrangements and will be a real indicator of whether things this time really are different.

    David Charles is a Director of Insight Economics. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Industry and Commerce from 1985 to 1990. He co-founded the Allen Consulting Group in Melbourne. 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Turkey and Daesh

    In this blog on 6 December 2015 ‘Turkey’s new neighbour – Daesh (Islamic State)‘  John Tulloh referred to an article by David Graeber in The Guardian on how Turkey is obstructing Kurdish forces that are the most effective opponents of Daesh.

    In that article, David Graeber asserts that ‘Western leaders could destroy Islamic State by calling on [President] Erdogan to end his attacks on Kurdish forces in Syria and Turkey and allow them to fight ISIS on the ground‘.

    David Graeber is an American anthropologist, political activist and author. He is currently a Professor at the London School of Economics and was formerly an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Yale University.

    John Menadue

    David Graeber’s  article ‘Turkey could cut off Islamic State’s supply lines. So why doesn’t it?’ is linked below. This article first appeared in The Guardian on 19 November 2015.

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

  • Robyn Eckersley. Australia’s climate diplomacy is like a doughnut: empty in the middle.

    There is a profound disconnect between Australia’s international climate diplomacy and its national climate and energy policies.

    The diplomacy could be cast in positive terms, on the surface at least.

    During the first week of the climate negotiations in Paris, Australia displayed a preparedness to be flexible and serve as a broker of compromises in the negotiations over the draft Paris Agreement.

    Australia has also agreed to support the inclusion of a temperature goal to limit global warming to 1.5℃, which is a matter very dear to the hearts of Pacific Island nations for whom climate change is a fundamental existential threat.

    Australia will serve as co-chair (with South Africa) of the Green Climate Fund in 2016, which will be channelling money to the most vulnerable countries in the Pacific and elsewhere to enhance their preparedness for the harmful impacts arising from a much warmer world.

    In his address on the opening day of the conference, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that Australia would ratify the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (Kyoto II) and commit A$200 million a year in climate finance going forward to 2020.

    And on the sidelines of the negotiations, environment minister Greg Hunt announced that Australia would provide A$1.2 million towards the Coral Triangle Initiative for Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Security.

    He also unveiled the Blue Carbon research project to explore how the protection of marine and coastal habitats could reduce emissions by storing carbon while also protecting biodiversity and fisheries.

    Yet appearances can be deceiving. The A$200 million in annual climate finance comes from the aid budget and is not new or additional. Nor does it represent an enhanced commitment relative to previous contributions.

    And it is widely acknowledged that an enhanced commitment to climate finance by rich countries to assist poor countries to develop clean energy and adapt to climate change will be central to garnering the support of developing countries to a Paris agreement.

    Australia had every reason to ratify Kyoto II, since it had one of the lowest emissions targets in the developed world for 2020 (5% below 2000 levels).

    Australia has also been able to benefit from greenhouse gas accounting rules (including a carry over of surplus emissions allowances from the first commitment period) that will enable achievement of this target at the same time as greenhouse emissions outside the land sector are set to increase by around 11% by 2020.

    Contrast this with Germany, the UK and Denmark, which announced that they will cancel their surplus emission allowances and not carry them over for Kyoto II.

    Australia’s climate diplomacy is therefore like a doughnut: a few some promising initiatives around the edges but nothing in the middle.

    The missing middle, of course, is robust domestic targets and policies for 2020 and the post-2020 period.

    Get serious

    If Australia was really serious about aiming for a more ambitious temperature target to stand firm with its neighbours in the Pacific, then it would have domestic politics that were commensurate with this ambition.

    As the strong contingent of civil society organisations from Australia at COP21 have been quick to point out, Australia’s domestic policy settings, including significant fossil fuel subsidies, actively encourage fossil fuel production and use.

    These subsidies, along with the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund, cast the burden on the public to pay for the cost of carbon pollution, rather than the polluters.

    The first week of the negotiations included a string of announcements of new initiatives on divestment from fossil fuels and efforts to promote the phase out of fossil fuel subsidies. This included a communiqué on fossil fuel subsidy reform, signed by eight non-G20 countries (including New Zealand and Norway) and supported by France and the United States.

    Australia declined to give its support to the communiqué. Turnbull said Australia would have supported it if it had been restricted to “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies.

    Yet economists describe fossil fuel subsides as perverse because they harm the economy (by propping up inefficient industries) and the environment, and soak up scarce public money that could be better spent elsewhere.

    To make matters worse, the government’s decision to approve the giant Carmichael coal mine in Queensland will completely cancel out any of the modest goodwill provided by Australia’s diplomacy.

    Germanwatch’s Climate Change Performance Index for 2015 ranked Australia 60th out of the 61 countries surveyed – second last to Saudi Arabia. This is down from 57th last year.

    No amount of flexible and constructive climate diplomacy, or negotiating support for Pacific Island nations, can hide the fact that Australia’s domestic policies are part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

    Robyn Eckersley is Professor of Political Science, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. Robyn Eckersley is attending COP21 in Paris as an accredited observer. 

  • Peter Gibilisco. The standardisation of services for people with disabilities.

    WHAT IS MEANT BY EFFICIENCY IN THE PROVISION OF SERVICES FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES? IS IT JUST A COVER FOR GREATER STANDARDISATION? 

    The State Disability Plan is not the only endorsement of the need to emphasize the individualising of care for people with disabilities. We now hear of a profound development – person-centred planning is said to be the world-wide benchmarked best practice. This involves a highly individualised vision of the person with disabilities and the result is that care needs multiply into a kaleidoscopic variety of individually generated special needs and concerns.

    This attempt to generate a sensitive and compassionate approach nevertheless faces an ongoing dilemma. The costs associated with such an approach to provision of disability services continue to outstrip the services that can be provided by the pension. Moreover, the demands (and possibly the false needs as well) that are generated by this latest example of neo-liberal micro-reform of the “disability workplace”, has the effect of further transforming the already precarious environment for care-worker and the client.

    I continue to think about what happened at a recent meeting that was convened by my own “service provider” to discuss with us an increase in rent for residents.

    At this meeting, we were told of plans to sell the provider’s prime real estate in the Melbourne CBD. A question was asked about the way in which the provider was viewing this sale. The discussion seemed to be suggesting that the sale could assist the provider in overcoming its budget problems. That was why as a corporation it was considering divesting itself of one of its assets.

    So the suggestion was put to the provider that if the building in Flinders Street was being sold for budgetary purposes, a small amount of the profit from the sale could be used to help the pensioners among the residents overcome their budget problems that would accrue from an increase in the rent.

    After all, the service provider is keen to present itself to the community as an effective not-for-profit company, and so all of its profits are to be ploughed back into the community it is serving. And residents certainly wish to have their part in this community recognised. They are not merely rentiers; they are constitutive of the provider’s “community”.

    The assets held by the provider are retained by it to enable the provision of a service it is constituted to provide.

    I had assumed all this but those representing the provider’s main office did not seem to get these basic points. Do they understand what a not-for-profit service provider is? I asked myself. They gave the impression that the budgetary problems of the residents were completely different from the financial demands that are upon the provider as these are documented in the company’s official accounts.

    And of course, these budget stresses and strains are not exactly the same thing. We residents also have to be responsible for how we manage our finances and that in fact was why we had insisted upon having the conversation in the first place. But just because they are not the same thing, does not mean they are unrelated and their inter-dependence ignored. To dismiss the suggestion that the profits from the sale might be distributed in a way that helped ease the strain on the budgeting of residents, seemed to suggest that the provider’s budget issues are a completely different kind of responsibility to those residents have for their own finances. Moreover, the residents are part of a community comprising themselves and the workers at all levels.

    So I guess the result was somewhat inevitable. Disgruntled residents will be left wondering how the sale of this prime real estate shores up the company in a way that will enable top management to be paid at the level to which they have become accustomed. So where will the profits from this sale go? In ensuring the immediate “business prospects” of provider, the company will, I guess, reduce some of its current budget deficit. But at the same time, there is still unrequited budget pressure for residents due to rent increases.

    Let me change the topic slightly here and note how in these days of cut-throat public relations, the provider may be confusing the services it provides with replacing proper policy-development with slogans. Let me invent a possible slogan:

    ACE DISABILITY SERVICES – We are here to give independent and fulfilling lives to people with physical, intellectual and multiple disabilities. Lovely slogan isn’t it? But then reflect upon the efficiencies that are required in shared supported accommodation like my own. And now look carefully at that phrase: people with physical, intellectual and multiple disabilities. I am not criticizing the ethical intention; I am trying to draw attention to the inner organizational chaos that will result for workers and residents if a facility conflates physical and intellectual disabilities. And who can tell how care for those with “multiple disabilities” can emerge in the midst of such organizational blurring.

    There are many residents, perhaps an overwhelming majority of up to 80%, in supported accommodation with some form of intellectual disability. Therefore it can be expected that in shared support accommodation like the place where I reside, that a policy of taking on such high demand people will simply result in a standardization of disability care for many service providers. And don’t get me wrong. Such people are also my neighbours and deserve proper care. But by putting all disability together in one facility, even if there are different classifications on paper in a provider’s policy documents, there will be an inevitable drive toward standardized care and abstract efficiency, that may allow the provider to continue its “service provision” rather than actually looking to the individual care of people with disabilities.

    Quite seriously, this is what I fear will happen. Without a rediscovery of how residents are genuine members of the community that the service provider is maintaining, a policy will develop in favour of standardisation over the appropriately differentiated individual care needed for people with disabilities in shared supported accommodation.

    Service providers receive much money for the care of people with disabilities. These payments come in the form of funding, government payments, and donations from other for-profit companies and the general public. But among residents of such facilities in the disability sector the suspicion is deeply ingrained that these funds never seem to meet the need for which they were intended. And requiring service provision to be subject to a culture of competitive tendering processes means that what were once not-for-profit bodies are not driven by a non-charitable need to accumulate the accoutrements of “business success” coinciding it seems with the self-serving “need” to provide their own CEOs and senior management with wages or salaries or packages as if “management” is a sphere that floats high well above the reality of the people their company is supporting.

    Most people with disabilities are highly individual, not unlike the rest of humanity. And indeed it is from this individuality that life becomes extremely complex. So, when people with disabilities are recognised for their individuality and diverse needs then it becomes apparent what treatment they require. That then is the moment when due respect is needed.

    Recently, over the rents, we have witnessed a significant demise in the provider’s ethos; fairness has been jettisoned. This has been a harrowing experience for me. I am yet to feel that I have been treated according to the stated and published goals of the provider. And then when severe disability is added to the mix of this residence, I conclude that the appeals to standardization and the need to run an efficient enterprise are simply ridiculous.

    As a resident of the facility supported by this service provider, I am certainly NOT a ’customer’. This word and its usage has passed its “use-by date”. In this context ‘customer’ refers to a person who is vulnerable and inadequate. I am assured of my vulnerability; I quite literally feel it in my bones. But am I inadequate? That is what is being questioned in these efficiency policies? Does one have to be a celebrity like Stephen Hawking before one can qualify for non-stereotyping?

    Yes branding costs money, too. But it’s ok if the payoff of new logos is spent beneficially in not-for-profit service management, rather than in making more attractive packages for over the top management. It is surely the responsibility of any company’s management to ensure its good public image. But this is not merely a function of the sales of assets to wipe out a deficit. And appeal to a black ink entry on the bottom line of a company’s account books can always be heralded in way that diverts attention away from the inner organisation dysfunction, if not moral bankruptcy.

    Special thanks to Christina Irugalbandara,  Cunxia Li and Bruce Wearne.

    For some time now I have been discussing my deep concerns about the way my support facility is managed with Bruce Wearne who helps me by smoothing my English for publication. In this latest piece, the more we discussed the topic, the more it became obvious that my angle of vision was sharpened by Peter Sember whose encouragement has meant so much to me. He came along to the meeting I describe in this piece. He was the one who set the cat among the pigeons by asking the kinds of questions I now continue to ask in this article. Sadly, he died a short time after going out of his way for me on that occasion and I feel it a great honour to dedicate this article to his memory.

    Dr Peter Gibilisco, is Honorary Fellow, University of Melbourne. His new book is ‘The Politics of Disability’.

     

  • Walkley Award for refugee advocate, Safdar Ahmed.

    All the 2015 Walkley Award Winners announced on Thursday evening came from mainstream media organisations except one, Safdar Ahmed. Safdar, who won in the ‘Artwork’ category for his documentary web-comic Villawood: Notes From An Immigration Detention Centre, is a Sydney-based artist and academic in the field of Islamic studies.

    safdar

    The work depicts the stories of asylum seekers and refugees inside Sydney’s Villawood detention centre. It includes the testimony of people from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, including men, women and teenagers. Some of those included are long-term detainees who have been detained for up to five years.

    The Walkleys presented it as a project of GetUp! The Shipping News, which is a crowdfunded initiative that has provided grants to journalists working on asylum seeker stories. Safdar posted it earlier this year in his space at the Twitter-owned Medium.org publishing platform.

    We can’t exactly boast that we have a Walkley award winner, but Pearls and Irritations featured it back in March and we are proud that Safdar gave us his blessing and permission to use it. Safdar’s aim to use art as a tool of advocacy on behalf of asylum seekers is in harmony with the purpose of this blog.

    The comic shows the disempowerment experienced by refugees in detention and the methods employed to survive and resist it. A chapter recounts the death of Ahmad Ali Jafari, a young Afghan refugee who suffered a heart attack within the centre in 2013. Forms of resistance depicted in the comic include acts of non-compliance, self-harm and one refugee’s participation in a rooftop protest.

    Safdar writes: ‘I hope this Walkley Award gives the comic more exposure, which seeks to depict some truths about mandatory detention and prompt people to question or rethink why Australia abuses refugees for politically-driven ends. I’d like to thank all the asylum seekers and refugees who participated in the project, for sharing their experiences with me. The comic is dedicated to them and to my late friend, Ahmad Ali Jafari. 

    ‘My thanks to GetUp’s The Shipping News Project, and to the 4700+ members of the public who contributed to their crowd-sourcing campaign. This award underscores the importance of alternative types of journalism, including documentary comics, in tackling important issues. Thanks also to everyone in the community art organisation Refugee Art Project, which this comic was inspired by.’

    The Walkleys judges commented: ‘Photos are not permitted within Villawood Detention Centre, so Ahmed has conveyed through his graphic novel style the conditions within the Detention Centre. By using the stories and often the artwork of the asylum seekers, Ahmed has produced a moving documentation of their plight, and a damning condemnation of Australia’s detention system.’

  • NBN and the high cost of copper.

    Lauraine McDonald in ‘itwire’ has just reported that ‘An NBN cost scandal has erupted with a new document revealing that copper for the Turnbull government’s hybrid MTM broadband network is going to cost ten times as much as the original estimate.’ 

    John Menadue

    See link to full article below.

    http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/telecoms-and-nbn/70623-nbn-copper-cost-blowout-exposes-government-short-sightedness

  • Travers McLeod. Relaxing airstrike rules is a recipe for disaster.

    Tony Abbott has argued Australia and her allies should relax targeting rules for airstrikes to destroy the Islamic State.

    At best, he is ignorant of the lessons of the military campaigns waged in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. At worst, he is willing to repeat mistakes to differentiate himself on national security and open a pathway to take his job back.

    Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Abbott isn’t as narcissistic as the latter reading suggests. Let’s assume he was insufficiently briefed on recent military campaigns or has forgotten the lessons of our longest wars.

    The battle of ideas, not body counts, will determine this war. Disproportionate use of force will only inflame and grow the Daesh insurgency. There is no military solution to destroy IS.

    “A military force, culturally programmed to respond conventionally (and predictably) to insurgent attacks,”wrote General Stanley McChrystal in November 2009, “is akin to the bull that repeatedly charges a matador’s cape – only to tire and eventually be defeated by a much weaker opponent.”

    McChrystal should know. He was commander of the United States-led coalition of forces in Afghanistan from 2009-2010 and headed up US Special Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan from September 2003 until February 2006.

    When McChrystal took over as commander he told his troops to “get rid of the conventional mindset”.

    We know the prequel. In 2005 the US was accused of being a “lawless hegemon”, one that avoided the laws of war or sought to exploit gaps within it. Commanders misunderstood the battlespace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their “enemy-centric” mindset harmed civilians and alienated the people. David Kilcullen described US forces as “chasing their tails”.

    From late 2006 military doctrine, strategy, tactics and rules of engagement began to shift decisively. Australian military advisers and judge advocates were pivotal in this change of mindset.

    Phillip Bobbitt put the new position best in 2010: “The war aim in a war against terror is not territory, or access to resources, or conversion to our way of political life,” Bobbitt wrote. “It is protection of civilians within the rule of law.”

    McChrystal’s tactical directive to troops in July 2009 made this explicit. “We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories – but suffering strategic defeats – by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people.”

    Losing popular support would “translate into more insurgent recruits, more IEDs, and a prolonged conflict with an uncertain outcome.”

    McChrystal prohibited the use of air-to-ground or indirect fire against residential compounds with three tightly-specified exceptions, installed new battle damage assessment requirements, denied capacity for unilateral missions without regional command approval, raised the approval level for night raids, tightened escalation of force procedures and mandated civilian casualty investigations and reporting up the chain of command within 24 hours from any given incident.

    McChrystal was clear: “Our success depends on our ability to escalate force proportionally, in a manner that the average Afghan civilian can understand, and respects the fact that this is their country.”

    Successive studies of countering insurgencies reveal that if one loses legitimacy they lose the war. This means one cannot separate the conduct of operations from the broader, contested narrative of a war.

    Securing the population and killing the enemy is a necessary condition to countering Daesh. But the chief lesson of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns is that the legality of the conduct of those operations is central to their legitimacy.

    This is why proportionality has become a watchword for countering insurgencies successfully. It requires a delicate but appropriate balance to be struck between military necessity and collateral damage, in an age when allegations of disproportionality can be uploaded to YouTube and viewed across the world in seconds.

    US military doctrine now asserts that “all interactions between security forces and the population directly impact legitimacy”. Complying with the law of war helps to gain local trust – violations “have a direct and significant negative impact on the ability to conduct successful counterinsurgency operations”.

    Abbott now advocates “less restrictive targeting rules for airstrikes”. His position may be more nuanced. He may dispute current distinctions between civilians and combatants, including what it means for civilians to participate directly in hostilities. As stated, his position is pregnant with ambiguity.

    Such hawkish ambiguity is exactly what Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ruled out last Tuesday in his National Security Statement to Parliament. Turnbull called for “calm, clinical, professional, effective” conduct to defeat IS, not “gestures or machismo”. He said “the strongest weapons we bring to this battle are ourselves, our values, our way of life”.

    In war the most significant distinction is between civilians and combatants. The latter are lawful targets who can be killed. We water down the distinction at our peril. This is but one way in which our military forces live our (and their) values.

    Countering insurgencies, former US Central Command head General James Mattis once said, is only new if “we don’t read our own history”.

    Given our focus these past weeks on France, it’s worth recalling that the best-known military theorist and practitioner of counterinsurgency was French. Lieutenant Colonel David Galula’s formula was simple: win the support of the people. “Antagonising the population will not help,” he wrote in 1964, “rash actions on the part of the forces should be kept to a minimum.”

    An ad-hoc legal approach to fighting terrorism would return us to the fog of law within the fog of war. It is a recipe ripe for disaster.

    Travers McLeod is chief executive of the Centre for Policy Development and the author of “Rule of Law in War: International Law and United States Counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan” (Oxford University Press, 2015).

  • Rod Tucker. What will the NBN really cost?

    Cost is a central issue in the ongoing debate about the best approach to building Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN).

    In 2013, the Coalition argued that Labor’s original all-fibre to the premises (FTTP) network could cost as much as A$94 billion. In the 2016 NBN Corporate plan the figure was revised down to A$74 billion to A$84 billion, while NBN Co’s multi technology mix (MTM), incorporating fibre to the node (FTTN) and upgraded hybrid fibre coax (HFC) was less costly, with a price tag of A$46 billion to A$56 billion.

    Since the Coalition announced these numbers, Labor has said that, if elected, it will not go back to an all-FTTP network, but instead pursue a half-way option, in which the HFC component of the MTM is retained but FTTN, the slowest and most limited technology, is phased out.

    It’s worth looking more closely at cost difference between FTTP and FTTN to see if the claimed A$84 billion to A$56 billion maximum cost comparison stacks up, and see where Labor’s new half-way solution sits.

    Capital costs

    The NBN 2016 Corporate Plan states that the average capital cost (capex) to connect a home or business to the NBN using FTTP is A$3,700. But the real cost for a FTTP connection is probably less than this.

    The A$3,700 figure quoted by nbn co is based on old construction techniques that have been superseded in other parts of the world. The costs of rolling-out FTTP in New Zealand, for example, have been dropping steadily in recent years and will soon be A$2,900 per premises. For some reason, NBN Co has yet to acknowledge the lessons learned in New Zealand.

    Let’s give NBN Co the benefit of the doubt and assume that the A$3,700 cost per premises for FTTP is correct. In comparison, the 2016 Corporate Plan states that the average capital cost for a FTTN connection is A$1,600, or A$2,100 less than FTTP.

    For an upgraded hybrid-fibre-coax (HFC) connection the capital cost is A$1,100, or A$2,600 less. However, in light of recent revelations in a leaked document from NBN Co published by Fairfax indicating that it may be necessary to overbuild Optus’ HFC network, the savings offered by HFC will not be as good.

    Using these numbers, it is easy to compare the capital costs of different networks.

    At the end of construction, the MTM network will provide FTTN to 4.5 million premises and HFC to 4 million premises. Labor’s new approach is to replace as many as possible of these 4.5 million FTTN connections by FTTP. The maximum additional capital cost to do this would be 4.5 million times A$2,100, or A$9.5 billion. This figure corresponds to A$790 per premises averaged across all 12 million premises in Australia.

    An all-FTTP network could be achieved by also replacing the HFC connections were by FTTP, the total additional capital cost of this hypothetical all-FTTP network would be A$19.9 billion, or A$1,658 per premises averaged across all premises.

    Peak funding

    Of course, it is necessary to also consider operational expenditure (opex) – the cost of running the network – and revenues from the network. These factors all contribute to the peak funding figures in the 2016 Corporate Plan.

    Peak funding is the maximum cash outlay required before cash flow becomes positive. Peak funding is a useful measure of cost because it is a direct measure of the cash outlay required. But it is not necessarily a good measure of the cost of the network infrastructure or a good measure of the net financial cost/benefit to the Australian taxpayer.

    Operational expenditure is a major issue for the MTM network because of factors including the need for new software management systems, the additional costs of maintaining the degrading copper wires in the FTTN network, and the cost of the electricity required to power the FTTN nodes located in suburban streets. Importantly, an FTTP network would incur none of these costs.

    In fact, the leaked nbn co document mentioned earlier shows that the operational costs of FTTN network are 67% more than for FTTP, and the operational costs of HFC are 25% more. Over the lifetime of the network, this difference could amount to billions of dollars, greatly reducing the overall difference in costs between FTTN and FTTP.

    Another factor that reduces the cost difference between the Coalition’s network and Labor’s new alternative is that a Labor’s FTTP/HFC network would be capable of generating higher revenues through the delivery of premium services that would not be achievable with a slower-speed FTTN network.

    This is well documented by high-profile companies such as Ovum, which predicts FTTP services will drive the highest global growth rates for broadband revenues over the next five years, based on premium speeds of 100 Mbps and higher.

    Timeframes

    In light of all these factors, why is NBN Co’s cost estimate for a hypothetical FTTP network so large? The NBN Corporate plan provides no detailed information on its financial modelling, but it states that an all-FTTP network would take until 2026 to 2028 to complete.

    If the timeframe was indeed as long as this, the revenue stream would be delayed. This could indeed lead to unrealistically large numbers for the peak funding cost of FTTP.

    So where does the 2026 to 2028 timeframe come from? My guess is that NBN Co has simply extrapolated from the present rollout rate for FTTP, which has not increased much since 2013. One piece of supporting information comes from a Senate Estimates meeting, where NBN Co confirmed that its A$74-84 billion number was not for a “continued” FTTP network but for a “restart” from the current plan.

    NBN Co waited until September this year to hire additional staff, increasing the number of employees from 3,400 to 4,500 to speed up the rollout of FTTN. If it had hired these additional staff in 2013 and focused on the FTTP rollout, the network could well have been completed by around 2020 or 2021.

    Rod Tucker is Laureate Emeritus Professor, University of Melbourne. This article was first posted in The Conversation on 1 December 2015.

  • Sebastian Rosenberg. Mental health changes.

    Announcing the federal government’s response to the National Mental Health Commission’s review of mental health services today, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull emphasised the concept of patient choice.

    The commission’s review was the latest in a long line of reports showing that for many Australians needing mental health care, their current choice is between getting no care or getting poor care.

    The reforms announced today have the potential to change this appalling situation. But ultimately they should be judged on the outcomes they achieve for patients.

    Poor access to care

    Mental health is the third-biggest chronic disease in Australia behind cancer and heart disease, affecting 4-5 million people each year.

    Access rates to care are low. And once a person has seen their general practitioner or psychologist, if their condition deteriorates, they have few options but to seek care from their local hospital emergency department.

    Following deinstitutionalisation 30 years ago, which overturned the practice of sending people with severe mental illness to asylums, Australia largely failed to invest in a genuine system of community mental health care.

    The bar for entry into the state-run hospital system rose, so you must be sicker and sicker to qualify for care. Rates of access to state and territory mental health services have not changed in some years. Yet spending has increased by more than 50%.

    We are, in fact, over-reliant on hospitalisation and there is waste. An unpublished survey by state governments indicated that more than 40% of all hospital mental health beds were occupied by people who would be better off in other settings if there was anywhere to send them.

    Mental illness also has a colossal impact on productivity and economic participation. The OECD estimates the average overall cost of mental health to developed countries is about 4% of GDP. In Australia, this would equate to more than A$60 billion or about A$4,000 a year per individual taxpayer.

    Tailored responses

    The federal government’s announcements have the potential to address these problems by presenting two key structural changes.

    The first is the decision to use the new Primary Health Networks (PHNs) to keep people with mental health problems out of hospital, by building new, integrated and stepped approaches to primary and community mental health care. Under the Abbott government, PHNs replaced Medicare Locals. PHNs’ role is to both plan and commission (fund) primary and community care.

    This means having the capacity to respond to all the problems a person might have, including not just their mental illness, but drug and alcohol issues, physical problems, homelessness and other problems. It also means having a range of services available to match the intensity of the person’s needs.

    PHNs will be tasked with properly planning to meet the mental health needs of the regions they serve.

    Given the size of the PHNs, some may require multiple plans to ensure they understand and can respond to locals’ needs. One of the PHNs in Western Australia covers an area the size of much of Western Europe, so plans will need to cater for diversity within regions.

    The second key structural change offered under these reforms is to end the dependency on simplistic fee-based services. The government has recognised that just sending people off for a set number of psychology sessions is an inadequate response, particularly for people with more complex conditions.

    The suggestion is that people with less complex problems should access evidence-based mental health therapies and services online.

    For others, a continuation of the Better Access program, which subsidises ten sessions with a psychologist or psychiatrist, may be entirely suitable.

    For people with more complex problems, however, the government has flagged its intention to permit PHNs to cash out some of their Medicare Benefits Schedule payments into new pooled funding arrangements to meet locally identified needs. PHNs would have the capacity, for instance, to build further on successful programs such as headspace or the Mental Health Nurse Incentive Program.

    These reforms suggest that better understanding individual needs can lead the PHN to more intelligently plan individual responses, bringing together clinical care and social supports such as living skills, vocational training and education.

    Overcoming barriers

    The government’s changes to mental health are not without challenges. It’s unclear whether PHNs will be up to the job, and what support they need to make the scheme work.

    The changes don’t appear to be supported with any new funding, yet we know the mental health system is under-funded. Mental illness accounts for 13% of the burden of disease but receives only around 6% of the total health budget. It should be noted that the “cashing out” arrangements are uncapped, opening up the potential for new funding under Medicare.

    Most importantly, we need to ensure these changes marry up to commensurate reforms by the states and territories. The fifth national mental health planning process now underway has proven ineffective in joining up mental health approaches between governments. The Commonwealth has pledged new leadership and it is here that it is needed most.

    Finally, the Commonwealth must establish a new and robust approach to accountability. Regionalism cannot mean we let myriad programs start and go unevaluated. Instead we need strong and consistent approaches to data collection, providing real information about things that matter.

    Rather than reporting on bed numbers, these processes need to reveal the extent to which PHNs are actually working to help people with a mental illness stay out of hospital, recover from their illness, complete their education, resume employment, avoid homelessness and become healthy and productive members of the community. None of this information is currently available.

    Prime Minister Turnbull stated that these changes were about trying to make the most of Australia’s mental wealth and human capital. His goal is laudable. But the work starts now.

    Sebastian Rosenberg is Senior Lecturer, Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney. This article first appeared in The Conversation on 26 November, 2015.

  • Travers McLeod. Unusual suspects challenging usual thinking on climate change.

    “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

    Twenty years ago Kevin Spacey uttered this famous line about his alter ego, Keyser Söz, in The Usual Suspects. Keyser Söz isn’t climate change, but he might as well be.

    Since the film was released an inordinate amount of money has been spent to trick the world that human-induced climate change doesn’t exist.

    Recent data from the CSIRO suggests the ‘trick’ is yet to be completely foiled in Australia. Although almost 80 percent of people believe climate change is occurring, every second person routinely changes their mind and there is considerable divergence on whether human activity is a causal factor.

    Thankfully, someone who requires no more convincing is Mark Carney, the Canadian Governor of the Bank of England.

    “There is a growing international consensus that climate change is unequivocal,” Carney said in September.

    “Human drivers are judged extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of global warming since the mid-20th century.”

    Carney, like his Chief Economist, Andy Haldane, is what I call an unusual suspect, someone who looks beyond the parapet and leads on an issue when we don’t expect them to.

    Think doctors and nurses on children in detention and sporting heroes like David Pocock on marriage equality.

    Although we might deem these interventions ‘unusual’ given their infrequency, they can be perfectly natural for the individual speaking out. Often they are based on experience or expertise.

    This makes unusual suspects particularly insightful, and especially powerful.

    Carney’s incursion into the climate change debate shouldn’t be taken lightly. He also heads up the global Financial Stability Board, established after the Global Financial Crisis.

    It was no coincidence Carney gave his speech at Lloyd’s of London.

    Insurers know full well the rising cost of weather-related events, aggravated by climate change, from around $10 billion per year in the 1980s to $50 billion today. These losses, Carney conceded, will “pale in significance” to those on the horizon when we consider “broader global impacts on property, migration and political stability, as well as food and water security”.

    Carney and Haldane argue the physical, liability and transition risks posed by climate change threaten financial stability.

    They are progressives amongst a hitherto conservative central banking set.

    Haldane in particular has bemoaned “quarterly capitalism”, which sees public companies over-discounting future income streams by 5-10 percent per year.

    He believes “shareholder short-termism may have had material costs for the economy, as well as for individual companies, by constraining investment”.

    Haldane is not alone. Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, wrote to S&P 500 CEOs in April, accusing them of prioritising actions to deliver immediate returns and “underinvesting in innovation, skilled workforces or essential capital expenditures necessary to sustain long-term growth”.

    Where are Australia’s unusual suspects in business and finance?

    One would find it difficult to locate seminal speeches on climate change and quarterly capitalism by our central bankers or the Business Council of Australia

    Much has been made of our tepid growth outlook. Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens challenged the National Reform Summit to ask: “how do we generate more growth? Not temporary, flash in-the-pan growth, but sustainable growth”.

    The adjective — sustainable — is key. Focusing on growth at all costs risks missing the wood for the trees. To engineer sustainable growth, one requires a sustainable economy. And that is what Australia lacks most of all.

    It is a shame, because sustainability is in Australia’s DNA.

    In fact, in 2011, then Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson told us “the theme of sustainability will need to shape the approach to policy development of this generation”.

    Parkinson was and remains spot on: his focus was on how each generation could bequeath to the next a productive base for sustainable wellbeing at least as large as the stock of capital inherited.

    How shortsighted it was for one of our best unusual suspects to be dumped by the Abbott government.

    His likely reemergence as head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is timely.

    At his alma mater, Princeton, in September, Parkinson echoed Carney by saying company boards and financial market regulators give scant attention to climate change risks. Equally absent was examination of the “knock-on effects to macroeconomic stability of falling demand for carbon-intensive exports”.

    Accelerating Australia’s transition to a sustainable economy will require those in business, finance, government and civil society to embrace unusual suspects on climate change and sustainability as the new normal, not the exception. If anyone can do this knitting, it’s Parkinson. Welcome back.

    Travers McLeod is Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Development. This article was first published in the Huffington Post on 26 November 2015.

  • Bullying and bugging in East Timor.

    The bugging by Australian Security Intelligence Service (ASIS) of an East Timorese cabinet meeting in 2004 will not go away. The event was so outrageous it is not surprising that it continues to resurface. Only a Royal Commission or a Judicial Review can redress some of the damage that has been done to Australia’s reputation, our intelligence agencies and most importantly of all, in our relations with our near neighbour, East Timor.

    There have been new revelations and continual cover-ups. As Senator Nick Xenophon has said on the ABC ‘This is a massive scandal”.

    I continue to be concerned about the competence of our intelligence services and the inability of all Australian governments to effectively supervise their secret operations. The supervising agency is too small to be effective. My experience is also that the supervisors including parliamentary committees, become part of the ‘intelligence club’. Journalists and so called academics ‘experts’ who report on our intelligence services are also invariably part of the same club.

    Our intelligence agencies have greatly expanded resources and powers but it is very hard to assess their competence. The bugging in East Timor, even though eleven years ago, remains a blight.

    See link below to ABC interview with Emma Alberici and Senator Nick Xenophon.

     

    http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2015/s4361657.htm

  • Joanna Thyer. When we are not sure, we are alive.

    What do Pope Francis, Thomas Merton and Graham Greene have in common?

    Like Pope Francis, Thomas Merton and Graham Greene were individuals whose sheer complexity equipped them to address the often contradictory world we live in, in order to find God in it.

    The writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton, the famous British writer, Graham Greene, and our current pope, Pope Francis, have a lot in common. Merton died in 1968 – from accidental electrocution whilst touring in Thailand, and Greene died peacefully in 1991. Both men were converts to Catholicism. Like Pope Francis, Merton engaged in interfaith dialogue. What these three men have in common, however, is that their works reveal them to be visionaries and mystics with a faith message for the world, a message that does not shy away from naming and engaging with the darkness around us.

    Graham Greene led an eclectic life, and embraced and dialogued with the complex world around him. After his conversion to Catholicism in the 1920s, he was commissioned to go to Mexico to report on religious persecution there which resulted in him writing one of his famous novels, The Power and the Glory. He was adept at characterising the flawed broken priest or individual who could still bring Christ to others, despite his brokenness. The internal struggle of the soul to find and receive grace was amongst the issues that consumed him. As he so well depicted in another work, The Heart of the Matter, he understood the paradox of how a person’s conscience and love of God, could also lead them to disaster.

    Greene confronted and explored the world of international politics, espionage and the world of corruption, (he worked for MI6 at one stage). He took a stand on moral issues – he allegedly quit the American Academy of Arts and Letters over America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.

    A serial adulterer and womaniser, he explored flawed and complex interpersonal relationships in his writing, such as in his famous work, The End of the Affair. He was by his own admission, a man who struggled with his own sins whilst balancing a passionate faith. Able to deepen and challenge his own religious and spiritual beliefs amidst a rich and tumultuous life, his flawed and complex nature both informed his writing, and furthered his faith as a devout Catholic.

    Both Merton and Greene struggled with the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and the struggle between the human soul, desire and what God’s direction and actions in a person’s life and the world around them, meant. Merton was also flawed, and allegedly quite headstrong in his inner and outer battles, and in his relationship with his monastic community. Books about Merton have been written saying he was not as ‘holy’ as he seemed and his personal diaries also talk about the love affair he had with a nurse for a while during his time as a monk in the 1960s. Yet these revelations are indications of a multi-faceted individual whose humanity fuelled his wisdom. Like Greene, Merton’s life experience and the wisdom he imparted to the world, enriched his faith. This is an example to all of us.

    Like Pope Francis, Merton saw the great wisdom of the Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu traditions, or metaphorically how ‘the sun sets in the East’. Whilst some have critiqued this perceived duality in Merton towards the end of his life, it reveals the depth of his quest to follow where God was leading him. Ironically, only days before his death in Bangkok, Merton had an epiphany whilst reflecting on the beauty of Eastern spiritual experience. In contemplating the ‘dharmahaya’ where ‘everything is emptiness and everything is compassion’ he reflected: “I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise”.

    In his book Church of Mercy, Pope Francis advises us to read the signs of God in our lives, be guided by the Spirit, and go beyond our comfort zone. Pope Francis’ washing of a female Muslim prisoner’s feet early in his pontificate is a dramatic example of how actions speak louder than words. The subtext of that action could readily be understood as demonstrating how Christ’s love really works. He has not played it safe. He understands the world he is in, and does not separate himself from it. His message is a metaphor for an individual’s spiritual life. He does not want a closed Church, but an open one, and emphasises that “a bruised Church is better than an ill Church”.

    Like Pope Francis, Greene and Merton were individuals whose sheer complexity equipped them to address the often contradictory world we live in, in order to find God in it. The lives of such people do not make them saints, yet they do exemplify their status as mystics who contribute to the spiritual development of others.

    At a time when religious persecution is rife, when extremists on either side have hijacked and distorted many religious beliefs, in a violent, chaotic and often uncertain world, the lives of people like Pope Francis, Thomas Merton and Graham Greene have a message for us: to embrace the brokenness in the world and in our own lives and find love and God in it. Their message seems to embody what Graham Greene once famously said, “When we are not sure, we are alive”.

    Joanna Thyer is a writer, Sydney hospital chaplain, and educator. Her most recent work is 12 Steps to Spiritual Freedom, (Loyola Press, 2014). Source:

    http://www.goodsams.org.au/good-oil/what-do-pope-francis-thomas-merton-and-graham-greene-have-in-common

    This article was first published in the November 2015 edition of The Good Oil, the e-magazine of the Good Samaritan Sisters http://www.goodsams.org.au/good-oil/what-do-pope-francis-thomas-merton-and-graham-greene-have-in-common

  • John Thompson. The costly abolition of Medicare Locals

    Despite promising to keep Medicare Locals, the Abbott government abolished the fledgling organisations after it took office.

    Even when it had no clear policies or plans to replace them, the Abbott government seemed determined to undo many of the initiatives of the previous Labor government. This was certainly the case in relation to primary health care.

    In 2008, the then Labor government established the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission(link is external) (NHHRC) to conduct a comprehensive review of Australia’s health system. The review provided the basis for the National Health Reform Agreement (NHRA) signed by the Australian government and the states and territories in August 2011. The reforms set out in the NHRA had three main objectives:

    1. Reforming the fundamentals of our health and hospital system, including funding and governance, to provide a sustainable foundation for providing better services now and in the future.
    2. Changing the way health services are delivered, through better access to high quality integrated care designed around the needs of patients, and a greater focus on prevention, early intervention and the provision of care outside of hospitals.
    3. Providing better care and better access to services for patients, through increased investments to provide better hospitals, improved infrastructure, and more doctors and nurses.

    The establishment of 61 Medicare Locals across Australia was one of the key initiatives taken to address these objectives.These regional structures aimed to strengthen the primary care system (and thereby relieve pressure on hospitals and other acute providers) by integrating Commonwealth and state government health planning and service delivery and access.

    Medicare Locals were non-profit companies selected after a competitive application process and funded largely by the Commonwealth with $1.8 billion for the period 2011–12 to 2015–16. While the Commonwealth funding deed specified program schedules and reporting requirements, Medicare Locals were provided with considerable scope to arrange their structure, operations and relationships to reflect their local health environment.

    To provide this focus on primary care, Medicare Locals were required “to work with the full spectrum of general practice, allied health and community health care providers and improve access to care and drive integration between services.” They established collaboration with health care services and other community organisations in their region to develop strategies to meet the overall primary health care needs of their communities. Considerable effort was made to ensure that general practice had a central role in the work of Medicare Locals – with varying effectiveness.

    Medicare Locals worked at a regional level with state and local government in the planning of primary health care services and in the linking of these services with Local Hospital Networks and aged care programs to deliver improved integration and effective transitions for patients across the entire health care system.

    The Medicare Locals program was a contentious one, not just because it was a Labor government initiative, but many GPs saw it as a threat to their primacy in their local primary care market and saw the regional health planning activities of the Medicare Locals as an unnecessary additional layer of bureaucracy. This negative view was reinforced by the AMA, the doctors’ union, that lobbied the Coalition Opposition on the basis of the perceived threat to the GP small businesses. For this reason, the Coalition went to the 2013 election with a health policy that included brief mention of Medicare Locals as follows: “We will also review the Medicare Locals structure to ensure that funding is being spent as effectively as possible to support frontline services rather than administration.” However, the then Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, made a promise that no Medicare Locals would be closed should the Coalition form government.

    About a month after coming into office, the new Minister for Health, Peter Dutton, announced a review(link is external) of Medicare Locals to be conducted by Professor John Horvath. The review was aimed at “reducing waste and spending on administration and bureaucracy, so that greater investment can be made in services that directly benefit patients and support health professionals who deliver those services to patients.” Comments from selected “stakeholders” were invited.

    Professor Horvath, previously Chief Medical Officer, was assisted in the review by two consulting firms: Ernst & Young provided advice on the current operations of Medicare Locals and future structure and governance options, and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (Deloitte), conducted an assessment of their financial performance and compliance to their Deed.

    The conduct of the review attracted substantial criticism, particularly for its lack of transparency. A Senate committee subsequently reported(link is external) that it had not been able to obtain much definitive information about the process and methodology used to conduct the review.

    More than 270 submissions were received, indicating a high level of interest in the review, but none was made available by the Department of Health or as supporting documents with the review as is the usual case. Horvath advised that he “personally conducted” interviews with key stakeholders but did not identify who they were. A small number of Medicare Locals were asked for input to the review but were restricted in the amount of information they could provide.

    It is understood that the Deloitte audit involved what the Department of Health called “a basic review” of the 2012–13 operations of the Medicare Locals functioning at that time, with a more considered audit of six of the 61 Medicare Locals. As most Medicare Locals had only just begun operating (setting up structures, employing staff, developing IT systems, etc.), it is not surprising that their audited financial and other achievements were not substantial, and the auditors were not interested in the future plans of the Medicare Locals.

    The review was completed in March 2014 and was highly critical of the performance of the Medicare Locals. Itrecommended(link is external) that the recently established Medicare Local system (one third of the Medicare Locals were only established as from July 2012) be replaced with a system comprising a smaller number of regional organisations called Primary Health Organisations.

    The Senate committee referred to above reported: “With limited information available publicly, and no detailed discussion of methodology in the Review report, it is difficult to understand the Review’s recommendations. Similarly, without the transparency that would have been achieved by the publication of the consultancy reports and the 270 submissions, the Review’s assertions that the Medicare Locals are ‘flawed’ cannot be tested.” The Senate Committee also stated that it could not reconcile the positive evidence it heard of the progress and achievements of Medicare Locals with the highly critical and negative findings of Horvath’s review of the work of the Medicare Locals.

    Notwithstandinga clear public statement by Tony Abbott that no Medicare Locals would be closed should the Coalition form government, when his government brought down the 2014-15 Budget in May 2014 it was announced that all Medicare Locals would cease operation on 30 June 2015 and a new network of Primary Health Networks(link is external) (PHNs) would be established.

    There have been substantial costs incurred in the closure of the 61newly established Medicare Locals, both financial and in terms of disruption or termination of valuable health services. In a relatively short time, boards had been established, staff had been recruited, premises and operating resources were acquired, relationships and collaborations established with local health organisations, and services and programs initiated. On the basis of government commitments, the Medicare Locals had entered into contracts, leases and employment obligations.

    The costs of winding up the Medicare Locals have been estimated at between $112 million to $200 million. The Health Department admitted that closing Medicare Locals would cost $112 million but refused a Freedom of Information request for details of this estimate claiming it would not be in the public interest to release these figures because it could jeopardise “its good relationship with Medicare Locals.” However, many Medicare Locals showed no reluctance to publicly announce their wind up costs at the Senate Committee hearing. The Barwon Medicare Local estimated their costs at $2 million; the North Adelaide Medicare Local’s estimated costs were $2.2 million.

    Skilled, and often very scarce, staff were lost as they became aware of the uncertainty of their future employment. These staff losses were felt most keenly in non-metropolitan areas where health workers are often difficult to find.

    Perhaps more crucially, many highly needed health services that had been recently begun were terminated.Although in their early stage of operation, Medicare Locals had established or funded a range of vital services, made important advances in population health, identified and filled key gaps in services, and begun the critical task of integrating primary care with hospital services. This momentum was lost and many communities lost the gains made. Furthermore, key health staff were lost, a particularly important factor in rural and remote areas.

    The Department of Health then announced that the new PHNs would be selected on the basis of a public tender process so that the new organisations could begin operations on 1 July 2015. This tender process was very poorly managed by the Department.

    The notice of tender for the PHN Program was issued on 28 November 2014, almost a month after the previously advised scheduled release date. The tender period was very short and conducted over the Christmas–New Year period with tenders to be submitted by 28 January 2015.This was an absurdly short time for major organisational relationships to be established and business structures and financial decisions to be made, particularly as the minister encouraged new private sector interests to participate.

    Although broad guidelines were provided to potential tenderers at the start of the process, major decisions and criteria such as the geographic boundaries of the proposed PHNs were drip fed to interested tenderers as the tenders were being prepared.

    State government officials advised that there was very little consultation with the key state health agencies to recognise and capitalise on existing health planning and coordination bodies.

    Information meetings for prospective tenderers were conducted in each state by Department of Health officials but the information provided was no more than that which already available on the Department’s website. The Department even refused to provide notes of the meetings or lists of attendees (which would have been of assistance to facilitate collaboration in the preparation of tenders).

    Horvarth’s review criticised Medicare Locals for focussing too much on service delivery, not entirely coincidentally a concern of GPs and other providers. His report recommended that PHNs “should only provide services where there is demonstrable market failure, significant economies of scale or absence of services”. However, he did not define “market failure” and the Department clearly had difficulty in providing potential tenderers any reasonable clarity on this matter. This certainly made the preparation of submissions very difficult, especially for tenderers in rural and regional areas where Medicare Locals had provided services to meet significant gaps in services.

    In summary, the tender process was very deficient. The Senate Committee noted the confusion surrounding the tender process and considered “flaws in the government’s PHN tender process raises doubts regarding any outcome of the tender process.”

    It is not surprising that about this time a poll of more than 1100 doctors across Australia conducted by the AMA declared the Minister for Health, Peter Dutton MP, the worst Minister for Health for 35 years.

    In April 2015 the Commonwealth government announced that 31 PHNs would be funded as from 1 July 2015. They would be required to establish Clinical Councils involving GPs, and Consumer Advisory Committees. Announcing the successful bidders, the Minister of Health, Sussan Ley, said the new PHNs would replace “Labor’s flawed Medicare Local system,” yet almost all PHNs selected (24 of the 28 PHNs) are either consortia of former Medicare Locals or have a Medicare Local as the lead applicant.

    The new PHNs will be responsible for populations and geographic areas that are much larger than those of the Medicare Locals. (For example, one PHN will now be responsible for all of Western Australia except the Perth metropolitan area.) Medicare Locals had an average population of 355,000; PHNs will service an average population of 738,000. Six PHNs will service populations of more than one million. Many health experts doubt the effectiveness and efficiency of such very large organisations, citing the failure of the NSW government’s establishment of mega health services.

    The substantial costs of establishing these new organisations are not known and it will be interesting to discover their operating costs when their first financial reports are made.

    The concerns of the Senate Committee that the inadequate Horvarth review and the Department’s inept tender process could lead to a poor result appear to be justified. Now, several months after the PHNs were formally established, there has been little progress in developing any useful operations. Many in the health system are of the view that the whole exercise is a very expensive ideological move that, despite very substantial financial resources and lengthy disruption and dislocation, may not achieve the results that the fledgling Medicare Locals were beginning to realise.

    John Thompson is an economist with experience in primary health. This article was first published in Australian Policy Online on 23 November 2015.

  • Victoria Rollison. Couples counselling for Labor and Unions

    When I saw the news that the Electrical Trades Union invited the Greens’ Adam Bandt to address their National Officers conference, and didn’t invite a speaker from the Labor Party, the lyrics of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” came to mind: ‘I’m not that chained up little person still in love with you, and so you felt like dropping in and just expect me to be free, and now I’m saving all my loving for someone who’s loving me’. This is not a lovers’ spat. The ETU has felt unloved by the Labor Party for a long time. In 2010, the union’s members made their displeasure official through a public, conscious uncoupling. As explained on the ETU website ‘our-history’ page: ‘The mood of the ETU membership towards the Labor Party has changed. The members no longer have faith in the Labor Party to listen to and act in the best interests of workers. The argument put forward is that political parties only listen to swinging voters. To that end, in 2010 the ETU membership voted to step away from its affiliation with the ALP and support whichever voice in the Parliament speaks genuinely for the workers’.

    Such a statement barely skims the surface of the complicated relationship between the Labor Party and the Australian trade union movement. Whereas some unions are un-affiliated, others are loved up and as cosy as ever, and continue to provide a well-trodden path into the federal Labor caucus. As pointed out by Professor Ray Markey: ‘Only 11 unions account for all federal Labor parliamentarians with union backgrounds, nine of which are affiliated to the party. Almost half of these 39 MPs come from three affiliates: the Shop Distributive and Allied Industries Union (eight), Transport Workers’ Union (five) and Australian Services Union (five)’. And of course, Labor leader Bill Shorten has a well-known union background in the Australian Workers Union.

    The question for both Labor and Australian unions is, are they good for each other? Will their relationship continue to be mutually beneficial to both parties, or should they go their separate ways?

    There is no simple answer to this question. In recent years, there have been triumphs for the relationship, and inevitable tensions. The triumphs include the union’s campaign against WorkChoices which contributed to Labor’s election win in Kevin-07. Union campaigns were also influential in the election of Queensland Premier, Labor’s Annastacia Palaszczuk. As explained in this interview with Peter Simpson, Queensland state secretary of the ETU union, the ETU, though not an affiliated union, mobilised a grassroots ‘Not 4 Sale’ campaign against public asset sales. Many other unions helped not just with campaign funds, but also with on-the-ground activities such as door knocking and phone calls. In her victory speech, Palaszczuk shared the love by saying: ‘Can I thank the union movement … Because it is the union movement that stands up each and every day and fights for better conditions for workers across this state.’

    Still, whereas the good times are good, the bad times are terrible. In working towards Party reform, Labor has slowly been unpicking their strong – some consider stifling – union links. For instance, in an effort to increase the accessibility to the party and the diversity of Labor rank-and-file membership, it is no longer compulsory for applicants to be a member of a trade union. Senator John Faulkner campaigned to reduce union representation at state conferences from half to 20%. Labor’s National President and Shadow Climate Change Minister, Mark Butler, is also pushing to increase rank-and-file decision making and reduce unions’ disproportionate voting rights. Since 2010, Labor has implied they are happy to date other people by describing their relationship with unions as ‘links’ amongst ‘other community organisations’. This is a far more casual relationship than 2002 when Labor described their union relationship status as a ‘partnership’.

    Any end to the relationship would be costly for Labor. John Warhurst says Labor ‘depends hugely upon the unions financially, not just through the regular flow of money for daily administration, but for election campaign expenditure and broader pre-election political campaigns…’ But with this money comes an expectation of influence, an influence many non-union Labor rank and file members and supporters see as ‘authoritarian, anti-democratic, sometimes corrupt and with power held by factions and “faceless men”’.

    Policy disagreements are also an unavoidable source of tension between Labor and unions. A recent example is the disappointment felt by unions about Labor’s deal with Turnbull’s government accepting the China Free Trade Agreement, albeit with some amendments. ACTU President Ged Kearney was quoted as saying ‘companies would still be able to source workers from overseas without offering jobs to local citizens and residents’ and ‘While we appreciate the efforts of Penny Wong and Bill Shorten to fix a bad deal, the proposed changes simply do not go far enough’.

    All of these complications inside Labor and unions’ relationship are amplified by the Liberal Party’s ideological war against unions, and by association, Labor. Speaking about his Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption in Parliament on 8 September 2015, former Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott claimed the commission was set up ‘because it was absolutely necessary to get to the bottom of rorts, rackets and rip-offs, of corruption and of criminality inside the trade union movement’. This depiction of unions as corrupt and criminal is regularly repeated in news stories, particularly in right-wing partisan press, framing any Labor MP with links to unions as untrustworthy. Overcoming such attacks, and defending their public reputation, is a crucial activity Labor and unions must cooperate in.

    If Labor and unions are to remain together, they need to be honest about how each has changed since they first met, and agree to compromise, as any couple who have a long history must do. Unions are operating in a vastly different economy and with a shifting and declining membership base, with ever-changing IR policy challenges to contend with. Labor is often stuck between a positive reform agenda rock and a populist electorally viable hard place, so won’t always be able to accommodate all unions all the time. Of course everyone must acknowledge that Labor can’t be progressively productive, and defend against the right’s attacks on IR policy, without winning elections.

    There is so much good about the relationship, I’m sure it’s not something either want to destroy completely. And even if the unlikely decision is made for Labor and unions to cut ties and file for divorce, I would hope they can agree to be cordial for the benefit of the children; for the benefit of everyone who relies on unions and the Labor Party to defend the rights of workers, to deliver socially progressive policies and to maintain economically equitable and sustainable economic growth.

    Victoria Rollison is a political blogger. She works in marketing and communications and is researching political narrative at the University of South Australia. She is a member of the ALP in Adelaide.

     

  • Arja Keski-Nummi   Andaman Disaster – Regional Cooperation on Refugees

    Too often in Australia we go cap in hand to the region when we have an asylum seeker or refugee problem. When our problems pass, we lose interest in regional cooperation. No wonder the region often see us as fair-weather friends.

    But our region faces refugee problems alongside ours. As a good neighbour we should help with the common problems we face. It is in our interest to do so as well as in the interest of regional countries.

    On 13 November 2015, the Huffington Post carried a story that “Myanmar’s Rohingya could be the world’s next major refugee crisis”.  The story commented

    ‘After months of monsoon rains, it is sailing season again in the South Seas of Myanmar. Six months ago, the plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority briefly garnered international attention when they were among thousands of starving refugees and migrants abandoned in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Human Rights groups now say a new refugee crisis looms, as members of the Rohingya minority are excluded from the dramatic reforms taking place in their country. Amnesty International recently warned that thousands more people could set sail in the coming months, risking a repeat of the May crisis.’

    John Menadue.

    See below a post by Arja Keski-Nummi on the earlier Andaman disaster.

    The crisis in the Andaman Sea provides an opportunity for the Australian Government through our Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as Co-chair of the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking and Related Transnational Crime to give the process some teeth and credibility in the region. This is a good opportunity for us to help others just as they have helped us in the past with regard to people movements.

    Five countries that are part of the Bali Process are facing a crisis that is drawing negatively the attention of the international community on the region; unprecedented since the Indo Chinese outflows of three decades ago.

    Australia should be approaching the other Co-chair, Indonesia, to work with affected countries in examining what can be done to both tackle the people smuggling/trafficking ventures that are preying on vulnerable people in Bangladesh and Myanmar and how best to ensure the safety and security of people who have been affected by such predatory behaviour.  In its 2013 communiqué ministers “underscored the importance of addressing humanitarian and protection needs in managing irregular movement”.

    Now is the time to enliven the April 2013 communiqué of the Bali Process Ministerial meeting in which in its penultimate paragraph:

    “Ministers recognised that the root cause of irregular movements in the region were complex and multidimensional and encouraged members to continue to work with countries of origin, including through development cooperation, to address where possible underlying factors which made people vulnerable to irregular movement.” 

    This communiqué called for greater regional cooperation and work on:

    • People smuggling and trafficking. From the reporting we have seen on this latest humanitarian disaster a people smuggling venture has quickly turned into trafficking.
    • Development of a “protection-sensitive regional approach” – the aspirations of which are to have consistent assessment processes for asylum seekers, and where appropriate and possible harmonised arrangements or the establishment of regional assessment arrangements.
    • Identifying in the region the perceived increase of labour trafficking and how this might be tackled by working with civil society groups and business.
    • Working with countries to address the root causes of such movements

    All of these concerns are present in the current situation of the people on the boats in the Andaman Sea.

    We should with our Co-chair seek to convene a special high-level ad-hoc group under the Bali Process banner to pull together a practical cooperative action plan that would provide assurances to affected destination countries that the burden is not theirs alone.  This group could comprise the five affected countries, Australia as co-chair and the three international agencies UNHCR, IOM and UNODC.

    Such assistance could include:

    In Destination Countries:

    • Assistance with initial screening and identification of people with protection concerns or who are victims of trafficking. A multinational task force (comprising nationals of destination countries as well as other Bali Process countries such as Australia and new Zealand) led by UNHCR to undertake that initial screening,
    • Flying in emergency assistance for shelter and medical support with the agreement of affected countries
    • Creation of safe havens pending final determinations –where the burden of costs is shared.
    • Assistance with local integration in certain circumstances through regional social investment projects in housing, health and education services that benefit the indigenous communities as well as new arrivals.
    • Commitments to resettlement of recognised refugees over a period of time.
    • Greater support for return through assistance in innovative new labour creation projects through social investment projects and micro financing schemes.

    In Source Countries:

    For the Rohingya the solution lies with Myanmar conforming to international norms in relation to the treatment of its citizens.  While Myanmar does not recognize the citizenship of a segment of its population and actively discriminates against them through property, education, movement and marriage laws this situation will continue.  The solutions have to lie in policy changes with the Myanmar government. As Myanmar emerges out of its self-imposed isolation regional institutions such as ASEAN have the opportunity to provide a constructive environment within which Myanmar can address the policy problems of this issue.  Complementary to this an ad hoc group as proposed above could provide practical assistance to ASEAN in mapping out strategies for supporting Myanmar in improving the conditions of Rohingya in Myanmar.

    Bangladesh has been a source of labour migration for decades.   Traffickers prey on the vulnerabilities of people desperate for work where there is none. Overpopulation, corruption, lack of opportunities, international demand for cheap labour all play into the hands of traffickers.  There is no easy solution to this cocktail of misery compounded by a lack of political stability in Bangladesh. While the Bangladesh Government has created a legal and administrative infrastructure to combat trafficking – “The Human Trafficking Deterrence and Suppression Act 2012” and the “National Plan of Action for Combating Human Trafficking for 2012 – 2014” and coming out of these instruments established a number of different strategies covering training, awareness and education as well as greater law enforcement measures, the problem remains overwhelming. According to the 2014 US Department of State Trafficking in Person Report, of 215 cases initiated for prosecution in 2013, a total of fourteen people were convicted of trafficking.  There are no reliable figures on how many people were trafficked in this time but conservative estimates put it in the tens of thousands. Given these most recent developments, a Bali ad-hoc group with Bangladesh as an active participant can continue a process of working with Bangladesh in strengthening the strategies it has in place and working with civil society in the country in providing protections and safe haven for people at risk of being trafficked.

    Smugglers and Traffickers – the raison d’etre of the Bali Process is to combat People Smuggling and Trafficking. Despite many countries in the region enacting laws against people smuggling and trafficking and the imposition of ever-greater penalties for smuggling and trafficking it remains one of the more lucrative and risk free ventures in the region.  Tackling this through laws and awareness campaigns while important is not enough. These loose coalitions of interest groups and syndicates are like a many-headed hydra quickly adapting and changing techniques and operations to prevailing conditions. Again the issue must be tackled at its source – in this instance most likely Bangladesh. The proposed ad hoc group could start the development of a strategy to support Bangladesh and other countries named in the US State Department TIP reports to strengthen its approaches against traffickers and recruiters and the victim of smugglers and traffickers.

    This is a global problem, which will only increase, and we cannot isolate ourselves from it. While for the time being Australia may have stopped the boats – this policy is not sustainable into the longer term. It is in our national and regional security interests to help stabilize populations and to play our part in the region. 

    Arja Keski-Nummi was formerly First Assistant Secretary in charge of refugees in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

  • Victoria Rollison. The Future of Australia’s Trade Unions

    A strong trade union movement is crucial to combating growing wealth inequality in the Australian economy.

    When asked in 2014 what Australia ‘had done right’ to defend the economy against the chronic wealth inequality experienced in the US, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz answered: ‘unions’. He explained that Australia has ‘been able to maintain stronger trade unions than the United States. The absence of any protection for workers, any bargaining power, has had adverse effects in the United States. You [Australia] have a minimum wage of around $15 an hour. We [the US] have a minimum wage of $8 an hour. That pulls down our entire wage structure’.

    Regardless of their comparative strength to unions in the US, Australian unions cannot afford to be complacent about their long term survival.

    Recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as analysed in The Guardian by Greg Jericho, paint a worrying picture for the Australian trade union movement. Jericho reports that ‘trade union membership in the private sector is now almost one in 10… And in a sign of further strife for the union movement, just one in 20 young workers are in a trade union’. The public sector (39.5%) and education (34.38%) industries have the highest percentage of trade union membership, but as the number of workers in traditionally strong union industries such as manufacturing decline, so too does union membership, particularly amongst male workers. In fact, Jericho points out, whereas men used to be more likely to be union members, women now make up a higher percentage of union members, with 15.9% of female workers members of a union as compared to 14.4% of men. The total percentage of trade union members in the Australian workforce is now 15.1%, and only 13.8% if you include workers in unincorporated enterprises. This compares to 40.5% in 1990.

    Commenting on these figures, former ACTU official, Tim Lyons    , says ‘Australian unions have only a few years to change or die’. Lyons is reported as blaming the ‘historic collapse in union membership’ on ‘an outdated approach that does not work across large parts of the workforce’, and admits the blame is shared by him as a ‘former senior ACTU officer’. He says that too often, unions are seen as only being concerned with their position in the political sphere and that ‘Political campaigning can’t ever be an excuse for not organising’. He goes on to argue that ‘The need for new models of membership and worker participation is long overdue’. Offering a potential way forward, Lyons suggests; ‘Strong, growing unions are ones that help give workers some power over their work and therefore their lives. There are no shortage of workplace issues to organise around, with penalty rates being only the most obvious’. Lyons sees unions’ futures in re-evaluating their value to workers and helping workers organise to help themselves, with less emphasis on political campaigning.

    Amongst their assessments of the declining membership of Australian unions, Jericho and Lyons comment on some more positive news for unions by citing polling released recently in Essential Media’s Essential Report, October 27 2015. The poll asked ‘How important are unions for Australian working people today?’ and found ‘The majority of respondents regarded unions to be important for Australian working people today (62%), whilst 28% believe that they were not important’.

    Ged Kearney, President of the ACTU, responded to the ABS’s declining union membership figures by pointing out that ‘while union membership density is hovering around 15% of workers, more than 60% of Australian workers are employed under conditions that were collectively bargained for’ and ‘Even for workers not covered by collective agreements, they still directly benefit from their broad acceptance. The ubiquitousness of such agreements has led to them becoming the de facto base rate across much of the workforce, rather than the relevant award’.

    The challenge for Australian unions is to translate the belief amongst workers of the importance of the role of unions, and the reality of unions’ benefit to wage growth, into a belief that union membership is a valuable investment for workers’ individual job conditions. A strong, united workers’ trade union movement is the best line of defence, as pointed out by Stiglitz, to defend against growing economic wealth inequality.

    Victoria Rollison is a political blogger, working in marketing and communications. This article first appeared in ‘Equality, a journal of Australian Fabians’.

  • Rob Nicholls. Ziggy’s stardust: The NBN, net neutrality and competitive neutrality

    The sound of an incumbent lobbying has the grating element of petulant mewling. When the incumbent is a state owned enterprise that is evoking arguments about net neutrality, then it’s time to ask the “cui bono?” or “to whose profit?” question. After all, the term “network neutrality” can be best summed up as a line of argument use by large businesses in their lobbying.

    In this case, it was the chair of the National Broadband Network Company, a business that likes to be known by its lower case initials nbn, that was flying the net neutrality kite. Ziggy Switkowski argued that it might be time to think about who should bear the cost of transporting streaming video from companies such as Netflix, Presto and Stan. Specifically, should the internet service provider (ISP) be able to charge Netflix and others for some of the carriage costs that it incurs? Ziggy also mentioned that access to nbn’s network might be more expensive to smaller ISPs.

    This might be a reasonable question to ask. The speech was on 16 November and attracted comments from the electronic trade press on the day and was covered by Fairfax on 23 November. Of itself, this suggests that nbn wants the question asked. However, the issue has much less to do with net neutrality that it does with the Chair of nbn seeking to change the scope of the company’s business. nbn is constrained by the shareholder ministers’ wishes expressed in a Statement of Expectations and its regulatory constraints which are imposed by law and nbn’s own Special Access Undertaking, that it gave to the ACCC. These assume that retail providers connect to nbn’s network at one or more of the 121 points of interconnection to nbn’s network. In doing so, the retail provider pays a two part tariff reflecting both the connection bit rate and the volume. The volume component is the Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC). This is a pure pricing construct, as there is no underlying cost for the CVC.

    The problem for Ziggy is that Australian internet users, in common with internet users all over the world, want to download more content. In doing so, they make the interconnection to nbn’s network look increasingly expensive at no additional cost to nbn. However, Ziggy’s argument on network neutrality harks back to an older era. For a start, each of the major providers of content pay for their own carriage across the Pacific. ISPs can interconnect with Netflix, Google (for YouTube) and Facebook in Sydney or Melbourne. Second, there are extensive content distribution networks to deliver the content closer to the points of interconnection and the use of these networks is paid for by the content providers. Netflix also offers ISPs the option of a no cost cache if they generate a great deal of traffic to a particular area. This Netflix Open Connect Appliance could logically sit at each of nbn’s points of interconnection (on the customer side of the CVC toll point) and Ziggy’s network neutrality issue would be resolved.

    But nbn actually wants to change its operating environment by competing with existing infrastructure providers. The argument that the smallest ISPs cannot afford to connect at every interconnection point sounds like a problem. It is not. The large infrastructure providers offer carriage services to the ISPs on a wholesale basis. However, the effect of this is also to magnify the nbn’s odd CVC pricing arrangements. Instead of letting private sector competitors provide services, the state owned enterprise would rather provide the carriage itself. This has the convenient effect of masking the CVC problem and the inconvenient consequence of lessening competition among private sector actors.

    The concept of competitive neutrality, with its origins in NSW state policy of the late eighties, its codification as a consequence of the Hilmer Review in 1993 and its role as the centrepiece of the proposals of the Harper Review last year, is a critical part of competition policy in Australia. If a state owned enterprise in another country argued that consumer demand was driving its actions in contradiction to the principles of competitive neutrality, Australian businesses would rightly complain. Using the the thin veil of network neutrality to try to justify breaching the principle when the solution to the problem is for nbn to change its pricing approach is not easily forgivable. Perhaps, like the album by David Bowie’s alter ego “Ziggy Stardust”, this line of argument should be released once and not be repeated.

    Dr Rob Nicholls is Lecturer, School of Taxation and Business Law, UNSW Business School.

  • Francis Sullivan. Learning As We Go: The Pope Models the Change the Church Needs

    Francis Sullivan ABC Religion and Ethics 12 Nov 2015 

    Ever since the conclusion of the recent Synod in Rome, I have been thinking about the signals of change that Pope Francis is sending. He does it in words and by his disposition.

    Observers at the Synod frequently commented on the informal and casual style of the Pope. He mixed easily and readily with participants. He didn’t stand on ceremony and was eager for a chat – more a “first among equals” than some sovereign ruler.

    This in itself is a marked difference from previous popes. He personifies what he extols: openness, inclusion and “learning as we go.”

    It’s not hard to see how such a disposition pays dividends in a world in which the search for truth and meaning can seem so clouded and even crowded out with competing voices, philosophies and ideologies. The fact that Francis doesn’t purport to “have it all sorted” only deepens his appeal to the rest of us who struggle at times to find certainty and a sure path in life.

    Pope Francis has a mantra. He speaks often of the mercy of God, not divine judgement. He wants to remind us of the importance of the human heart, the innate urge to feel for others, understand their plight and seek to help. He wants us to see this as the first and most important of the human responses. This is a disposition that builds bridges and heals wounds; a perspective that seeks to restore relationships, nourish people and promote harmony, not division.

    Only this week he spoke of a Church unafraid to question itself, live with doubts and the discomfort of interrogating its assumptions; a place of dialogue, with a willingness to embrace the new and the awkward. A church that seeks to reform through becoming unsettled, unsure but close to people, their circumstances, sense of isolation and travail. A church more like a meeting square than a brick bastion.

    This reminds me of what Simone Weil meant by paying attention. She said that in order to get a sense of what is true we need to suspend our own agenda and concerns and shift the focus of our attention on to that we encounter. In so doing, the truth of that encounter, that dynamic within the dialogue, will be revealed.

    This is similar to the maxim that listening is the first step towards wisdom. To listen well is to be aware of the voices in ourselves that try to understand another person long before we have actually heard them. Letting go of preconceived perspectives, attitudes and even understandings is the challenge for a pilgrim church if dedication to truth is to be its hallmark.

    The irony is that, in becoming disturbed or, as the Pope puts it, “uncomfortable” – maybe even knocked off course – we are strangely on a pathway more to do with God than any human construct of the Divine.

    At one level, we should not be surprised to hear a pope speak and act like this. The fact that we are surprised speaks volumes for the institutional persona the Church has cultivated in many quarters these days.

    Critics see the Church as being harsh on human nature, uncompromising with its take on the truth and immovable in its attitudes. In its response to child sex abuse, the Church too regularly failed the test of moral leadership, hid behind institutional protectionism and sought to excuse itself as just another institution with some “bad eggs” in the basket.

    It spent too long exhausting institutional resources to justify, contextualise and even rationalise away the problem, rather than in humbly admitting its failures as far up the line as they went. The upshot has been in collapse of trust and the consolidation of the public image of a Church that not only speaks of arrogance and indifference, but that also fails to “feel with” those abused and disenchanted.

    Too often Church officials wanted understanding before they expressed mercy. We didn’t get the problem before it became a tsunami. We didn’t get what victims and their families were saying and the reach of the tentacles of abuse within the Church. We didn’t get the imperative to cry out in shame and seek atonement. And when we did, it looked too late.

    God have mercy!

    Francis Sullivan is CEO of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, which is coordinating the Catholic Church’s engagement with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.