I've been sort of tucked away watching 'Orange Is The New Black' and so have had little time to write stuff here. In the intervening weeks, clearly the world has moved on, but always seems to me there is a fundamental stodginess with the way this government goes about its business. Maybe it is because it's not really conservatism but flat-out intellectual coward dressed up as conservatism, that is being passed off as the framework for all the half-arsed policy decisions being cast about.
Anyway...
Pleiades sent me an article by Guy Rundle a few weeks ago that blasts the Abbott government's position on Renewables. It's behind a paywall so it behooves me to copy the whole thing (Though tempting it certainly is) I will share these bits with you.
The rise of things like household solar presage far greater shifts than alternative energy models and competition to existing supply; such new forms of power undermine the very form of value on which a high-profit energy sector is based. The plain fact is that the spread of household solar and the advance of a two-way grid is not merely an expansion of private competition -- it is the beginning of a socialisation of the grid, and of the production of energy in society. And much more beyond that.
This radical effect has crept up on people because the only prior model of socialisation we have known is state-nationalised enterprises, a la the old State Electricity Commission of Victoria. Such statist social democracy arose in the 20th century, for a variety of political and economic reasons. In the '80s, it was unbuckled into privatisation -- which produced some efficiencies and investment through profit and competition, which were quickly swamped by higher energy prices and underinvestment as take-away profit margins were widened.
Thus we became accustomed to the idea that a "socialist" form of managing energy was the old, bad way, and private capitalist methods were superior. So few, least of all Big Energy, saw coming the technological revolution, which would make a form of energy supply possible that was socialised, while being independent of the state. Rooftop solar is 2% of the energy supply. One way or another it will start to grow exponentially. Once it passes a critical point, the grid will be neither a private nor a state entity, but a social one. As other technologies grow and proliferate -- such as the CSIRO's printable solar cells -- establishment and repair costs will plummet. Sooner rather than later, in new build, roofs will be cells, and the distinction will collapse entirely. With the advancing revolution in battery storage, the "grid" will cease to exist in its current form. The "grid" will be a network of shared abundant power, the production/consumption division collapsed.
That's a ways away -- though closer than you think -- but what terrifies Big Energy is the transition to it, which is a long slide zone of unknowable investment and profit effects, headed only one way. Headed only one way, without the intervention of a capitalist state, that is. Where at one stage of national development the capitalist/social democratic state saw its role as connecting science, technology and production together, the neoliberal Australian state now sees its role as decoupling them.
Why? Because all that capitalism now has on its side is the maintenance of scarcity. That becomes all the more urgent as technological development, driven in various areas by the exponential advances governed by Moore's law, swamps existing scarcity so comprehensively as to destabilise basic rates of profit. Property and the market were once forces of innovation -- now, with so any committed to spontaneous tech development, open-source sharing and hybrid involvement/investment models, there is a faster mode of co-operation and innovation. So capital must put the brakes on. On everything. Which is why a government like Abbott's now gives the appearance of being a gangsterish bunch of rent-seeking enforcers. Their only job is to hold innovation back. They abolished the minister of science position, because science itself is now their enemy.
Why isn't there anyone in the Labor Party who can speak to this, with some form of vision, tying amazing technical developments to families in the burbs having easier, more prosperous, cleaner, greener lives? Quite aside from Labor paralysis, there is labour paralysis too. The labour movement doesn't know what to do about these rapid shifts, even if it recognises them occurring. The Labor/Labour complex needs to come up with a comprehensive answer to the imminent crisis of jobs and work about to envelope half a dozen industries, including energy. If they stay isolated and simply defend increasingly low value -- and often boring, dangerous and unpleasant -- jobs as they are, without any sort of transition plan, then they will find their only ally is Old Capital, which makes its money by exploiting them.
Yes, what does future industry look like? How are we going to find meaningful employment in a world where machines ill soak up the menial or repetitive jobs? The world on the other side of capitalism isn't exactly clear, and the tenor of discussions in this country has been more barren than bleak, mindlessly resistant rather than embracing of the future and more stupid than clever (although that last one can always be sheet home to the current government).
Renewable energies and supplies aren't just some fad dreamed up by the lunar left. It's a necessity born of our own civilisation. If we are to accept our place in a civilised world ti all its trappings, then we have to understand the consequences of such acceptance. One of which has been global warming. We may have hit the point of nu return, and yes, Australia's economy is heavily weighted towards export of fossil fuels, but it doesn't mean it has to always be that way, nor is it any good reason to stay so reliant on the export of energy and infrastructure commodities. It's not as if this is a particularly subtle observation. The fact that the Abbott government much prefers to indulge in a kind of double-think, double-speak, where they try to please the mining lobby at all costs consigns us to the kind of crony capitalism rampant in Asia which gives rise to tremendous social inequalities.
But worse still is that when it really gets down to brass tacks, this government has no vision for how Australia is going to survive climate change induced by Global Warming, let alone have an industrial policy with a bunch of actions plans. So much for the adults benign charge, if by adults they meant people with a view to enrich themselves at the expense of the nation. And if that seems too harsh an assessment, keep in mind that the businesses they've helped the most seem to be either mining or foreign.
The RBA and Treasury have been waiting for sometime for a non-mining sector led recovery, but it is simply not manifesting itself. Part of the problem is that measures to boost consumer confidence are also disproportionately pushing up house prices and rent, so people are not willing to spend any more money than they have been when the real wages remain stagnant. And while this may be a short term situation (unlikely given the state of the world economy), it is disturbing that the non-mining sector simply hasn't regained its mojo even in the era of TwIRP.
What's even more vexing is that while mining delivers only around 10% of the GDP, it earns around 65% of Australia's income from overseas. The Australian economy in effect has become one big life-support system for the mining sector, and everything else we do is kind of irrelevant to the world. We don't do tech or Hi-Tech; we don't do manufacturing any more (those jobs got eaten by the rise of Asia); we don't do science or research, and we're refusing to move over to renewables. The ironies that we're producing more and more tertiary educated people - and charging them a motza for the privilege of getting educated - and sending them into a world where their chosen fields of expertise are most likely in declining demand.
Worse still, the process of dumbing down has progressed to the point where most of these newer graduate cannot be trusted to be competent as graduate even 10years ago. So maybe it's not such a bad thing - but it's also product of the kind of wall-eyed scatter gun approach to how, the tertiary sector is sold as a product as opposed to education being respected for being education on its own terms. And worse still, we're exporting this 'education' while we busily run down funding to our universities. It is perverse to say in the extreme.
It is exactly as Rundle says - the government is so afraid of the future, it is pretending it does not exist. Yet time has a way of simply marching on; and all these acts of denials are going to come home to roost, with tangible price tags that will make us rue the day we elected the Abbott Government.
Clearly I'm not writing something earth shatteringly new or amazing here.
The RBA and Treasury have been waiting for sometime for a non-mining sector led recovery, but it is simply not manifesting itself. Part of the problem is that measures to boost consumer confidence are also disproportionately pushing up house prices and rent, so people are not willing to spend any more money than they have been when the real wages remain stagnant. And while this may be a short term situation (unlikely given the state of the world economy), it is disturbing that the non-mining sector simply hasn't regained its mojo even in the era of TwIRP.
What's even more vexing is that while mining delivers only around 10% of the GDP, it earns around 65% of Australia's income from overseas. The Australian economy in effect has become one big life-support system for the mining sector, and everything else we do is kind of irrelevant to the world. We don't do tech or Hi-Tech; we don't do manufacturing any more (those jobs got eaten by the rise of Asia); we don't do science or research, and we're refusing to move over to renewables. The ironies that we're producing more and more tertiary educated people - and charging them a motza for the privilege of getting educated - and sending them into a world where their chosen fields of expertise are most likely in declining demand.
Worse still, the process of dumbing down has progressed to the point where most of these newer graduate cannot be trusted to be competent as graduate even 10years ago. So maybe it's not such a bad thing - but it's also product of the kind of wall-eyed scatter gun approach to how, the tertiary sector is sold as a product as opposed to education being respected for being education on its own terms. And worse still, we're exporting this 'education' while we busily run down funding to our universities. It is perverse to say in the extreme.
It is exactly as Rundle says - the government is so afraid of the future, it is pretending it does not exist. Yet time has a way of simply marching on; and all these acts of denials are going to come home to roost, with tangible price tags that will make us rue the day we elected the Abbott Government.
Clearly I'm not writing something earth shatteringly new or amazing here.
Goodbye Farewell, Piss Off, Bronwyn Bishop
For a few weeks now, Bronwyn Bishop has catapulted herself into the headlines as the poster child of what is wrong with this government. In that time, the Prime Minister has tried to protect her and let her keep her job as Speaker of the House, but he's basically had to abandon her over the weekend, and so her time as Speaker of the House came to an end.
For as long as we've known her in public life, Bronwyn Bishop has been a ratbag; a hard right fascist with nary the wit to mount a sensible argument; in fact she may be the original politician who brought down the tone of politics in this country through her un-nunaced, unsophisticated sloganeering. She is also the original Ayn-Rand-influenced nut-job with nary a conscience or compassion or common sense. She's always been the woman who, whenever you saw her on television you thought, "Ugh, she's still there," with all the personal revulsion you normally reserve for turds in the swimming pool.
It has been entertaining seeing all the social media memes with helicopters, but more importantly, it has been most excellent that she has been exposed as the biggest of rosters amongst rosters in the government. That somehow, the fact that she seemed to think and operate under the misapprehension that rules of accountability din't apply to her, finally got to see the light of public scrutiny was wonderful thing. Furthermore, it showed that this government really isn't any kind of government to end entitlements any more than it is a government of adults. Witless, shameless and gormless, the government tried to ride out the impossibly scandalous as some minor glitch in proceedings.
If anything can rob the government of its dignity, authority and gravitas, it is these kinds of scandals. Bronwyn Bishop and her travel perks have singlehandedly reduced this government to a joke.
Between July 1992 and June 1993 the backbencher had spent $93,456 of taxpayers' money on airfares and car hire while criss-crossing the nation and – at the same time – undermining John Hewson's leadership of the Coalition.
Bishop had form when it came to travel. On one occasion, between 1987 and 1988, she had allegedly hired a helicopter – again at taxpayers' expense – to take her from a fete to a dog show because, as her staffer Ellis Glover told me, she didn't want to be late.
But it was not just Bishop's travel expenses that caused concern amongst her colleagues. It was also her fund-raising methods.
Four months before the 1990 federal election the state executive of the NSW Liberal Party ordered Bishop to stop going outside the organisation to raise funds for her re-election campaign. This followed a cocktail party in which she reportedly received pledges of up to $5000 a head, money she wanted to put into a private bank account for use as she saw fit.
Bishop was told this breached party guidelines. No member of parliament, or candidate, was entitled to accept money on the party's behalf for their own campaigning. That was the responsibility of the finance committee.
These are not failures of the system as claimed by Tony Abbott; they are rightly - as characterised by Malcolm Turnbull - Bronwyn Bishop's own character failings writ large, driving right by common sense with pedal to the metal.
At this point in time, it is a tragedy that there is still so much more time before they have to call an election.
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