John Menadue

  • David Holmes. Tony Abbott, Rupert Murdoch and coal.

    As the latest State of the Climate report reaffirms 2014 to be “the hottest on record”, the NSW Liberal Party is pressing ahead with plans for a “Carnival of Coal” in August. The party’s upper house whip, Peter Phelps, has appealed to members to download a sticker for MP office doors in support of the upcoming carbon love-in. It says:

    I loved carbon before it was coal.

    The Liberal paleo-love for coal, which Tony Abbott has declared “good for humanity”, is at least a point of differentiation with Labor. Labor does not promote such slogans at all – even if, in Victoria, the Andrews Labor government is still issuing coal exploration licences.

    Both parties are capable of romancing the coal industry. But Liberal parties around the country have had much more success in convincing voters that either coal is more important than climate, or have decided that – with a population drip-fed on attention-deficit-consumerism and its reality television advertorials – their connection can be comfortably sublimated.

    Whatever its form, the love for coal in Australia is going to end badly, like all relationships based on fantasy. To slightly misquote a 19th-century philosopher: the demand to give up the illusion that coal is good for humanity is the demand to give up a condition which needs such an illusion.

    The condition I am referring to is the way our half-formed social democracy has become so captive to the ugliest form of corporate-servicing statism. It is not that the state has completely merged with corporate interests. Australia still has incredibly strong and progressive civic institutions such as its public broadcaster, its schools, universities, bureaus, museums and aspects of the legal system that do not serve capital’s interests.

    It is that our governments have become servile – not to voters, but to a conjunction of multinational mining, energy and media interests, who have as their dating agencies the far-right silos of the capitalist class, such as the Institute for Public Affairs, which do not disclose their corporate donors.

    Many believe, including perhaps Abbott himself, that he retains his power base at the pleasure of an ageing octogenarian who is well known for obtaining amusement from playing the Freudian Fort-Da game with entire democracies – the power to give and take away power – as long as he has also received something in return.

    The same newspaper group that managed to squeeze a “toxic” “carbon tax” through the consciousness of millions of tabloid readers by means of slogan and cartoon did so when it was threatened by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) with having to repay almost A$900 million it had received on the eve of the last federal election.

    The infamous “Kick this Mob Out” election blitzkrieg on Labor that started on August 5, 2013, was launched precisely at decision time for the ATO to appeal the Federal Court ruling on the windfall payout News Corp reportedly received by titanic-scale profit-shifting.

    Global profit-shifting activities are routine for multinational empires such as Murdoch’s. But, not all have the ability to pressure governments at election times. And it is clear that at least the two major political parties believe they need a media mogul to gain office.

    But political parties also need big donors. The largest to the Coalition are the energy and mining companies, who receive the greatest benefits in corporate welfare.

    The examples are quite grotesque. Fuel rebate subsidies that mining companies receive run at A$2.2 billion per year. Meanwhile, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) is asked to cancel its A$2.1 billion in subsidies directed exclusively to windfarms – which have the ability to hurt coal.

    Before it moved to neuter the CEFC, the Coalition has proposed what has been dubbed the ”Dirty Energy Finance Corporation” for Northern Australia. It will bewilderingly make up to A$5 billion available to subsidise infrastructure projects in northern Australia and Queensland in particular.

    A source has suggested to me that the fund is actually an elaborate financial smokescreen to helping out the coal mines in the Galilee basin – particularly the Adani Enterprises mine, but also the GVK Alpha Coalmine. GVK Alpha, the largest coal mine in Australia, was approved 2 months after the Coalition assumed power, is part-owned by Gina Rinehart – and also stands to benefit from billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies. Ms Rhinehart attracted satire in 2011 for flying liberal MPs to India to attend the wedding of the granddaughter of mine co-owner GV Krishna.

    With the coal price diving worldwide, the mines – are unlikely to be economically viable without a huge subsidy. They might also surpass the viability threshold if they were able to sell the coal to a nearby newly proposed coal-fired power station that has been endorsed by Abbott personally.

    However, competition from renewable energy company Windlab for an adjacent 1.2 gigawatt combined solar and wind farm would be an enormous threat to Alpha and Adani. It is pledging to undercut the price of the coal station by $30 per megawatt hour.

    Time for my readers to draw a diagram to figure out which proposal will get funded. A diagram might picture the coincidence that the CEFC was directed to cease subsidising windfarms – for which it actually returns a profit to Australian taxpayers – just as it was realised the Windlab proposal posed a threat to the coal-fired power station.

    It is worth considering that, according to Bill McKibben from 350.org, the Galilee basin alone has so much coal that if it is all burnt, it would take the world 30% of the way to getting to 2 degrees. You couldn’t invent a more tragic case study on how destructive the Abbott government is on climate.

    But then there is Direct Action. This is a government marketing exercise that disguises a further A$2.5 billion giveaway to corporate Australia that works with targets so small as to guarantee Australia’s status as having fallen off the climate action map.

    Detailed analysis shows that Direct Action won’t even meet its miniscule targets. It has led to a demonstrable increase in Australias Co2 emissions since the carbon tax was repealed, according to the government’s own figures.

    Given the Abbott government’s ongoing love affair with coal, it is little wonder that Australia was publicly scrutinised at climate talks held in Bonn last month about the impact of its domestic policies. The UN talks, attended by representatives of 190 countries, were an important stepping stone to the much-anticipated Paris summit to be held in December.

    While the Coalition’s reckless disregard for addressing climate change may not get scrutiny by the tabloid media in Australia, it certainly will in Paris.

    David Holmes is Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies at Monash University.  This article was first published in The Conversation on 18 July 2015.

  • Shiro Armstrong. A risky Trans-Pacific Partnership deal.

    The largest hurdle for the 12-member Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement — the US president’s ability to get Trade Promotion Authority, or fast track — has been cleared. Many people think that the TPP can be wrapped up in a few months.

    There are still difficult issues to resolve, but they are trivial compared to the ability to get a straight up-or-down vote in the US Congress, without which the deal would be a non-starter. The remaining issues can easily be horse-traded at the political level and compromises can be made in order to complete the deal.

    The temptation will be strong to rush across the finish line for what will be a major political trophy — but the risk is that the TPP will be an agreement that does more harm than good for economic and political relations in the Asia Pacific.

    A completed TPP will be accompanied by grandiose statements about the deal covering 60 per cent of global GDP and half the world’s trade. This sounds much less impressive when you compare it to groupings like APEC, which includes China and Indonesia, that have even higher global GDP and trade coverage. But the numbers like these don’t tell us anything about what kind of deal it will be or what gains and costs it will bring. The most optimistic estimates suggest trivial increases in GDP.

    The TPP aims to write rules for international commerce in the 21st century and includes a large number of chapters that go beyond 20th century trade issues.

    There are three major flaws, though, that will likely overwhelm any positives the deal may deliver.

    The first is that the core of the new rules involves aspects that further private interests (read: large multinationals) at the expense of general welfare in member countries. The most egregious of these is stronger intellectual property (IP) rights protections, which are anti-development and simply transfer wealth to US pharmaceutical companies and Hollywood. Stronger intellectual property protections stymy innovation. This means a net reduction in trade and a loss in global welfare. If ! countries like Australia think stronger IP protections are in their national interest, they do not need an international treaty to introduce them.

    The second flaw is who the TPP leaves out. China, India and Indonesia, among others, are not party to the TPP nor will they be able to join anytime soon. The hurdles to membership are unreasonably high for non-advanced countries, who will pay a cost from being left out with strict rules designed to divert trade from them.

    The third major flaw is that even in the win-win trade enhancing areas, the TPP will either entrench protection in some areas — chiefly agriculture — or, where it succeeds in liberalising, will do so at the expense of non-members. Inefficient and unproductive sectors are a drag on economies, and liberalising them would produce real gains. But many countries in the TPP are bringing an overly defensive stance — think Japan and its rice and other ‘sacred’ produce — or are starting with that sector off the negotiating table altogether, as is the case with US sugar.

    More egregiously, the TPP will complicate trade and impose serious costs on non-members.

    Vietnam is a case in point. The country is paying a high price for entry by adopting standards and rules inappropriate to its stage of development, but it will benefit from increased market access in the United States for its garments exports. Yet Vietnamese exporters will only enjoy that preferential treatment if it procures raw materials from another TPP member instead of from cheaper, more efficient suppliers like China. These and similar provisions that derive from the way TPP has been negotiated bilaterally make it a particularly complex and costly agreement. The trade diversion that will result imposes economic costs on members and non-members alike — and some of the latter are even poorer than Vietnam.

    To make matters worse, the trade- and welfare-reducing IP rights provisions are being traded off against and bundled with market access provisions. And some provisions could be disruptive and costly when onerous standards, institutions and reforms — to state-owned enterprises, for example — are imposed and countries are expected to leapfrog stages of development.

    As TPP members sprint towards the finish line, they will need to introduce measures to enhance the positives of the agreement — the genuine trade and investment liberalisation that occurs — and over time minimise the negatives. A first step is to limit the scope and reach of the welfare reducing IP protections.

    The agreement needs to be expansionary on the win-win trade and investment liberalisation aspects. That involves limiting the complicated preferential deals within the TPP and making it easy to expand membership. That is no easy task given the design of the agreement is to punish non-members into compliance on terms set by the advanced economies. A more productive way forward would be to help build capacity in lower income countries so that they can reach those standards. That is how to further productive economic interdependence and win friends.

    If progress can be made in reform and liberalisation unilaterally or through the help of other regional initiatives — and if the WTO and multilateral system can be strengthened — then the benefits of the TPP can be accentuated and some of its more pernicious costs averted.

    Shiro Armstrong is co-director of the Australia-Japan Research Centre and co-Editor of East Asia Forum at the Australian National University.

    This article was first posted on the East Asia Forum website on 26 July 2015.

     

  • Bob Kinnaird. More government dishonesty on China FTA

    Now that Federal Labor Leader Bill Shorten has publicly stated his opposition to the China FTA labour mobility provisions, the Coalition is ramping up its attack on union and political critics of the deal.

    Trade Minister Robb lead the charge this week, with allegations of union ‘falsehoods’ and a ‘racist scare campaign’ over the China FTA that do not stack up (‘Don’t give credence to union scare campaign’, AFR, Letters, 21 July 2015).

    The main alleged union ‘falsehood’ is ‘that Chinese companies will be allowed to bring in their own workforces at the expense of Australian jobs’.

    The fact is that Chinese companies will be able to do exactly this under the FTA package that Mr Robb negotiated. Under the terms of the China FTA, any China-based enterprise with ‘a contract for the supply of a service within Australia and which does not have a commercial presence within Australia’ can bring in an unlimited number of its own Chinese employees as skilled workers on non-concessional 457 visas, without ‘labour market testing or any economic needs test’ (ChAFTA, Chapter 10, Annexe 10-A, Clause 10(a)).

    This includes Chinese companies with contracts on ‘significant infrastructure projects’ of $150 million or more under the Investment Facilitation Arrangement (IFAs) in the China FTA package.

    This means a China-based enterprise contracted to perform say all the engineering and design work on a project in Australia, or all the welding work, can bring in unlimited numbers of Chinese engineers or welders to Australia on non-concessional 457 visas, with no obligation to even look for skilled Australian engineers or welders, let alone prove that none are available.

    Chinese companies with these contracts can access unlimited numbers of 457 visas for their Chinese employees in all ‘skilled’ occupations – meaning all 651 occupations currently on the non-concessional 457-eligible list (known as the Consolidated Sponsored Occupation List or CSOL), and any added to the list over time. ‘Non-concessional’ means the Chinese workers must meet all the standard minimum requirements for a 457 visa, including minimum English language skills (which the Coalition has reduced), qualifications and salary.

    The FTA also grants the exact same 457 visa privileges to China-based companies transferring their staff to Australia as ‘intra-corporate transferees’ moving ‘to fill a position in the branch, subsidiary or affiliate of the enterprise in Australia’. These include Chinese and other foreign nationals ‘with advanced trade, technical or professional skills’, who can be moved to Australia in unlimited numbers with no 457 LMT, for any reason including to perform work associated with ‘significant infrastructure projects’.

    Mr Robb’s China FTA also permits unlimited numbers of Chinese workers as ‘installers and servicers’ of machinery and equipment where installation or servicing by the supplying Chinese company ‘is a condition of purchase of the machinery or equipment’. These Chinese workers enter on shorter-term 400 visas also with no labour market testing, like the non-concessional Chinese 457 visa workers mentioned above. Chinese project investors in Australia will preference suppliers of cheaper Chinese machinery and equipment, so we should expect many Chinese 400 visa workers under the FTA.

    Coalition Ministers say nothing about these outrageous FTA concessions but instead deflect attention solely to the Memorandum of Understanding on Investment Facilitation Arrangement (IFAs), alongside the formal China FTA treaty.

    Chinese companies can also bring in their own workforces of concessional 457 visa workers under these IFAs. ‘Concessional’ 457 visas mean Chinese and other foreign workers in semi-skilled occupations, and those in skilled occupations who do not meet the standard minimum requirements for a 457 visa, such as minimum English language skills. The government tries to conceal the fact these are concessional arrangements for lower-skill workers, with Ministers like Mr Robb saying IFAs are for ‘skilled’ overseas workers.

    The arrangements for concessional 457 visa workers under IFAs are different to those for the non-concessional 457 workers covered by the FTA itself. The government has surrounded these IFAs with the fog of obfuscation since they were first announced back in November 2014 and has done little in nine months to clear that fog and persuade Australians that these are in the national interest.

    Unlike the non-concessional 457 visas for Chinese workers, there will be negotiated limits on the numbers of concessional 457 visa workers on IFA projects. The number of concessional 457 visa workers and ‘guaranteed occupations’ on an IFA project will be set in an umbrella IFA project agreement, from which individual direct employers on the project will then draw down under concessional 457 ‘labour agreements’. The MOU expressly rules out any requirement for labour market testing for a project company ‘to enter into an IFA’, which will be valid for at least 4 years.

    It now seems that the total number of concessional 457 visas approved for an IFA project will be determined based on consultants reports and similar speculative data as to projected future ‘shortages’ of Australian workers in up to 4 years time, provided to the Immigration Department (DIBP) by the project owner. On this basis, the IFA project owner will get approval for say 1,000 concessional 457 visa workers over the life of the project. IFA project employers can then ‘bid’ for a share of the 1,000 concessional 457 workers.

    To access these 457 workers, there is no legal obligation for these IFA project employers to undertake 457 labour market testing (LMT) as legislated in the Migration Act 1958. The legislated LMT obligation does not apply to sponsors of concessional 457 visa workers under labour agreements, only to sponsors of non-concessional 457 visa workers. Labor must surely regret this oversight in its 2013 legislative amendments on 457 LMT which the Coalition will not remedy. Its policy is the abolition of legislated 457 LMT entirely.

    The MOU says that direct employers on IFA projects may be required to undertake some form of labour market testing (LMT) before accessing concessional 457 visa workers. The MOU also states that ‘where labour market testing is required, employers may satisfy this requirement by demonstrating that they have first tested the Australian labour market and not found sufficient suitable workers. DIBP will make publicly available information on how any labour market testing requirements could be met’ (MOU on IFA, clause 8 and footnote 6 – emphasis added).

    On 22 July, Assistant Immigration Minister Cash said DIBP Project Agreement guidelines for companies seeking to recruit overseas workers will give effect to IFAs. These guidelines, dated May 2015 but strangely not mentioned in DFAT’s ‘Myth-busting’ Fact Sheet on the FTA issued in mid-July, state that employers: “must provide a comprehensive written statement of the labour market need for the requested occupation(s), demonstrating ongoing shortages …. as well as evidence that you have made significant efforts to recruit workers from the Australian labour market within the previous six months.” Furthermore: “The department will only enter into a project labour agreement where it has been satisfied that Australians have been provided first opportunity for jobs.”

    This is a much lower standard than the legislated 457 LMT obligation where sponsors must prove to DIBP that no suitably qualified Australian is available to do the job, at the time of each 457 visa nomination, where the LMT condition applies. Like most obligations and provisions in concessional 457 labour agreements, it also is embedded only in Departmental ‘guidelines’ and policy, not legislation or regulations.

    The Minister’s attempt to assure that these ‘guidelines’ offer adequate protection for Australian workers also conveniently ignores the fact that these applications for concessional 457 visa workers by individual IFA project employers will be made in a context where the project owner has already secured approval for large numbers of these workers, in the umbrella IFA agreement.

    This places undue and unfair pressure on DIBP officers to approve 457 visa applications from individual IFA employers, especially operating in a high-profile visa program area with no legislative framework and far too much room for Ministerial and political intervention.

    The Coalition government will not admit that these IFA arrangements are unprecedented. Australia has never before in an FTA package deal permitted concessional 457 visas for even skilled workers, let alone for semi-skilled workers (like concreters, scaffolders, truck drivers, even office workers). It is also unprecedented for any Australian government to allow foreign companies access to concessional 457 visa workers under labour agreements. Until the China FTA package, only Australian businesses could access these concessional 457 visa workers because these arrangements are too high risk for abuse and exploitation.

    Time for government honesty about the China FTA labour mobility package.

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

     

     

     

  • Patty Fawkner. Mary Magdalene: friend, icon, model

    We have yet to balance spirituality and sexuality in the Church especially in regard to women. Women’s leadership and spiritual influence will be compromised until we do, writes Good Samaritan Sister Patty Fawkner.

    I thank my father for my friendship with Mary Magdalene.

    I was a young woman when, after a brief illness, my father died of cancer. It was the first time I’d lost a loved one. I was devastated.

    My gnawing grief for my darling Dad made me interpret well-meaning words of sympathy as hollow pious platitudes. God seemed nowhere to be found. I felt nothing of God’s comfort. Unbelievably naïve, I had expected God to shield me from normal human grief because I was a person of faith – I was a nun for heaven’s sake!

    Many months after Dad’s death I went on a weekend retreat and the wise old monk who guided me suggested I read Chapter 20 of John’s Gospel and spend time with Mary Magdalene in the garden on the morning of Jesus’ resurrection.

    The story is well-known and well-loved. A grieving Mary goes to the tomb. The body of Jesus is not there. Still weeping, she encounters a mysterious figure whom she mistakes for the gardener. He calls her by name. She re-discovers her Beloved. He tells her not to cling onto him but to go and tell the good news of his resurrection to his disciples. “I have seen the Lord,” she rejoices.

    Something shifted in me as I spent time with Mary. Somehow, inchoately, I felt God calling me by name. Somehow God was present in my emptiness. Like Mary, I couldn’t cling onto a former idea of God. I had to, in Anthony de Mello’s words, “empty out my teacup God”. I had to find a new, more adult image of God. Instead of a Mr Fix-it God who did not honour my grieving humanity, I found a more mysterious God, a presence in emptiness, a bright darkness, a God who grieved with me.

    I was grateful to Mary Magdalene but still didn’t really know her.

    Years earlier I had seen Cecil B. DeMille’s movie, The King of Kings, where Mary Magdalene first appears as a bejewelled, breast-plated courtesan driving a chariot drawn by – what else but (?) – five plumed zebras! She is hurrying to meet her lover, Judas Iscariot, who she hears has become ‘distracted’ by some carpenter turned preacher.

    I laughed at Cecil B. DeMille’s fertile imagination but still accepted uncritically the Christian tradition’s stereotype of Mary as the infamous scarlet woman who turned her life around upon meeting Jesus.

    Scripture study over the years has led me to discover who Mary Magdalene is and who she is not. The more the real Mary Magdalene is allowed to ‘stand up’, the more significance she has for me, not only as a friend, but also as an icon of what women’s role in the Church is and could be.

    Scripture scholars agree that there is not a shred of evidence that Mary was a prostitute. There are at least six or seven different Marys in the Scriptures and they get marvellously muddled.

    Each Gospel writer portrays Mary Magdalene as the first witness to the resurrection and the first to announce this publicly. The definition of an apostle is one who has encountered the risen Lord and proclaims that Good News. In the earliest Christian tradition, Mary is therefore rightly celebrated, not as prostitute but as “Apostle to the Apostles”.

    Mary was chosen for this special role because, I believe, she stood with Jesus in his suffering. Unlike the male disciples who, apart from the Beloved Disciple, fled or drew a weapon in the garden or denied Jesus, Mary endured the brutal horror of Jesus’ crucifixion.

    She does not flee. She does not fight. She does not flinch. Like so many women after her, she gives practical expression to her faith in Jesus. She sits opposite the tomb till dark and then early the next morning comes to the tomb with spices to anoint the body.

    We know that female community leaders and spiritual guides were not uncommon in the early Church. But as soon as the Christian community became part of the establishment, women became more marginalised. Patriarchy minimalized them.

    Within a few centuries, Mary the “Apostle to the Apostles” was forgotten and Mary the former prostitute became entrenched in official Church teaching and in popular imagination.

    As Mary Magdalene’s star waned, the other Mary, Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, shone. The two Marys demonstrate the Church’s tendency to either put women on a pedestal or relegate them and discount the legacy of their spiritual leadership.

    Mary of Nazareth is firmly on the pedestal. Dressed in virginal blue, she retains her spirituality but is stripped of her sexuality.

    Mary of Magdala, the relegated one, retains her sexuality but has been stripped of her spiritual influence. Her name, Magdalene, continues to be mythically associated with female sinfulness. She continues to be ignored as “Apostle to the Apostles”.

    The institutional Church has an abject record of recognising women’s spiritual leadership. In the Catholic liturgical calendar there are about 200 feast days for holy men and women, and only one in five – 20 per cent – are women, and a quarter of those 20 per cent belong to Mary, the mother of God. The greater majority of the remaining women are either virgins or religious – hardly the profile of the majority of women in the Church!

    We have yet to balance spirituality and sexuality in the Church especially in regard to women. Women’s leadership and spiritual influence will be compromised until we do.

    Pope John Paul II loved putting women on a pedestal. He spoke often about women’s “feminine genius”, but preferred that they remain in the private sphere of kitchen or cloister.

    However, there are positive signs with Pope Francis, who said in an address for International Women’s Day, that “a world where women are marginalised is a sterile world”.

    “Women have the capacity to see otherwise,” he said. They “ask questions that men never think of”. Of course they do! Their experience is different. Their perspective and insight is different.

    Women have tended to start from their own experience of God, rather than theory about God. This is what Mary Magdalene does. “I have seen the Lord”, she says, and tells the other disciples what her Beloved said to her.

    Repeatedly Pope Francis has said that the Church needs women’s wisdom and contribution in all spheres of Church life including decision-making. The critical issue, however, is how to break the nexus between decision-making and ordination. Pope Francis acknowledged this in his first major document Evangelii Gaudium, but worryingly, has not as yet made any significant structural moves to rectify the situation.

    For me, Mary Magdalene represents all the unrecognised but spiritually significant women and men in the Church. She invites me to enter Jesus’ suffering and not shirk. She calls me to encounter the Risen One in my prayer. She challenges me to be a Good News person who proclaims fiercely and boldly not herself, but the One whom she has seen, the One who sends her. She has much to teach us about God’s inclusive, incredible love for the relegated, the disparaged and dispossessed.

    Mary Magdalene proclaims Jesus as Good News. She is Good News. She certainly is good news in my life. As we celebrate her feast on July 22, may she be so in yours.

    * Good Samaritan Sister Patty Fawkner is an adult educator, writer and facilitator. Patty is interested in exploring what wisdom the Christian tradition has for contemporary issues. She has an abiding interest in questions of justice and spirituality. Her formal tertiary qualifications are in arts, education, theology and spirituality.

    This article was first published in The Good Oil, the e-magazine of the Good Samaritan Sisters http://www.goodsams.org.au/good-oil/mary-magdalene-friend-icon-model

     

  • Brian Johnstone. Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ and Cardinal Pell.

    Cardinal George Pell has criticized Pope Francis’ ground-breaking environmental encyclical. As Pell told the Financial Times on Thursday, July 14, “It’s got many, many interesting elements. There are parts of it which are beautiful,” he said. “But the Church has no particular expertise in science … the Church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters. We believe in the autonomy of science.”

    In the encyclical Laudato Si’ Pope Francis engages his readers on three levels; the first is that of science, the second is that of faith and theology the third is that of reasoned ethics.

    The first level is represented by chapter One of the document, (pars, 17-52). It has been generally acknowledged that the document presents the consensus of the majority of competent scientists. There are some scientists who hold differing views, but they are clearly in the minority. It is reasonable and responsible on the part of the Pope and his advisors to provide an account of the interpretation of the facts on which they base their further reflections. It is perfectly clear that that Pope, in this section, is not appealing to his religious authority to support the description of the contemporary ecological situation. He is reporting the consensus of scientists, who competence he acknowledges. If someone has different views, then a reasonable and responsible reply would be to present the scientific evidence for that view.

    It is quite misplaced to insist that the Church has no authority on scientific questions. The Cardinal, however, asserts, “We believe in the autonomy of science.” Well, who are “we” in this matter? Pell and his fellow climate change deniers? Does he think that the Pope needs to be corrected on this point? The pope well understands what “the autonomy of science” means. The Pope, in contrast to His Eminence, was educated in science and had the assistance of internationally recognized scientists in composing this encyclical.

    Pell states that the Catholic Church has “no particular expertise in science.” Pope Francis nowhere claims that the Church has such competence. What he does offer is a responsible account of his interpretation of the contemporary scientific consensus. If someone wishes to offer a differing view they ought to provide supporting evidence to support that view.

    At a second level, the encyclical engages in reflection on faith and so enters the sphere of theology. (pars. 55-100) It is in this section that Pope Francis introduces what Professor Joseph Camilleri describes as a seismic shift in mainstream Christian thought: human life is essentially defined in its relationship to God, to others and to the earth. There is a clear move beyond an earlier anthropocentric view; the relation between nature and humanity is a crucial dimension of the encyclical. This important theme has entirely escaped Pell.

    The third level is that of ethics. Reasonable ethical argument presupposes a responsible account of the relevant facts. This is provided by Pope Francis in the first section of the encyclical. In the following sections the Pope develops a critical, culturally informed ethical response which Pell ignores.   John Allen reports that despite the cardinal’s criticism of the pope’s environmental stance, Pell noted the encyclical had been “very well received” and said Francis had “beautifully set out our obligations to future generations and our obligations to the environment.” These final animadversions can sound quite patronizing. Cardinal Pell is prepared to grant that the views of the Pope are indeed “beautiful,”—even if without a secure basis in scientific reasoning. But Cardinal Pell himself provides no reasoned argument in support is his assertions.

    In the sphere of climate science, Cardinal Pell is himself no authority, but is rather at the mercy of his own bias. Perhaps he needs to re-read the Pope’s document, and update his previous views on climate change and the broader issues of ecology.

     

    Brian Johnstone. C.SS.R. is a Redemptorist priest.

     

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

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

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

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

    John Menadue

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

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

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

     

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

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

     

  • Stuart Whitman. Labor 2035

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

     

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

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

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

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

    This is her speech.

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

    I feel I have returned home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    These reforms enabled us to become the party of participation.

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

     

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

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

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

  • Peter Blackrock. Germany in control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

     

  • James Button. A Moment of Unexpected Hope

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    None of this is easy or without risk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

  • John Howard on political Royal Commissions.

    Last September John Howard said

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

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

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

  • Peter Day. Warning: role models may shrink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

     

  • Miriam Lyons. On inequality of opportunity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Greek Crisis

    See below links to two interesting articles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Pearls and Irritations Policy Series

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

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

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

    Current Affairs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

  • Europe’s attack on Greek democracy.

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

     

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

  • Ross Kerridge. GP Remuneration.

    Current Affairs

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Heart sinks. Groan. Oh dear….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But in the meantime, who is your GP?

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

     

     

     

  • Walter Hamilton. Why I am an Australian citizen

    Current Affairs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Walter Hamilton reported for ABC for more than 30 years.

     

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

    Current Affairs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    It’s important.

    Whose side is the ABC on?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But you would have to change the ABC Act.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Long may that independence continue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Celebrating achievement. Sharing discoveries. Uncovering truths.

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

    Helping us understand each other and this country better.

    To help make Australia, Australia.

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

     

  • Rod Tiffen. Murdoch’s declining influence.

    Current Affairs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Current Affairs.

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

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

  • David Charles. Innovation in Australia.

    Policy Series. 

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

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

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

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

    How has Australia Performed? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Key Requirements for Innovation Success 

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

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

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

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

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

    How does Australia Rate? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    What is to be done? 

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

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

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

    Food and agribusiness;

    Mining equipment, technology and services;

    Oil, gas and energy resources;

    Medical technologies and pharmaceuticals; and

    Advanced manufacturing sectors. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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

    Current Affairs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Worse than a defeat: shamed in Afghanistan.

    Current Affairs

    In London, I have been reading again some of the history of the recent UK military venture in Afghanistan. It is disturbing reading. Neither people in the UK or in Australia seem to want to learn from the disaster in Afghanistan.

    Only recently our Prime Minister and senior military officials have been telling us how successful we have been in Afghanistan. Just as in the UK I suspect that it is mainly puff to cover a failed venture.

    Australia’s war in Afghanistan was the longest national conflict in Australia’s history. Overall 40 Australians were killed and 261 wounded, to say nothing of the tragedy we inflicted on the Afghan people. We spent an estimated $8 billion on Operation Slipper.

    For what?

    The SMH Defence Correspondent David Wroe on 30 May reported:

    “The Afghanistan province where Australian troops were stationed for eight years and suffered most of their casualties is in danger of sliding back into Taliban control, Afghan sources and experts say. Eighteen months after ADF troops withdrew from their main base Oruzgan province, a power vacuum left by the assassination of a Western-back strongman has sparked an insurgency push that by some estimates, has put half the province in Taliban hands. The Australian ambassador in Afghanistan, Nasir Ahmad Andisha, confirmed there had been setbacks.”

    I have just finished re-reading the book review by James Meek in the London Review of Books in December 2014. He reviewed four books on the UK involvement in Afghanistan. Meeks said

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

    For James Meek’s review, see link below.

    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n24/james-meek/worse-than-a-defeat

  • Brad Chilcott. Refugees, possibility before protest.

    Current Affairs.

    As founder and national director of Welcome to Australia my dream is that many thousands of refugees and other migrants arrive safely in Australia every year to be welcomed into a fair, diverse and inclusive society where they will live free from vilification, fear and prejudice.

    For asylum seekers and refugees themselves, the greatest risk of Labor’s upcoming National Conference is not the danger of an imperfect chapter in the Platform. It is the danger of Labor failing to deliver real and practical outcomes to help ease their plight, while causing them to endure the real-world impact of re-energising the politics of fear and vilification of the world’s most vulnerable.

    I do not believe this analysis should be dismissed as conceding the ideological argument to realpolitik. For as long as political leaders concentrate Australia’s attention on the irregular arrival of asylum seekers, asylum seekers will continue to suffer. The last fifteen years clearly demonstrate this truth.

    If Australia were bereft of conservatives willing to politicise the approach of each boat to our shores, if there was no aligned media hungry to demonise the asylum seekers on them, the current political strategy of some advocates would be validated. The relevant Platform chapter could reflect an Australia where the electorate sees images of desperate people risking their lives at sea on the evening news and responds by asking their Government to rescue, care for and house them.

    Unfortunately, the last 15 years of toxic debate have convinced Australians that “leaky boats” are a threat to our national security, that leadership is best measured in brutality and that people seeking our protection by crossing the ocean are of questionable integrity and intent. Measured public opinion demonstrates that 70% of Australians want us to continue our harsh deterrence policies – in fact, nearly a quarter of our community want us to increase our cruelty.

    But there is another statistic worth our consideration. Research by the Scanlon Foundation indicates that 70% of Australians have a positive attitude towardsrefugees and this number is growing.

    Put bluntly, for most Australian voters, refugees are welcome and the perception of porous borders is not. Or put another way, the public will not countenance any policy or proposition that appears to reopen the boat journey from Java to Christmas Island. This socio-political reality creates difficulties for any opposition and requires that Labor is strategic in its approach.

    Labor party refugee advocates have a choice. To precipitate a fresh round of fear-mongering and vilification of asylum seekers, providing the politics of prejudice and division with new impetus, by authoring a perfect Platform chapter that will never become Government policy. Or to set aside the deep disappointment regarding the Labor Party’s record in this area and unite behind a framework that could not only be realised as the policy of Government, but would also change the lives of thousands of asylum seekers and refugees for the better. In other words, to choose an approach that keeps the public onside, delivers significant outcomes, and detoxifies the rancorous political debate around refugees.

    Labor can be the one voice of progressive possibility – or another voice of progressive protest.

    A successful and progressive Platform chapter on asylum seekers and refugees would achieve five primary outcomes – and remain durable in Government without abandoning them

    1 )   Offer thousands more refugees the chance to belong and contribute to Australian society every year.

    2 )   Protect the asylum seekers currently in our community and onshore and offshore detention centres from harm, providing them with real opportunities to work, study and prosper.

    3 )   Neutralise a toxic, divisive and damaging public debate.

    4 )   Open up the policy, political and social space required to effectively build a durable regional resettlement framework

    5 )   Ensure excellence and effectiveness in Australia’s settlement services.

    Such a policy is not only conceivable – it would the best possible outcome for asylum seekers, refugees and Australia’s national character and one that progressives must advocate for.

    A truly compassionate Labor policy would immediately give people living on Bridging Visas the right to study and work and abolish Temporary Protection Visas; commit to transparent, independent oversight of all detention centres operated or funded by Australia; legislate for time limits on all forms of immigration detention; end the fast-tracking of asylum seeker claims; reinstate Government funded legal aid for asylum seekers; commit to closing the ocean route to Australia; and create a safe pathway to protection by increasing the humanitarian intake to 27 000 with a special focus on those displaced in our region.

    Labor in government would have a real opportunity to transform the lives of countless thousands while maintaining the confidence of a population committed to“stopping the boats”.

    It could be argued that there are more progressive policy positions. However, there are no more progressive possibilities. Labor’s National Conference can be used to demonstrate just how “perfect” it is when it comes to people seeking asylum, or can unite behind meaningful change in the right direction.

    Brad Chilcott is the founder and National Director of Welcome to Australia, a national movement of people working together to cultivate a culture of welcome in our nation. This article first appeared in The Chifley Research Centre. http://www.chifley.org.au/possibility-before-protest/

     

  • Walter Hamilton. Magna Carta and universality.

    Current Affairs. 

    Eight hundred years ago, this month, King John reluctantly signed Magna Carta, a form of peace treaty forced on him by rebellious barons. It is considered to have marked the beginning of the end of the age of despotism. Some also see Magna Carta as the extension into politics of Christianity’s leveling theology: no longer was there one chosen people (monarch); all humanity had access to salvation (the law).

    Durham Cathedral (one of the architectural marvels of the Christian tradition) holds a 1216 edition of Magna Carta, which is currently on display to mark the anniversary. It is a great privilege to lay one’s eyes on such a rich piece of history.

    At the heart of Magna Carta is a statement of universality that all ‘free men’, including the king, were subject to the law:

    No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

    Although ‘free men’ then made up only a small minority of the population, and Magna Carta would be variously ignored, amended or superseded in later years, this first stating of the principle of English liberty changed everything.

    To the extent that Magna Carta was created to constrain the monarch, it represented a devolution or decentralization of power, which is a highly topical subject in present-day Britain.

    The political map of the United Kingdom is now sharply divided, with the Scottish nationalists holding almost everything above the Tweed and the Conservatives dominant in the south. The North-South divide, itself, however, is nothing new. Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South is just one nineteenth-century variation on a well-worn theme.

    Travelling from London to Yorkshire and Durham, and thence into Scotland, the modern-day visitor immediately hears the change, in the accents, and feels the climatic change. And yet many economic and social changes in the past fifty years have led Britain in the opposite direction, towards greater uniformity. Gone from the North are the industries that once defined its separateness from the South: coal mining and shipbuilding. Around Durham, for instance, the landscape is no longer dominated by the mounds of coal slag older residents still remember; Durham today is as green as Kent.

    Back to Magna Carta.

    While the celebration of the charter’s anniversary might give encouragement to present-day de-centralizers, the greatest idea it upholds, for me, is the principle of universality: that all ‘free men’ (which we can translate into the contemporary ‘all members of a democracy’) are equal before the law. From this equality, this universality, we derive the benefits of open discourse, of free trade, freedom of worship and ‘the brotherhood of man’.

    Magna Carta stands against modern trends that tend to atomize society through, among other things, the ascendency of single-interest group-ism that narrows interaction with others, a process increasingly enabled by the Internet and other new media.

    I was reminded of this trend by a recent news report on the proliferation of so-called ‘safe spaces’ on British university campuses. The idea of the university, as classically conceived, is to promote the exchange of ideas and knowledge across barriers of class, race and gender. ‘Safe spaces’, on the other hand, are exclusive to specific ethnic or gender groups, where they may exchange ideas ‘safe’ from dissent or contradiction. The promoters of ‘safe spaces’ say they are needed to protect marginalized minorities from the dominant culture; in other words, the imputed intolerance of others is appropriated to justify reverse intolerance.

    From ‘safe spaces’ to Scottish nationalism is not such a big leap.

    As I have been travelling around, taking in the opinions of the people I meet, the ghost of Magna Carta has stalked the contemporary debate about representation and autonomy. How, for instance, can one reconcile the referendum result that clearly endorsed Scotland’s remaining inside the United Kingdom, with the extraordinary success of the Scottish Nationalist Party?

    The answer partly, I think, is that Scots were nervous about economic separation from the union (notwithstanding that the SNP is now pressing for legislation that would give Scotland ‘economic autonomy’) and concerned at the way the referendum came to be perceived as an act of outright unfriendliness towards the English (contrary to the many family and business connections that people want to preserve).

    The big vote for the SNP in the subsequent parliamentary elections was the natural corollary to this. If Scotland is to remain inside the union, it wants its own voice and, more to the point, power over its own destiny. Labor, I have been told so many times, has always been the party of Scotland. No longer is that the case. The poisoned legacy of Tony Blair, ‘New Labor’, the Iraq War, plus the failure of Ed Miliband’s team to muster candidates in Scotland who had the respect of a restive electorate, all contributed to the result. Labor is gone in Scotland for the foreseeable future.

    But Scotland is not gone from the union. The forces of dissolution versus integration (or atomization versus university, as I have termed them earlier) are contending one against the other. It is a multifaceted contest and the likely outcome is far from clear. Under the June sunshine, amid the flocks of European tourists come to the Highlands for a milder form of summer, the hills and glens and the lochs remain for now firmly in place.

    Walter Hamilton is visiting Scotland researching family history.