John Menadue

  • Barney Zwartz. Christianity is dying out? Don’t count on it.

    Repost from 10/10/2015

    Recent predictions (and perhaps hopes) about Christianity’s demise in the West have been greatly exaggerated. But to the extent that the faith does disappear, it will be greatly missed, writes Barney Zwartz.

    Predicting social trends is usually an inexact science, but England’s influential Spectator magazine has boldly put a precise date on the disappearance of Christianity from Britain: 2067.

    If the number of UK-born Christians keeps sinking at the rate it has for the past decade, by 2067 they will be “statistically invisible”, Damian Thompson wrote.

    British Anglicans have fallen from 40 per cent of the population three decades ago to 17 per cent last year. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of Christians born in Britain fell by 5.3 million.

    Thompson writes:

    If that rate of decline continues, the mission of St Augustine to the English, together with that of the Irish saints to the Scots, will come to an end in 2067.

    Catholics also dropped in Britain, down to 8 per cent from 10 per cent in 1983, but they are a much smaller minority than in Australia, where they represent a quarter of the population. In both cases, numbers are buoyed by non-Anglo immigration.

    Thompson recognises that projection is not prediction, but it is plain that the trends are dire for British believers. Nor are they particularly encouraging for the churches in Australia.

    The churches have already had to accept the unpalatable fact that they have largely lost their once-automatic role as society’s conscience, and have become merely one voice in the crowded public square. But this is no bad thing – they are not silenced, they merely have to work as hard as everyone else to have their views heard.

    I do not doubt that the number of Christians in Australia’s Census – down to 61 per cent in 2011 from 86 per cent in 1971 – will continue to decline. A large proportion of that 61 per cent are cultural Christians, and as church attendance falls, so will cultural identity.

    However, this may well be balanced by other factors, so that the churches will find a new equilibrium. Other social trends are working in their favour.

    For example, as an ever-larger proportion of the population lives alone and looks for connections, churches stand out more strongly as an option. Other institutions that served this role, such as sporting clubs or niche groups, are often in sharper decline than the churches. This is shown in an interesting new trend: where a few decades ago people were converted and then went to church, today new members come to church for social connection and other reasons, and then (may) become Christians.

    In 2012, the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Health found in its systematic review of all the relevant studies, over and over again, a positive relationship between religion and mental health/well being. This may prove significant. The handbook reports that 93 per cent of 45 studies found that religion/spirituality is related to greater purpose and meaning. 73 per cent of 40 studies found that religion/spirituality is related to greater hope. 61 per cent of 413 studies found lower rates of depression or faster recovery from depression in individuals who are more religious.

    In August, the Independent newspaper in the UK reported a study of 9,000 people over the age of 50 which found that the only activity linked to sustained happiness was attending a place of worship.

    What does all this mean? I want to make two claims: first, that reports of Christianity’s demise in the West are greatly exaggerated; and second, that to the extent it does disappear, it will be greatly missed.

    As Joni Mitchell put it eloquently, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

    The churches will have fewer nominal attendees, so that members are more committed. As they continue their good works, but without much of the moralising of the recent past, the faith will become more attractive. It will be like the fourth century – before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and began its fateful courtship of power and authority.

    The early Christians’ courage and compassion – for example, staying in cities to found hospitals and tend to the plague-ridden when other citizens fled, as in the time of Emperor Decius – made a profound impression. There have been many like them ever since, going to the darkest and most difficult places, and improving people’s lives.

    With their lost moral authority, Christians will lose their social status – a process that is well underway. By this I don’t mean that a Christian doctor or saleswoman will be any less honoured as a doctor or saleswoman, but that their faith will not be seen as meritorious or contributing to whatever else they are.

    Already there are many in Australia who despise and condemn believers as irrational and foolish and are quite happy to say so; who talk of invisible friends, flying teapots or fairies at the bottom of the garden. Christians, sadly, have not always been generous when they were dominant, and cannot complain too loudly now.

    Part of that possible imitation of the fourth century will be that churches are made up less of society’s stakeholders – those with worldly success, and those who aspire to it. (That was one of the appeals of Christianity as the official religion – it was the side of the winners.) Instead, the believers will be like those the Apostle Paul described in his first letter to the Corinthians: “Think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.”

    This brings me to my second claim: that if Christianity were to decline in the West to the extent that some believe, it will be a huge loss. If I accept the claims of atheist spokespeople that the number of real, committed believers in Australia is closer to 20 per cent than 60, as I do, then those 20 per cent are vastly over-represented in the ranks of society’s volunteers, helpers and donors. As one newspaper reported at the time, of the 41 aid agencies that rushed to Rwanda in 1994 to provide support and relief, 37 were Christian. Today in Australia, of the 30 largest charities, 26 are faith-based.

    Much of Australia’s social capital over the past two centuries was built by Christians, explicitly motivated by their faith to work not just for themselves but for the community at large. They believed they were called to love their neighbour – all their neighbours – and brought their (now-maligned) “Protestant work ethic” to bear on the problems and challenges of their time. The economy, and in particular the siren call of profit, is the only language that seems to move government or business now. Or at least, it is the most heard.

    In his Short History of Christianity, Geoffrey Blainey suggests that rather than dying out, Christianity is set to keep evolving and moving, declining and re-emerging, just as it always has. It’s a faith that has repeatedly reinvented itself, and while no revival is permanent, neither has been any decline.

    Despite the recent predictions (and perhaps hopes) of some, history suggests that this age-old pattern is likely to continue.

    Barney Zwartz is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity. This article was first published in The Drum on 5 October 2015.

  • Richard Woolcott. Australia’s role is in our region.

    There is no doubt that Malcolm Turnbull’s visit to Indonesia and his and Lucy’s contacts with President Jakowi and his wife have very substantially improved the situation between Indonesia and Australia that existed before Malcolm’s visit.

    The most recent and important meeting was between the Indonesian Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Defence with our Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Defence.  This meeting of the “two plus two”, as it is called and the press conference which followed underlined how the situation between Australia and Indonesia has changed and substantially improved.  This does not mean however that there are no on-going differences.  It was clear from the responses to the questions at the press conference that Indonesia, which is not a claimant state, is very careful not to adopt a negative attitude towards China’s activities in the South China Sea.  Both the Indonesian Foreign Minister and Defence Minister made it plain that all countries in the region shared an important interest in a stable peaceful approach to claims.

    Both the Indonesian Ministers for Defence and Foreign Affairs made it clear that they wanted Australia to maintain firmly the position that West Papua was a part of Indonesia.  The Australian Ministers in response to these comments indicated that Australia acknowledged West Papua as a part of Indonesia.  This does not entirely rule out Indonesian fears that we may over time change our position as we did in respect of East Timor.  But  East Timor had never been a part of the Dutch East Indies, as was the case with West Papua.

    My considered view is Australia needs to refocus on the important interests in our own Region – South East Asia, North Asia and the South West Pacific in what is now generally called the Asian Century.  Former Indonesian Ambassador to Australian Sabam Saigian and currently the Editor in Chief of the Jakarta Post wrote earlier this year the blunt commentary that “Australia is still stuck in the 20th Century mode.  It is a Monarchy with a Head of State in London and its security arrangements are largely Cold War relics…..Australia is out of sync with the emerging geo-political environment of Asia today”.

    I do consider we need to establish an updated and more balanced approach to the vital relationship between the United States and China.  There is a danger that adversarial attitudes towards China could become a self fulfilling prophecy.  The present debate on China mainly assumes that Australia has no choice but to support American primacy in Asia against the perceived rising Chinese hegemony, something which Xi Jinping has always denied.  Former Prime Ministers Hawke, Keating and the late Malcolm Fraser as well as most former Ambassadors to China and a number of academics can be expected to resist American” hegemony“ although they accept a cooperative and constructive United States role in Asia.  In my view Australia should not take sides on China Japan disputes or on rival territorial claims.  Our focus should be on unimpeded passage through international waters and trade routes.  Provocative actions by all claimants should be avoided.  Malcolm Turnbull was in his very recent visit to Japan cautious in this respect and very firm in opposing the resumption of whaling by Japan.

    Turning to the Middle East we should acknowledge that while there were reasons for joining the US led invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, fourteen years later with forty Australians killed, over five hundred billion dollars spent and more than thirteen thousand Afghan civilians killed on objectives once deemed to be indispensible such as national building and effective counter insurgency have been downgraded or abandoned because there are  no longer adequate resources, time or even a clear US will to achieve them.  Polls suggest that the US public  opposes US ground forces being involved in further conflicts in the Middle East.

    Australia needs a fundamental change in our national psyche focused more on Asia than on our well established links with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand (the “anglosphere”), and Europe.    We need a much more sustained conversation with our neighboring countries in Asia and the South West Pacific.

    Essentially terrorism has to be dealt with in each country, although discussion on dealing with it internationally can be useful and there was evidence  of new discussions between the AFP and the Indonesian police ,, although the Indonesian Foreign Minister did say that Indonesia wanted to check some of the information which they had received from the AFP.

    In the long term no bi-lateral relationship will be more important to Australia than that of Indonesia.  The stability, unity and economic growth of a predominantly (81%) moderate Muslim nation of two hundred and fifty million people stretching across our north and trade routes a distance from Broome to Christchurch in New Zealand is vital to Australia.

    There is some discussion in New York at present about an Australian interest in the Secretary Generalship of the United Nations, at present held by Ban Ki-Moon.  This will come up in the middle of next year.  It would normally be for the Eastern European group to nominate a candidate but there is some doubt that they will be able to agree on a candidate.  Although he publicly says he is not a candidate, it is quite widely regarded that Kevin Rudd is interested in the position and is privately working on securing it.

    We are to some extent locked into participation in the Middle East through our cooperation with the present Iraq Government and our role in support of British air activity. The essential fact however is that Australia cannot influence the outcome of the kaleidoscope  of changing activities between extremist Shiites,  Sunnis and Kurds and a range of countries with different objectives including Saudi Arabia,  Iran, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Israel, China and the Yeman.  Because our role is symbolic in that it will not lead to a solution in the foreseeable future, it would be desirable for Australia to withdraw from the enormously complex situation in the Middle East and focus our attention on our region of the world when we can do so.

    Tony Abbott on a number of occasions said that the first duty of a PM was to increase the safety of the Australian people.In fact his approach has made the Australian people LESS safe.

  • Ray Markey. The myths surrounding penalty rates.

    The article below by Professor Ray Markey was posted before the release of the recent Productivity Commission Report on penalty rates.

    Following the release of the report, Professor Markey commented as follows:

    ‘The Productivity Commission report presents no new evidence for increased employment from reduced penalty rates. Mainly there are theoretical economic arguments and modelling based on it. Time use survey data is very selectively cited and dated anyway since the last survey was in 2006. It clearly shows that people prefer weekends for being with family and friends and does not refer to studies showing it is difficult to make up during the week for this weekend time being lost due to work. The one new argument in the report is very interesting, namely that the onus of proof about the impact of reduced penalty rates on employment should be reversed i.e. employers shouldn’t have to prove this is the case to get changes – clearly an admission of a lack of evidence.

    It is tiring to hear penalty rates linked with productivity as the minister responsible, Senator Cash, did on radio this morning. It has nothing to do with productivity and neither the Productivity Commission nor the main employer submissions made this claim. Productivity increases would require increased output relative to inputs (labour). Reducing penalty rates will increase employer income and potentially profits, but it is inconceivable how it affects productivity positively. If the argument that employment will increase as a result of reduced penalty rates is true, it may have a negative impact on productivity. Cheaper labour costs certainly provide incentives for employers not to engage in innovation to increase productivity and this is the trap for low wage economies such as New Zealand, where they struggle with lower productivity than Australia and lower wages. Reducing penalty rates, therefore, is a distraction from the Prime Minister’s focus on an innovation agenda.’

     

    In the current review of modern awards before the Fair Work Commission, employers are challenging the level of penalty rates. At the same time, the Productivity Commission says excessive penalty rates for Sundays reduce hours worked, mean unemployment is higher than it needs to be, and reduce options for businesses and consumers. It wants Sunday penalty rates in some sectors to be set at the Saturday rate.

    A penalty rate for Sunday work was first implemented in Australia for working “unsocial” hours in 1919. The 1947 ‘Weekend Penalty Rates Case’ expanded penalty rates to Saturdays, while Sundays were set at a rate of double time. Later decisions specified that workers would need to be compensated for the loss of opportunity for family life and social time resulting from weekend work.

    More than 60 years on, employers argue the world has changed. It has, but many of the arguments employers make are not supported by the evidence.

    Myth 1: Given extended trading hours, it’s no longer abnormal for people to work weekends

    Most employees still do not work unsocial hours. According to the Australian Work and Life Index, 38 per cent of workers work unsocial hours; only 32.2 per cent of workers work weekends and 18.9 per cent of workers work evenings after 9pm regularly. These figures include the 13.1 per cent of workers who work both evenings and weekends regularly.

    Myth 2: It’s only young single people that work weekends.

    While being single with no children is more common than other family types among these workers, they are not a majority: there are also many couples both with and without children, and sole parents.

    Women are also more likely than men to work weekends. HILDA data indicates that only 22 per cent of male and 21 per cent of female weekend workers were dependent students; in other words, 78 per cent of all weekend workers were not dependent and pay their own bills.

    Myth 3: The disadvantages of working weekends are only bad for those who work very long hours.

    Employers argue that the adverse effects associated with working weekends are only relevant to those who work very long hours, and that the days and times themselves are no longer relevant, either because people no longer engage in the activities which previous decisions attempted to protect, or because these activities can be made up on other days and at other times.

    But those who work on weekends do so at the sacrifice of time with friends and family, time which cannot be simply made up through time spent at other times during the week. This is particularly acute on Sundays, which remain a time for spending time with family. In spite of claims to the contrary, the differentiation between Saturdays and Sundays remains relevant in modern Australian society.

    In general, the recompense of penalty rates is the key reason for willingly working weekends; with far fewer doing so to meet their own flexibility needs. However, the experience of the Work Choices era, and the importance and power of employer expectation, does suggest that many employees would not, in the absence of penalty rates, be able to avoid weekend work due to fear of losing their jobs, and indeed employees being forced to work weekends for no extra pay seems the most likely consequence of removing penalty rates.

    Myth 4: Those who work in industries that pay penalty rates are not low paid.

    Many workers on penalty rates are among the low paid. According to the Australian Work and Life Index, 37.8 per cent of workers who work weekends only and receive penalty rates rely on these to meet household expenses. This increases to 48.8 per cent for those working both evenings and weekends, and 52.2 per cent for Sundays only.

    Myth 5: Reducing or eliminating penalty rates would increase employment.

    The empirical evidence for increased employment as a result of reducing penalty rates is non-existent. Employer arguments have been based essentially on economic theory, which is merely hypothesis in the absence of empirical confirmation. What may be relevant in terms of the impact of wages on employment is that none of the available empirical evidence suggests minimum wages have a significant effect on net employment, a point reiterated by the Productivity Commission.

    While some studies do suggest a substitution effect, this would be a matter of balancing one set of employed workers against another — older workers versus youth. However, a number of studies suggest no effect at all, and some suggest a positive effect.

    Given the evidence, it is difficult to see any benefits likely to accrue from the abolition or reduction of penalty rates for employees, employment levels or greater availability of services to the public.

    Professor Ray Markey is Director of the Centre for Workforce Futures.
    This article was originally published on The Conversation on 2 December 2015.

  • Moira Rayner. Corrupt churches need women leaders

    Lord Acton said that ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ It was in correspondence about the then pope’s proposed new doctrine of papal infallibility. It is often overlooked that he added, ‘Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.’

    When I was a child, the greatest misuse of priestly power imputed to the ‘RCs’ was the sometimes brutal violence used in the ‘care’ of disobedient pupils, unmarried mothers, illegitimate and ‘removed’ children and orphans in institutions run by nuns, brothers and priests.

    Thanks to brave individuals and independent journalists, the sexual abuse permitted and distributed by some of these hands has been revealed in Australian parliamentary inquiries and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

    It is unfair to profile the one, Catholic Church for the sins of so many more whose patriarchal culture and authoritarian practices are shared by those who professed to ‘suffer the little children to come unto me … for of such are the kingdom of heaven’.

    Yet former bishops and archbishops have told the Commission that, yes, the Church failed its duty, protecting its reputation, wealth and ordained at the cost of children and complainants. Fairfax claimed the Melbourne Response saved the Church at least $62 million, by capping the amount payable to a fraction of what complainants would have been awarded had they not been dissuaded from suing.

    It is increasingly apparent that the Church’s moral failure to address the worm in its heart has poisoned the vine. By their fruits you shall know them.

    *****

    I am a laywoman, and in the Catholic Church could never be ordained.

    Like many women, I am active, as a spiritual director and retreat leader. As well, over the last decade I was briefly responsible for receiving complaints about professional standards in the Anglican diocese of Melbourne, and am currently a member of a professional standards committee for one of the Catholic orders. The majority of its members are women. They are laity, busy, unpaid, and without power.

    And thereby is some hope. Since Vatican II, successive popes have pledged a greater role for the laity to work with those who are ordained, and Pope Francis has emphasised respect for women religious, and some hope for long-squelched leadership roles for women.

    The Vatican bureaucracy is not pleased with this, or with women’s views on small matters such as admitting the divorced to the Eucharist.

    There is a traditional culture of brotherhood in the upper echelons of the Church at every level. There is also a natural urge to homosocial reproduction in its instrumentalities.

    If I have learned anything from my work with companies and organisations on cultural change, it is that these comfortable cultures need to be broken up, because they are, as Lord Acton said, so readily corrupted. Narrowly defined, corruption means people use their position and authority for personal rather than the church’s benefit (that is, the whole church, not just its office holders).

    More broadly, it refers to any violation of ethical and legal rules even when there is no personal gain, as in perjury, turning a blind eye, bending the rules, using violence to silence nay-sayers, wildcards and whistleblowers, or covering up physical and sexual misconduct, theft, and discrimination.

    The Royal Commission has revealed a corruption of compassion within the culture of Christian institutions, which strikes at the heart of their mission and spirituality. There is also, within most churches I believe, a culture of acceptance of ‘noble-cause corruption’; that is, illegal actions undertaken to achieve laudable ends, in this case, protection of the institution itself.

    This is one of the ills already addressed in the US. In 2014 the Australian Jesuit Province arranged a vist from Kathleen McChesney (pictured with Truth, Justice and Healing Council CEO Francis Sullivan), a former executive assistant director for the FBI, who had been employed by the American Bishops Conference to establish a system to deal effectively with preventing, and protecting children from, sexual and other abuse.

    It is evident over ten years that there has been genuine progress in easing out corrupt, incompetent or cowardly church officials there. Even within a clerical culture of loyalty towards brothers and fathers in a hierarchical organisation, it was possible to create a structural and procedural framework which had reduced the actual incidence of offending.

    Women do most of the hard work in parishes and form the majority of active parishioners. They know they have no authority. They are outsiders. Some are choosing to ignore what priests say and judge them by what they do.

    The best way to change such a culture is therefore to start giving women positions of real influence and respect — outsiders see what insiders cannot, causing interruptions to the easy transitions of assumed and unquestioned authority, and groupthink.

    Including women and thusly diversity at every level breaks up consensus and challenges noble corruption-fostering cultures. These challenges will be unwelcome but they are necessary if churches are to embody a gospel of love and protection of the marginalised and undervalued.

    Moira Rayner is a barrister and writer. This article first appeared in Eureka Street on 13 December 2015.

     

  • Ranald Macdonald. Meet Mark Scott’s heir apparent, a businesswoman with close ties to the Murdochs.

    “The announcement of Michelle Guthrie as the new ABC supremo by ABC Board Chairman Jim Spigelman is shrewd and just maybe a winner.

    Of course, one cannot judge the performance of a driver until she is actually behind the wheel and showing her stuff.

    An “A” for innovation, though, for the Board on its decision – and (perhaps) it is an appointment which will not be slammed by the News Empire (after all, M’s Guthrie worked for the Murdochs for some 13 years).

    To that I would add, at least a potential “B-plus” for her performance as an administrator, someone with international experience in media and new technology and the excitement of being the first woman to be executive head of our National broadcaster.

    Those concerned with the budget cuts, the increasingly Sydney-centric nature of our ABC, the 500 staff reduction and the dreadful impact of the breaking of the Australia Network contract, plus the loss of ‘spread’ around the continent,  know that M’s Guthrie has many challenges filling her inbasket.

    (Incidentally, an interesting finding on Q & A was the imbalance on the panels with the Sydney domination, which would have been worse but for Christopher Pyne’s regular appearances! How to stop the ABC becoming the Sydney-ABC?)

    For an understanding of the benefits and challenges of the new media, no worries. For living within budget – and perhaps providing government with further budget savings and introducing advertising revenue (will iview be charged for?), perhaps a slightly concerned “B”.

    For a commitment to quality programming for all of Australia and fighting for the funds to achieve it, that is a challenge.

    As is, how to deal with editorial leadership and defence of independent reporting in the public interest, programming decisions and a commitment to present an authentic Australian voice into SE Asia and the Pacific – and Australians reporting back to us in terms relevant and understandable.

    We await outcomes, so with the hope for an improvement of a provisional, but concerned, “C-plus” – though there is an important debate to be held as to whether the job is too multi-faceted for one person and whether an editor-in-chief should be appointed by M’s Guthrie, responsible to her. It would at least provide a shield for journalistic decision-making and choices, which politicians noisily seek to influence.

    Anyway, a welcome to the new CEO from ABC Friends – and we hope to meet and discuss where Michelle Guthrie wishes to take the ABC to. We suspend judgement, but my provisional marking on her appointment averages a “B-plus” – without being influenced by the Murdoch years on her C/V.

    Ranald Macdonald – former MD of The Age and National Campaign Manager of the ABC Friends.

  • Caroline Coggins. Christmas and weed mats

    Weed mats are used to grow a garden.  A weed mat lets us relax and focus on what we want to grow. There’s no need to labour over all the weeds that need pulling, make neat rows and certainly not break up the top soil, destroying the ‘nature’ of the soil.

    What we actually want to grow/love/know gets us up each day, like Mary’s “Yes.”

    December the month of Advent, waiting on the coming of our God, can be overwhelmed by the ‘glitter of the Christmas tree’. Yet there is a pulsing of hope that is palpable.  Most of us desire to feel connected, be loved, share, to give and receive. But we can be disappointed: too much to do, not enough space, the failure of our expectations to fruit in a meaningful way. Often our deepest need for meaning is left wanting.

    St. Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus, says that our choices decide our orientation, what will shape our life. Making decisions is the heart beat of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. Making decisions are a bit like putting down a weed mat.

    Recently I attended a gathering of Jesuits and lay who work in their ministries. Two priests celebrated their final vows after twenty years. Each of us there felt their “Yes”, not necessarily as a final vow, but as a yearning to know and follow what is calling us. This “Yes” will hold us, both in the moving toward and the fall away. It will bring us back home. Ignatius referred to the Jesuits as ‘minima compania,’ in other words, we are the least, ‘just’ earthly vessels, limited and fragile, yet in this vulnerability the transcendent power of God is at work.

    We are nothing special, but the vow, what we do internally, is something very special. I think it takes a long time to realise that we are ‘minima’.  It is when we let God be God.

    One of the priests talked of his experiences of being led gently, both by a mentor who was a big part of his formation, and the people/parishes who shaped him these last 20 years since his first vows.  Such accompanying is not about knowledge but walking beside. We grow into life, we don’t just arrive fully formed. It’s something that our perfectionist and self-reliant striving selves seem to forget.

    We know that the story of Jesus is such a story: Mary will search in her heart and say “Yes”; God will show us the way to be become human by giving us his Son, thus becoming pulsing beings listening to the deepest part of our selves. The three wise men said “Yes”, they listened to and followed their hearts, they followed the stars.

    Why weed mat?  I think most us can feel pressured to look neat and tidy, with everything ordered.  We have many weeds and we can be unfocused. But now we wait, Christ will come, and the weed mat will help us, not to get busy and lost in the weeds, but with our “Yes”. We are loved as we are. Then a hole is poked through for the seedling to emerge, right there amongst the weeds. We just need to make some room for the little plant, a space for the light to shine through.

    Christmas is like that, a mess of all things, but in the midst is the baby Jesus, vulnerable like us. He grows, loved and nurtured by Mary and orientated entirely to his Father. We wait in joyful expectation, knowing that in the chaos we can behave just like a weed mat. It’s the “Yes” in the midst of everything that allows his light to shine through.

    We cannot do everything,
    And there is a sense of liberation in realising that.
    This enables us to do something, and to do it very well,
    It may be incomplete,
    But it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s Grace
    To enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results
    But that is the difference
    Between the Master builder and the worker.
    We are workers not Master builders,
    Ministers, not Messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

    (Often called ‘Romero prayer’ written by Ken Untener in honour of Oscar Romero in 1979)

    Caroline Coggins is a psychotherapist.

  • To solve the Syrian Crisis, we need to overcome these three obstacles.

    In the Huffington Post on 9 December, Seyed Hossein Mousavian describes the three issues that need to be addressed in order to solve the Syrian crisis. For link to this article, see below.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seyed-hossein-mousavian/syria-crisis-obstacles_b_8740514.html?ir=World?ncid=newsltushpmg00000003

  • Peter Burdon. Why is the business world suddenly clamouring for a global carbon tax?

    Among the various interests at the Paris climate talks, it is arguably the voice of business that has emerged most clearly. Many business leaders are now saying that if the world is intent on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there must be a worldwide price on carbonand a framework for linking the 55 schemes that exist in areas such as China, the European Union, and California.

    Momentum has been building since May, when six of Europe’s largest oil and gas companies, including Royal Dutch Shell and BP, issued a letter calling for global carbon pricing system. That month, leaders from 59 international companies also signed a statement calling for carbon pricing to feature in the Paris agreement.

    Advocacy has continued during the Paris negotiations. For example, Patrick Pouyanné, chief executive of French oil and gas giant Total, argued that the shift from coal to gas “will not happen without a carbon price”. He suggested that a price of US$20-$50 in Europe was required (well above the current price).

    Oleg Deripaska, president of the world’s largest aluminium producer Rusal, put the issue in stronger terms, describing the idea of voluntary national emissions commitments (upon which the Paris agreement largely hinges) as “balderdash”.

    Asked what success would look like from the Paris negotiations, Deripaska replied:

    A success [for most people] would be lunch at a nice French banquette with foie gras and oysters. But no, seriously, it is carbon tax or die.

    Carbon tax on the menu?

    It is not clear whether a carbon price will figure in the Paris agreement. But it is important to consider what is motivating some of the world’s highest-emitting companies to advocate for a carbon price. And what other, perhaps more intrusive plans for tackling climate change would be taken off the table?

    Businesses have a stronger presence at COP21 than at any previous climate negotiation. They know which way the wind is blowing and realise that governments might require painful and complex interventions to reduce emissions. Moves are afoot to decarbonise the world economy some time after 2050 (see Article 3 of the latest draft text, and there has been strong advocacy for a moratorium on new coal mines.

    Helge Lund, chief executive of British oil multinational BG Group, argues that a carbon price reduces government intervention and attempts at “pick[ing] winners in terms of energy technologies.” Instead, he argues: “the market will dictate the most efficient solution”.

    Forecasts from the International Energy Agency suggest that fossil fuels (including coal) will provide the bulk of energy demand for developing countries going into the future. Companies intend to meet that demand. Thus, Shell can simultaneously advocate putting a price on carbon and make plans to drill in the Arctic where production will not begin until 2030.

    While that might sound perverse, there is actually nothing inconsistent about those two positions.

    One way for energy companies to maintain economic growth in a carbon-priced economy is to shift investments gradually away from coal and oil, and towards gas. That is why Shell has paid US$70 billion for the BG Group.

    Of course gas might come under similar pressure in time, but as the Financial Times has reported:

    …oil companies’ skills and assets mean that finding and extracting gas is a short and natural step. Moving into renewable energy is a much bigger leap.

    This can be seen in the many examples where energy companies have struggled to develop other forms of energy, such as BP’s ill-starred attempt to brand itself as “beyond petroleum” and invest US$8 billion over ten years in renewable energy. The company has since backtracked on that goal, has left the solar market, and has no plans to expand its onshore wind investments.

    Beyond markets

    Of the 185 countries that have submitted climate targets ahead of the Paris talks, more than 80 have referenced market mechanisms.

    Clearly, a price on carbon is going to play a role in attempts to tackle climate change. This is a good thing but it is not sufficient and must not become a distraction from other serious interventions.

    Recent research confirms that we do not have time to wait for energy companies to transition at their own pace from fossil fuels to renewable energy. For example, last week Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research published a paper in Nature Geoscience which argued:

    The carbon budgets associated with a 2℃ threshold demand profound changes to the consumption and production of energy … the IPCC’s 1,000 gigatonne budget requires an end to all carbon emissions from energy systems by 2050.

    A carbon budget consistent with 2℃ (let alone 1.5℃) requires a dramatic reversal in energy consumption and emissions growth. Governments should treat overtures from business with caution, even if businesses are making the right moves. They need to ensure that these moves are made at a speed that suits the climate, rather than just business.

    Peter Burdon is Senior Lecturer, Adelaide Law School, University of Adelaide. This article was first published in The Conversation on 11 December, 2015

  • Peter Day. The Cupboard.

    “There you go, Peter, today’s pay. Don’t waste it.”

    “Thank you, Mr Boss; I can now buy some paint for my cupboard. Have a good night, Mr Boss, I’m going home now.”

    “Okay, Peter, see you tomorrow … same time?”

    “Yes, Mr Boss, same time, same time: fifty-five past 8 o’clock in the morning.”

    It usually took Peter an hour to get home as he navigated the bustling alleys and back streets of Kolkata, passing fruit vendors, beggars, monks, sewerage drains, smoking meats, motorbikes, street kids, temples, magicians, orphaned dogs-cats-and-rats; not to mention the myriad friendly faces ‘who just had to be smiled at’. Really, it was a journey of 1,000 “hellos”, with each greeting accompanied by a gentle, respectful bowing of the head. Peter was always conscious of being polite, which wasn’t at all difficult thanks to an innate fondness he had for his fellow man; a true philanthropist, you might say – if a very poor one. This gentleness flowed from the nurturing and modelling of his beloved grandmother – more on her later.

    Generally, it was spot on 8pm when Peter strolled into his tenement building. He was a stickler for punctuality: “Eight-hours-after-12-o’clock-midday is my always homecoming time,” he’d insist with a twinkle in his eye.

    The building was a similar age to Peter, thirty-plus years, but not in nearly as good a shape. It stood like a tired old man carrying a heavy yoke. Perhaps if someone blew hard enough it too would tumble over. Socks, towels, t-shirts, electrical cables, TV antennas, and assorted sneakers hung messily from balcony rails and windows betraying the reality within: unforgiving, overcrowded chaos – two-hundred rooms worth.

    Usually it was three minutes past ‘eight-hours-after-12-o’clock-midday’ when Peter entered the first floor corridor to commence his settling-down-for-the-night routine. It was all very simple: he’d roll out a Hessian mat, say a quick prayer of thanks, then lie down very quietly next to his cupboard: “The most cleanliest and tidiest cupboard in all Kolkata,” he’d rejoice with anyone who was interested – not many were.

    The cupboard, like his gran, was a significant presence in his life, and he dutifully attended to it as if it were the Taj Mahal. Probably his most important duty was its annual Christmas painting: this year, bright yellow; last year, bright green, and the year before that, bright red.

    It didn’t make much sense to his neighbours, this attentiveness to an unremarkable cupboard in an even less remarkable building. “I bet,” some passers-by would scoff dismissively, “I bet that’s where he keeps the proceeds from his pick-pocketing and thieving … or maybe he’s got some pet rats!”

    Peter hadn’t chosen a good place to sleep either: a busy corridor with lots of people traffic. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to nudge him with a discreet kick, while others would bark, “Why don’t you pay for a room like the rest of us; and who gave you permission to paint that cupboard, anyway?”

    “Sorry, sir, sorry, sir,” Peter would reply patiently, respectfully, which tended to disarm his plaintiffs.

    “Arrgh, never mind, never mind; but make sure you clean-up your mess.”

    Sure, to outsiders it was just a cupboard, but Peter knew otherwise. Indeed, he knew everything there was to know about it including its dimensions – and to the nearest millimetre, thank you very much: “Five foot 3.2 inches long, two point zero feet exactly high, and four foot plus 6.6 inches deep.” 

    Despite these modest proportions, Peter’s Christmas painting rituals were long, drawn-out affairs; usually around six hours. Each brush stroke was akin to patting a much loved pet: gentle, slow, and tender. This wasn’t just another chore, rather it was a sacred action: comparable to a sacristan polishing a tabernacle or decorating an altar.

    What was also compelling about the cupboard was how immaculately clean Peter kept it; it was literally spotless inside and out. This was in stark contrast to the rest of the building which had been meekly surrendered to the powers of dust and grime and cockroaches and rats and ablutions.

    While Peter’s annual working-bees were not to everyone’s taste, especially this year’s yellow, the cupboard certainly offered some respite from the colourless apathy and neglect that abounded.

    Peter’s attention to detail was another virtue that could be traced back to the guidance of his grandmother: “If a job’s worth doing, Peter, it’s worth doing well.” He’d first heard that gem when he was about seven.

    Indeed, much of his memory was infused with his grandmother’s wisdom and teachings. He adored her: “My bestest and favouritest person in the whole world.”

    She was also the one who made sure, unlike the busy, distracted people around him, that Peter knew he was truly loved and truly valued. “The world needs more like you, dear grandson; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

    This was a difficult truth for Peter to grasp because every day he was reminded in someway that he was a ‘bit slow’, and very poor.

    No wonder, then, the care and attention he afforded his cupboard. After all, that was where his beloved grandmother slept, and it was his duty to keep her safe in a nice, bright place:

    “The cleanliest and tidiest cupboard in all Kolkata; Merry Christmas, grandma.”

     

    This is a fictional tribute to Peter de Cruz who did indeed keep his grandmother safe as she slept in a cupboard next to him in the corridor of a tenement building in Kolkata, India.

  • 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.