Category: Politics

  • John Menadue. What a remarkable thing to say!

    As reported in the SMH of December 22/21 this year, Dyson Haydon, who heads the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, said the following in respect of Julia Gillard. Her ‘intense degree of preparation, her familiarity with the materials, her acuteness [and] her powerful instinct for self-preservation made it difficult to judge her credibility’.

    What an extraordinary and remarkable things to say by a Commissioner who is a former High Court Judge.  Would he have preferred Julia Gillard to be un-prepared and incompetent before the Royal Commission? If he could not find against her credibility he should have left it at that and refrained from gratuitous comments.

    The Royal Commission that we really need is an enquiry into massive tax avoidance by wealthy individuals and large corporations who are paying minimal or no tax at all.

    There is a lot of privilege and unfairness in Australia that needs exposure and correction.

  • John Menadue. Capitalism and the fall of communism

    In this blog on 5 November I drew attention to an article by the Economics Editor of the Guardian Larry Elliott. In that article Elliott said “As the Berlin Wall fell, checks on capitalism crumbled.”  The principal thesis of that article was that with the end of communism capitalism became more aggressive and less inhibited. He said

    “The fear that workers would ‘go red’ meant that they had to be kept happy. The proceeds of growth were shared. Welfare benefits were generous. Investment in public infrastructure was high. But there was no need to be so generous once the Soviet Union was no more. What was known as neoliberal economics was born in the 1970s but it was not until the 1990s that market forces reigned supreme. The free market spread to poorer parts of the world where it has previously been off limits, expanding the global workforce. That meant cheaper goods, but it also put downward pressure on wages. What’s more, there was no longer any need to be inhibited. Those running companies could take a bigger slice of profits because there was nowhere else for workers to go. If its citizens did not like ‘reform’ of welfare states, they just had to lump it.”

    This is not a new thesis, but it is becoming more and more urgent as a result of growing inequality.

    And inequality is becoming more entrenched and apparent as we see the massive scale of tax avoidance by large multinational companies like Google, Westfields, Apple, Amazon, Ikea, News Corp, Glencore/Xstrada and hundreds of others. Taxes which we pay to maintain a civilised society are becoming optional for the wealthy and powerful.

    In the next week or so I will be posting articles by Ian McAuley on this issue – capitalism, society and morality.

    I think that there is widespread evidence that with the end of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, capitalism has become less restrained, and more aggressive. The neoliberal theorists told us that if the rich have more money through tax reductions and other benefits they will invest more and the poor would get the ‘trickle down’ benefits.  This has not happened.

    • There is growing concern across the world about the rise of inequality and the destructive social and economic consequences. Thomas Piketty in his book Capital in the Twenty First Century draws attention to the long term trend to greater inequality. This book is terrifying conservatives. Inequality has become a major issue in the US where the process began with Ronald Regan and his neoliberal supporters. Alan Kohler in the Business Spectator points out that “rising inequality began in the 1980s and was the direct result of Reganomics and its pursuit of tax breaks for the rich”. Regan also set about quite deliberately to cripple the trade unions. This crippling of the trade unions and the tax benefits for the rich in the US have bought enormous benefits for the wealthy and a major skewing of income with disastrous effects on the economy and political life where wealthy vested interests can, in effect, buy governments. Even Rupert Murdoch has shown his concern by hopping on the bandwagon about growing inequality. But his concern is not convincing when we know that in the last 16 years he has paid $US 600 million in salaries to himself, his children and a few senior executives.
    • Maggie Thatcher followed suit in the UK. She said there was no such thing as society, only individuals and markets. This has culminated in what the Governor of the Bank of England said in May this year that “capitalism is at risk of destroying itself and that bankers have an obligation to create a fairer society”. He added “the basic social contract at the heart of capitalism was breaking down with rising inequality.” He warned “my core point is just that as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential to the long term dynamism of capitalism itself…Capitalism loses its sense of moderation when the belief in the power of the market enters the realm of faith”.
    • The neoliberals present their case in terms of how they favour an open and competitive market when in practice a major objective is to favour capital against labour and reduced competition. In Australia, market based approaches to climate change through carbon taxes or an emissions trading scheme are rejected in favour of government handouts to polluters. Vested interests are able to bring influence or buy governments in a way not possible 25 years ago before communism collapsed.
    • We have seen rapacious banks with their obscene executive salaries bring the world economy to its knees in the global financial crisis.
    • In Australia we have a government that speaks about ending the age of entitlement but seems more determined to extend the benefits of the privileged. We have a Royal Commission that is allegedly about corruption but I suspect that the real agenda is to cripple the trade unions, the strongest countervailing force for justice in the Australian economy and society. The CFMEU and the HSU are fair game but not the much more culpable Commonwealth Bank.

    In my blog of 20 September this year, What does Labor stand for?” I emphasised that only a strong society, including a strong and respected government can support a strong economy. There is no point in an economy that does not serve social ends.

    There is a prevailing view by the present government, as the Liberal Party platform says “that only businesses and individuals are the creators of wealth and employment”.  As I said in that September blog this Liberal Party view sees government as a burden rather than a contributor to the common wealth. There is a danger that the increasingly unrestrained power of capital and big business legitimises destructive social divisions which encourages people to separate themselves from society in physical or metaphorical gated communities such as schools and hospitals. It allows the connection between contributions to be severed. It encourages rent-seeking, speculation and protection of privilege rather than productive investment. Increasingly, companies in Australia are paying large amounts out in dividends, buying back shares and sitting on idle cash rather than investing in the future of the Australian economy and Australian jobs. There are not many ’trickle down’ benefits in all of this.

    The fall of communism has emboldened the exponents of capitalism. There is a continual assertion of the importance of business over and against society and the community.

    Pope Francis is one clarion voice saying that business and the market must be underpinned by morality.  He has challenged market fundamentalists who hawk ‘trickle down’ theories as naive. He has denounced the new tyranny of unfettered capitalism and calls inequality ‘the root of social evil’. He is a lonely voice at the moment.

    Ian McAuley will be discussing these issues in a series of articles starting later this week in this blog.

    The fall of communism is proving to be a great boon for the powerful at the expense of the powerless. The restraints on the powerful are crumbling.

  • What will Israel become?

    In the International New York Times of December 20, Roger Cohen focuses on the future of Israel. He says ‘Every day … another European Government or parliament expresses support for recognition of a Palestinian state … In the space of a few weeks something has shifted. The Leader of the Labor Party, Isaac Herzog has been ushered from unelectable nerd to plausible patriot. Polls show him neck and neck with the incumbent [Benjamin Netanyahu].  For link to this article see below.  John Menadue

     

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/roger-cohen-what-will-israel-become.html?emc=edit_th_20141221&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=69612024&_r=0

  • John Menadue. The accident prone Julie Bishop.

    I have written before about Julie Bishop’s mistakes as Foreign Minister despite the media spin that she has successfully generated. Those articles were: ‘Julie Bishop – Substance and Style’ on the 18th November; and ‘Julie Bishop -‘Undiplomatic, politically partisan and wrong’ on 22 November. Just recall her foolish attack on President Obama over the Great Barrier Reef.

    Since then Julie Bishop has continued on her merry way with a pliant media.

    In the recent budget cuts Julie Bishop volunteered a further cut in her foreign aid allocation of $3.7 billion. Together with the May budget cuts that she agreed to this represents a cut of over $12 billion in our aid program over four years.

    Julie Bishop has clearly decided that it is easiest to attack politically soft targets like the poor in our region. Australian foreign ministers do not have a domestic constituency to defend and so she attacks people who can’t vote or protest about her decisions.

    Michael Keating in this blog has noted that foreign aid has been the fastest growing item in the UK budget over the last four years, increasing by 25%, while expenditure on most other UK government functions has fallen. Indeed the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, is on record as saying that the increase in foreign aid is his proudest achievement in government. In Australia, however we are moving in the opposite direction with Julie Bishop cutting help for the powerless and the poor.

    As Caritas has pointed out, ‘The budget cuts mean that in terms of OECD rankings, Australia’s contributions to overseas aid are now at the lowest level ever since OECD records began in 1954. These cuts are severe and will put Australia near the bottom of OECD rankings as a contributor to international aid and development. … Australia is the third wealthiest country on a per capita basis in the world yet we will now slide to around 20th position as a contributor to international development.’

    Perhaps we have also forgotten that Julie Bishop led the charge against Julia Gillard over the so-called union ‘slush funds’. I recall the day when she was the sole opposition questioner and every question was directed at Julia Gillard’s association with Slater & Gordon and the AWU. Accusations of criminal conduct were made against Julia Gillard, but the Royal Commissioner Deyson Haydon has now found that there were no grounds for criminal action over Julia Gillard’s involvement in the so-called slush fund.

    Julia Gillard has called for her accusers to show decency and apologise. But Julie Bishop who led the charge has said nothing and the media continues to give her a free ride on this and on the litany of mistakes she has made.

    Julie Bishop was the loyal deputy to both Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott. She sided with leaders who took diametrically different positions on climate change and the need to address carbon emissions. She shows great flexibility in all things.

  • Michael Keating. The Government’s mid-year budget update. Part 2.

    Where to from here? 

    So what is the Government’s strategy to return the Budget to return to surplus as the government has promised over the medium term?

    The May Budget was almost universally criticised for its unfairness. While restoring fiscal health of the nation may require sacrifices, the evidence clearly showed that in the May Budget the Government did not demand equality of sacrifice (for example, see my comments on the Budget posted on this site last May).

    Unfortunately the new evidence from the MYEFO suggests that this unfairness continues. Essentially the Government has balanced the cost of its new policies announced since the Budget, mainly involving new expenditures on what it believes to be extra security, by making further cuts in existing programs. The net result of these various policy changes since May is that the further net addition to outlays over the four years to 2017-18 is expected to be only $4.1 bn. But the cuts have mainly affected politically soft targets, with foreign aid taking the biggest hit with another $3.7 bn cut, on top of the previous cut in the May Budget of $7.6 bn. By comparison it might be noted that foreign aid has been the fastest growing item in the UK Budget over the last four years, increasing by 25 per cent, while expenditure on most other UK government functions has fallen. Indeed, the Conservative Prime Minister is on record as saying that the increase in foreign aid is his proudest achievement. In Australia, however, we are spending more in a dubious attempt to enhance our military power, but slashing spending which might increase or at least maintain our soft power overseas.

    Of course, merely balancing new spending with cuts in existing programs will not of itself return the Budget to surplus. Overall the Government’s approach to the task of budget repair remains the same as outlined in the May Budget, as it continues to rely for the most part on increasing revenue rather than expenditure restraint. Thus government payments are projected to actually rise as a percentage of GDP from 24.1 per cent in 2012-13[1] to 25.2 per cent in 2017-18; that is the Abbott Government is itself budgeting for a substantial increase in payments relative to the level of payments under Labor, equivalent to one percent of GDP. While on the other hand, total government receipts are projected in MYEFO to increase by two percentage points from 22.8 per cent of GDP in 2012-13 to 24.8 per cent in 2017-18. In other words, total payments are being only modestly restrained while receipts increase substantially as a result of allowing bracket creep as people move over time into higher income tax brackets. The Government has promised to cap tax revenue at 23.9 per cent of GDP, but in the meantime receipts are bearing the main burden of Budget repair, while the expenditure cuts are principally being used as the basis for a reordering of expenditure priorities more in line with this Government’s values.

    The response of the business community, or at least their self-appointed spokespeople, to the MYEFO’s receding prospect of restoring the Budget surplus has been to argue that this further highlights the need for economic reform. And as already suggested in my previous companion comment, faster economic growth would greatly assist in balancing the Budget. However, that begs the question of what sorts of reform would most help improve economic growth. According to the Business Council, the reform agenda should focus on taxation, federalism and industrial relations. But faster economic growth requires improved productivity growth or increased workforce participation, and the evidence is not strong linking either of these two key variables to reform of taxation, federalism or industrial relations. While such reforms might be supported, realistically their pay-off in terms of productivity and participation can only be expected to be fairly small.

    Instead the evidence is that the best way to improve participation is to increase the education and skills of people who presently lack the skills for the jobs of tomorrow. And innovation based on research and education is also likely to have the greatest impact on our future productivity growth, at least in the longer run. But unfortunately these are precisely the areas that the government has chosen to target for expenditure savings. Instead there is scope for more expenditure restraint, but this would involve improving the efficiency and effectiveness of services and their value for money, especially in relation to school education, health and infrastructure. The Abbott Government has, however, shown no evidence of looking seriously at program effectiveness and instead its quest for savings has seemed to be mainly guided by its own particular political values and prejudices.

    Looking to the longer term future, of course Australia will have to live within its means, and despite our best efforts to accelerate economic growth, those means may well not increase in the years ahead as fast as we have become used to. In that case the need for ongoing expenditure restraint will become even more important, but so too will the need for tax reform. In sum, what the MYEFO again reminds us is that society faces a fundamental choice between less expenditure or a more effective tax system, or more likely some combination of the two. In a previous comment on an ‘Alternative Budget Strategy’ (posted July 22/23) I showed how additional revenue totalling some $42 bn could be raised in 2017-18 by real tax reform that reduced the various tax expenditures (ie concessions) and closed a number of tax loopholes that are presently used to avoid paying tax. In my view this would be the best place to start if we want to put our public finances on a sustainable footing for the future.

     

    [1] I use 2012-13 as the starting point for this comparison, rather than 2013-14, because the payments for 2013-14 were artificially inflated by the incoming Abbott Government by bringing forward some payments into that year and by the payment of $8.8 bn to the Reserve Bank, which of itself increased total payments by 0.6 per cent of GDP.

  • Hazel Moir and Deborah Gleeson. Evergreening and how big pharma keeps drug prices high.

    Efforts by pharmaceutical companies to extend their patents cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year. In some cases they also mean people are subjected to unnecessary clinical trials.

    Big pharma makes big profits. Their useful new drugs are patented, protecting them from competition and allowing them to charge high prices. When the patent ends, other companies are allowed to supply the previously patented drug. These are known as generics. The prices of generic drugs are much lower than the prices of in-patent drugs – it has been suggested that for widely used drugs price falls can be as much as 95%.

    Pharmaceutical companies want to get their new products listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), because they will sell in much higher volumes. Taxpayers have an interest in ensuring that these drugs move from the high in-patent price to the much lower off-patent price as early as possible.

    On average, a patent provides effective protection from competition for about 14 years. But, of course, companies like monopolies and would like to extend the patent period. Over the past few decades they have used a process known as evergreening to keep generic companies out of the market for longer.

    How evergreening works

    Evergreening is achieved by seeking extra patents on variations of the original drug – new forms of release, new dosages, new combinations or variations, or new forms. Big pharma refers to this as “lifecycle management”. Even if the patent is dubious, the company can earn more from the higher prices than it pays in legal fees to keep the dubious patent alive.

    Evergreening is possible because in Australia the standard required to get a patent is very low. Different methods of delivering drugs (such as extended release, for example) have been known for decades. But when one of these known delivery methods is combined with a known drug, the patent office considers this sufficiently inventive to grant a new 20-year patent. Another favourite evergreening strategy is to patent a slight variation of the drug.

    Brand pharmaceutical companies argue that these “lifecycle management” patents provide improved health outcomes to the community. They meet the (very low) patentability thresholds of novelty and inventiveness. Critics argue that the claimed improved health outcomes are small or non-existent.

    An evergreening story: from Efexor to Efexor-XR to Pristiq

    An example is useful. In the case of the depression drug venlafaxine (marketed as Efexor), the original version had major side-effects. However, when provided in extended release form these side-effects were substantially reduced.

    Naturally the extended release form (Efexor-XR) became preferred. Although it might seem obvious to combine venlafaxine with an extended release form to overcome the side-effect problem, the patent office granted two new patents for extended release versions of venlafaxine.

    One of these was written in such a broad form that it delayed generic entry by two and a half years, while legal wrangling took place. Eventually the evergreening patent was declared invalid. But the cost to taxpayers of this delay is estimated at $209 million.

    Pfizer has a second evergreening strategy for venlafaxine. When venlafaxine is taken, the human body converts it to desvenlafaxine. In other words desvenlafaxine is a variant of the original active pharmaceutical ingredient venlafaxine. Clearly the two compounds are closely related. So it is astonishing that desvenlafaxine passed the tests for getting a patent.

    Desvenlafaxine is marketed as Pristiq. Pristiq entered the market early in the two-and-a-half-year period of legal wrangling over the extended release venlafaxine (Efexor-XR) patent. Pfizer’s marketing of Pristiq in February 2009 was so lavish that it attracted the attention of investigative journalists.

    Pristiq has no additional benefits for patients. Despite this, during the first six months of 2014 half of prescriptions were written for Pristiq rather than for the clinically identical Efexor-XR.

    But Pristiq costs between $A22.32 and $A26.50 more than Efexor-XR, depending on the dose. Based on reported prescription volumes in 2013-14, the cost to the taxpayer of doctors prescribing Pristiq rather than Efexor-XR exceeds $21 million a year.

    Unless generic companies challenge the desvenlafaxine patent, there will be no generic versions of Pristiq until after August 2023, when the patent expires.

    Would you like a placebo with that?

    When such minor variations in drugs are patented and marketed, there are also ethical considerations. Pfizer had to undertake clinical trials to obtain marketing approval for Pristiq. These involved blind comparisons with placebos. Thousands of seriously depressed patients involved in these trials received placebos for no good reason, since the chemical compound was identical with the action of venlafaxine in the body.

    Marketing of Pristiq clearly offers few benefits to the public. It does, however, offer Pfizer the benefit of extracting additional income whenever a doctor prescribes Pristiq. Many patients suffering severe depression were subjected to a placebo in order for Pfizer to undertake the clinical trials needed to obtain marketing approval for Pristiq. There seems to be no system for protecting patients from clinical trials undertaken only to support drugs based on evergreening patents.

    Evergreening entails large-scale economic and social costs for Australians. Reform of our patent laws to prevent evergreening is long overdue. This should be a priority for any government interested in reducing unnecessary costs to the health system.

    But instead, the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement talks expected to take place in Beijing this weekend could reinforce these problems and make reform of the patent system more difficult.

    Hazel Moir is Adjunct Associate Professor, economics of patents, copyright and other “IP” at Australian National University.  Deb orah Gleeson is Lecturer in Public Health at La Trobe University. This article first appeared in ‘The Conversation’ on 6 November 2014.

  • Hazel Moir, How trade agreements are locking in a broken patent system.

    Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series, we review Australian trade policy over the years and where we stand today on the brink of a number of significant new trade deals.

    Australia has long had low requirements for obtaining patents. Some of these low standards were “locked in” in the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. This made reform to the system difficult but not impossible.

    The same cannot be said of the proposals in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement(TPPA). If implemented, they will ensure no future Australian government can improve the patent system without violating the TPPA obligations. They also reinforce the current problems within Australia’s patent system.

    It is so easy to get a patent

    Patents are no longer just for scientists and engineers doing leading-edge research. They are not limited to technology or science. They don’t even have to be inventive – at least in the ordinary meaning of the word.

    Australia’s patent standards are incredibly low. In 2003, we even granted a patent for a method of teaching children about finance by having them work for their pocket money. The “invention” had lots of different parts such as learning about credit cards by getting next week’s pocket money early. This is actually the best way to get a patent in Australia – combine two known things or processes and as long as no one has written them down together, you can get a patent on it. If it has been written down, all that is needed is a third known process!

    The gradual watering down of patent standards over recent decades has led to an explosion in the number of patents being granted in Australia. In 1984 the number awarded was 7,044, in 2013 this had grown to 17,112.

    This has significant implications for pharmaceuticals and it has led to higher costs for consumers and taxpayers. For example, if a known medicinal compound is combined with a known method of release (such as extended release) then an extra patent is granted. A patent for extended release venlafaxine (brand name Efexor®) kept generic competition off the market for two and a half years, costing taxpayers over A$200m.

    The TPPA also reinforces the current flawed approach to granting patents. Hidden in footnote 54 to draft article QQ.E.1, it says patents should be granted when “the claimed invention would have been obvious to a person skilled or having ordinary skill in the art having regard to the prior art”. This means that it is inventive enough for a patent unless it is obvious to an unimaginative person working in a very narrowly circumscribed field.

    However there is a big difference between being inventive and not being obvious – just like there is a big difference between being beautiful and not being ugly.

    What else does the TPPA do to our patent system?

    As well as cementing this extraordinarily low standard for granting patents, the TPPA plans to broaden the extensive privileges already granted to patent owners.

    Existing privileges prevent Australian-based companies from making and exporting a drug to a country where it is out-of-patent if the patent is still valid in Australia. This is silly and costs Australia significant export earnings.

    The TPPA plans to go further by limiting the grounds on which patents can be revoked or cancelled. Pharmaceutical patents will be longer in some countries. Data exclusivity provisions will be wider and stronger, and may reinforce the market exclusivity of some drugs.

    What are the penalties for getting the patent system wrong?

    There are very few for patent owners. If your patent is challenged and revoked, then only the profits made since the legal challenge need to be repaid.

    Yet those who infringe a patent may be fined and may have to exit a particular line of business or develop less efficient means of production.

    The TPPA will make it more difficult to challenge a patent. It proposes a presumption of patent validity (Article QQ.H.2.3), which directly contradicts Australia’s current laws. Many scholars in the United States consider this presumption as one of the worst features of the increasingly broken US patent system.

    Why should we care about the TPPA?

    First, it is undemocratic for one government to tie the hands of all future elected governments. The IP chapter of the TPPA is heavy-handed regulation. It specifies in detail many aspects of patent policy which are currently subject only to parliamentary control. It will make domestic reform hard if not impossible.

    Second, cementing low standards for patent requirements will mean we can do little to control the cost of health care. Australian taxpayers will continue to pay a lot more for pharmaceuticals.

    Third, there is some – albeit tenuous – link between patents and innovation. All court cases on patent infringement involve an innovating company being sued. So only our innovating companies pay for our broken patent system. As only 25% of Australian innovating firms take out patents, it is the other 75% who pay the price of a bad system. Innovation is too important for our future to get it wrong.

    And for what? Just how much extra milk or beef exports will we get in the TPPA? Adopting the TPPA is rather short-sighted when we consider the future economic strength of Australia lies in the knowledge industries.

    This article draws on research prepared for the 2014 Workshop “Ten Years since the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement: Where to for Australia’s Trade Policy?” Sponsored by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW Australia

    Hazel Moir is Adjunct Associate Professor, economics of patents, copyright and other “IP” at Australian National University. This article first appeared in ‘The Conversation’ on 20 October 2014.

  • Michael Keating. The Government’s mid-year Budget Update. Part 1.

    What does it say about the government’s fiscal performance? 

    The headline news is that the Budget deficit for the current fiscal year, 2014-15 has blown out by $10.6 bn from $29.8 bn in the Budget to $40.4 bn in the Mid-Year Economic and Financial Outlook (MYEFO) released on Monday.  Over the four years to 2017-18 the deterioration in the Budget balance since last May is projected to accumulate to some $43.7 bn.   According to the Government none of this deterioration in the Budget is the Government’s fault; indeed as much as $39.6 bn is explained by changes in the economy and only $4.1 bn represents the net impact of policy decisions taken since the May Budget.

    But as a point of comparison try telling this story to Wayne Swan. Swan’s last Budget was for the fiscal year 2013-14, and between May 2013 and the release of the MYEFO for that year, the Budget balance deteriorated by $28.9 bn, and over the four years ending in 2016-17 by $101.2 bn. Clearly on the face of it the deterioration between the Budget projections and the MYEFO for the next four years was worse in Swan’s 2013-14 Budget, but the deterioration was much the same in both Swan and Hockey’s Budgets for the first Budget year, being $28.9 bn in 2013-14 (Swan) and $29.8 bn in 2014-15 (Hockey).  Furthermore in terms of fiscal responsibility, only $0.4 bn of that deterioration in the Budget balance in 2013-14 was explained by policy decisions taken by the Labor Government before they lost office, and Labor’s policy decisions in its last few months actually improved the Budget balance for the four years to 2016-17 by as much as a net $8.2 bn.

    The difficulty for both former Treasurer Swan and the present Treasurer Hockey is that the economy has not performed to expectations. Swan expected to balance the Budget in 2015-16 and Hockey six months ago expected to almost achieve that balance in 2017-18. Now Hockey is asking us to believe that the Budget will be balanced by 2020-21, another six years away. It will be interesting to see how financial markets react to this ‘forecast’, but many may see the pursuit of this Budget surplus as an ever-receding mirage.

    Personally I think the Government is right not to pursue fiscal consolidation at any cost, and to allow the Budget to act as a shock-absorber until the economy is more robust.  Also in some respects, the way the economy is evolving at present is quite remarkable.  In fact the latest forecasts in the MYEFO predict no change since the Budget for real GDP growth in the current financial year at an annual rate of 2½ per cent. So while the economy is sluggish, economic growth is still being maintained, and unemployment is expected to only slowly drift up a bit further.  But what is unusual is that nominal GDP growth for this year is now forecast to be only 1½ per cent compared to double that rate of 3 per cent as forecast back in the May Budget; this change is because producer prices are now expected to fall, mainly as a consequence of declining commodity prices, and even though consumer prices are expected to rise in line with the Reserve Bank’s target rate of around 2½ per cent in this financial year.  It is this forecast softness in producer prices and wages that is hitting the forecast of Budget revenue hardest.

    In addition, the medium-term economic outlook is for another round of economic restructuring.  Mining investment and construction are being wound back, but mining exports are booming, and with the falling exchange rate, imports are likely to be subdued, and there will be something of a shift in favour of service exports and advanced manufacturing. However, given the hit that manufacturing has taken in recent years, this shift back in favour of a more balanced industrial structure is likely to be relatively slow compared to previous such episodes.

    Nevertheless, despite the Government’s special pleading, this is not the first time that Australia has experienced a dramatic decline in its export prices. As the Government is at pains to point out, in the last three years to September 2014, which of course covers the last two years of the previous Labor Government, the terms of trade fell by as much as 25 per cent, but on an annual basis this is no faster decline than the Hawke-Keating Government experienced when the terms of trade fell by 17 per cent over the two years to September 1986. It is therefore of some interest to compare how the present Abbott Government is handling this difficult situation compared to Hawke and Keating almost thirty years ago.

    The Abbott Government continues to ask us to believe that over the present year and the next three years fiscal consolidation will continue at an average annual rate of 0.6 per cent of GDP per year.  By comparison, the Hawke-Keating Government’s starting point was a Budget deficit in 1985-86 equivalent to 2.0 per cent of GDP, or much the same as the Abbott Government inherited for 2013-14 on taking office in September 2013.  However, the rate of fiscal consolidation that the Hawke-Keating Government actually delivered was equivalent to an annual rate of more than one per cent of GDP over the following four years, or around twice the rate proposed by the Abbott Government (and yet to actually be delivered). A key factor explaining this difference is that the annual rate of real GDP growth achieved by the Hawke-Keating Government between 1985-86 and 1989-90 averaged 4 per cent, whereas the Abbott Government is only projecting the economy to grow at an annual average rate of 3 per cent between 2013-14 and 2017-18.

    As Joe Hockey says a strong budget may be necessary for a strong economy, but perhaps even more so a strong economy helps produce a strong budget. The question is then what to do if the economic outlook is not all that strong, and that is addressed in the following comment on Where to from here. 

  • John Menadue. The Sydney seige and social misfits. Will we ever learn?

    I posted the following blog ‘Will we ever learn?’ on 27 October this year. Amongst other things it highlighted the domestic risks that would result from the Abbott Government’s decision to join the war in Iraq and Syria.

    Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association has today  described the hostage taker and killer as a ‘nutter’.It is also clear that there were numerous warning signs in the previous  behaviour of the attacker,

    John Menadue.

    The Coalition and conservative commentators have told us for years that international action by Australia in taking the lead on climate change would only be symbolic and would not really have any effect.

    But the Abbott Government has stood this argument on its head by urging and agreeing to join the war in Iraq and Syria. Our participation in this war will be militarily insignificant and symbolic– eight fighter jets, four support aircraft and 200 Special Forces. Our involvement won’t have any strategic effect. But the government wants to be seen to be ‘doing something’ .Whilst it may pay short term political dividends, it will not work in the longer term.

    With our symbolic act of joining in the war against IS we are making Australia less secure despite what Tony Abbott says. It is clear from opinion polling that Australians believe that our involvement in Iraq and Syria will make us more prone to attacks at home. The Canadians are experiencing that right now with social misfits and publicity seekers trying to make heroes of themselves. We are being bated into the use of more and more force against IS

    When intelligence officials and police are allowed to tell us openly what they believe, they tell us that we will be more vulnerable. The Chilcott Enquiry in the UK was told by the Head of MI5 that UK participation in the Iraq War substantially increased the threat of terrorism in the UK. A former head of the AFP in Australia told us several years ago that we faced the same risk because of our involvement in Iraq.

    We have been told many times that our security and economic future is in cooperation with our region. We have endorsed the US ‘pivot to Asia’, but now we are pivoting back to the Middle East again. Two of our key associates in regional cooperation and security are Indonesia and Malaysia. Neither of them or indeed any other significant countries in our region are committing their military against IS.

    Julie Bishop has now announced that we are to deploy 200 Special Forces to advise and assist the Iraqi military. She chooses to disregard the fact that the US spent billions of dollars to train the Iraqi army, but because of the sectarianism of the Iraqi Government, the Iraqi military collapsed and ran away from ISIS, abandoning its US supplied equipment? How absurd is it to think that our 200 Special Forces will make any difference.  But some people feel good, by ‘doing something’.

    The government is hoping, as Hugh White has said, that there will be a good, cheap and successful war against ISIS. But all the evidence is against that hope.

    • The US and other air forces will soon run out of targets. After three weeks of the air war in Afghanistan, former Secretary Rumsfeld said that the US air force had run out of targets. The RAAF may already be finding this out.
    • As Malcolm Fraser has pointed out, without a ground force and an end point, the war against IS will be a farce.
    • Allied forces in Iraq and Syria will only be there for the short term, but IS, in whatever form, will always be there.
    • In Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, together with our allies, we started the escalation with military advisers, then bombing, and then limited ground forces and then large-scale ground forces. It will be the same again as our intervention flounders.
    • Foreign involvement in civil and sectarian wars never works. In the end ‘success’ depends on the motivation of the participants in the conflict.
    • The countries and groupings in the Middle East are a maelstrom of religion, ideology and tribal groups. We are taking sides in a constantly changing and complex political, sectarian and ethnic struggle. Hezbollah, the Kurds and the Assad regime were believed to be the ‘baddies’. Now it seems that they are the ‘goodies’ in opposing IS. Iran may yet turn out to be on the side of the ‘goodies’.
    • Tony Abbott has said that IS is an ‘existential threat to Australia’. Does he seriously think that IS represents a threat to our survival? If such a threat exists, why don’t nearby countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and the Emirates join in a united front to oppose IS? Yet night after night we see Turkish tanks sitting on the hill side outside Kobari and refusing to intervene against IS.
    • We are appalled when we see public executions by IS fighters, but we  turn a blind eye when US drones directed from CIA headquarters in Langley direct hellfire missiles and kill scores of citizens at wedding celebrations in Yemen and Afghanistan. We ignore our own ferocious violence.

    Conservative governments have led us to our three most recent debacles in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan – and they still keep repeating their mistakes. Will we ever learn?

    Until the leaders and the people of the Middle East address their own domestic and regional problems our intervention will only make things worse.

    There has been a history of Western intervention in the Middle East – colonisation, supporting authoritarian rulers, military occupation and exploitation of Middle Eastern land and resources such as oil. The CIA overthrew the democratically elected Mosaddegh government of Iran in 1953, for the benefit of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, now BP.

    When will we ever learn?

    From what we are feeling

    Will we ever learn?

    As sorrows deepen.

  • Helena Britt. General Practice and value for money.

    Last year taxpayers spent A$6.3 billion on GP services through Medicare, about 6% of the total government health expenditure. This was a 50% increase (A$2.1 billion) in today’s dollars over the past decade and equates to about A$60 more per person in real terms.

    Health Minister Peter Dutton says this growth is “unsustainable”. He plans to introduce a GP co-payment in hope of reducing the number of times Australians visit a GP and to ensure users foot some of the bill.

    But targeting primary care for cost savings could backfire. Research we’re releasing todayshows that while the number of GP visits has increased, the services are cost-effective. If the same services were performed in other areas of the health system, they would cost considerably more.

    Under pressure

    Unsustainable or not, Australia’s health-care system faces a number of challenges, most notably from the rising prevalence of chronic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer. This is due to three major factors.

    1. Australia has an ageing population as our world-class health system keeps us alive longer.
    2. In response to government encouragement through Medicare initiatives, GPs are diagnosing disease earlier and providing preventive interventions for health risk factors and diseases such as hypertension, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes.
    3. An increasing proportion of Australians are overweight or obese, putting them at risk for chronic conditions.

    Earlier diagnosis means people are living longer with diagnosed disease. The result is exponential growth in required care over their lifetime.

    The search for more cost-effective health care for our population should be applauded. But reducing spending on GP services is not the answer.

    What do we get?

    Our team has been studying general practice activity for over 16 years through the Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH) program. This cross-sectional encounter-based study uses changing random samples of about 1,000 GPs per year, each of whom contribute details of 100 encounters with consenting patients. This provides a representative sample of about 100,000 encounters per year from across the country.

    Results from one of the BEACH books, released today, shed some light on what we got for the $2.1 billion of extra Medicare spending on general practice. In 2013-14 there were 35 million more GP services than ten years earlier, a 36% increase. This included 17 million more attendances by patients aged 65 years and over (a 67% increase).

    Length of GP consultations recorded through BEACH suggest that the average consultation now takes almost one minute more than a decade ago. The result is that GPs spend an extra ten million clinical hours with their patients, a 43% increase.

    The number of problems managed at these consultations has also significantly increased. GPs managed an additional 68 million health problems at these encounters (an increase of 48%), including 24 million more chronic problems.

    Management of these problems involved an additional ten million procedures (a 66% increase) and 12 million clinical treatments, such as counselling, advice and education, than a decade ago.

     

    Clearly, increases in the amount and complexity of GP clinical work are reflected in additional Medicare expenditure. If other medical specialists and/or emergency departments had provided these extra services, they would have cost far more.

    The average cost of a GP visit was A$47 from Medicare, plus a A$5 patient contribution. For a private specialist, the average visit costs Medicare A$82 plus a A$38 patient fee.

    A visit to the emergency department, which is paid by state and territory governments, costs far more. In Western Australia, for example, an emergency department visit in 2011-12 cost A$599 on average.

    More, not less primary care

    International research has repeatedly concluded that investment in primary care is the most cost-effective way to provide population health care. As GP services are far cheaper than other types of medical services, discouraging GP visits by introducing a standard co-payment for most patients would increase costs to governments, now and later.

    It may seem counter-intuitive, but one effective way to contain the cost of Australia’s health care would be to expand the use of GP services.

    One issue not acknowledged in the discussion about health costs is the increasing number of patients with multiple chronic conditions. These patients use more resources and are more likely to have fragmented care due to the number of health professionals involved. GPs play the central role in co-ordinating the management of patients with multiple chronic conditions, reducing costly hospitalisations.

    As the age of government-supported retirement increases, many Australians will have to work until they are 70. This highlights the importance of promoting good health across the lifespan, through a strong focus on primary and secondary prevention and co-ordinated management of chronic conditions.

    In any one year 85% of us visit a GP, but only about 15% of us are admitted to hospital, where a far greater proportion of health funds is spent. GPs supply the bulk of care to the population, so general practice is where our investment should be.

    If we want to strengthen our health-care system and ensure its sustainability into the future, it makes sense to encourage people to use its cheapest and most efficient arm: general practice.

     In addition to Helena Britt, other contributors to this article were:  Christopher Harrison, Clare Bayram, Graeme Miller, Joan Henderson and Julie Gordon. The Article first appeared in ‘The Conversation’ on 11 November 2014.

     

     

  • Chris Bonnor. The public and private of school achievement.

    Once again we are in the middle of the annual HSC result festival – time to celebrate the winners amongst students and schools. Names of the top 100 schools are again paraded, seemingly to confirm a language about schools variously described as elite, high performing or prestigious. Everything else is out of sight. We read about the (well-deserved) success of particular students and hear from school principals about why their schools (apparently) did so well.

    The language of sporting competition is readily employed as schools rise or slip in the ranks – as they inevitably do as Year 12 cohorts come and go. School labels are prominently displayed: selective, private, comprehensive. Cheer squads for one label or another are found in almost every home, every workplace, in the columns and airtime of media and in the halls of policy and power. Competing claims and even urban myths are created and recycled.

    The more astute punter will know that the top 100 schools are dominated by those which are selective, private or planted in the right postcode. Any school which selects kids will gravitate to the top of the academic and social pile. Many private schools are there because their fees are high and fees always have a gatekeeping role. For other schools the right postcode has the same effect.

    Some of the top 100 schools are very good – it’s just that we don’t really know which ones. After all, around 75% of the so-called top schools would also be in the top 100 if ranked by the level of advantage of the enrolled families.

    To really comment on school achievement – especially to compare school apples with apples – we need to take into account this level of advantage. So what does such a fair comparison of schools really show, especially about the public and private labels?

    If we use NAPLAN as a measure it seems that public schools across Australia nudge above Catholic and Independent schools, especially among schools enrolling above-average advantaged kids.

    For the Higher School Certificate the story is more complex, mainly because the numbers of schools are smaller. But there is still a story:

    • For schools enrolling the most advantaged students, public secondary schools are ahead by a country mile, but they are not included on the next graph because most of those schools select their enrolments, so any comparison isn’t fair!
    • But in the next rank of advantage (ICSEA 1100-1149 for the My School savvy) public schools, almost all them local comprehensive schools, are ahead.
    • Going further down the food chain we find Catholic schools ahead of both public and Independent,
    • Then in the next group (ICSEA 1000-1049) they are all the same.

    There aren’t too many private schools enrolling the less advantaged so comparisons at that end are more difficult.

    There are a few take-outs from all this. There are certainly quality differences between schools – even schools which enrol similar students can achieve at different levels. But brands and labels, such as public and private, don’t describe, or align with, these differences.

    There are implications for parents. The differences between the sectors are simply not significant, hence choosing schools by sector label can be largely pointless. Even where one sector is apparently ahead in one group of schools parents still have to believe that their child would be advantaged by enrolling in a school in that sector. They also have to weigh up any perceived advantage against other factors such as cost, transport and whether the apparent advantage actually exists for similarly labelled schools in their locality.

    All other factors being equal, an informed process of school choice needs to be sector blind. Parents would be best advised to put urban myths and rusted-on beliefs to one side, do their homework and pay much closer attention to the many and complex indicators of school quality.

    At the level of school provision and funding there is another interesting implication of the similarity between school outcomes. Given that the achievement of schools enrolling similar students is much the same what does this potentially reveal about the effectiveness of the public and private investment in schools?

    The average recurring cost of educating public school students is around $12 000 per annum. There are large numbers of public schools, disadvantaged and remote, where the average investment is much higher. Much of this higher investment is tied up in fixed costs but is the additional investment well-targeted? At the other end of the scale there are large numbers of higher SES private schools where the combined public and private investment per student is well above $12 000. The investment in these schools is around $3bn each year. It is going into schools which don’t achieve at levels above equivalent public schools.

    We need to know more about this. For almost a year my colleague Bernie Shepherd and I have been analysing My School data to see what it tells. So far we have revealed:

    • shifts in funding which are seeing more going to schools which enrol more advantaged students,
    • a widening achievement gap between high and low SES schools, and now
    • a persistent lack of significant difference between outcomes of public and private schools.

    At a time when the Gonski recommendations have been largely written off as being too hard or too expensive these findings are enough to raise considerable concern about equity and achievement.

    Watch this space.

    Chris Bonnor

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Cavan Hogue. Petroshenko visit.

    President Petroshenko should be received courteously and his visit should be used to seek further trade with Ukraine. There is no reason to avoid cordial relations with Ukraine but our Government is going a lot further than that.

    Ukraine is a distant European country where we have limited interests. The Prime Minister appears to be using it as an excuse to attack Russia. Mr Abbott was a successful Leader of the Opposition but he is finding that building is a lot harder than demolition. President Putin provides an enemy on whom he can exercise his attack dog skills and Mr Abbott has used the MH17 tragedy for domestic purposes. Creating foreign threats to draw attention away from domestic failures is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Australia is not a European country and should leave European problems to Europeans.

    The Prime Minister announced that Australia will set up a resident embassy in Kiev to replace the existing dual accreditation from Poland. What this is supposed to achieve is not clear. Presumably the Foreign Minister will have to find the money & staff from an already overstretched budget to provide the resources for this venture. Was she consulted before an announcement was made? Was DFAT asked for an assessment of where Ukraine stands in our foreign policy priorities? Do we need more expenditure at a time when everyone is being asked to cut expenditure?  Or is this Sheriff Abbott shooting from the hip again?

     

  • Quentin Dempster. Submission to the Senate Select Committee.

    S U B M I S S I O N 

    Senate Select Committee into the Abbott Government’s Budget Cuts on Friday 12 December 2014

    Quentin Dempster – appearing as a private individual

                     VANDALISING THE ABC

    1. Following is a list of impacts which I have assembled from available sources.    I can add to it as more information comes to hand. The committee already has the benefit of formal statements of impacts from the ABC (and SBS) and their claimed justifications.  This list is to help the committee understand and put into perspective the audience impact through the reduction of production resources, journalists and program makers not always frankly stated by ABC management.   The ABC has said that 300 staff are to be terminated immediately with a further 100 through restructuring operations over 2015.
    1. Radio Australia – GONE ARE:-
    • Phil Kafcaloudes and Mornings (2 hours of live programming to the Pacific weekdays)
    • Asia Pacific weekdays
    • Asia Review weekends
    • Reduced daily news bulletins
    • Loss of network entirely in western Pacific island nations including the Marshall Islands, Pauru, Marianas, Kiribas and the Cook Islands
    • RA’s shortwave service to Myanmar (via Singapore) to be shut down end of December
    • Language services cut to one person per service resulting in no continuous news service
    • Loss of dedicated language programs to Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Myanmar, Vietnam and PNG
    1. Australia Network/Australia Plus television – GONE ARE:-
    • No longer a 24 hour channel. Built around a six hour block of programming repeated across the day.
    • One hour nightly news program ‘The World’ reduced to 30 minutes
    • Business Today weekdays with Whitney Fitzsimmons
    • Pacific Sports 360 – dedicated sports review program for the Pacific
    • Fashion Asia
    • Around 650 rebroadcasters for the Australia Network service reduced to about 50 rebroadcasters in India, Asia and the Pacific, mostly delivered through a limited and encrypted satellite service
    • Loss of untold Direct-to-home viewers across Asia, particularly in Thailand, who can no longer access our signal straight off the satellite due to encryption.
    1. Asia Pacific News Centre (check updated information from ABC management) – GONE ARE:-
    • Loss of APNC correspondents in Delhi, Jakarta, Beijing, the Pacific and parliament House Canberra. Total journalist and production staff made redundant as a direct result of the termination of the ABC/DFAT contract: 73.
    1. Foreign Correspondent reduced to 22 x 30 minute episodes starting in mid-April. Catalyst the ABC’s television science show will be severely cut. Catalyst will fill the 8 pm Tuesday slot for 10 weeks from February, March and early April, and then, when Foreign Correspondent finishes its Catalyst will come back for 11 more shots. Result: Destroyed production momentum for both programs, audience confusion. After Catalyst’s first 10 week run the program staff will go into a producers’ pool for several months for so far unannounced production. We are expecting that if by 2016 Catalyst exists at all it will have been outsourced.
    1. ABC’s international bureaux. Staff ‘consultation’ is still underway.  But going west to east around the world this is what we currently know:-
    • London – a rare bright spot. The third reporter there (currently on local hire) will be upgraded to a full A-based position. And there should be more camera capacity.  Currently the long time editor there also shoots PTC’s (pieces to camera) and overlay. But management wants to transform that into a full camera/editor position. That may mean the current editor will be terminated and a new locally hired person brought in.
    • Moscow – Bureau officially closed more than a year ago. Long time fixer/translator should have been kept on.  Awaiting confirmation of this.
    • Middle East – ABC has realised belatedly that having all reporting resources in Jerusalem is not wise. New Arab world office will be established in Beirut – reporter, camera and locally hired fixer/Arabic translator. The second Middle East report will stay in Jerusalem and become a VJ (video journalist) with one local producer to help. Expecting office administrator and driver to be sacked.
    • Nairobi – Has been VJ correspondent and will remain so. Hopefully the reporter has an officer, a fixer and some admin support.
    • New Delhi – To become a home based VJ with local fixer/translator. The ABC has had a functioning office in Delhi for decades but now apparently the lucky correspondent is expected to cover the entirety of South Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal etc (1.2billion people) from a back bedroom.
    • Bangkok – similar to Delhi. Good functioning office will be scrapped. Home based VJ plus local.  Excellent camera man will be offered fewer days per year.
    • Jakarta – Meant to be a bigger ‘hub’ with second correspondent and second camera but with regional ‘fire reporter’ – immediate despatch to breaking stories thought by staff to be better coordinated from Bangkok than Jakarta.
    • Beijing – also slated as bigger ‘hub’ two correspondents and two cameras but to cover Japan and Korea and region as required. This is not really an enhancement but more a replacement of the resources which existed when Australia Network was operating.
    • Tokyo – A big loser. Close down the office in the main government broadcaster NHK – where ABC currently gets access to news bulletins and feeds, although rent is ‘cheap’.  BBC apparently has spent 15 years trying to get back into the building.  New arrangements: home based VJ plus local fixer/translator.  Under Japanese law it will be very expensive to have locals including excellent local hire camera operator made redundant.   The process of closing down is expected to take most of 2015.  Tokyo decision is viewed by ABC staff and international correspondents as short sighted.
    • Port Moresby – Already VJ. Has separate office from home in one compound, plus local fixer. Correspondent often has to waste several days a week doing admin because ABC News will not hire someone to help.
    • Auckland – Closed and with it a lot of good South Pacific coverage as well as NZ material. ABC has had a visible TVNZ office for many years of great value to Australia’s engagement with the Kiwis: a single correspondent with VJ capacity but access to professional TV NZ crews. Highly productive and comparatively inexpensive:
    • Washington – Staff do not believe claim by News managers that they are creating ‘major multi-platform hubs’ in London and Washington by July 2015. The truth is Washington DC is being down sized with one fewer reporter and likely to lose its long time editor (who occasionally shoots footage and interviews). One of two camera operators (an Australian on local hire conditions) has reportedly been told that his current contract is too generous and to stay he will have to take a pay cut.
    1. Radio National  

    RN is cutting deeper than the cut the network was asked to deliver ($350K) as part of the Government’s budget cuts in order to invest in a digital future.

    • Five specialist feature programs to go (Hindsight, Encounter, Poetica, Into The Music, 360documentaries) to be replaced by a generalist 4x28min feature slot. 9 out of 18 producers to lose their jobs.
    • Increase in the freelance budget of the Features area – a clear casualisation of the workforce.
    • Bush Telegraph cut – loss of 6 jobs
    • By Design and RN First Bite to go and replaced by less resourced program covering similar content areas – dumbing down the network.
    • The Religion Unit to lose 4 producers as part of the restructure of RN Features, these 4 producers are in the pool of 18 producers mentioned above.
    • A new program to be presented by Tom Switzer
    • Background Briefing to lose half a position in Canberra but to gain a FT position in Melbourne – no consultation about this decision.
    • A new junior reporter position established in Perth to work across the network.
    • Four new digital producer positions created – this is where the investment in the digital future comes in.
    • One position to go in the RN Admin team – 2 people in a pool to be reduced to one.

    Overall 22 potential redundancies at the network and the creation of 8 new jobs.

    Religion 

    The impact on religion and its format coverage on the ABC is of particularly distressing concern.   Please see an open letter to ABC chairman James Spigelman AC QC from 30 of Australia’s religious leaders covering the Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu communities. Signatories include Melbourne’s Anglican Archbishop Dr Philip Freier, the Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, the Uniting Church’s President of the National Assembly, Professor Andrew Dutney, plus leaders of multiple Christian denominations, Jewish and Hindu organisations.  The open letter said:

    “We write to you because we believe that the ABC has a particularly important role in presenting religion both in its own right and as an integral part of modern Australia, thanks to the high-quality specialist religion programming provided by both television and radio.  We believe the faith and values we hold will always occupy a central part in the formation of our Australian national identity.  Further, an understanding of religion plays a crucial part in grasping today’s ever more complex social and political developments both in Australi9a and internationally.  It has never been more important for Australians to have access to content that builds a deeper understanding of the role of faith in the lives of individuals or society, as demonstrated in last month’s G20 interfaith summit”. 

    • In reality, the proposed changes mean a reduction in Religion Unit staff from 10.5 full and permanent positions to 6. This is a loss of 43%.  The media has quoted a loss of 70% of below the line production budget i.e. the amount of budget available after salaries.  This is correct.  The majority of this budget has been spent on artist fees (i.e. freelance producers).
    • The removal of the religion feature producers from the Unit with its attendant support and extended networks and specialist knowledge base across different religious, faith and multi-cultural minority communities was not at any point prior to the announcement on Monday Nov 24 discussed with those responsible for managing Religion. On the contrary when further consultation was requested Religion was told that there would be opportunity for further discussion about the future of religion on RN once the scale of government cuts was known.  Clearly there was no intent to have any discussion since the ‘proposed’ changes and cuts were all handed down (as if at the flick of a switch) less than two working days after the government announced its cuts.
    • Significantly the religion unit’s remit stems from the job description of the EP Religion, ABC Radio. It has a remit to serve the ABC Radio division and more widely across the ABC.  The Executive Producer’s leadership of programming is to be in consultation with Network Managers.  It was with immense surprise and shock that the proposed changes were presented effectively fait accompli and an hour later to 4four of the Unit (those primarily deployed at present on the production of the existing RN feature, Encounter).
    • The rationale given by Michael mason, the new Director of Radio behind the proposed formation of a features unit (to encompass existing RN Arts features and Encounter, the religion feature) is to pool staff and resource for “greater program efficiency and program cohesion” – this is an existing modus operandi for the Religion Unit to the benefit of six programmes, nine hours across four Radio networks; in the devising of several cross-network and cross-divisional projects which have been applauded by RN, by the Radio Division and by Television:  it having even been noted that Religion have been seen to be providing the model for the way the ABC should work in the future.
    • The religion Unit contends that its staff are not attached to individual programs (work records support this). Religion also contends that RN management and indeed Radio Division management should not be nominating these producers as features producers.
    • It is further contended that if the line management of people and editorial is removed from the Religion Unit, the producers selected from the pool based on their specialisation as well as feature making skills will soon lose that specialisation without the support, cross-fertilisation and development of ideas that comes from the way the Unit works together.
    • Religion is also concerned about the inability it will have to move staff around between programs, to give other producers opportunities to produce in the feature and documentary form and to use the skills of the staff to be removed from the Unit to the benefit of the other five programs in the Unit, to ‘renew and refresh’ in the parlance of RN, to give things a good shake up. This goes to the heart of Religion’s ability to manage people and their careers to motivate, inspire and challenge them and to use all the skills available to the widest possible benefit of the ABC.
    • The job of the EP for ABC TV’s Compass has been axed. This means there is no editorial head of religion in TV. Compass will now be supervised by a general commissioning editor.
    • Songs of Praise is to be discontinued. Leaving Compass as television’s only commitment to religion.
    • Christmas Carols and Readings which was previously part of ABC TV’s Christmas offering was dropped last year and reportedly Head of Programming ABC1 and ABC 2 has said that he would not schedule it into the future ‘unless he was told to do so’.  In short:  ABC axes Christmas Carols. This has left ABC TV with no reflection of Christmas as a religious festival anywhere in the schedule. 
    1. At the Movies

    Although Margaret Pomerantz and David Stratten have voluntarily now left the ABC it is significant to note that the ABC will not be developing replacement talent or continuing a program which has successfully engaged audiences for decades.  Again the qualitative difference in this format was the intellectual depth and honesty used to engage viewers in this most powerful art form.  Its added value was its critical exposure of Australian feature length movies and their comparison with those produced elsewhere in the world.   The loss of this format is a tragedy for Australian audiences and the local film industry.

    • Classic FM

    The loss to the ABC and Australia seems to concentrate within Classic FM and new music genres: the loss of NMUL and Jazz outlets from the free to air Classic FM network being examples, along with the prospect of losing “to the God who sings” as a result of cuts to the Religion unit.  The cuts to Classic FM will result in a significant loss of a specialist craft and skill base – a loss of more than 300 years of massed experience.   The cuts have been concentrated in two branches with 50% of existing staff going from both Perth and Adelaide.  In spite of a proclaimed new ‘model’ of parity in numbers between engineers and producers in each branch (i.e. two engineers equals two producers) the sole producer position in Perth has been abolished.  Perth is the hardest branch in the ABC to support by relief staff (potentially from either Melbourne or Sydney) because of travel times.  Classic FM staff have identified inaccuracies and errors in the Lewis review which to date have not been corrected by ABC management.  As a consequence the credibility of the current changes has been undermined with only the barest of new ‘structure’ plan provided for discussion.

     

    • ABC domestic news and current affairs. GONE are:- 
    • 30 Friday night state shows which have existed in this timeslot since 2001. Loss of local TV current affairs in NSW, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, Western Australia, Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory.  This is a major blow to the ABC’s engagement with audiences at a local level around Australia.  There is a qualitative difference in the ABC’s coverage of politics, issues, and state services in this format (studio interviews with premiers and ministers plus investigative pieces) – education, health, law and order, environment, planning, social equity and multi-party corruption.  The removal of these programs in New South Wales and Queensland at this time when state elections are due in early 2015 is passing strange editorially.  
    • The Business – Ticky Fullerton’s late night business and market review program is gone. Staff dispute management claims about audience figures for this program and are highly sceptical about the influence and effective business journalism to be delivered by 2 x 15 minute slots placed elsewhere in the News 24 schedule. Again the concern is one about the loss of a qualitative difference in format.
    • Lateline – See ABC management explanation. Field reporting capacity for original investigative reports is being stripped out.  Lateline has been a major force in ABC journalism, exposing major bungles in Commonwealth Government administration, failures in indigenous affairs and exposure of systemic cover-up in child sexual abuse – a precipitant to judicial inquiries at state and national levels.  Staff see the loss of Lateline’s original reporting capacity particularly its role in government accountability to be a major blow to public broadcasting in Australia.
    • Current affairs – will lose about 31 full time positions (26 editorial, 5 news operations).
    • State news rooms – will lose around 30 full time positions (29 editorial, 1 news operations). Reduction in duration of radio news bulletins.
    • Overall 100 editorial and support staff to be stripped from news and current affairs programming on radio and television.
    • TV production South Australia and Western Australia
    • The ending of TV production in SA and WA is expected to result in the reduction of a further 9 full time positions in SA and 10 in WA. The committee has been furnished with production impacts by others.   The loss of the ABC’s remaining regional television production capacity outside Sydney and Melbourne confirms the strategic centralisation of ABC creative content production to Sydney and Melbourne.   It is this issue which needs to be addressed by government in future consideration of the role and functions of the ABC and its taxpayer investment in the regions of Australia.

    In summary

    • It is apparent from an analysis of these impacts on the content produced by the ABC that those programs which require specialist skills, investigative journalism, studio based interviewing to add greater value to state and territory government accountability, distinctive international broadcasting from logistically supported in situ foreign correspondents,   that the current cuts are vandalising the ABC and its role in our national life.  The ABC has been judged by the public to be one of the most trusted institutions in Australia.  It is trusted mainly because it is perceived by the public as independent of the government of the day.   It is trusted because on occasions it is perceived by the public as having the capacity to call government to account.   The impacts raise a distressing concern that ABC journalism through the digital revolution will be turned into ‘churnalism’ servicing the relentless demands of the 24 hour news cycle.  ‘Churnalism’ is reactive coverage to drive traffic to ABC news online, tablet and mobile sites through rolling coverage to exploit immediate public interest.   But journalism is more than ‘ambulance chasing’.
    • The same quality concerns apply to all programming offered by the ABC. Since its foundation in 1932 the ABC has evolved uniquely without paid advertising. Public broadcasting has followed the ethos of Lord Reith (director general of the BBC 1927-38) to ‘educate, inform and entertain’. This ethos transcends delivery platforms. Reith fought United Kingdom executive government to establish the BBC’s independence but famously said of the broadcaster’s reason  for being:

                            “He who prides himself on giving what he thinks the public wants is often creating a fictitious demand for lower standards which he himself will then satisfy.”

    The political context

    • The Abbott Government has no mandate from the electorate to cut the budgets of either the ABC or SBS. The emerging deficit was well known to the political parties well before the September 2013 federal election. While the shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull noted the cost efficiency of the broadcasters could or would be reviewed in the context of likely deficit reduction policy, cuts of the magnitude now confronting the ABC and SBS were not forewarned.   In a now famous statement on the eve of the 2013 election Tony Abbott said unequivocally and unconditionally that there would be no cuts to the ABC or SBS.
    • Two months after the change of government Mr John Menadue, former CEO of News Corp. Australia and a former Secretary Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, noted in a prescient article Murdoch and Abbott vs ABC (19th December 2013):

    Tony Abbott has a debt to repay to Rupert Murdoch for the extremely biased support he received in the last election.   With the help of Senator Cory Bernadi, Tony Abbott is now following the Murdoch Media line in attacking the ABC.  He is also following in the steps of the Howard Government that attempted, unsuccessfully, to bring the ABC to heel.   During the Howard Government, Minister Richard Alston and Senator Santo Santoro led a concerted campaign against the ABC to force political compliance. 

    1. While both Prime Minister Abbott and Communications Minister Turnbull now acknowledge that Mr Abbott’s pre-election commitment should not have been uttered and that the reduction to the broadcasters’ funding envelope from 2015 must proceed in the interests of deficit reduction, John Menadue’s observations help to establish the realpolitik here (politics based on realities and material needs rather than on morals or ideals). This is self evident in the government’s decision, announced by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, to terminate the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade contract with the ABC to provide international broadcasting services to the Asia Pacific region. While Minister Bishop can be expected to reject any suggestion that she has exercised her discretion to terminate the Australia Network contract at the insistence and persistence of a lobbying campaign by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, she has exposed the shallowness of her thinking through her stated reasons for such termination.  In a speech to Chatham House in London (12th March 2014) said: 

                   It’s not about the ABC promoting its news programmes or whatever else into the region.  It’s actually meant to be fulfilling the Australian Government’s foreign policy objectives.  My question is whether or not there is an inherent conflict in having the ABC contracted to deliver Australian government messages into the region.  We’ve had the conflict writ large when it comes to the issue of asylum seekers and the issue of the Snowden allegations.  The ABC is a news organisation and perfectly entitled to report how it wishes intro the region on those two contentious issues.  But under a soft-power diplomacy contract, it’s meant to be delivering a positive image of Australia into the region.

    • The Minister wanted Australia Network to be a propaganda arm of government in spite of the long standing protocol that the ABC would adhere to its editorial Code of Practice in its international reporting. DFAT had contractually agreed that it would not have veto or censorship control of material to be broadcast. Of course the ABC would expose contentious issues concerning domestic Australian politics and foreign policy and the politics and human rights abuses occurring anywhere in the region.   The ABC would be bound by its editorial practices, constrained by defamation, contempt and discrimination laws domestically and by protocols covering cultural and ethnic sensitivities.   The two contentious issues the Foreign Minister seemed to be referring to at Chatham House were the ‘burnt hands’ claims of asylum seekers under Australian Navy operations and the ABC’s joint reporting with Guardian Australia of the Edward Snowden drop of ‘five eyes’ intelligence surveillance showing that the Australian Signals Directorate had tapped the mobile phones of the Indonesian president and his wife and senior Indonesian ministers and officials.    For sure both were embarrassing, but journalism’s role is to inform the public.  In spite of Minister Bishop’s claims in a recent Insiders interview with Barrie Cassidy that the Australia Network service was contractually under-performing, DFAT at no time raised any concerns that the ABC’s operation of Australia Network was not meeting its contracted performance standards.   On this factual basis this committee would be entitled to ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to table or release DFAT’s advice to her on which she based her decision to terminate the Australia Network   On the evidence to date it appears the Minister’s discretion was unilaterally applied.   Given the vandalism to the national interest described above the committee would be entitled to ask with justified consternation: Why?  

    Management Speak

    • In addition to the ABC’s response to the Lewis ‘efficiency’ review and the Cabinet Expenditure Review Committee’s setting of the funding envelope for ABC funding to apply from July 2015, ABC managing director Mark Scott has provided staff with an explanation of additional cuts to produce $20million of internal savings for ‘reinvestment’ in the technological upgrade of iView and for other purposes. The ABC Board, the managing director and his communications staff have failed to protect or to effectively defend the ABC from the aggressive political attacks upon the broadcaster from News Corporation which has consistently demonstrated its political hold over the current government. The Board and its chairman, James Spigelman AC QC, were missing in action in the months leading up to the May 2013 federal budget with its 1% ‘down payment’ budget reduction.  The Board, its chairman and managing director, failed to persuade the government of the value to Australia of the ABC’s international broadcasting capacity, particularly with the 2013 ABC annual report stating that with 3.3billion mobile phones in the Asia Pacific region the ABC was wiring Australia into the region as never before with quality, ethical programming, finance news, sport and entertainment.  It is because of this failure of the current ABC Board and management that the Federal Parliament should now consider new methods of securing certain and adequate funding outside the political and discretionary power of executive government for the public broadcasters – the ABC and SBS. 
    1. Mark Scott summed up the ABC’s survival challenge in current political and funding context as specifically to ‘reinvest’ in ABC content for mobiles and tablets.

     “If we continue to drift, if we continue to do what we’re doing now, then inevitably our audiences will get older and the percentage of Australians watching, listening and logging on each week will fall, our approval rating will fall and our ability to hold on to the funding base we’ve got will be more of a challenge.   “So what I’ve said to our teams is we want to increase from 25 percent (our current digital audience) to 40 percent in coming years … and in order to do that we need to invest more money in online and mobile services. Why is it only 25 percent?  We have underinvested in it compared to others.  We see four key areas that will need investment for us to be able to grow this mobile and online audience.  One is iView, one is Triple J, one is our ABC children’s services and the final one is ABC News.  And the one with the greatest potential to lift our engagement is ABC News.  News is already a massive driver of online and mobile traffic everywhere.  One of the reasons people keep picking up their phones is to get the news, to get the latest information and we need to invest more in order to really be able to do that.” 

    • Online and mobile is said to be the key to securing the ABC’s future. Mark Scott gives just one line on what actual content would be covered, listing ‘great Australian drama, news, regional content, arts, narrative comedy, religion and science’. He offered the new ‘HBO-style’ Australian thriller Code (based on Canberra political intrigue which premieres later this month on ABC TV) and the narrative comedies Utopia and Please Like Me (currently screening) as examples of content designed to attract younger audiences.
    • Exactly what, how and by whom future content which ‘skews young’ on mobiles and tablets is to be created and under what editorial criteria, is not mentioned. He is considering outsourcing all ABC content creation with the possible exception of news, leading to the destruction of what is left of the ABC’s creative independence.
    • Mark Scott needs to explain exactly what content he will be asking taxpayers to reinvest in and how it fits with the legislated Charter of the ABC to enhance a sense of national identity, cultural diversity, to inform and, of course, to entertain.   How will this content draw from the talents and ideas of creators around Australia and not just from Sydney?  How will it build a viable video schedule currently dependant on largely British programming (Dr Who, QI, BBC murder mysteries etc) and now playing second fiddle to Foxtel after its recent exclusive first release  contract with the BBC?
    • At a time of the disaggregation of free-to-air television audiences and the decline of print journalism there seems to be a greater need than ever before for a public broadcaster/cybercaster which is not driven by the prejudices and preferences of narrowing demographic segments but more concerned with ‘broadcasting’ – ensuring that young, old, geographically and culturally diverse Australians know what each other is thinking. The role of the ABC is to expand the experience of the people of the nation: call it nation building, cohesion or inclusion. The programming ideas which evolve from this ethos should not be driven by ratings or by ‘skewing’ demographically.
    • Mark Scott is putting the means of delivery and its uptake by targeted audiences ahead of what is to be delivered. Wrong way round. The flaws with this approach were once described at an ABC broadcasters’ conference as “driving into the future with your eyes fixed on the rear view mirror”. That is, making decisions about what content the audience should be offered based purely on what they have already experienced. The strategy omits specialisation and innovation across the genres as drivers of original content creation.
    • Today, Friday 12th December 2014, the ABC is in a dark place. It faces a hostile national government out to do it very real damage at the insistence of Rupert Murdoch. It has a Board which appears mute or devoid of defensive advocacy.  It has a staff in agony at an unfair redundancy process based on what is known as ‘hunger games’ elimination on an inscrutable management selection methodology.  But it has a public which wants it to survive and prosper.   The ABC is a creature of an Act of the Federal Parliament of Australia.  Its survival as a quality producer of Australian content across the genres and regions will depend on those forces within the Parliament and the public rallying to its defence.

     

     

     

  • Michael Keating. The politics of the Medicare co-payment

    The adjustments that Tony Abbott announced to the Medicare co-payment are presumably intended to remove this particular ‘barnacle’.  According to Graham Richardson, that self-styled political expert writing in the Australian, Abbott’s parliamentary colleagues ‘are breathing huge sighs of relief … that the Medicare co-payment has been so restructured that it scarcely exists anymore’. Really? Are they stupid or don’t they and Richardson know the facts?

    The reality is that the $7 co-payment has been abandoned for pensioners, other card-holders and children, but for the rest of us the co-payment is still $5 a visit instead of $7. Furthermore, this difference of $2 has been taken back from the doctors who were previously going to receive this $2 while the government got the remaining $5. According to Abbott’s press release the revenue raised by this latest version of the co-payment will still amount to more than $3 billion, which is not much less than the $3.5 billion shown in the Budget; the difference of $0.5 billion presumably reflecting the loss of revenue from pensioners and children who will now not have to pay this extra charge.

    In my view there is almost no chance of doctors lowering their prices by $5 and thus absorbing it, especially given the government’s intention that the Medicare rebates will be frozen with no indexation until July 2018. Instead, now that the doctors will not get the extra $2 that the government previously thought was justified, why would anyone expect the doctors to take another cut of $5 per visit.  Accordingly the $5 co-payment will almost always be passed onto the patient. Everyone will pay $5 more; about half of us for the first time, and the other half will have another $5 added to their existing co-payment. And with the Medicare rebate frozen it is likely that the extent of bulk billing will fall over time so that the co-payment will effectively increase by more than $5 on average over the next few years.

    While removing the co-payment for pensioners and children has significantly ameliorated the impact of the co-payment on the lowest income groups, this latest change in the co-payment therefore does little for middle Australia.  The majority of people will be $5 worse off instead of $7 worse off and why should they be expected to thank the government for this.

    Nevertheless, it has been argued that the budget has to be fixed and expenditure brought down, and in that context setting a price signal is good policy if we are to make health funding sustainable. The issue then is will the new $5 co-payment be more likely to deter unnecessary visits to the doctor, or is it more likely to deter patients who should see their doctor? In the latter case the co-payment is likely to lead to increased health expenditure where necessary treatment is postponed.

    We cannot be sure of the answer to this critical question whether doctor visits, which might be deterred by the co-payment, are necessary or not. But it is worth noting that around half the people affected by the new co-payment, already face a significant price signal so in their case the risks would seem to be more towards the risk of not seeing a doctor when they should. While for those who will face a co-payment for the first time, it is worth noting that the increasing use of hospital outpatients wards, notwithstanding very long waiting times, seems to suggest that people with tight budgets are mostly not seeing a doctor unless they have a good reason.

    Finally as John Menadue showed in his blog posted on 12 December there are many other better ways to restrain the future growth of expenditures in health care. So what Abbott’s announcement of his revised co-payment demonstrated is that we have yet another example of not very good policy that the voters are again likely to reject – the worst of all possible worlds.

  • Walter Hamilton. Japanese election.

    Four more years of…

    Oh, by the way, Japan is having a national election on Sunday. Has anyone told the Japanese?

    Some are calling it the “Seinfeld election”––the election about nothing. Which probably suits Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who called it two years early, with no apparent justification. Others have cynically observed that some in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) reckon a disillusioned electorate is easier to govern.

    After 10 December, when Japan’s new Designated Secrets Law came into effect––locking up “sensitive” information for 60 years and threatening to lock up any leaking public servant for 10 years (and 5 years for any journalist who encourages a leak)––“disillusioned” took a giant backward step towards “uninformed”.

    Just for good measure, the LDP sent out letters to the country’s main media organisations, as the campaign got underway, demanding “fair” election coverage––by which it meant they should not give emphasis to any one person or any one issue. Yes, this was always meant to be an election about nothing.

    So is there nothing about which Japanese should be anxious, should be demanding answers? What about the fact that after two years of “Abenomics”, that wonder cure, the economy is now in recession? What about the moves to bring nuclear power reactors back on-line, when 70 percent of the population opposes the use of nuclear energy? What about the further planned increase in the defence budget, the third year in a row, at a time of massive budget deficits? What about the failure of the leadership to make significant progress in repairing Japan’s dire relations with China and South Korea? What about the corrosive effects of the widespread apathy eating up the Japanese electorate?

    Take one issue: nuclear power. A large stab of Japan, around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power plants, remains  uninhabitable because of the disaster nearly four years ago. Mothers across the land have to worry daily about sourcing food for their children, which they hope will not be contaminated. The enormous costs of the radiation clean up silently mount up for future generations to pay; and the piles of contaminated soil and rubbish fester away in a thousand forgotten corners. And yet, in 60 speeches during this election campaign, Prime Minister Abe has not once directly mentioned––nor been required to mention––the nuclear issue.

    The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (the ruling party when the Fukushima disaster occurred) has likewise passed over the issue because it relies on support from unions whose membership embraces the electric power industry.

    Many commentators believe that Shinzo Abe called the election now because conditions in Japan are likely to get worse next year. According to the latest data, real wages in the September quarter fell by 3% compared with a year ago. The gross domestic product (GDP) has contracted in the past two quarters––despite the biggest monetary and fiscal stimulus ever.

    So, how is the ruling party likely to fare in this unpromising climate? If opinion polls can be trusted, the LDP and its coalition partner, the New Komeito, will actually increase their hold on power by winning more than two-thirds of the lower house seats in the Diet. Come again? Yes, on the back of a depressingly low voter turnout, Mr Abe will convert the policy vacuum into a fresh, unassailable mandate.

    How will he use this mandate? On past performance, he will demand even greater loyalty and co-operation from his party and from Japan’s mass media; he will intimidate opponents, now armed with tough new laws, such as the Secrecy Act; he will press on with an economic program that so far has produced, even by the most generous measures, meagre results.

    The Prime Minister says he needed to call a fresh election to get the public’s approval for his economic policies, specifically a decision to postpone the next scheduled consumption tax increase. This always sounded like a lame excuse.

    Mr Abe has spoken often about the need for broad-ranging reform, including lowering the corporate tax rate, opening up the labour market to foreign workers, expanding childcare to encourage more women into the workforce and liberalizing the agricultural sector. Holding an election puts back any reform program by at least 6-12 months. He could have acted to address all these issues head on, without an election, and yet he dithered. Most Japanese still don’t know why they are going to the polls on Sunday. Half of them won’t even bother.

    The opposition parties, taken by surprise, have made no headway during the campaign. The DPJ may increase its number of seats to around 70 in the 475-seat chamber, but that will still be less than a quarter of what the LDP expects to win. Several other opposition parties––that are mainly creaky vehicles for the unfulfilled ambitions of washed-up ex-LDP politicians––will probably lose ground. On the other hand, in this strange scenario, the Japan Communist Party is expected to double its representation, off a small base, by virtue of standing for something when all else seems mere opportunism. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for the ABC for eleven years.

  • The Wit of Whitlam – a great read.

    • ISBN: (Paperback)9780522868081
    • ISBN: (E-Book)9780522868098
    • PUBLISHED:03/Dec/2014
    • IMPRINT:Melbourne University Press
    • SUBJECT:Biography: general

    The Wit of Whitlam

    James Carleton

    Self-proclaimed international treasure Gough Whitlam never shied away from a pun, a put-down or a witticism.

    His wife Margaret was his ‘best appointment’, he called Malcolm Fraser ‘Kerr’s cur’ after the Dismissal and when Sir Winton Turnbull called out in parliament ‘I am a country member’, Gough interjected ‘I remember’.
    When it was suggested he was funny, Gough responded: ‘Funny! Funny? Witty, yes. Epigrammatic perhaps, but not funny. You make me sound like a clown.’
    James Carleton, Radio National presenter and founder of the university club ‘The Dewy-Eyed Whitlamites’, presents a keepsake of Goughisms that vindicates the Great Man’s self-assessment, ‘I never said I was immortal, merely eternal.’

    About the author

    James Carleton is a reporter and alternate presenter of Radio National’s Breakfast program. Specialising in national and international politics, especially the Middle East, he has reported for 7.30 and written for the Sydney Morning Herald.
    James is well experienced with conflict situations as the father of three young boys.
    In 1990 he founded the Sydney University club ‘The Dewy-Eyed Whitlamites’.

    – See more at: https://www.mup.com.au/items/154221

  • Graham Freudenberg. Gough being Gough.

    LAUNCH OF JAMES CARLETON’S ‘THE WIT OF WHITLAM’,BELLEVUE HOTEL, PADDINGTON, NSW, 8 DECEMBER 2014

    As Henry Kissinger discovered to his chagrin in Beijing in 1971, Gough made a habit of getting there first.  The Bellevue is no exception.  Most of us here probably associate the Bellevue with its glory days when Suzie Carleton was, as Gough always described her, its chatelaine.  And Gough and Margaret were very much part of that scene.

    But Gough and the Bellevue go back to 1951, before he even entered the Parliament.  That’s when, as junior to Bill Dovey, Margaret’s father, counsel assisting the Liquor Royal Commission, he exposed the Bellevue, along with the Captain Cook and the Edinburgh Castle, as one of the notorious sly-grog pubs of Sydney.

    You can’t get more ‘0ld Sydney’ than that – and Gough and the Bellevue were in the thick of it.

    It’s a reminder, too, that there was an Eastern Suburbs Whitlam before there was a Western Suburbs Whitlam, well before Werriwa.  And long after.

    He was appointed Minute Secretary of the Darlinghurst Branch of the ALP the very night he walked in to join the Party in 1945 – two days after he was demobbed from the Air Force.

    He was pre-selected for the Fitzroy ward in the Sydney City Council in 1947, but the Council was sacked before the election.  Later as you know, when he moved south and west, he failed in bids for the State seat of Cronulla and for the Sutherland Shire Council.  As he used to say:

    I might have been Lord Mayor of Sydney, Premier of NSW or even President of the Sutherland Shire.  But, alas, the fates were against me.

    The Fates brought him back to the Eastern Suburbs with a bang in 1975.  It was more or less a fluke that Gough and Margaret had bought their unit at Darling Point just before the Dismissal.  And Margaret immediately moved out of Kirribilli and into the flat the very next day.  They had never envisaged it as their home address for the next four decades.  But it became his Sydney headquarters for the campaign.

    It’s in Marathon Avenue.  So as not to alarm the bourgeoisie among the new neighbours, he didn’t put ‘E G Whitlam’ on the residents’ board in the lobby.  He identified the new tenants as ‘Miltiades’ – the victorious Greek general over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.    So began Gough’s second incarnation as Eastern Suburbs Man.

    This, of course, is the Gough that a bright-eyed curly-headed kid named James Carleton came to know – eyes wide open, ears wide open, taking it all in.

    But the special thing about young James is not only what he witnessed at first hand.  He was soaking up all the stories from some of the master story-tellers of the times – Mick and Eric and Ed and Brian, just to begin with.  It’s not adequate to say that they are keepers of the flame.  They lit it.  And indeed, they are part of the flame.

    So, as Gough might have said, James was destined to write this book whenever it was published.

    As shown by his ability to meet Louise’s deadlines.  A remarkable feat.  His big problem was that the stories just kept on coming.  From 21 October, right up to the Town Hall Memorial, and after.  In fact, it was the only wake I’ve ever been to where the only subject of conversation actually was the deceased.

    The reason is that everybody who ever met him has a Gough story.  They remember them and want to tell them. So the stream is endless.

    One reason why they remember them is that Gough had the great comedic gift of the totally unexpected.  Tony Burke, on telling Gough his new daughter was named Helena, couldn’t possibly have expected a monologue on the history of the name, from Helen of Troy to Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, who discovered the True Cross in Jerusalem

    –              Gough, I didn’t know that

    –              Tony, if you talk to me for even a short time, you’ll always learn                                           something.

    The Labor candidate at Alice Springs could hardly have expected to be introduced to the Renaissance School …

    –              Comrade, I am to poster-sticking what Giotto was to the circle.

    Another characteristic that comes through all the stories is his disdain for platitudes and clichés – something of a handicap for a politician.  So his standing instruction in the drafting of speeches was, as Queen Gertrude said to Polonius, ‘More matter with less art”.  Or, as I would put it, ‘more facts, less bullshit’.

    Gough himself put it in another way.  About 1974, we were discussing our respective writing styles.

    –              ‘Your trouble, comrade, is that you are too dithyrambic.  Mine is that I’m                          too inspissated .’

    Well, who can argue with that?

    [Dithyrambic – a passionate choral hymn, in honour of Dionysus, wild, bacchanalian;]

    [Inspissated – dry, densely detailed.]

    He did have the grace to say that we complemented each other.

    There were other occasions we discussed speech-writing – at the opening of the Sydney Entertainment Centre on 1 May 1983, not long after the return of the Hawke Government.  At this stage, I was working with both Bob Hawke and Neville Wran.

    –              How are you coping, comrade, doing what Our Lord says is impossible?                           (Man cannot serve two masters).

    [Reading from Canberra Times 25 March 1990] –

    “There was one VIP whose absence from the official opening at the Australian National Gallery on Friday night of ‘Civilisation: Ancient Treasures from the British Museum’, created a minor sensation.  The Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, was otherwise committed, so in his place stood the chairman of the ANG Council, Gough Whitlam, who read the following note from Mr Hawke:

    ‘My present preoccupation with the preservation of Australian civilisation prevents my joining you tonight…. Well, then, in the circumstances we’ve had to draw on an ancient treasure from the Australian National Gallery!”

    He acknowledged the brilliance of Mr Hawke’s message, and displayed his own considerable insight into the nature of political expediency by quipping: “Quite frankly, I couldn’t have done it better if I’d written it myself …. and I suspect it was written by the same person who would have written it for me!’ “

    Conclusion

    One of the pieces I wrote as valedictory I entitled “A Very Public Life’.  By this I meant, among other things, that there was a great unity – a one-ness – between the public and private Gough.  As he said of the Whitlam Government itself, ‘What you saw is what you got’ – and that really goes for the public figure and the private man.

    It wasn’t quite as Queen Victoria said of Gladstone: ‘He addresses me as if I were a public meeting’.

    But there was never much Gough said or did that was meant to be off-the–record.

    Indeed, the only time he took me to task, in all the hundreds of thousands of words between us, was when I wrote the Arthur Calwell entry for the Australian Dictionary of Biography and said that Gough had made a ‘calculated indiscretion’ in 1965 in telling a New Zealand reporter that Arthur was too old for the leadership.

    But indiscretions abounded, calculated or otherwise, and while those around him may have shuddered at the time, they are now all part of the legend.  And a great many of them are in this book.

    As Gough said: ‘I may be a legend but I am not a myth’.

    And I think that it is a mark of Gough’s true greatness that the legend grows, even as we recall things with love that in anybody else would be regarded as outrageous.

    It goes without saying that Gough would have enjoyed this book.

    It contains one of the keys to understanding Gough Whitlam.  And that is : he enjoyed being Gough immensely.

    And you can see how much enjoyed being himself, not least being the best caricaturist of himself, in every page of this book.

    In this book, we can enjoy Gough being Gough.

  • Max Corden. Australia needs higher taxes, not spending cuts.

    The federal budget balance is expected to deteriorate. The reasons are numerous but, in a lengthy statement, the government sums it up in terms of two key factors. These are: the softer economic outlook; and unresolved issues inherited from the former government.

    The economy is going through a transition. A decline in resources investment will be offset by a recovery in the non-resources sector. It seems the decline in resources investment may be sharper than previously forecast while the recovery in the non-resources sector may be more gradual.

    Thus, with real gross domestic product growing at a slower rate, hence “a softer economic outlook”, revenue from taxation will also be less. The result is a higher budget deficit.

    The previous Labor government can apparently be blamed for many “legacy” items, but one is rather curious. Our central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia, has to receive A$8.8 billion to compensate it for losses incurred to its foreign currency reserves during the period when the Australian dollar appreciated.

    The choices faced by the government

    Given the deficit prospect, the government faces three choices:

    (1) Run a bigger deficit, (2) raise taxes, or (3) cut government spending.

    The government has already embraced choice (3) – cut spending. With regard to choice (2), it abolished the carbon tax and the minerals resource rent tax, and thus moved in the wrong direction.

    Perhaps the government will cut public spending further in areas it finds attractive. After cutting funding to the CSIRO, ABC and SBS, the staff of the federal public service, and funds available to the states for health, education and transport, not to speak of the universities, there are surely more possibilities.

    Incidentally, over 20 non-statutory bodies have been abolished or rationalised. The underlying (or even explicit) philosophy is to reduce the size and responsibilities of government. This is in tune with United States conservative attitudes.

    What the government should consider is raising taxes rather than further spending cuts. This is a very serious proposal. Yet, compared with the US approach, it may be more in tune with traditional Australian attitudes, which expect a great deal from governments.

    Why the federal government should raise taxes

    To understand the argument behind the need to raise taxes, it is important to understand what can be described as Howard’s Gift.

    Under the Howard government, beginning around 2003, there was a boom in the form of rising export prices of iron ore and coal. As a result, revenue from corporation tax increased sharply.

    This led the Howard government to cut personal income taxes on no less than five occasions. Also, superannuation concessions were extended. The details can be found in John Edwards’ Beyond the Boom.

    This was John Howard’s gift to the taxpaying middle and upper classes. It was clearly a response – perhaps understandable – to the export boom.

    The trouble was it had the effect of increasing budget deficits in later years when tax revenues declined. In particular, budget deficits in the Labor (Gillard) years were increased by Howard’s Gift. Even now it has an adverse effect on the government’s budget balance.

    However, as the mineral export boom in the Howard years turned out to be temporary, the income tax cuts that were motivated by the boom should also be temporary. In other words, they should now be reversed.

    Personal income tax rates should be increased to where they were before the boom. Usually opposition parties oppose tax increases. Prime Minister Tony Abbott ran a very effective campaign against the carbon tax when in opposition.

    So this proposed tax increase needs to have bipartisan support. If Labor gets into government later, they will be glad to have a decent revenue base for their budgets.

    Reform required for our tax system

    At the same time some other improvements should be made to the income tax system. These ideas all come from the famous Henry Report on the Australian tax system.

    The aim would be to simplify the system and, above all, to remove special concessions and deductions that principally benefit the better-off. These are the favourable concessions that affect the superannuation earnings of people on high incomes.

    All remuneration should be measured as wages. Capital gains tax rate concessions and various concessions available to primary producers should also be removed.

    In addition to increasing income tax rates to their earlier levels, more revenue needs to be obtained from the GST. This tax has to rise if sufficients funds are to be generated for the states’ vital functions.

    There is no doubt the GST is a relatively efficient tax, but it would be more efficient and easier to collect if goods and services of all kinds faced the same GST rate. Exemptions should be avoided and, probably, the rate increased closer to comparable international rates.

    However, the real problem with broadening the GST or raising the rate has to do with equity. This tax is a bigger burden for persons with low incomes than for the well-off. But equity within society is more effectively achieved with a progressive income tax and social security system than through exemptions from the GST. This means that some of the GST revenue gain should be returned to households in the form of increased social security payments and a more progressive personal income tax schedule.

    It is clear that Australia’s entire taxation system needs major improvements. This is clearly shown in the Henry Report, which is a valuable guide for reform.

    No doubt these matters will be discussed in the government’s prospective white paper on taxation. The government needs to raise more revenue while making limited improvements to income tax and the GST. The basic aim, above all, should be to avoid further damaging government spending cuts.

    And what about a recession?

    The government believes there is a “softer economic outlook”, which means we might face a recession. It is impossible to predict at this time whether this will happen. However, if there is any possibility of a recession, then it is not the time to cut government spending nor to raise taxes.

    However, the government does need to implement long-term structural reform of the tax system and expand its revenue base. In the face of a recession, the RBA will need to lower interest rates and stimulate the economy and also depreciate the Australian dollar. Such stimulus would, as a by-product, partly reduce the budget deficit.

  • John Menadue. Temporary Protection Visas and the Senate cross-bench.

    I wish that the Rudd, Gillard and Abbott Governments had done things very differently on refugee policies. But faced with the impasse at the present time, I welcome the compromise arrangement which the government has negotiated with the senate cross benches – two senators from the Palmer Group, Nick Xenophon, Ricky Muir, Bob Day and David Leyonhjelm. But like the curate’s egg it is good and bad in parts.

    As a result a negotiated package has been achieved that will enable the government to get the refugee processing system moving again to assess the claims of over 30,000 asylum seekers who are in detention or in the community with very restricted rights. The package includes

    • The introduction of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) which will grant three year residency for those found to have a legitimate refugee claim. At the end of that period they will not be guaranteed a permanent visa, but may re apply.
    • The introduction of Safe Haven Enterprise Visas (SHEVs) for five years if the asylum seeker spends that time either working or studying in a designated regional area whilst their claim is being processed.
    • There will be an increase in the humanitarian intake of 7,500 places over several years.
    • Asylum seekers on bridging visas will have the right to work.
    • All children in detention, except those on Nauru, will be released into the community.
    • Medicare will be made more readily available.

    This cannot be the end of the process, but I have no doubt that worthwhile progress has been made. The blockage in the system has been removed and processing will start. This is very important.

    It will be important to hold the government to account for this increase in the humanitarian intake to ensure ‘changed circumstances ‘does not result in a failure to implement the increase.

    In the past I have opposed TPVs for maritime arrivals because they leave the claimants in limbo about their future, they denied family reunion and did not deter asylum seekers as successive governments have suggested. But with 30,000 people already in limbo, some progress through TPVs would materially help their position. In a different political landscape, both in Australia and in countries from which asylum seekers have fled, it is not unreasonable to expect that over 80% of asylum seekers issued with TPVs will become permanent residents or citizens within the next ten years.

    Even with rights to work and some Medicare support, the large number of asylum seekers who will be moving into the community will present a major challenge for NGOs, churches and asylum seeker centres who generously support asylum seekers in their need. The government will need to urgently address this financial burden.

    There are other significant problems which will have to be addressed; the increased powers for defence and customs personnel; refoulment; compatibility with the Refugee Convention and judicial oversight.

    To cover its own failure, the ALP has said that the government was using children in detention as pawns in the negotiations. I understand that view and it is true that the government could have released these children at any time as also the last ALP government could have but didn’t.  But as part of a package the release of children is an excellent outcome, whatever the antecedents or background.

    The purists will not like this package. As a friend of mine said, he would not want to have these purists advocating on his behalf. ‘If I were starving, I expect I would die because these purists would deny me access to bread and water while fighting for my entitlement to a three-course meal’.

    I am surprised that the ALP didn’t take the opportunity to negotiate hard over the package. Instead it ceded asylum policy negotiations to the senate cross benches. What a sad abrogation of responsibility by the ALP to leave the outcome to Ricky Muir and others.

    I have written before about the abject failure of the Greens on both climate policy and refugees. On climate policy the Greens voted with the coalition in the Senate in 2009 to vote down Kevin Rudd’s Climate Pollution Reduction Scheme. Always the purists, the Greens wanted more than was on the table. Legislation was defeated in the Senate and we have gone backwards on climate policy ever since. The policy purity of the Greens and their incessant posturing has caused great damage to Australia on climate change.

    And the same is true on asylum seekers and refugees. Here again the Greens sided with the coalition in theSenate over two years ago to vote down theArrangement with Malaysia which the UNHCR said it could work with. The failure of the Senate to pass the enabling legislation after the High Court decision in 2011 meant that the Malaysian Arrangement failed. That triggered the enormous increase in boat arrivals in 2013. This led to Manus and Nauru. For this the Greens must bear a heavy responsibility. But they still continue to wash their hands of responsibility and parade their policy purity. Their posturing has delivered awful consequences for asylum seekers and refugees.

    It is also time both the ALP and the Greens showed some tactical nous. For the present, they have dealt themselves out of effective participation and negotiation on a very difficult but critical issue – the plight of 30,000 asylum seekers whose claims are waiting assessment.

    These amendments to the Migration Act must be seen as work in progress. There are many important issues that will hopefully be corrected with a change of government. There many important things that need to be done

    • Increase the humanitarian intake to at least 25 000 pa
    • Abolish mandatory detention which is cruel, expensive and does not deter.
    • Establish Orderly Departure Arrangements with Sri Lanka, Iraq and Afghanistan
    • Open more migration pathways, like 457 visas for persons who may be borderline refugees
    • De militarise our refugee policies and programs.

    A lot more must be done. But breaking the deadlock on the 30,000 forgotten people in detention or on bridging visas is an important step.

    As refugee advocates we have some hard thinking ahead.  To date we have failed comprehensively   to win improvements for people in great need. The perfect has become the enemy of the good. Needy asylum seekers are the losers.

    Sometimes harm minimisation is the best course, a course that the ALP and the Greens chose not to take on the Migration Act amendments.

    Aren’t 30,000 strangers in our land in need of help today, not in one or two years’ time!

  • Tim Colebatch. The Abbott budget is hard to sell.

    The Abbott government’s problems began long before the 2014–15 budget, but now the budget is at the heart of them. It has failed to win support from the voters, and failed to win support from the Senate.

    Why? I think there are two reasons. The first is that its measures, taken together, fail the test of fairness. That’s well known, and the opinion polls show the public’s reaction.

    The second is not well known, but it may have been grasped intuitively by many Australians, which is why the government’s appeals to national interest have fallen flat. In short, the sum of the government’s actions is not to reduce the budget deficit, but only to rearrange it.

    And now, as treasurer Joe Hockey will tell us on 16 December when he releases the heavily revised Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, or MYEFO, the plunge in mineral prices and the economy’s failure, yet again, to meet budget forecasts mean a return to surplus is now just a distant goal, and we will face big deficits all the way to the next election.

    But even back in May, if you looked at the budget numbers, the net impact of the Abbott government’s policy decisions would have cut the deficit by just $4 billion over its first four years in office. Add in a crucial cost the budget numbers left out, add in the extra spending approved since the budget, and the net impact of the government’s decisions has been to increase the budget deficit – not to reduce it.

    We’ll come back to that. The central issue in the public debate over the budget has been fairness. It is what has sustained the Senate’s opposition to the budget measures – even those that economists, including this one, would see as well-targeted.

    Much of this ground was well covered in an earlier Inside Story essay by the Australian National University’s Peter Whiteford. I will simply plagiarise some of its key points here. If the budget measures were adopted, Whiteford reports:

    • An unemployed twenty-three-year-old would lose $47 a week, or 18 per cent of his or her disposable income. An individual earning $250,000 a year would lose $24 a week, or less than 1 per cent of disposable income. Is that fairness?
    • Unemployed people aged under thirty, who receive less than 1 per cent of budget spending, would suffer almost 10 per cent of budget savings.
    • The National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling calculates that the poorest 20 per cent of households, which earn 8 per cent of all household income, would shoulder 16 per cent of the budget cuts. The richest 20 per cent, which earn 40 per cent of all household income, would shoulder just 10 per cent of the cuts.

    If the government really wanted to close the budget deficit, why did it weight its cuts to fall so heavily on lower- and middle-income Australia, and so lightly on its own class of upper-income Australians? Did it not foresee the public reaction?

    If it was serious, why didn’t it come up with a comprehensive deficit-reduction strategy that tackled both sides of the ledger – increasing revenues, since that is where the real problem lies, as well as reducing spending? That would ensure that the pain was minimised by being shared by all, including those best able to pay. That would work to unite us, rather than divide us.

    The only unity Australians have gained from this budget is in opposing the lot – the good along with the bad. This week Essential Research published a new poll that found Australians oppose all six budget measures on its list, mostly overwhelmingly. Only 18 per cent support indexation of petrol tax, 20 per cent support cuts to university funding, 24 per cent support the $7 Medicare co-payment, and so on.

    Back in October, Essential found Australians supported only one measure on a different list of budget savings: sadly, cuts to foreign aid. Only 25 per cent supported the first lot of cuts to the ABC, only 28 per cent agreed with a higher pension age, and only 12 per cent supported the central measure intended to reduce the deficit: taking $80 billion from future school and hospital funding for the states.

    According to the old political wisdom, governments planning reforms should do them all at once, so that no one issue can get the airplay to stop it. That maxim now needs two qualifications: the government must start with strong public credibility and an ability to sell its message.

    This government had neither, and still hasn’t. Since the budget it’s gone quiet on the plan to shift schools and hospitals spending to the states, yet that is the cornerstone of the deficit-reduction strategy. Without it, there will be no deficit reduction. Presumably the government is waiting until after the NSW and Queensland elections, so as not to embarrass its state allies.

    Nor has it campaigned to explain why we should increase the pension age or index fuel taxes. The Australian’s Paul Kelly berates voters for not realising that the budget is in crisis, but the government’s actions suggest it doesn’t itself see it as serious. That much is clear from the detailed numbers in its two budget exercises so far – the 2013–14 MYEFO and the 2014–15 budget.

    The bottom line is this. Had the Abbott government’s spending cuts been implemented, they would have cut budget deficits by $70 billion over four years. Its tax cuts and new spending, meanwhile, would have added $67 billion. Net saving: $3 billion over four years.

    Some budget emergency!

    To put it another way, even in May, the plan was for 96 per cent of all the money saved by the Coalition’s spending cuts simply to be spent in other ways. Only 4 per cent was to be used to reduce the deficit.

    Under Labor’s policies, Treasury estimates, the cumulative deficit for the four years from mid 2013 to mid 2017 would have been $110 billion. Under the Coalition’s policies, it would be $107 billion.

    And that was in May: before the new commitment of troops to Iraq, before the free-trade deals, before the extension of the royal commission into the unions, etc., etc. Even if the Senate passed all the budget measures it has rejected, the new MYEFO will reveal that the net result of the Abbott government’s decisions has been to increase the deficit from what it would have been had Labor’s policies continued on autopilot.

    These are the budget’s own figures. All I’ve done is to add them up – and add the $1.2 billion costs of servicing the increased debt resulting from its tax cuts and new spending.

    Between them, the 2013–14 MYEFO and the May budget handed out $45 billion of new spending over the four years to 2016–17, and $22 billion of tax cuts – all funded by taking on new debt. Three decisions accounted for half of them: scrapping the emissions trading scheme ($13.7 billion), the splurge on new roads ($12.1 billion, without any cost-benefit analysis) and the $8.8 billion grant to the Reserve Bank – a grant the RBA had not asked for, and which appears to have been designed to inflate the 2013–14 deficit and lay the blame on Labor.

    That was not the only fiscal fix. During the Victorian election campaign it emerged that Hockey prepaid the Victorian government $1 billion for the East-West Link in June – so that it could appear as spending in 2013–14 (blamed on Labor) rather than 2014–15 (for which he must answer). Victoria, of course, didn’t spend the money, just banked it. MYEFO 2014–15 will show if there were other fiscal fixes like that one.

    One caveat: in the longer term, if the government’s budget plans were all implemented, they would reduce the deficit significantly. Its strategy has been to load up the deficit in 2013–14, and reduce it in later years. By 2016–17, Treasury estimates, the net impact of the government’s policy changes would lower the budget deficit by $9 billion, including $6.4 billion saved that year alone by cutting social security payments.

    Eventually the budget would get back to surplus, primarily as a result of increased income tax revenue from bracket creep, and the savings from the government’s plan to cut $80 billion from grants to the states for schools and hospitals.

    But the Commonwealth could never win an argument with the states on those cuts; it would be seen as abandoning its responsibilities in two crucial areas of government. It could win only if the states collectively decide they would rather have a bigger GST to spend as they choose than have the Commonwealth share the cost of running schools and hospitals. And premiers get to be premiers because they’re good at politics.

    The Abbott government could try to keep fighting the same old issues, but the polls suggest the voters have stopped listening. It still has twenty-one months left before it has to meet its electoral fate. It could turn off the life support for the old budget plan and reboot with a new comprehensive strategy – closing tax loopholes as well as cutting spending – clearly designed to reduce the deficit rather than pay out on political enemies (including students and universities, the ABC, foreign aid and welfare groups, and public transport). It would have to unite the country behind a common purpose, rather than divide it.

    But Tony Abbott by nature is a cultural warrior, not a unifier: that’s just not him. If the Coalition is to adopt a budget strategy to win over the middle ground, its Cabinet reshuffle has to start with him. I can’t see that happening.

    Tim Colebatch is former economics editor of the Age and author of the recent biography, ‘Dick Hamer: the liberal Liberal’.

    This article was first published in Inside Story on 5 December 2014.

     

     

  • Australia is worst performing industrial country on climate change.

    For the Lima Conference on Climate Change that has just begun, a report by the think-tank Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe examined the 58 emitters of greenhouse gasses in the world, and about 90% of all energy-related emissions. The report named Australia as the worst performing industrial country in the world on climate change. We have now replaced Canada as the worst performing industrial country. The report author told The Guardian, which has published this story ‘It is interesting that the bottom six countries in the ranking – Russia, Iran, Canada, Kazakhstan, Australia and Saudi Arabia – all have a lot of fossil fuel resources. It is a curse.The fossil fuel lobbies in these countries are strong. In Australia they stopped what were some very good carbon laws.’

    For the report in The Guardian, see link below.

    http://gu.com/p/44xha/sbl

  • John Menadue. Tony Abbott did not stop the boats.

    The data just does not support the never-ending claims by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison that they stopped the boats. The under-resourced and uncritical media accepts the Coalition’s line.

    I will come to the recent data, but first the evidence is clear that action by the Coalition along with the Greens in the Senate to prevent amendments to the Migration Act greatly assisted people-smugglers and boat arrivals from 2011 onwards.

    The rejection of the arrangement with Malaysia by the High Court started the rot. The High Court decision may have been sound in law, but it had powerful consequences for boat arrivals. The arrangement with Malaysia needed improvement but it did provide guarantees that Malaysia had never provided before. The UNHCR was prepared to actively cooperate. When the High Court rejected the Malaysian arrangement in August 2011, irregular maritime arrivals were running at less than 300 per month. That number increased to 1200 by May 2012, and kept on rising.

    The Labor  Government  attempted to amend the Migration Act to address the problems identified by the High Court but the Coalition together with the Greens blocked the amending legislation. They bashed Malaysia at every opportunity. The failure of the Malaysian arrangement sent a very clear message to people smugglers that boat arrivals would succeed. Boat arrivals were running at over 4,000 per month in July 2013.

    The action by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison in association with the Greens triggered this dramatic increase in boat arrivals. Both Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison made it abundantly clear that they did not want to stop the boats with an arrangement such as that with Malaysia. They wanted to stop Labor stopping the boats. Their political intentions were revealed by WikiLeaks that reported that ‘a key Liberal Party strategist told the US embassy in 2009 that the more boats that come the better’. (SMH 10 December 2010). Scott Morrison became Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship in December 2009.

    Action by the Coalition in the Senate triggered a large increase in boat arrivals in 2012 and into 2013.

    But did Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison really stop the boats when they came to power?

    The data shows that the downward trend in boat arrivals occurred from July 2013, two months before the Coalition came to power. See data below.

    2013 Boat people arrivals(excluding crew) Boats
    January 2013 471 10
    February 925 16
    March 2455 37
    April 3396 47
    May 3315 47
    June 2715 41
    July 4145 47
    Aug 1591 25
    September 837 15
    October 339 5
    November 207 5
    December 355 7

    Source: Department of Immigration and Border Protection, and Australian Parliamentary Library.

    What largely stopped the boats, although not completely, was the announcement by Kevin Rudd on the 19th July 2013 that in future any persons coming by boat and found to be a  refugee would not be settled in Australia. We may argue about the wisdom of that policy, but it effectively crippled the business case of the people-smugglers.

    In the data above, there are undoubtedly some leads and lags and seasonal factors, but the data shows that the Rudd announcement of 19 July 2013 dramatically cut the number of boats and people arriving by boat. The major turnaround occurred between July and August, before the Coalition came to power.

    As the Abbott Government was not sworn in until 18 September 2013, its policy on boats would also have had only marginal effect on September arrivals.

    So between July and September, people arriving by boat fell from 4,145 to 837 and the number of boats fell from 47 to 15. The trend largely continued after that time.

    Peter Hughes a former deputy secretary in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship put it this way in an article in the Canberra Times in late 2013. ‘The arrival of 546 asylum seekers in October and November 2013 represents only 14% of the number of arrivals for the corresponding months in 2012. This is a dramatic reduction … The announcement of long-term resettlement of refugees in Papua New Guinea and Nauru by the previous government has likely been decisive in changing the decision to travel to Australia on the part of those asylum seekers who have not yet handed over their money to a smuggler. ‘

    The game-changer was Kevin Rudd’s announcement of 19 July 2013 on no resettlement in Australia for boat arrivals. It is also likely that tighter visa procedures on Indonesia’s part would have helped reduce the number of boat arrivals.  In effect the Rudd Government slammed the door although the boat turn a rounds pushed the final bolt home. In other words, if there was any doubt in the minds of people smugglers and asylum seekers trying to come by boat those doubts were removed.

    The Abbott Government capitalised on a trend which the Rudd Government clearly started in July 2013.

    Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have wrung every political advantage they could from boat arrivals. But the evidence is clear that they helped accelerate the numbers before they came to power and it was the action of the Rudd Government, before they came to power in September 2013 that put boat arrivals on a downward track

    Operation Sovereign Borders has really been quite marginal and would not have been ‘successful’ without the July 2013 decision. Navy and Customs were able to turn a few boats around. This would have been impossible if boats had continued to arrive at 47 a month as they were in July 2013. OSB has been very high profile and very expensive – and offensive to Indonesia. But OSB has not been the main game.

    The game-changer was Kevin Rudd’s announcement in July 2013.

  • John Menadue. Outsourcing and redundancy at the ABC.

    Mark Scott has expressed concern at the pain being felt by staff losing their jobs and careers. He announced that he and his senior team would take a pay freeze for a year.

    When it was pointed out that there would not be sufficient staff left to fill the program schedule, some senior manager apparently announced that the money achieved through some of the budget savings would be used to commission some individual programs and short series from some of those very people who are about to be made redundant. So, the ABC management is proposing to sack long serving and loyal staff with proper jobs, and use their salaries to bring them back on short term contracts and commissions with no security of employment.

    The cuts will fall most heavily in program making areas. Over the past several years the ABC has closed its television production centres in Perth, Hobart and now Adelaide which has so upset Christopher Pyne. At the same time it has radically cut internal production in Sydney, until virtually the only in-house TV programs left are Compass and Catalyst. Now they are moving the outsourcing philosophy into Radio. The cuts will fall most heavily on staff in programs requiring depth of production, research and analysis; in TV and Radio News and Current Affairs, and in radio documentaries and features.

    Mark Scott says the ABC needs to target younger audiences. The ABC has been talking about that for decades. And the same commercial formula for doing so is being trotted out again: Make it shorter, make it lighter, make it cheaper, and if possible make it funny.  What was that about dumbing down?

    The intent it seems is to transform the ABC from a production house, reflecting the geographic and cultural diversity of the nation, into a commissioning and transmission agency, serving a few big commercial co-production houses, such as Southern star and Endemol.

    The difficulty with this model is that commercial co-production partners may cover their costs plus a few percent doing a deal with the ABC, but their real mark-up comes from selling the product on the global market. This means productions skewed to their commercial sales potential rather than editorial merit for Australia.

    The second consequence of this model is that with journalists and producers on casual and short term contracts, staff are going to be very timid about offending the powerful. This form of short term, run of show, contract employment poses a significant threat to independent vigorous program making, and to a free media. It risks the public purpose of the ABC.

    The major industrial problem facing staff is that the ABC has told them that all redundancies will be individually targeted. This breaks a long standing expectation of staff. As the cuts have come in waves every decade or so and staff numbers have shrunk from around five and half thousand to around three thousand, staff have been allowed to volunteer for redundancy, and where possible to arrange for staff who wish to go to substitute for staff who wish to stay, so long as the targeted savings can be met. This was generally done as a way of cushioning the pain and gaining maximum staff co-operation in a difficult situation. This time round management have pre-emptively declared No Voluntary redundancies, and No Substitutions. Faced with industrial laws that make striking illegal, except during a once in 3 year wage bargaining period, staff are faced with the prospect of risking punitive legal retribution if they protest.

     

     

  • John Menadue. Our Environment Minister is not going to Lima

    Almost all countries will have their climate change or environment ministers at the UN Climate Change Conference which commences this week in Lima, Peru. This conference is in preparation for the crucial conference on climate change in Paris next year.

    But our Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, will not be there. Tony Abbott is sending his Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, but is also sending Andrew Robb, our Trade Minister to keep an eye on her. It is reported that Julie Bishop went ‘bananas’ over this insult to her.

    News reports suggest that Tony Abbott had no intention of sending  a minister to Lima. Julie Bishop asked for approval to go and was refused. When she asked a second time approval was given but only on the condition that Andrew Robb went with her. How very odd!

    But clearly Tony Abbott has major doubts about the reliability of Greg Hunt on climate change. As Michelle Grattan put it The Conversation on 3 December 2014, ‘In 2008 when the Coalition was committed to an emissions trading scheme, Shadow Treasurer Turnbull, Hunt, the environment spokesman and Bishop, the deputy Liberal leader, oppose Nelson’s desire to link an ETS to when the big emitters took action rather than to a specific date. In 2009 when Turnbull was leader, climate spokesman Robb … spectacularly repudiated Turnbull’s proposed compromise with the Rudd Government to get Labor’s ETS through parliament. Robb’s dramatic intervention, made during a long party room meeting on the highly contested issue, was a devastating blow to Turnbull’s leadership, which was under pressure over this stand on the ETS and his non-consultative style. Robb has documented the story in his book” Black Dog Days”. Turnbull quickly lost his job and Abbott became leader.’

    We have seen a consistent pattern by the Coalition in opposition and now in government to dismantle and defund almost attempts that have been made to address the threat which climate change presents to our planet.

    Even this week the NSW and ACT governments combined with researchers at the University of NSW’ Climate Change Research Centre, which predicted increasing hot days, longer dry spells, increased fire danger and fewer wet days.

    The science is trending overwhelmingly in one direction; that action on climate change is essential. But still the Abbott Government obfuscates and dissembles, even refusing to send the Environment Minister to the critical meeting in Lima.

  • Refugees – some middle ground is opening up.

    See below a speech made in the Senate on 4 December by Senator Xenophon. The Senator was one of six cross-bench senators who negotiated with the government for a compromise on the contentious Migration Bill.

    Senator XENOPHON (South Australia) (12:17): Australia’s migration policies have always had a long and vexed history. They have been, and rightfully so, open to significant scrutiny from international and domestic courts, independent experts, interest groups and the electorate. It has and will continue to be a passionate debate about a wicked and vexed issue. For me it is always important, always, to remember that we are dealing with legislation that relates to people, our fellow human beings. They are not numbers; they are not the myriad of labels that have been applied to them by all sides of the debate; and they are not political inconveniences, punching bags or props. They are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends, neighbours and acquaintances. They are, in short, people just like you and me who have found themselves in extraordinarily difficult circumstances—some, unimaginable circumstances. So I would like to approach this debate with respect, with compassion and with dignity.

    This has not been an easy process for me. On one side this bill does contain a number of measures that I am not comfortable with. But on the other side, if we do not act, the 30,000 people currently awaiting processing will continue to be left in limbo. If this bill does not pass there is also the real risk that the government will use a nonstatutory process instead, which will not result in any better outcomes for the people who are currently in Australia. This problem is a true Hobson’s choice: we are left to decide between two potentially negative outcomes.

    Back in 2012 the former government put up a number of proposals, the so-called Malaysia solution, which was rejected by the then opposition and the Australian Greens. I remember at the time—I remember well—I was in hospital and I asked for my vote to be recorded. There is a saying: ‘Not to have the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.’ As imperfect as the former government’s solution was, it was preferable to doing nothing. We saw more and more drownings, more and more people pass away, and more and more people fall victim to people smugglers and the awful consequences of that.

    What is being proposed by the government here is by no means perfect—in fact, it is quite imperfect—but the consequences of not supporting it will mean that asylum seekers will be in a worse position, in my view. It also has to be noted what the immigration minister said a few moments ago. He has agreed, as part of a process of constructive engagement with crossbenchers, to increase the humanitarian intake by 7,500 people—a significant increase. My view is that we should double the humanitarian intake or more. We are a big country with a big heart. But I am trying to deal with the actual political realities here. We have an opportunity to increase significantly the humanitarian and refugee intake by 7,500 people on top of the 13,750 per annum. We have an opportunity to have something like 25,000 people on bridging visas have work rights for the first time. We have an opportunity to significantly improve the lot of those individuals who have been left in limbo. The reality is that under the former government border control, immigration policy, was out of control, and that is something we need to take into account.

    I have met with many interest groups and representatives, including Amnesty International and also Paris Aristotle of Foundation House and the former government’s expert panel. My view on this issue changed when I saw what Angus Houston, what Paris Aristotle, and what Michael L’Estrange said in that expert panel. I congratulate former Prime Minister Gillard for having the foresight to set up that panel—to actually have a circuit breaker to try to look at this in a different way, because to me it meant that we needed to consider the awful moral dilemmas that we had to deal with. I thought the panel headed by Angus Houston came up with a number of sensible proposals.

    In that context, I have approached the government to request changes to the bill and to migration policy to improve the conditions for the men, women and children who are awaiting processing. That doesn’t mean that we cannot still advocate for a significant increase in the humanitarian intake. It does not mean that we stop being critical of the government’s policies, but if we do nothing, if we do not support this bill, then I believe fervently that what will happen is that asylum seekers will be worse off if this bill is not passed, as imperfect as this bill is.

    That is the moral dilemma; that is the wicked problem.

    I want to make it clear that my vote for this bill is conditional on these changes and those circulated by the Palmer United Party. The government has taken my concerns into account and, I understand, will be circulating amendments to that effect. As such, I will not speak to those amendments in detail, but I would like to take this opportunity to outline the changes that I have proposed. I also want to make it very clear that these proposals do not necessarily represent my ideal outcomes. They do not, but they do make important steps forward—and I do not believe they should be rejected because they are only ‘good’ rather than ‘perfect’.

    Firstly, I have proposed changes to allow people holding TPVs or SHEVs to travel outside Australia where the minister is satisfied there are compassionate or compelling circumstances and the minister has approved that travel. That has never occurred before, either under this government or under the previous government, and I think that is an important concession. This would cover circumstances where a TPV or SHEV holder wants to travel to visit family in circumstances such as significant family illness or death. While I would prefer to allow family reunification on these visas, I believe this is an important step in granting these visa holders rights that go some way towards acknowledging the importance of family.

    Secondly, I have proposed changes to ensure that, through the use of a disallowable instrument, the fast-track process only applies to the legacy caseload. This will make sure that the use of this fast-track process will be subject to the scrutiny of the Senate. Thirdly, I have proposed changes to the definition of ‘manifestly unfair’ in relation to the rejection of claims so that it more accurately reflects language used by the UNHCR—and that is important. I think that is a benchmark that we need to look at very carefully.

    Fourthly, I have proposed some changes to the fast-track review process to ensure that it is not only efficient and quick but must meet the natural justice provisions already included in the Migration Act. This will help to ensure that decisions take natural justice into account within the confines of the act and so are more balanced and fair. I have also proposed changes to the requirement for the review to take new information into account. My specific intention in this case is to ensure that information that was not provided for personal reasons, including mental health reasons, can be taken into account. One example that has been put to me are the many cases of sexual or other assault, where the victim may not volunteer that information in the first instance. I think all of us can appreciate the reasons behind not sharing that information—the shame and the trauma that may prevent someone from speaking out. My proposal to the government was that this type of information and these circumstances must be taken into account, and I believe these changes will improve the review process in that regard.

    Fifthly, I have raised concerns relating to the non-refoulement provisions and how we can be sure that a person being returned to a country is not facing persecution. In this case the government has agreed to use phrasing similar to that of the UNHCR to define both when a person is considered to be part of a particular social group and what effective protection measures should be taken into account when considering if that person should be returned. I believe these definitions will bring Australia more in line with UNHCR best practice in terms of defining and applying these clauses.

    Further, I have advocated, as have others, for an increase in Australia’s humanitarian intake and to extend work rights to people on bridging visas. I have always been a strong advocate of increasing our humanitarian intake. I believe the government could go further, but I do acknowledge the increase they have proposed will make a real difference—7½ thousand people. That is 7½ thousand people who can be taken in through that humanitarian and refugee intake and who can be part of our community. I do not want to throw that away. That does not mean that my colleagues in the Australian Greens or the opposition cannot say that we should double it—I think we should—or that we should have a much bigger humanitarian intake, a much bigger refugee intake. It could be an issue at the next election. I do not have an issue with that—it ought to be. But I do not want to throw away this opportunity to have 7½ thousand more people come in to this country through that humanitarian and refugee intake process.

    Extending work rights to those on bridging visas is also vitally important. Participating in the workforce, even in a small way, makes people a part of our community and society. It gives them, quite simply, a reason to get up in the morning—to feel valued and that they are making a contribution. I do not want to pretend that any of these measures is an ideal outcome or that they represent what I would see happen in the perfect world. But they will make a true difference to the people who are here right now, who are in detention right now, who are waiting to be processed right now. This may not be perfect, but it is good. It is also important to remember that this is not the end of the debate. These measures do not mean that I, as many others, will stop pushing for improvements. They are merely the next step, not the final one, and I would urge my colleagues to support this bill.

     

  • Tony Kevin.  Cuts to ABC Classic FM strike at Australia’s cultural heritage’

    Limelight, ABC Classic FM’s online magazine, reported on 24 November

    ‘The number of concerts recorded will be slashed by a massive 50%, with just 300 performances due to be recorded over the next two years verses the 600 concerts recorded during the previous two years. Broadcasts of live performances currently account for 17 hours of Classic FM’s weekly output.’

    http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/major-cuts-abc-classic-fm%E2%80%99s-programming-confirmed

    So listeners will lose around 50%, i.e., 8-9 hours of Australian-performed broadcast music each week.

    What will we lose?

    Events like the 30 November broadcast of the fine new Australian opera by Iain Grandage and Alison Croggan, The Riders (2014), inspired by Tim Winton’s great novel. Many thousands of people will have heard this ground-breaking new work on Classic FM radio (and it is still up on Listen Again).

    Or Max Richter’s new composition Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Recomposed (2012), which he played with the 22-piece Wordless Music Orchestra, an outstanding New York electro-acoustic group, in Melbourne on 24 November. Parts of this brilliant reworking of a familiar classic are already being broadcast on Classic FM: last week I heard Summer, and loved it.

    Or the brilliant Victorian Opera Wagner Ring Cycle performed late last year in Melbourne, all 17 hours of which was rebroadcast soon afterwards on ABC Classic FM. Or Pinchgut Opera Company productions in Sydney. Or the Sydney International Piano Competition.

    The 17 hours per week until now of broadcast live musical performances on Classic FM presumably reflected professional artistic judgements of how much of such music being played live each week around Australia was worthy of national broadcast.

    Arbitrarily to cut it in half is like telling the ABC it can only broadcast half the days of a cricket Test series, or half of a football season. It makes no artistic sense.

    Cost accountants like these cuts, because programmes of pre-recorded music CDs from overseas are cheaper than Australian live broadcasts. There are savings on broadcasting rights fees paid to creators and performers, and from not putting recording crews and announcers in place, sometimes in not-so-accessible locations in regional Australia.

    But at what artistic cost?  For example, if ABC FM has now to cease rebroadcasting the Huntington Music Festivals: there will be real losses in listener pleasure, and in the financial support around the nation that helps a unique festival like Huntington in remote Mudgee to attract sponsors and thus continue to thrive. Many such festivals depend on ABC broadcasting financial support to help keep them viable.

    How will FM program planners allocate their halved domestic live broadcast time between the Sydney Symphony Orchestra? The Adelaide or West Australian Symphony Orchestra? Huntington? Victorian Opera’s Wagner Ring Cycle? The Riders? A Peter Sculthorpe memorial tribute concert? An international piano or vocal competition in Australia?

    The national classical music live broadcaster should not be forced to make such egregious choices on any but artistic grounds. This is what ABC Classic FM was set up for, and extended across our vast land to reach 95% of Australian radio audiences; not mechanically and endlessly to play tapes from overseas. There must be a balance.

    I’m not sure how one gets across to people who do not much like or understand classical music the huge cultural treasure and living musical archive that the national Classic FM network, as it has evolved over the last 40 odd years, now represents in Australia. There is nothing else quite like it in the world.

    It allows listeners almost right across Australia to hear the best world music and Australian-created or performed music, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Some people might see this as catering to an elite minority ‘niche’ taste. Is listening on the radio to Test cricket or an AFL series a ‘niche’ taste? I don’t listen to these things, but I am happy for others to do so.

    The love of classical music has deep and broad roots in Australia. We would never have had a Joan Sutherland without our rich Australian classical music public culture, back to our early European settlement – all those church choirs, brass bands, eisteddfods, music and dance schools. And in the dark days of WW2, when visionary ABC executives like Bernard Heinze and Charles Moses, who both had a strong sense of cultural mission to the whole country while we battled Nazi  barbarism, sent ABC orchestras touring around Australia and playing Beethoven’s nine symphonies to packed houses of emotional audiences. And in the rich golden years of Australian classical music from the 1940s on, inspired by the contributions of Jewish and other refugee musicians from Europe.

    ABC Classic FM has inherited from ABC Radio National, and now has sole broadcasting responsibility, for nurturing this rich living musical heritage. Live concert-hall or opera house audiences are essential for music to thrive. But surely it is also a cultural good that retired people in Orange or Bendigo or Launceston or Bunbury can switch on their FM radios and hear the same wonderful music, played in our country.   Hearing a tape from Frankfurt or London is just not quite the same thrill.

    The national Classic FM network allows large numbers of listeners to share in hugely significant and inspiring live musical events in our country that many, because of where they live, or lack of money, or mobility issues, would never get to hear. It allows many Australians to feel a sense of belonging to a common music-loving national community, uniting young, middle-aged and older people.

    A symbiotic relationship exists between a thriving classical music national radio network, which builds and enriches audiences, and the stimulation and professional development of young musical talent in our country. If one is harshly cut back, the other inevitably will suffer. A holistic approach is surely needed.

    What will happen under halved live broadcasting hours to the broadcasting opportunities and performance fees of our smaller state symphony orchestras outside Sydney and Melbourne – in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Tasmania? How will they cope with loss of income and audience engagement in their states? Such national musical assets are hard to create, easy to destroy. Look at the USA now, a virtual classical music radio desert and with symphony orchestras in financial difficulties closing down around the country. Do we want this?

    Somebody must speak out now for Classic FM. It is not for elites, not for silvertails. It is for the 750,000 Australians listening to their FM radios, whose parents and teachers taught them to cherish classical music, whatever their location, means, ages, or mobility. Don’t taxpayers and citizens have a right to demand that this precious intangible national cultural heritage, built up by the hard work of so many people over so many years, not be cut off at the knees now?

     

     

  • Eric Walsh.  A ‘ragged’ year not a ‘ragged’ week.

    Nobody laughed – things must be different in the press gallery these days.

    Prime Minister Tony Abbott in one of his longest press conferences was trying desperately to erase the hangover from the setbacks which have dogged him and his government since his dismal performance at the G20 meeting which he had hoped – forlornly as it proved – would rescue the image of a very disordered and unimpressive government. He was trying to end the year on what at least might seem to be a high note.

    He had just told the assembled media that despite the ‘dire’ state of the economy which had been his theme for more than 12 months, he could not abandon his universally unpopular $5 million paid parental leave scheme which will benefit only very rich women. This would, he said, be seen as breaking a promise. This, while he was being peppered with questions on his Kristallnacht of promises on health, education, pensions, tax,  petrol pricing, the ABC and SBS and even on his water buy-back policy from the Murray Darling system.

    Such a brazen failure to read the mood of the meeting might in other days of the press gallery cause at least some audible amused incredulity. Billy McMahon, exhibiting similar ill-based self-assurance, could certainly not have got away without a snigger.

    This press conference was supposed to set the scene for a high-note ending to his government’s first full year in office. Like many of Tony’s recent endeavours, it failed. Tony has developed a new principle by which he evaluates his government’s performance. ‘Things aren’t what they are – they are what Tony says they are’. It’s catching on with some of his ministers – a very quick adaptee is Treasurer Joe Hockey.

    In his last week of a pretty dismal year, guided by this principle, Tony tried to convince his questioners that the government had a single ‘ragged’ week – not a ‘ragged’ fifteen months as demonstrated by the authoritative Newspoll the next day. The government was still in a heavily losing position as it has been in Newspoll and every other poll since November last year, and worst, stuck at the new low it hit with the production of its first budget back in May.

    The principle is holding good too in reviewing presentation of his government’s controversial policies. Crippling moves on education, health, pensions, etc., are not broken promises taken from Tony’s innovative viewpoint. Unsurprisingly others, like electors, might and currently seem to see them in a different light. Tony using his same self-created prism assures us the Barrier Reef is not endangered by climate change; consumers, not bankers, will benefit from the removal of safeguards involving financial advice; students will somehow be better off paying up to $100,000 to earn a degree and pensioners won’t be worse-off having their payments calculated in the new way this budget proposes. There are a host of other propositions on which the voter seems determined to see things as they are rather than what Tony says they are.  Look at the polls.

    And there is another major promise on which Tony has not yet been called by either the Opposition or the media. Robustly confident of an election win Tony declared that in government he would not be dealing with minor parties or Independents to win passage for policies which at the time voters were assured were not happening. In recent weeks our major political coverage has involved the very negotiations – only occasionally successful – that Tony assured us would not happen. And he went further. He would, he promised, not hesitate to take parliament to a double dissolution in order to tame the Opposition and get his program implemented.

    A mere glance at the opinion polls tells us why this remains another broken promise. But it does not explain why he has so far been unchallenged by either Opposition or press on the question. Highly unfavourable opinion polls are not the only deterrent for Abbott here. Have a look at the election manifesto for which Tony will be seeking national support.

    Higher university fees, lower pensions, more costly healthcare, dearer petrol, total disregard for climate change and a total shutdown of any government bodies likely to advise him otherwise. And there are a host of other electoral nasties Tony has unveiled as he has stumbled through his first 15 months in office but which remained well hidden in the lead up to his election win.

    After his promise-shattering budget this year, Tony would indeed prove himself a gambler if he thought he could retain electoral support by promising these things were no longer part of his program.

    Once bitten …..

     

     

  • Ian McAuley. Pyne on education funding.

    A good friend is someone who, when you’ve had too much to drink at a Christmas party, ignores your protests and takes your car keys to prevent you driving home sozzled. You’re surely grateful the next morning.

    When he gets back to the Adelaide’s leafy eastern suburbs and has regained his composure, Christopher Pyne might realize that Senators Lambie, Lazurus, Wang and Xenophon, in rejecting his university ‘reforms’, have saved him and his government from something almost as bad as a DUI conviction. In a country where almost everyone aspires to a tertiary education for themselves or their children, deregulating fees after cutting public support for universities by 20 per cent is a sure election loser.

    He might even show his gratitude by sending Christmas cards to the four Senators.

    Because the landscape of tertiary education is changing there are genuine reforms to be pursued. Information and communications technology is having a huge effect on tertiary education, but those who believe a university course can be delivered over the Internet in the same way as one downloads a novel from Amazon seem to have missed some important learning in their own education. Employers are increasingly interested in demonstrable skills rather than certificates, and graduates are increasingly finding themselves moving away from their initial disciplines, but a swag of technical skills is not the same as a capacity for critical thinking and an ability to live as a responsible and engaged citizen. And there is a need to bring TAFE and universities closer together, but this should involve the inclusion of more liberal content in technical education, as is the case in northern European countries, rather than pushing universities even further along the path of commercialization.

    If the government wants these issues addressed, it must restore funding to the tertiary education sector, already badly savaged by the Rudd-Gillard Government before this Government cut funding even further.

    Some Senators are arguing for a return to free university education, a proposal that’s unthinkable to either of the two main parties. It’s not unthinkable in Germany however, where Niedersachsen has just become the last state to abolish university tuition fees (joining with the Nordic countries), and it shouldn’t be unthinkable in Australia.

    The political rejoinder is that to do so would involve billions of extra government debt. But the Government’s proposal also involves funding through debt – individual debt rather than government debt, and Australians already have high private debt. Whether Australians pay for tertiary education through HECS-type repayments or future taxes, that debt still has to be repaid. In a macroeconomic sense the form of debt makes no difference.

    Where the difference comes, however, is in who chooses to go to university and what courses they choose. It’s easier to risk a $100 000 or $50 000 debt if, in time, you are likely to inherit a share in a million dollar house, and if you choose a course in corporate law rather than teaching. That’s the unfairness and gross misdirection of resources of Pyne’s proposals.  They disingenuously combine both inequity and economic waste – the waste of leaving many people’s capabilities underdeveloped.

    Even better than either HECS or public debt, however, would be restoration of university funding through collecting more taxes from those who have enjoyed free or heavily-subsidised university education. Reforming ‘negative gearing’, restoring the pre-2001 capital gains rules, prohibiting use of family trusts for tax avoidance and removing superannuation concessions favouring high-income earners all come to mind.

    It’s time for the baby-boomers to repay their debts to society and to contribute to educating those who come after them.

     

  • John Menadue. Why the ABC is unique and important.

    The BBC is the most successful public broadcaster in the world. It is a good model, not to copy but to adapt to our own needs and circumstances.

    Lord Reith who was Director General of the BBC 1927-38 pithily described the BBC’s purpose in three words…educate, inform and entertain. He was famously determined that the BBC would provide its audiences with something rather better than they thought they wanted. He said,  ‘He who prides himself on giving what he thinks the public wants is often creating a fictitious  demand for lower standards which he himself will then satisfy,’

    Sir Ian Jacob who was DG  1952-59 defined public broadcasting as ‘ …a compound of a system of control, an attitude of mind, and an aim, which if successfully achieved results in a service which cannot be given by any other means. The system of control is full independence, or the maximum degree of independence that parliament will accord. The attitude of mind is an intelligent one capable of attracting to the service the highest quality of character and intellect. The aim is to give the best and the most comprehensive service of broadcasting to the public that is possible. The motive that underlies the whole operation is a vital factor; it must not be vitiated by political   or commercial consideration.’ 

    So much of our media including the ABC is a long way from the approach of Lord Reith or Sir Ian Jacob. Rupert Murdoch justifies what he offers by saying that if viewers or readers don’t like what he offers then they can switch the dial or read something else. This is what Lord Reith would have described as ‘creating a fictitious demand for lower standards which he himself will then satisfy’. When critics say that Murdoch dumbs down the media like this he describes his critics as elitist or snobs.

    One field in which the ABC should be unique and way ahead of the field is in its coverage of our own Asian region. The ABC should be the leader in helping to break us free of our dependence on the news, current affairs and entertainment media houses of New York and London. The ABC is the only media organisation that can help us live with and learn from our own region. When the ABC should be putting Asian coverage as its highest priority it is scaling back dramatically. It is in retreat in this critical area.

    Another important feature of the ABC must be is that it is national. It can help bind and unite the country, free us from state and local parochialism and help form and project our national identity. The only two other major national media organisations are the Australian Financial Review and The Australian.  The former is a specialist service. An important strength of The Australian is that it is national although it is increasingly failing as a serious, independent and professional newspaper.

    Unfortunately the ABC’s coverage out of Canberra, our national capital, falls well short. It should give us less politics and gladiatorial sport and more in depth analysis of policies. God save us from the increasingly bland and glib generalists who know a little about many things but are expert on nothing. The ABC needs to lift its national coverage.

    In its geographic coverage, the ABC cannot be everything to all people. Most of Australian media is focused on state capitals, so I wonder why the ABC needs to be so committed to Sydney and Melbourne where at least there are established and competitive media players. It is different in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth which are one-newspaper cities with the ABC the only substantial alternative

    The ABC is obviously a very important player in regional Australia. The lack of strong local media in regional cities and towns makes the ABC so valuable for country people in Australia.

    The role of the ABC must be to’educate,inform and entertain’ and to provide a ‘service which cannot be given by any other means’ It does this much better than other media but its own shortcomings and the collapse of other media models requires it  to lift its game.

    The ABC will always be under pressure from governments, both Labor and non Labor. Its independence may be better safeguarded by considering again licence fees which were abolished by the Whitlam Government and replaced by direct funding from the budget.

     

     

  • John Menadue. The smoko continues.

    In April 2012 Greg Dodds and I posted an article on this blog ‘The Australian Century and the Australian smoko’. We argued that while we responded well to the opportunities in Asia for over a decade in the 1980s, we went on ‘smoko’ from the mid-1990s. There was widespread complacency and fear of Asia was promoted. The result has been two decades of failure by business, universities, schools and the media in equipping ourselves for the region. That complacency is still with us and the fear of Asia is promoted by ministers like Scott Morrison.

    Another report has just been recently published which highlights our complacency…

    A recent survey prepared by PwC and reported yesterday by the Financial Review has given us more bad news. PwC undertook a survey of 1,000 Australian businesses. It found

    • Two thirds of Australian companies have no plans to change their approach to doing business in Asia despite the urging by the government and others.
    • Only 9% of Australian businesses have any sort of operation in Asia and only 12% have had any experience in Asia at all.
    • Whilst about a half of large companies are doing business in Asia, only 23% have staff on the ground ‘in market’ and for those companies with an Asian strategy, the total contribution of it to their bottom line was only 12%.
    • Australian companies last year invested more in New Zealand than in all of the ten countries of our South East Asian Region.

    PwC partner, Andrew Parker, said ‘If Australian businesses want a place in future global supply chains and to participate in the growth of intra-Asian trade, we will have to dramatically lift our engagement and investment in the region. Unfortunately Australia is way behind. Asia is passing us by and we need to act now. This may well be our last chance’.

    Australian business profits are booming. Dividends are at record levels. Some major Australian companies are spending their cash in buying back shares. Most Australian companies are awash with cash. But the clear evidence is that they are not prepared to take risks and invest and trade in the fast growing economies of our region.

    In earlier blogs, I have drawn attention to the same disquieting facts.

    • I have yet to learn of a single Chairperson or CEO of any of our major companies who can fluently speak any of the key Asian languages. There are now tens of thousands of Australian born citizens of Asian descent in our universities. But they are unlikely to break into the ‘white men’s clubs’ of our company boards.
    • In late 2013 the Business Alliance for Asian Literacy, which represents 400,000 businesses in Australia, found that ‘more than half of Australian businesses operating in Asia had little board and senior management experience of Asia and/or Asian skills or languages’.
    • Tourism has been booming, but we don’t get much repeat business. We skip from one new market to another, first Japan, then Korea and now China. If we are not getting repeat business it suggests there is something wrong with our product.
    • Many young Australians I knew studied Asian languages in the 1980’s but could not find work with Australian companies. They drifted off to Hong Kong and other Asian cities where their skills were valued.

    The clear failures in our business sector to equip itself for Asia are even more obvious in our media which is still chained to our century old links to media houses in the North Atlantic.

    We talk endlessly about the business and other opportunities in our region, but we sit on our hands when it comes to do anything serious on the subject.

    The government takes pride in trade and investment partnerships that it has finalised with Japan, ROK and China but where are the business people to take full advantage of these new arrangements?