Blues In The Key Of 18C

'The Right To Be A Bigot' Politics Truly Sucks

I don't mean to write a lot about politics or economics. It just ends up that way. I couldn't imagine being a real life political correspondent covering the comings and going in Canberra. I imagine it would be quite insular and tedious to begin with, but made worse by the rhetorical games and the not-answering-your-question-but-shoving-my-agenda thing that politicians do that makes bullshit out of important subjects and perhaps does more to obfuscate things rather than reveal.

The modern cadre of journo covering politics would have the added horror of having to follow politicians through social media as well as having to translate the politi-speak employed by the politicians into plain English. It's not an enviable job. Back in the day when Peter Smark, Peter Ellingsen and Alan Ramsey wrote for the Fairfax, you never got the feeling that they got too exasperated even when the going got silly or for that matter violent as it did in Tiananmen Square.

Then again, they didn't come up against the wall of bullshit that gets erected daily by our contemporary politicians. The wall of bullshit can get so high, it can get a man with no idea and no policies of merit, get voted in to become Prime Minister of the land. That's some steep bullshit.

I can't really imagine what it's like to be Katherine Murphy or Laura Tingle who have had to work the press gallery in Canberra during the Abbott Government, because some of what they've written lately betrays a quiet disillusion with government, politics and what politics can achieve in this country, given the calibre of people we've voted in. I mean, it's bad enough blogging this stuff. Doing it for work would suck.

That in a roundabout way brings me to this current brouhaha they are having down in Canberra to do with the Racial Discrimination Act part 18C. The Liberal Party claims with the highest possible ground can muster, that 18C interferes with freedom of expression. To recap, this notion exists because conservative commentator Andrew Bolt got himself into a spot of bother over vilifying somebody for not being Aboriginal enough. It's stretching things. This then gave enough impetus for the Coalition government to try and rewrite this little section that says you can't offend and humiliate people, and George Brandis infamously championed the cause of people's right to be a bigot.

If the great crusade for freedom of expression culminates with the right for people to be bigots, then you have to think maybe you took a wrong turn somewhere. Surely you'd think the moment those words left his lips, George Brandis might have thought, "hang on, maybe I'm giving ammunition to the wrong people?" After all, the first thing that sprang into my mind was the line from 'Catch-22':

"Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop, or spic.”

If you're arguing for a special, specific spot to protect plain obnoxious assholes from the Racial Discrimination Act, maybe you're arguing too fine a point to be called 'freedom of speech'. If you want a special exemption from the RDA, and that exemption is to be allowed to offend people and humiliate them by calling them words like nigger, kike, wop/wog or spic, (or abo, boong, chink or gook too!), maybe it doesn't say much about the free press or freedom of expression in this country? After all, what kind of press is going to say, refer to Mr. Obama as a nigger and cite freedom of expression to allow it, and by extension, not to cop to the judgment and opprobrium such a description would earn them?

Maybe it just says more about George Brandis and his own tremendous, irrepressible desire to be a bigot? Is it really a win for freedom of speech if the upshot of changing this act is so that Andrew Bolt can use the bully pulpit of his radio microphone to vilify people without much of a voice in our community? Maybe this is simply too hard asking the party of "ditch-the-witch" to consider. Maybe it's just too hard for them to comprehend.

Think of all the things this government doesn't support, like a bill of rights. Or the things it chooses to censor, treating its own citizens like children. It goes after artists for fear their work might be paedophilia; it censors films that point to the corrupt nature of power, like 'Salo'; you can't argue this wowser government is doing everything it possibly can to protect freedom of expression. How can all this fixation and fuss over 18C be anything but the desire to be bigoted and not to be punished for it? One can't possibly take this bunch on their word about this principle.

So here we are, folks - a Parliament busily arguing the imagined merits of rewriting 18C. Read it and weep.

View From The Couch - 28/Feb/2017

Oscars Mix Up

I don't really have anything to add to the chaos that resulted from the wrong movie being announced as winner. I just want to say it's just a fuck up and nobody was killed or injured. It'll pass.
In the mean time, congrats to all the winners. It feels all so faraway, really.

I just noticed 'Piper' won Best Animated Short. I feel very happy for Adrian Belew who did the score for that short film. He's been posting updates on the progress of that project on Facebook and I know what it means to him, so congratulations are definitely in order there.

Clean Coal? The Banks Don't Think So

This is one of those funny things that happen because the politics is so retrograde and politicians so inept in this country - APRA is saying banks can't be allowing investment into 'clean coal' projects because they have every chance of being a stranded asset in the future. That's basically the banks telling the party of the banks to get their policy on renewable energies and emissions control sorted out properly.

What's amazed about the intransigence and the grandstanding about not doing anything to control emissions except Direct (in)Action by the Coalition Government is that given the vagaries of a two party system, if they don't control the policies to do with climate change, it's going to fall upon the ALP and the Greens to devise an ETS and renewable targets; and when that happens, it won't be as favourable to the business sector as the one they could devise on their own.

I can't believe I'm arguing for it, but essentially, the Liberals and Nationals need to get their shit together and sort out a proper set of policies if they don't want to be consigned to the waste basket of history. Which, is not a bad thing for me, but it boggles the mind that these politicians can't figure out the ramification of their own political snafu into which they've snookered themselves.

But Of Course Policy Isn't Their Strong Suite

Peter Hartcher thinks this lot are so inept, they're missing oral the sitters that could easily be dispatched and be good policy.

Australia's need for more power plants, roads, rail, bridges, ports and airports is dire. Ken Henry, former secretary of the Treasury and now chair of National Australia Bank, made the point about Australia's failure forcefully this week: 

"We do not have the infrastructure capacity to support today's population, far less the population of the future," he told the Committee for Economic Development of Australia on Thursday. 

"On the basis of official projections of Australia's population growth, our governments could be calling tenders for the design of a brand new city for two million people every five years; or a brand new city the size of Sydney or Melbourne every decade; or a brand new city the size of Newcastle or Canberra every year. Every year.
"But that's not what they are doing. Instead, they have decided that another

3 million people will be tacked onto Sydney and another 4 million onto Melbourne over the next 40 years ... 

"And even if we do manage to stuff an additional 7 million people into those cities what are we going to do with the other 9 million who will be added to the Australian population in that same period of time? Have you ever heard a political leader addressing that question? Do you think anybody has a clue? At the very least, we are going to have to find radical new approaches for infrastructure planning, funding and construction." 

Without sensible solutions to hand, politicians are turning to extreme ones. Tony Abbott's speech on Thursday night is an example. He proposed cutting the immigration intake to take pressure off housing prices: "Why not say to the people of Australia," posed Abbott, "we'll cut immigration to make housing more affordable?"

This is remarkable. This is a former prime minister who presided over Australia's normal, relatively large immigration intake who now calls for it to be cut.

Yeah sounds about right.

Coming To Think Of It, Neither Is Mathematics

Part of the problem is that Malcolm Turnbull is so hamstrung that he can't really make policies that could save his neck, get past his own party. This is compounded by the odd politicking of Tony Abbott to destroy polling figures for Turnbull but also offer idiotic advice for which nobody asked.

There's even rampant speculation that the Right wing of the Liberal Party might head for a spill and install Peter Dutton as Malcolm Turnbull's replacement. The joke is out of the bag and is getting ridiculed soundly.

Here's the thing. Let's say they do this and remove Malcolm Turnbull.
Will Malcolm Turnbull have any reason left to stay in politics? Likely not, seeing that it's unlikely he'll ever be PM again.
What happens if a pissed-off Malcolm Turnbull then resigns on the spot to spite the party and the government loses its 1 seat majority right there. The new PM - presuming it's Peter Dutton, but it doesn't really matter who - immediately has to go to the GG and say he doesn't have the numbers;  so it's election time all over again and the electorate will punish them for the shenanigans.

That the Coalition would have to be sub-75 IQ to attempt the switch was my first guess but... you never know your luck in the asylum called Parliament House. These people can't seem to count how many seats they have.

Back To The Moon

SpaceX have announced, some time next year they're going to send 2 people around the orbit of the Moon.

"This will be a private mission to a paying customer," said company Chief Executive Elon Musk. 

"This should be incredibly exciting."

He declined to identify the individuals, or say how much they would pay for the weeklong mission, except to say that it was "nobody from Hollywood".

Musk said the two prospective tourists knew each other.

The flight would last about a week, circle the moon and head out deeper into space before returning to Earth. 

"Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration," the company said in a statement.

"Other flight teams have also expressed strong interest, and we expect more to follow. Additional information will be released about the flight teams, contingent upon their approval and confirmation of the health and fitness test results."

All I can say is that if I had the kind of success Elon Musk has had, he's doing exactly what I would want to do. Actually Ido have one more thing to say, and that is this: in his fiction, Robert Heinlein predicted that private enterprise would get us to the moon. Even though he lived to see NASA do it, his concept was always along the lines a maverick, enterprising business person putting together the project on his own and getting it done. Elon Musk is like a character straight out of 'The Moon Is A  Harsh Mistress'. That's somewhat exciting. Maybe there will be more things to grok in the near future.

News That's Fit To Punt - 13/Feb/2017

The Weekend From (The Hottest Part Of) Hell

Goodness, we survived that one. It was nice to be forewarned about how awful it was going to be. It's only the middle of February and apparently we've smashed heat records for February. We've smashed number of days over 35 degrees in a summer, and we've simply not seen heatwave like this. The news tonight is that there will be more on the way.

It was good then to see our idiot Treasurer Scott Morrison wave around a lump of coal telling us coal was the future when clearly the future was here and it was a furnace-like summer, just as predicted by the science over 30years ago. It's not much fun being vindicated but there you have it. And it's staggering to note the Coalition still want to carry on with their pantomime of pretending none of theses going on, and that somehow doing more of the same is going to improve things.

Naturally, the government got a pasting from Lenore Taylor in the Guardian over the weekend.
Katherine Murphy was equally pointed about the Coalition Government's antics. Her headline read:

Scott Morrison brings coal to question time: what fresh idiocy is this?

I know I keep bringing it up but Machiavelli wrote that the moment a government allows itself to be held in contempt, that's when it really loses. This is true of Princes and Democracies according to the man who had ample opportunity to witness both modes of government. Here, we have a government that finds new depths of stupidity and wonders why its polls are so devastatingly bad.

At this point in history it is clear that the Coalition Government is bankrupt of ideas. For all this talk about being the economic managers, three years into this government, it's looking like they haven't got a grip the economy, they're trying to claw back non-existent monies from the poor on welfare, and they're helpless in the face of the sheer force of nature unleashing a historic heatwave. They can't talk about it, because it exposes them to the fact that they dismantled what little policy was in place to combat it, and that they have spent the last decade fighting very hard not to do anything about the existential threat of our times. All they can do is muster up some blame game on to the ALP - of whom it must be said were also reluctant in bringing in the ETS, which in turn got them voted out.

Ten years on from the election Kevin Rudd won trying to combat climate change, went have a government that has steadfastly refused to do anything worth doing.

Still, it's quite the sight to see these Coalition frontbenchers hyukking it up with lump of coal between them as if they've made a point. Most of Australia with an understanding of climate science were looking at that as the moment the Coalition refused to pull their collective ostrich heads out of the air conditioned holes in the ground. I don't know how to say this politely, but what they are doing is criminal negligence.

Of course over the weekend, a township went up in smoke and fire fighters were out there in conditions labeled 'catastrophic' as they fought blazes across the state. The contrast couldn't have been starker, the irony deeper. Scott Morrison and the coalition are going to regret that stunt.

UPDATE: Nick Xenophon blocked the 4bn bill to cut welfare to fund the NDIS. he labelled it "dumb policy and dumb politics". As you do with such policy and politics.

Liars' Scissors

The revenue is shrinking, mostly thanks to tanked commodity prices and the sluggish demand for iron ore and coal from China. The Australian establishment is a bit in denial about China with its clockwork 6-7% annual GDP growth. The closest thing to the string of 6-7% figures China has been posting in the last decade - in the face of the GFC and post-GFC era no less - was the run of steady 7% returns Bernie Madoff's Ponzi fund was allegedly delivering for its members. Think about that for a moment.

Anyway, the point is, the deficit is growing, so the natural thing the Coalition Government wants to do is make cuts. The plan this week is to cut welfare and give it to the NDIS. Yes, the NDIS was a great idea that was put in to place by Julia Gillard's ALP government, and everybody knew the time it was unfunded, but it was so important it had to be done. Now that the Coalition arena government, they've decided that the way they'll fund it is by cutting welfare. The kinds of money they're talking about is $3billion, with the full funding for the NDIS clocking in at $21billion with about half of that coming from the Commonwealth, the rest coming from other disability sector. It all feels like robbing Peter and Paul to pay Mary with the shaky hand.

Here's the thing. This government is letting $50billion slip through their fingers just this year while they do this little ugly shuffle. Yes, and that's just the Gas multinationals walking away without paying tax. I kid you not, this is the level of incompetence this government has sunk to in order not to have the big end of town pay its fair share. But it wants to claw back imaginary debts from welfare recipients, cut their welfare and use that money to fund the NDIS. It's so low, you can't but help call it what it is: depraved.

It's a bit like the Titanic is going down not because it hit the iceberg but because the captain opened the Kingston valve, letting the water in. Then they're rushing to shuffle beds in the sick bay. But they want you to believe they're the better managers of the ship's affairs.

A Repressed Bastard

People really thought Malcolm Turnbull was going to be something different. With the departure of Cory Bernardi and the string of bad news his government has had over the summer, this is just not going to happen. In fact, I came across this little bit with this worthy quote:

(It is true that Mr Turnbull is very rich. Just last year he gave the Liberal Party $1.75 million; an unthinkably large sum, probably even nearly enough to buy a two-bedroom flat in Sydney. And it is equally true that Bill Shorten hangs out with billionaires. It's just that neither man much likes to be reminded of either truth.) 

"This is what people miss about Malcolm," one colleague observed happily after the spray. 

"They think he's a repressed social moderate. Actually, he's a repressed bastard."

It's nice to see people spell it out. You don't get to be Malcolm-Turnbull-rich being a social moderate. You get there by being a bastard. He got to be Prime Minster by being a bastard. Let's not kid ourselves that he's anything but the 100%, genuine, full-hide, shameless, bastard we expect the 1%-ers to be.

Listen up folks, he is the class enemy no. 1.

News That's Fit To Punt - 08/Feb/2017

That John Alexander?

Long time readers know of my immensely low pinion of John Alexander as tennis commentator. He was simply terrible, in as much as he offered no technical insight and often ascribe bad motives to the characters of the players, much like an armchair psychology buff. A typical line of John Alexander commentary would be that a player X missed a shot because he has a bad character. It drove me away from watching tennis on channel 7.

Anyway, it has been the big surprise of his time in politics that he backs building a high speed rail network in this country, and all for the right reasons. He is still continuing his push, and even getting called a crusader for it.

Crusading Turnbull government MP John Alexander, who has supported a debate about negative gearing, said vision and innovation needed to replace the "debilitating political argument" about housing. 

A bipartisan committee chaired by Mr Alexander backed his vision for high-speed rail, recommending the government seek proposals for a link between the two major cities, and evaluate ways to raise private capital through value capture. 

Under that model, previously trumpeted by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, major infrastructure is privately funded by the increase in land values that accompanies the creation of new or larger cities made possible by that infrastructure.

(edit) 

"It would appear there's a perfect storm of opportunity to liberate [regional] cities through high-speed rail," Mr Alexander previously told Fairfax Media. "You will push up prices enormously around Goulburn; people will be delighted." 

But he warned on Tuesday the report's ambitious goals were only achievable if all three levels of government co-operated and were "willing to forgo individual revenues to ultimately maximise total revenues". 

Mr Turnbull and the new assistant minister to the treasurer, Michael Sukkar, have promised the government will say more about housing affordability this year, as Labor continues to push for negative gearing reform.

It's kind of crazy that the only person in government making any bloody sense is John Alexander.

About That Housing Situation...

Turns out the record private sector debt is now sitting at about a trillion dollars, and the cracks are beginning to show. Don't be fooled by the price rises in Sydney and Melbourne, there's substantial pressure on the housing bubble right now.

Homeowners, consumers and property investors around Australia are making more calls to financial helplines as three warning signs back up the spike in demand: mortgage arrears are creeping up, lenders' bad debt provisions have increased and personal insolvencies are near an all-time high.

"It's steadily out of control -- I don't know of too many financial counselling services where demand doesn't exceed supply," said Fiona Guthrie, chief executive officer of Financial Counselling Australia, who says the biggest increase in calls is from people suffering mortgage stress. "There are more people who have got mortgages that they can't afford to pay."

(edit) 

"There's so much household debt that a couple of rate hikes here would completely knock the wind out of the housing market, and a lot of people would be impacted by it," said Gareth Aird, economist at Commonwealth Bank.That's partly why he doesn't think the RBA will lift rates until 2018 at the earliest. 

While most borrowers in Sydney have plenty of equity in their homes as prices keep rising, that's not the case elsewhere. In the mining state of Western Australia, which is struggling to cope with the end of an investment boom, more than 10 per cent of mortgage holders have little or no equity buffer, according to a Roy Morgan report last week. In South Australia and Queensland, 8 per cent and 7.2 per cent of borrowers respectively are in negative equity. 

That may not matter if you're a homeowner with a secure job and comfortably servicing your mortgage. But Australia's labour market is far from solid, with the RBA citing it as one of the economy's biggest uncertainties. The jobless rate rose for the second straight month in December to 5.8 per cent, while underemployment -- the number of workers wanting more hours -- is near an all-time high. At the same time, wages growth is the lowest on record.

It's notably unaffordable, everybody's been so eager to get into it, there are signs of housing being over-bought everywhere. It's okay in the main but the fracture lines are running elsewhere. Hmmm...

The truth is that the RBA sort of glommed into this problem by keeping rates low for such a long time, and because nobody's ever had the negative signal for the market, there's a profound belief that it only goes in one direction, up. All the while they invited the other parts of the economy needed the low interest rates, but also, by under-measuring inflation they've given themselves even more reasons to keep the rates low. If the average household debt is 187% of income, you know it's not sustainable - but all the while they've not really addressed the irrational exuberance.  

Politics being what is, its practitioners like to emphasise different parts of problems instead of talking about the private sector debt for what it is, and despite the more-than-abundant evidence that there's a  property bubble in progress, the politicians have sought to characterise all this as a 'housing affordability' problem. Implicit in this shifting of focus is the idea that the problem isn't with the property bubble, it's with the people who can't afford to get in on the same RBA-funded gravy train investment. Even more pernicious in that shifty little manoeuvre is the idea that they want to keep the asset price gains, and to that end - all the politicians are property owners and investors, as well as the big wigs at the RBA - these people will do and say anything to talk down the bubble. A simple cui bono examination explains how the interest rates stay low in a bid to keep the asset prices inflated.

As somebody who dabbles in the equities market, I find the utter lack of caution for the bubble to be quite absurd. Markets by their very nature are meant to go upend down. The fact that the housing market in Australia hasn't fallen to historic norms in a very long time, can only mean there's long way to fall when the perfect storm will hit.

Housing never falls, right? We all love housing. In case you're wondering how this all shows up in our political rhetoric, have a look at this next one:

"I've Got Mine, You Can't Have Yours" Says Malcolm Turnbull

This is pretty ugly.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has unleashed a blistering attack on Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, slamming him as a "simpering sycophant" and a "parasite" who yearns for his own harbourside mansion. 

The energetic end to Question Time came after Mr Shorten launched his own barbs at the Prime Minister, accusing him of attacking families, attacking standards of living, of being tough on pensioners and soft on banks. 

"The Prime Minister is seriously the most out-of-touch personality to ever hold this great office of Prime Minister," Mr Shorten said. 

Mr Turnbull's response, which led to the rare display of Coalition members thumping their desks, was brutal and an effort to counter attacks on his personal wealth just days after he revealed his $1.7 million donation to the Liberal Party. 

Mr Turnbull said Mr Shorten was a "would-be tribune of the people" and accused him of rising to prominence by networking with prominent Melbourne businessmen like Richard Pratt. 

"There was never a union leader in Melbourne that tucked his knees under more billionaire's tables than the Leader of the Opposition," he said. 

"He lapped it up, yes, he lapped it up." 

The Prime Minister accused Mr Shorten of "knocking back Dick Pratt's Cristal" and looking forward to living at the personal expense of taxpayers. 

"This sycophant, blowing hard in the House of Representatives, sucking hard in the living rooms of Melbourne, what a hypocrite," Mr Turnbull said.
"They call themselves the Labor Party; well Mr Speaker, manual labour is a Mexican band as far as they are concerned. Most of them have never done a day's work in their lives."

If you are an egalitarian liberal as Malcolm Turnbull claims he is, how can he begrudge his fellow citizen for wanting a Harbourside Mansion when he has one himself? I mean, what's wrong with that aspiration if it's good enough for himself? 

How can Bill Shorten be a parasite just because he has had career benefactors, when Malcolm Turnbull himself had a career benefactor in Kerry Packer? People need a break here and there. What is so morally objectionable about that reality? 

It's really weird how the conservatives have a thing about harbourside mansions. Barnaby Joyce recently said people should move out of Sydney because not everybody can afford a harbour views. If you notice, its only the coalition talking about harbourside mansions. It's not as if the ALP's in Parliament screaming everybody needs a harbourside mansion. 

You'd think these people never watched 'The Castle'. 

 

The Tyranny Of Stupid

Age Of Entitlement Is In Full Swing

We kind of knew way back in 2010 that the current crop of Liberal and National Party MPs running for government were intellectually deficient. If that seems like a big claim, then you really need to go back and reread the headline after the same mob got into office after 2013, because it's been gaffe city and the outer-suburbs of loonyville ever since. The most symbolic bit of rhetoric might have been WTE - that's Worst Treasurer Ever! - Joe Hockey made the remark that the age of entitlement was over, and proceeded to cut welfare. In an era when wealth inequality was increasing at an ever accelerating rate and when the well-heeled scions - the most entitled people with the most entitlements society confers upon them - start cutting at welfare in the name of ending entitlement, no amount of double-think is going to get you over the line of acceptability. Accept that, and you may as we'll get a lobotomy.

On the whole, it is unsurprising then that Tony Abbott's time in the Lodge was shorter even than Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd, and that Joe Hockey would be dispatched right out of Parliament in the dumpster fire purge that followed. We should pay attention to The Hon. WTE Joe Hockey because now, he's the ambassador to Washington as well as pulling down his MP superannuation. Entitlements and double-dipping much Joe? This mentality of sticking their hands deep into the public purse for personal gain seems to be ingrained in the Coalition MPs.

Now, it appears it is all coming to light. Susan Ley this month is the first casualty of the war in Turnbull's cabinet. Bronwyn Bishop - she of helicopter-gate notoriety - blamed to socialists, which garnered her a new round of ridicule, and today Julie Bishop is being scrutinised for her polo trip on the public purse.

The thing that is striking about all this is that they really don't care how this looks to the world. Whether it is Susan Ley or Bronwyn Bishop, they put up a front saying they're allowed to be spending public money on expensive personal jaunts, and as such the scrutiny itself is unwarranted. It's staggering how they can't put the two together and see how bad they look. You wonder how we got to this point, but maybe it was simply always thus. But it doesn't help to have such stupid people fronting for the government.

The Dearth Of Thinking Talent

I know I keep writing about this, but not a week goes by without making itself apparent in the public discourse, so here I go again...

One of the problems with any long running group is that it get sclerotic. The most notable feature of the current LNP Coalition government lineup is just how lacking in intellectual firepower they are. There is not a single one of them who won't come out with some neo-liberal ideological cant as their substitute for actual thinking. It used to serve them well until the GFC happened, but the GFC has opened up a problem for the neo-liberal ideology that it has proven itself to be entirely self-serving for the wealthy investor classes. Worse still, many of the current problems arise out of the long pursuit of neo-liberalism since John Hewson's manifesto Fightback. Doing more of the same is clearly not going to solve those very same problems.

As I pointed out a couple days ago, the verdict is in and this government isn't very good at managing anything. If Tony Abbott's time did anything, it was to put the Australian economy in full reverse. When you add up all the information out there, you get the picture that this government actually hasn't got the faintest clue as to what to do. Worse still, they don't exactly have the next John Hewson to give them a blueprint. What they have is more of the same guff being generated from the IPA, which in turn is just reciting article of the neo-liberal faith.

There's simply nobody doing proper thinking worth spit on the conservative side of politics. Worse still, because they don't do any thinking, they enter the arena without much thought, and are incapable of creating the kind of solutions to problems that don't first kowtow to ideology. We are at the point in history where whatever worked for Reagan and Thatcher and by extension Howard, Blair and Clinton are not going to work any more. Yet there is simply a dearth of thinking that actually is going to serve the greater good, coming form the right. Instead it's the usual user-pay, trickle-down, privatise-the-lot, tax less, cut-welfare, - see how it has become a self-parody? - policies they trot out as if that is some kind of panacea. As if the problem with the ALP government under Rudd and Gillard was that they couldn't do neo-liberalist economics properly.

You wish politics hadn't become so idiotic, and surely the Left have made their own contributions to the general stupidity going around, but it is surely the intellectual failings of the Right that have turned our economy around from surprising success to doldrum failures. And there's only more of the same to come from whence that came.

I Didn't Expect This

This is utter hearsay but here goes...
Years ago, somebody told me they once had dealings with Malcolm Turnbull, and they came to the conclusion that he was a crook. I don't know on what basis this was said to me, or what Malcolm Turnbull might have done to earn such scorn, but basically, the advice being offered was, "if you have a choice to vote for Malcolm Turnbull to be Prime Minister, don't".

He lamented on the day Malcolm Turnbull became opposition leader the first time and said, if Australia ever elected Malcolm Turnbull, it would rue the day. And then the Godwin Grech thing happened and  this person was relieved that Malcolm Turnbull would leave politics. Of course subsequent events have gone entirely in the opposite direction and he is now our Prime Minster, has been for a year and we still don't know what the hell he stands for.

We think he stands for Malcolm Turnbull being Prime Minister and not much else. I know it's hard having a Parliament with a 1 seat majority, but it's not like the Turnbull Government is setting the place on fire, getting stuff done, or for that matter passing sensible legislation. It's not as if he's doing anything that he hinted he might want to do, should he ever become Prime Minister; it's more like he just sits around basking in the warm glow of the office of Prime Minister, swanning around going to the cricket or whatever. It sure doesn't look like a government with a solid agenda, certainly no more than the "Jobs & Growth" slogan it took to the election, and even allowing for the alarming banality of that slogan which it is underperforming immensely, his government doesn't even seem to be even about that. (Judging by his cabinet ministers it seems to be about shoving public monies into their purses as quickly as possible)

I think Turnbull is just going to try to ride out as long as possible, and then when they do finally oust him, he's going to enjoy the reckoning that the Liberals have nobody with a brain with whom they will replace him. If people had high expectations for Malcolm Turnbull, he's sure not living up to them, but more to the point, he's incredibly pleased and satisfied that he does't have to live up to expectations. He is Prime Minister. He will always have been a Prime Minister, an exclusive club that he can forever flaunt to his dying day. He will be in the history books forever, his name is immortal.

It's a pity the rest of us are the ones who have to pay for such indulgences. 

Maybe we should take solace in the fact that he's not completely fucking up the very institutions our country while he swans about being Prime Minister of Malcolm-ness. Maybe this is all there is to the man, and the most important thing about him is still, that he is not Tony Abbott. 

News That's Fit To Punt - 14/Dec/2016

In Case You Missed It, They Really Suck

What can you say? Our Federal Government under the Coalition truly suck at this governing thing.:

Yesterday’s quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) growth numbers reveal two things with crystal clarity. First, that the international recovery following the global financial crisis (GFC) is well underway and gathering pace. Second, that Australia is the one stand-out economy in the developed world missing out on the strengthening tailwinds.

That bit we knew. If you care to work through the article, you'll see comparisons of just how bad our government has been handling the economy at least since 2013, which happens to be when they took over form Labor.

The take home bit is this bit:

GDP growth — quarterly and annual — are not the only indicators on which Australia is lagging among developed countries. Most countries are also recording steady growth in employment. Australia’s job numbers appear stable, but hours worked per person are declining. 

Australia is one of only seven countries now recording lower real wages, and one of just 13 still increasing gross debt. It is the only OECD economy with the quadrella of declining GDP growth, worsening employment, declining wages and deepening debt. 

There can now be no doubt that, as Crikey tentatively proposed in October, Australians in 2013 exchanged arguably the best economic administrators in the developed world for unarguably the worst.

Yup. They'e doing a terrible job. Who would have guessed? Who?

Did Leanne Call You?

I got a robocall from Leanne today. I picked up the phone and off she went, railing on like some old school friend you never wanted to hear from again, banging on about the pension and her dad who worked hard all his life. Turns out a lot of people got the call.

The robo-call is anonymous, with no authorisation or hint of its origin, but Fairfax Media has confirmed it is the work of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, which has launched an 11th-hour campaign against the January 1 changes.

The Abbott-era reforms, passed with the help of the Greens in 2015, will redistribute some income to needier pensioners while saving $2.4 billion over four years from the wealthy. 

The asset limit will increase substantially, meaning those underneath it will gain an average of $30 a fortnight. But those above the threshold - about 330,000 people - will lose part or all of their pension.

Labor opposed the measure in 2015, but this year pledged not to wind it back. In recent weeks, pensioners have received letters from Centrelink informing them of the imminent changes.
Acting social services minister Mitch Fifield said the changes made the pension more sustainable and the family home would continue to be excluded from the assets test.

"Pensioners and their families should not believe the scare campaign from an organisation not even willing to put their name to their robo-calls," he said.

I don't know. I get that it's an important issue but Leanne was hardly persuasive. 

WasteCONnex Woes

Here's a truly sucky moment. 

A Sydney man whose home was compulsorily acquired by the state government for the WestConnex motorway project is facing Christmas in jail after he was refused bail for allegedly breaking into his former house. 

Van Ngo, 68, was charged with damaging property and entering a premises without a lawful excuse after he allegedly broke into his former home at 84 Campbell Street, in St Peters in Sydney's inner west, hours after being evicted.

Until his eviction and arrest on Friday, Mr Ngo was the last remaining home owner along a strip of houses in Campbell Street that have been acquired by the state government for the $16.8 billion WestConnex motorway project.

On Tuesday, Mr Ngo's bail application was refused in Central Local Court, leaving him facing up to a month in Silverwater prison while his lawyers prepare another bail application in the Supreme Court.

You have to feel for the guy. He probably spent his whole working life paying off that mortgage and in comes the NSW Government building a tollway exchange nobody wants to keep their lobbyists happy. Out on the street got Mr. Ngo for not-enough-on-the-dollar. The people building the White Elephant Tollway are making a killing just on the real estate values even though there's a Bubble going on. These people getting evicted are not getting fair value. You wonder how the Tollway builders and lobbyists live with themselves kicking out other people from their homes.

Politics of Stupor

Twenty Years Of 'Big Stupid' In The Making

For some time now, our polity has been beset by the idiocy, mendacity and disingenuous hypocrisy on all sides. How long does this go back? It may go all the way back to 1996 when we elected the Howard Government when the seeds for all this stupidity - The Big Stupid - were sown. In twenty years we have come a winding tortured road in climate policy where on the one hand we have made commitments to control our carbon emissions, but on a domestic policy level, failed to implement policies to make that happen. If that were the only area we would be in a position to argue, "okay, let's fix that", but we are not; for we seem to have a legion of linked ideological snares that have been set loose upon our nation and try as we might, we cannot seem to untangle the mess.

Case in point might be the desire not to tax the super profits of mining concerns, or the desire to open ever more coal mines like the Adani mine in Queensland, or the fact that the mind ignores the signs that fossil fuel use for energy generation may steeply decline. What's alarming is that the Australian government has had 20 solid years to do something about it and the break down of how we spent that time goes like this:

1. 11 and a half years under John Howard denying it was a problem, being 'sceptical'. Why he opted to be sceptical of scientific findings but not those of armchair conspiracy theorists is unexplained.  
2. 3years under Kevin Rudd trying to implement Carbon Pricing, whereupon the Greens refused to put it through the Senate because it wasn't their version. 
3. The Rudd government worked to implement as many climate sensitive policies as possible and became a major actor at Copenhagen where emissions talks fell apart. 
4. This prompted a retreat and a simultaneous drop in Rudd's support which led to Julia Gillard's ascendancy.
5. Julia Gillard called an election promising not to put in a Carbon Tax. The election resulted in a hung Parliament, and so in order to form government with the help of the teens, she acceded to their wishes and put in Carbon Pricing. 
6. That led to Tony Abbott's opposition claiming that Gillard broke an election promise and promising to remove the aid 'Carbon Tax'. 
7. 3 years of a Gillard Government and the Opposition attacks on its emissions policy led to a complete breakdown in consensus for carbon policy within the Coalition. 
8. When the Coalition won Government, it dismantled the carbon pricing mechanism and replaced it with Direct Action, which is less efficient and is not working to rein in emissions. 
9. 2years of as utterly retrograde and disastrous government-by-tabloid-headline Abbott government, they replace Tony Abbott with Malcolm Turnbull who, having a reputation for having an understanding of the policy area, completely does an about-face and continues with the disastrous policies of his predecessor. 
10. Turnbull goes to an election, and he too gets his own hung Parliament, and so the numbers dictate he continues with the disastrous an stupid policy he would personally not endorse. 

That's the potted history that brings us up to date. Apart form the years the ALP were in government, the Coalition has done very little to even wrestle with the problem. They've done far more damage than any good and any credible observer would have give them negative marks for not trying and active resistance. Worse still, their constituency applauds this rearguard action for the petrochemical industry and fossil fuel interests.

The ugly prognosis is that it's not going get better any time soon. Worse still the Coalition government can't do better because it is in the pockets of these interests and basically would lie through their teeth to keep the idiotic status quo of climate change denial. It's staggering to think that something so important could be left to blow up in our faces because in the minds of these politicians, the interests of the lobby outweigh the interests of the public.

They can argue about it, but they're not really going to give up the money from the special interests.

No Power, No Glory, Just The Big Stupid Please

Australian kids are falling behind in the education stakes. It's not surprising that this is the case given the numbers of people voting for the Coalition. It would appear that the proportion of truly stupid people has increased exponentially, as evinced by the rise of support for One Nation.
In case you missed it, here's an time on what One Nation thinks should be climate policy.

"We are being controlled by the UN and these agreements that have been done for people's self interest and where they are driving our nation as a sovereignty and the economics of the whole lot," Hanson told the gathered media.

Wheee!
Anyway. Signs of a lack of education are here too:

People regularly cite Australia's economic strength and our egalitarianism as reasons why emotion-driven, fact-free and angry populism will not flourish here as it is flourishing in other Western democracies. 

But research recently published by a University of Melbourne academic, Roberto Stefan Foa, and his former Harvard colleague Yascha Mounk, shows that our democratic consensus is fragile too. 

The pair has been researching the attitudes of people in so-called "consolidated" democracies, to the conventions and institutions that comprise those democracies.
They have found a disturbing trend – over time, in all the liberal democracies including Australia, open-ness to the idea of military rule has grown, the number of people who think a democratic system is "bad" has grown, support for the concept of civil rights is less, and fewer people express an interest in politics. This trend is especially pronounced in young people, so-called Millennials. 

In these conditions, populist politicians gain traction by appealing to emotion and bypassing fact altogether. 

These politicians outrage the "elites", precisely because they don't adhere to the values of liberal democracy, which roll all the way back to the Enlightenment. They are playing "our" game but they won't accept the rules we wrote. They don't value rationalism over emotion. They don't abide by the norms so many of us thought (or hoped) were settled, and in this sense they are radical. 

And when you have a Prime Minister who refuses facts as squarely as Turnbull did this week, despite being educated, intelligent and on record as knowing those facts better than most people, we are edging towards the land of the radical, where policy-making is as fantastical as a go-nowhere boat trip over a bleached-out coral reef.

In other words, the Big Stupid is like a genie unleashed from a bottle already trampling across fairly fundamental philosophical positions upon which things like public discourse and democracy are built.
As George Lucas joked in his script for 'American Graffiti', Rome indeed wasn't burnt in a day.

The funny thing is that the headlines tell us our education system is underperforming. That because of this, our economy is suffering. We already know what we should be doing, - fund the full Gonski - but we have a government that won't.

not educating the populace suits oligarchical interests of the country in as much as more ignorance seems to directly correlate with voting Coalition. If one were of an academic mindset, such readily-made correlations would be embarrassing but that discounts the fact that this bunch of Coalition politicians know no shame. They just want power for the pay-check. It's quite extraordinary how such a situation came about, it is far easier understand that as Trump noted, the conservatives of any land would "love" the 'poorly educated'. Not, not the un-educated, but the poorly educated - which clearly means those who not only weren't left alone to come to stupid choices, but those who were educated so poorly they were given more wrong answers than right ones, and are definitely more inclined to vote for the conservatives. The cynicism involving education beggars belief.

The Stupid wants more Stupidity. It needs more Stupidity to sustain itself - nay, grow - and so Stupidity begets the Big Stupid that we have come to.

Interest Rates, Property, Banking, Greed, And Fear

The ticking time bomb is the housing affordability crisis and the Property Bubble.
The long and short of it is that all our banks have committed vast sums of money into private sector debt. It can't afford for the asset values to fall, or else all those big loans will go bad and wipe out the banks. Our society is too reliant on the four banks and Macquarie Bank because they are too big to fail. And so in order not make things harder for them or their mortgage customers, the RBA has eased interest rates to historic lows, just to keep the soufflé going. Will the Bubble pop? Over the dead body of the RBA.

And it's been going like this for 8 years going on 9 since the GFC. It has gotten so big, nobody can contemplate what a correction would look like.We don't even know what might trigger such a correction. It's bit like living the shadow of a very big object that is precariously balanced, but we marvel at the engineering that has so far kept it from toppling.

The Federal Government knows what it has to do. It has to wind back Negative Gearing. It has to implement rules to limit investors, it has to scrutinise foreign investors more, and it has to provide more supply, and more infrastructure. It's not exactly doing any of these things. The Federal government under the Coalition has argued that retaining the AAA credit rating is necessary in order to keep interest rates low. Except, they're already low enough. All that the low interest rates accomplish is help investors take more risks in the market.

It's not surprising then that nothing gets done. Nobody wants to fix it. So one of these days, there will be something that triggers a collapse and then we'll se how many people get out of the market ahead. but the long this goes, the bigger the impact is going to be and more people will get wiped out. It's like the Coalition government is committing Australians to play chicken with the biggest purchase of their lives.

That Infrastructure Issue

What little infrastructure they're building, the Federal government is for of building the wrong ones. This is because they are in the pockets of the general construction lobby and this lobby likes to build unless toll roads. Of course, they're so careful not to lose the AAA credit rating, they're not investing in much else, and this has led to a contraction in the economy this quarter.

Economic growth over the year to September was just 1.8 per cent, a big comedown from 3.1 per cent over the year to June, which was itself revised down from 3.3 per cent. 

"This is the second-worst economic growth result in 25 years," Labor treasury spokesman Chris Bowen said. "It's only the fourth negative quarter since 1991, and on the only other occasions there were good reasons. In 2011 it was dealing with Cyclone Yasi in Queensland, in 2009 it was the greatest international downturn since the Great Depression, and in 2000 it was the aftermath of the Sydney Olympics. It is also the case that this figure is worse than 2011, worse than 2000, and comparable with 2009, in the middle of the global financial crisis."

Mr Morrison said the unexpected result would be incorporated in the mid-year budget update to be delivered on December 19.
The government itself was responsible for some of the decline in GDP, with a wind-back in its spending accounting for 0.1 percentage points of the 0.5 per cent drop.

Mr Morrison said the December update would continue to show the budget on a path to return to balance by 2021. But it was possible the trajectory would change, so that the government supported the economy by investing more in infrastructure upfront in return for bigger cutbacks later, as recommended by the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 

A further slide in business investment knocked another 0.4 points off economic growth, and a partly weather-related slide in construction knocked off 0.3 points.

And so that one went. The thing is, it's not like Australia' economy suddenly found its way into negative growth. It's been a few years now that the mining investment boom was coming off the boil so something had to be done to boost investment. Instead, under Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey, the Coalition government went for cuts and destroyed the automobile manufacturing industry as well. It was hard to decipher what those two idiots wanted except maybe for people to lose their jobs but somehow stay off the dole. One ought to give ScoMo the benefit of the doubt, but it's not looking like he's got a good grip on the problem if he thinks tax cuts to businesses is going to do the trick. At this point in time, even the Coalition government ought to know that trickle-down bullshit just doesn't work, and that rhetoric is long past its use by date.

Is It An Election Or A Circus?

One Of The Most Disturbing Things

By this time all of you with a connection to the internet should know that Donald Trump took a big hit last week, when a 2005 recording was released wherein he displayed the most misogynistic frat-boy sensibility we all suspected he had. In fact if you didn't suspect it or felt compelled to defend it, it probably meant you had it as well. Since then his polls have plummeted, and it's been such a meltdown in the media about it. Republicans who once offered their support to the Donald are now withdrawing it; some are even calling for him to pull out. It's all looking a bit untenable for the Donald.

President Obama has said:

"One of the most disturbing things about this election is just the unbelievable rhetoric coming at the top of the Republican ticket,"

"I don't need to repeat it. There are children in the room."

... which pretty much sums it up. If you thought Mitt Romney giving a speech about the 47% of Americans being freeloaders was damning, this bit of audio consigns Trump to the ranks of those who truly did not deserve to run.

The more interesting thing this week is that Donald Trump's 2005 leaked audio has become something of an enabling cipher for our politicians to discus the American election - something that politicians rightfully avoid doing.

A handful of Australian politicians have now expressed their opinions on the Trump scandal ahead of the second presidential debate. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull labelled Trump's comments "loathsome" and said they deserved the "absolutely universal condemnation that they have received". 

Minister for Women Michaelia Cash said Mr Trump's comments were "demeaning, they were disappointing and they were wrong, full stop". 

Deputy Prime Minister Barnarby Joyce, while labelling Mr Trump's comments as unacceptable, criticised both the Democrats and Republicans for digging up rubbish from each other's past. 

"I just think this whole debate in the United States is turning into a dirty, filthy concoction which belies the respect the American people deserve," he told ABC radio.
"They're all digging up rubbish from each other's past and I just think the whole thing is pretty unsavoury."

It's not just a bunch of nobodies saying this stuff in the press, and that's a little surprising.

Regular sparring partners Pauline Hanson and Derryn Hinch, two of the most outspoken crossbench senators, have exchanged heated words in the hallways of Parliament House about Trump's attitudes to women. 

Fairfax Media's political reporter Fergus Hunter reports that the spat, caught on camera, followed a television interview where the pair were asked about whether Trump should quit the race for the White House. 

As the pair left the television studio and walked on to their next Parliament House engagements, Senator Hinch pursued his Senate colleague over her attitude.
"That you, as a woman, could even make any justification for what he has said and what he has done is just ...," he said. 

"Well, I didn't condone what he said," responded Senator Hanson. 

"No, you said the people of America will decide. If you are even slightly right, then God help the country and God help the world. The man is a sexual predator and he is a disgrace," the former broadcaster said, before getting a lift.

Great Googly-moogly. One can only imagine the rest of that conversation. On the one hand you have the crank Pauline Hanson tacitly trying to continue support for the unsupportable Trump, and on the other side you have a shock-jock-turned-pollie looking for some moral high ground; The two of them arguing over a candidate whose approach to elections was to turn it into a reality show. You can't come up with this stuff.

Australian Labor senator Doug Cameron doubts there will be a Trump presidency.
"Why would any woman in America vote for Trump?" he asked. 

"The sooner he's defeated, or the sooner he gives in the better." 

New Labor MP Emma Husar said Australia would work with whoever was elected, but called Trump a "pig". 

"He's an absolute repugnant animal who deserves to have every single Republican who is well-respected over there walk away from him," she told reporters.

You know, in the days not so long ago, our politicians would have refrained from saying stuff like this. What the hell is Senator Hussar going to do should the Donald pull out an unlikely win and visit Australia? Hide? Apologise? Yes the Donald is a terrible human being, but is it that necessary for a Senator in Australia to be hammering in nails of his political coffin when others inches own country are doing a perfectly good job? It actually doesn't say anything good about our polity. If lack of restraint is Donald Trump's problem, then our politicians could have done better showing that very same restraint.

A World With POTUS Trump

Peter Hartcher has this article:

The US under a President Trump would withdraw Australia's security guarantee and become a "rogue superpower", according to a scholarly analysis commissioned by Australia's Lowy Institute. 

The results would be so dire that the US election is the most consequential for world order since World War II, and the most consequential for the US since the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the report says. 

"For the first time one of the two major party nominees for the presidency, Donald Trump, is campaigning on a platform of weakening the core elements of the international order, including the US alliance system and an open global economy," concludes Thomas Wright from the Brookings Institution in Washington. 

He says Australia's alliance with the US would suffer directly as a result. 

The Republican candidate has said he'd be prepared to re-negotiate or abandon US alliances with Japan, South Korea and NATO, but has not specifically mentioned Australia. 

"Honestly, I think you are probably in the same category" as those US allies, Dr Wright told Fairfax Media. "He just hasn't been asked.

It's a genuinely scary world where Trump's in charge. There's not a lot of conversation about it in Australia, but there's quite a bit of it in Japan where they've budgeted the possibility of a complete US Withdrawal, and just how much money would have to be spent by Japan to fill that vacuum. In short, Japan would have to re-arm in a way that would bring back a proper military. A Trump-led US pull out to from Japan and Okinawa will necessitate Japan return to being a military power.  Presumably the same would apply for Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. Not only would that be a more dangerous world, it would be more expensive in a time when governments don't have money.

Peter Hartcher is so disturbed by this, he wrote a further comment piece on the same topic:

In trying to make believe that Donald Trump is not as dangerous as he promises to be, millions of people have resorted to denialism.
On three levels. 

First, that he could not possibly win. This remains in the hands of events, of course. But even after he was exposed boasting of sexually assaulting women, US betting odds on Sunday gave him one chance in five of taking the presidency. 

Two, that he could not possibly be serious about the things he's said. He does enjoy being outrageous. And on many issues he has had more positions than a yoga instructor. 

(edit) 

The third and final level of denialism is that even if he's elected and even if he tried to press ahead with his policies, the American system would stop him.
Wright agrees that Trump would be frustrated on domestic initiatives by the Congress or Supreme Court. 

But on his foreign policy ideas? Wright's analysis paper, to be published by the Lowy Institute on Monday, says: "He will have a freer hand internationally. There is no body or law that can prevent him from aligning himself with Putin, ignoring an ally, or shaking things up with a far-reaching foreign policy statement. And, as we have seen, grievance against the rest of the world is not just a part of Trump's ideology, it is at its very core."
Denialism is no defence. Trump, even now, is possible. He's serious, and some of his most dangerous ideas could become real.

Well that's all well and good, but our country has very little sway over the electoral outcome in the USA. So denialism or not, there's solid chance that Donald Trump might still survive this round of scandals and end up POTUS and unleash fresh hell. Should that happen, those Australian politicians who slammed him are going to look really dumb for having done so.

Yeah, it's a problem.

Populism And The Politics Of Blame-Throwing

As with Australia, you do wonder how in the hell America got to where they are now. After all, if Pauline Hanson is back, and she's sort of okay with Donald Trump, you know he's appealing to the demographic of wilful ignorance and cranks. That there are so many of them attests to the 'success' of conservative governments who tried to create a populace more prone to populist arguments by degrading the quality of public education.

In ever way possible, the Donald Trump candidacy is a symptom of the anti-intellectual malaise thetas endemic amongst the conservatives. What the Republicans didn't count on was for the election to be hijacked by a reality show host who understood the schema of democracy's prime election as nothing but a popularity contest; And this, was essentially made possible by the very education-deprive populace the conservatives helped neglect - not nurture - who decided to choose the person who made the show more interesting.

The impact of Reality TV in the last 15years has been devastating. It's no coincidence that Pauline Hanson herself was a contestant on dancing with the stars. If one thing these shows have taught the populace, it is the entertainment to be had by having fractious, conflict-generating individuals on the show to stay longer. Donald Trump himself understands this very well, and so went about the primaries behaving more like a boor than a candidate, and still managed to win because he drew upon the votes who understood this dynamic the most. If the Republicans didn't see this coming, that would be because they were complaining about a black man being in the White House a little too much. It would appear their neurosis was entirely misplaced.

View From The Couch - 02/Sep/2016

The Shoe On The Other Foot

There's this old story in Japan called 'Rakuda' - which I've made into a little video you can look up on YouTube. It's about a polite guy who happens to come across the corpse of a gangster, and the gangster's 'Bro' is there to make his day miserable. The Bro sends the mild mannered guy on errands to organise a little wake for the dead gangster, while holdings work tools hostage. Later that night, the two men drink to the dead man. The polite man undertake influence of alcohol turns into a massive bully who returns the bullying spades. Trust me, it's very black but very funny.

Right now, Bill Shorten is that mild mannered man, sticking to the Bro, Malcolm Turnbull. Maybe it's broader, the whole ALP is the polite dude turned drunk and ornery and angry, while the Coalition is the guy who is suddenly on the receiving end of the exact same bullying he dished out.

It's quite the spectacle really, to see a
Government lose a vote in the Lower House. It hasn't happened since 1962 when Menzies had a one set majority, so it's rather telling.

Peter Hartcher has called for Christopher Pyne to get the boot. Pyne has denied it was his fault, which is like the biggest "who farted?" moment in politics I ca remember since... well, I don't know. It is a rather large fart. You'd think the Whip would be in for a bit of whipping from the PM. Even the missing Justice Minister Michael Keenan is trying to dodge blame. Much as I despise Christopher Pyne, I don't think it's on him - it's surely on the Chief Whip for the Liberals. The difficult bit is that it's a woman. Lose her and the Coalition would be told they're dumping the blame on a woman. You can just see it now.

Anyway, it's all come to pass that in the first week the new Parliament sitting, the one seat majority government has already run into an all too predictable ambush. This may be the bit where we're all forced to remember just how well Julia Gillard's government did with two seats. Of course 2 is mathematically 100% better than 1 so this is going to get very interesting very soon.

Or as the raging drunk nice guy says in 'Rakuda', "One thing I learnt is that if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything!"

What's In A Name?

I've been re-reading Bill James' Historical Baseball Abstract since I dug up that section on A-Rod, Jeter and Nomar. The most interesting things in life are in the marginalia. There are two MLB baseball players with the name Billy Hamilton. the one I was familiar with was this guy:

Billy R. Hamilton (born September 9, 1990) is an American professional baseball center fielder for the Cincinnati Reds of Major League Baseball. Hamilton holds the Minor League Baseball single-season stolen base record with 155 steals — 10 higher than the previous Minor League record set by Vince Coleman and 25 more than Rickey Henderson's record set on the Major League level. He also holds the Cincinnati Reds record for most stolen bases by a rookie in a season.[1]

The thing to know about this Billy Hamilton is that he's very fast on the base paths.Now, in the 1890s section of Bill james' big book is a name Billy Hamilton  describing him as the best all round player of 1891, but also, the man with the most steals in the 1890s.The earlier Hamilton it turns out, was just as much a speed demon around the bases as the modern Billy Hamilton.

Hamilton broke into the major leagues in the American Association with the Kansas City Cowboys in 1888. He established himself as a star the following season by batting .301 with 144 runs and 111 stolen bases. In 1890, the Cowboys, who were ceasing operations, sold Hamilton to the Philadelphia Phillies. The next year he led the NL in batting average (.340), runs scored (141) and hits (179). For a third consecutive season, Hamilton led the NL in stolen bases. 

In 1892, Hamilton hit both a leadoff and game-ending home run in the same game. Only Vic Power (1957), Darin Erstad (2000), Reed Johnson (2003) and Ian Kinsler (2009) have accomplished the same feat.[4] He hit .380 in 1893, which led the major leagues.
Philadelphia outfielders Hamilton, Sam Thompson, Ed Delahanty and Tuck Turner all hit over .400 in 1894. That year Hamilton set the all-time standard for most runs scored in a season (198); since then, Babe Ruth has come closest to Hamilton in runs scored, with 177 in 1921, setting the American League and modern MLB record. Hamilton also set the record for most stolen bases in one game, with seven on August 31, 1894. He set the record for most consecutive games scoring one or more runs, with 35 runs in 24 games in July–August 1894.[5] 

Hamilton led the league in steals for a fifth time in 1895. In 1896, Hamilton moved to Boston, for whom he played his final six seasons. Although his numbers declined, Hamilton still scored over 100 runs in all but two of those seasons. 

Hamilton retired after the 1901 season. Over his career he compiled 912 (or 937; see Career total discrepancy) stolen bases, a .344 batting average and 1690 runs in 1591 games; he is one of only three players to average more than one run per game played. His .455 career on-base percentage ranks fourth all-time behind Ted Williams, Babe Ruth and John McGraw, and his 912 stolen bases ranks third behind Rickey Henderson and Lou Brock. 

He is the Philadelphia Phillies career leader in batting average (.361), on-base percentage (.468) and stolen bases (508). He holds Phillies single-season records for on-base percentage (.523 in 1894), runs (196 in 1894), stolen bases (111 in 1891) and times on base (355 in 1894).

I know, it's utter trivia. The two men are not immediately related. It's coincidence - if you have 100,000 names, you will get doubles like any set of baseball cards.

Quick Shots - 27/Aug/2016

Balancing Books On The Backs Of The Poor

Scott Morrison is an ideologue, even under the heavy makeup he wears pretending to be pragmatic. Otherwise it's hard to understand the meaning of his speeches and how they connect to what he does as the Treasurer.

Heading into its fourth year in office, the Coalition government is again warning of a complacency in Australian politico-economic discourse, which blithely accepts rolling budget deficits as normal. 

Tilling the soil for a looming budget savings battle when Parliament resumes, Scott Morrison notes that most Australians have not experienced a recession in their adult lives and thus don't appreciate how terrible they can be. 

This insouciance has allowed for long-run operating shortfalls, and worse, an electorate-wide failure to realise that being structurally in the red is no way to go into a sharp global downturn, even if deficit financing is the obvious response once one occurs. 

Reworking Joe Hockey's infamous age of entitlement message with its notorious "lifters and leaners" dichotomy, Morrison believes too many people pay no tax effectively, and that the country is in danger of sleep-walking into economic distress because of a lack of imagination. And past political will.

And to that extent what he will do is start by cutting the dole. This is while the rich end o town still get to keep their superannuation perks. In other words, he is putting the poorest of Australians first into the firing line in a bid to fix the bottom line of the government. It's a novel idea if you don't really understand what that would mean, and it's an absurd idea if you do understand the ramification of such a course of action. Yet, this is the man.

Just as a contrast, the previous Conservative PM of Britain David Cameron - he of the Brexit vote and other calamities such as austerity - once said during the GFC that one thing his government would not do would be to balance the books of the government on the backs of the poor. Whether he meant it or not, or was able to do as he stated or not, I do not know. However, as positioning statements go, it's a lot better than "lifters and leaners" or "Taxed and Taxed-nots". I guess if you're the party that insists on conserving the class system, it pays to show some class sometimes. Seeing that we live in a class-less society according to the blue bloods, it is not that surprising to find conservatives in this country show no class whatsoever.

For whatever it's worth, this pic was doing the rounds from Get Up!:

He Doesn't Understand The Problem

On a related topic, there's this interesting defence of the Prime Minister's $5 for the homeless person.

This week the Prime Minister spoke with a homeless guy in Melbourne and put $5 in his begging cup. Our mainstream media followed accusations that the PM was "stingy". This story – and picture of the Malcolm and the man with his cup – was reported around the country and was even reported in the New York Times. Now I never tell anyone to vote for any political party and I don't mind when people criticise government policy or lack thereof, but to call Malcolm Turnbull "stingy" is an outrage.

I don't know if it is an outrage. His government just cut $4.00 per week of dole money. If you looked at the $5 charity, it's like he's giving one person a one-off compensation for a shitty cut to benefits while he gives the middle finger to the rest. It's not that the Prime Minister is stingy so much as he doesn't understand that he's part of the problem that keeps the man homeless and on the street.

Malcolm has been here many times, sometimes with cameras and many times without. As the Bible says, good deeds should be in secret. 

He's put on an apron or sometimes just sat and spoken with homeless people in our community. Many times since those days when we were on the brink, the Turnbulls have helped us with breathtaking generosity. 

I happen to know that the help we've received is just the tip of their charitable iceberg. "Stingy" is not a word I'd ever use to describe our PM. 

Imagine the story in the media if the PM had put $100 in the cup? Our culture will be crippled and miserable when we become incapable of seeing an act of compassion.

It would still be myopic of the prime Minister tithing he's doing any good. It's pretty simple. He's the Prime Minister - he should be able to devise policy so there is minimal level housing available to the homeless, if people's homelessness really worried him. And if he can't it can only because he's too stupid or too incompetent or too unwilling to do just that; honestly the problem isn't whether the Prime Minister is stingy or not.

Gosh you know what? You never used to see homeless people in Sydney before '96. Certainly not in the numbers we're seeing today. People could be down and out and downright unemployable but the dole was there to make sure they could afford a place to live. It's not surprising that since John Howard won in 1996, Australia has somehow managed to create a class of misery out there all the while enjoying 20-odd years of economic growth. It just doesn't make sense that this is what has become of our nation. This is all a product of Neo-Liberalism. 

News That's Fit To Punt - 01/Aug/2016

The Rudd Rejection

It's already a fiasco, but this business of the Coalition Government not nominating Kevin Rudd to run for Ban-Ki Moon's office of Secretary General of the UN is already spinning wayward.

Kevin Rudd says he was told he had Malcolm Turnbull's strong support for his bid for the top job at the United Nations before the Prime Minister suddenly reneged on that commitment, according to private letters from Mr Rudd to Mr Turnbull, obtained by Fairfax Media.

In an explosive new development in the aftermath of the Turnbull government's official rejection of Mr Rudd's request for endorsement to run for the post of secretary-general of the United Nations, Mr Rudd has released letters, which, while only showing one side, suggest that agreements had been reached to support the Rudd bid, but that this support was suddenly withdrawn on May 1, just days before the election was called.

This is quite awkward.
Over the weekend, Peter Garrett was heard this first concert since returning to being a vocalist, that the world dodged a bullet when Malcolm Turnbull refused to back Kevin Rudd as a candidate. It's a bit cruel but I guess there's no love lost between Rudd and Garrett*.

It's not exactly a great move by Turnbull. Now he'll have a vindictive Rudd on his case and god only knows how that will play out. After all Kevin Rudd can be a spectacular media tart and if he signs up for something like Sunrise again to prefer his political opinions on a regular basis, it mightn't be long before he will actively say things to sway public opinion against the government. Rudd was always going to be better for everybody concerned, outside of Australia.

Anyway, Pleiades tells me this won't be the end of it because Rudd doesn't know how to quit. Not only that he has significant recourse with his international friends. Dr. Geoff Raby has an article in the AFR today that illustrates possible path back for Kevin Rudd. If the election/selection for the UN Secretary General does not conclude before the US election and if Hillary Clinton should win,therein every chance that a President Hillary Clinton might back Kevin Rudd for the job. At which point it's going to be an uneasy phone call for Malcolm Turnbull.

In a matrix of fifty-fifty coil flips, there's a 25% chance Turnbull doesn't have to revisit this issue, 50% chance that the issue remains irrelevant, but a 25% chance that he's going to have to eat crow.   That 25% however is looming larger when you think through the fact that the next Secretary General is being selected in sync with the next US President. The US will moe than likely delay the selection until after the election, and that Donald Trump is (for al his blather) unelectable. That means there is a great probability Malcolm Turnbull will be asked to revise this topic.


* - As a side note, I've been pondering for long time why as a fellow leftist Peter Garrett's stance on things have bothered me over the years. My old working theory was that he was a prat, but that seemed too simplistic. The most accurate representation of his position might be that he is a regressive leftist. Once you understand that about Peter Garrett, the rest of it is rather easy to decode. 

One Seat Majority

The last seat in the Lower House fell to the ALP, which means the Coalition have only a seat majority. One would surmise then that Malcolm Turnbull has no margin for error.

No Coalition MP will be able to cross the floor. Even an abstention would force the Speaker to cast a tie-break vote, creating the appearance of party weakness. Coalition discipline will need to be watertight. 

2212`1`12Coalition figures have been fond of saying that a narrow majority will enforce its own discipline. That's true in the sense that it forces the party to stick together like glue. But on whose terms will it stick together? 

Mr Turnbull's challenge of managing his right flank becomes that bit harder because the handful of lower house MPs who might actually take the rare step of defying party discipline at the point of voting in Parliament will need to be placated down to the last man or woman. 

Those passionate outliers within the party will be empowered by knowing Mr Turnbull cannot afford to lose a single vote.

Well... one would imagine that's a two way street. If the fringy-crazy want to threaten to cross the floor, it would be over a policy that the ALP may actually want, and would a fringy-crazy rightwing nut job MP want to cross the floor just to spite their moderate PM? There can't be that many bills that satisfy both the ALP and the Greens and the fringy-crazy right wing of the Coalition. Not even Bob Katter would cross the floor to do that. It's hard to image that fringy-crazy rightwing MP of the Coalition would be going that far as well, no matter how unhappy they are with Malcolm Turnbull.  

Of course Bob Katter's not happy Malcolm Turnbull hobbled Katter's friend Kevin Rudd's aspirations so maybe therein a scenario where Bob Katter crosses the floor (Katter's already signalled he's not going with the ABCC legislation).

Didn't Last The Week

In the last post I pointed out how untenable the Royal Commission that was announced was, having Brian Martin heading up the Royal Commission, and surely enough he's resigned.

Former Supreme Court judge Brian Martin has resigned as the head of the royal commission into the NT juvenile detention just days after being appointed. 

His replacements have been announced as former Queensland Supreme Court judge Margaret White and, following calls for an Indigenous co-commissioner, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda.

Citing the need for public and stakeholder confidence in the joint Commonwealth-NT inquiry, Mr Martin said that criticisms of him had been "disingenuous" and ill-informed.
"However, notwithstanding the nature of the commentary, it has become apparent that, rightly or wrongly, in this role I would not have the full confidence of sections of the Indigenous community which has a vital interest in this inquiry," he told media in Canberra.

As teens like to say, "sure, whatevs". You have to love people putting up defences of their positions that fly in the face of reality. If it were exactly as he said it was, he wouldn't be quoting, would he? Both things cannot stand and one thing we know for sure is he's not doing this Royal Commission any more. You can't put a man in charge to investigate himself.

The Downside Of Identity Politics

Here's something about a statue going up in Ashfield.

It's the peace statue that is dividing Korean and Japanese community groups, with legal threats issued to a church minister and complaints escalated as high as the Minister for Multicultural Affairs. 

At the centre of the dispute is a statue commemorating the "comfort women" of World War II - the women and girls who were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese troops - which has been imported from Korea by a local Korean community group.

The group - called the Peace Statue Establishing Committee - plans to unveil the statue, which they describe as a "peace monument", at a traditional welcoming ceremony to be held at the Korean Community Hall in Croydon Park on Saturday. 

The statue, which cost $35,000 and was donated by a Korean benefactor, is about 1.5 metres high and depicts a Korean comfort woman sitting beside an empty chair, as a symbol of the victims who have since died.

And so it is that we come to the Comfort Women issue, exploding on the streets of Sydney. Really, we ought to ask, should this issue be played out in Australia? Should it be played out in Sydney?

Now, this statue was meant for Strathfield but was soundly beaten back by a presentation by the Japanese community. The main plank of the rebuttal, so to speak, was that there actually is no mythical girl who was forcibly taken away by the Japanese Army to be a sex slave prostitute. Except this is accepted as fact thanks to the Yoshida Testimony of 1982, as published in Asahi Shimbun. Since then there has been much research on this area to corroborate the Yoshida Testimony, and nobody has been able to corroborate any of it. There has even been a US Senate enquiry into it and the the US Senate recognised that there was no truth to the Yoshida Testimony. Seiji Yoshida himself made statements before his death to the effect that he had made it all up.

Last August Asahi Shimbun finally retracted the Testimony as false, which has led to a class action against Asahi Shimbun for insisting on its provenance for 34 years, providing ammunition for the claims that the comfort women were forcibly taken away by the Japanese government orders. It's been such effective bullshit that people in the west are refusing to give up that talking point, now that Asahi Shimbun has retracted the claim. The new of its retraction and what it means has been very slow in getting around the globe.

So yes, the statue is inflammatory. That's the whole point. It's primarily being put there to offend while proclaiming peace and remembrance or whatever. The people who want to put it up want to do so to stick it to Japan over stuff that happened in World War II. The people who don't want it put up are fed up with South Korea trying to stick it to Japan for an apology and an extra pay out.

Except as of 28th December 2015, there has been a new apology and an agreement to pay the claimants. The terms of the agreement stipulate several things including, this is the last discussion to be had on the topic of comfort women, their recompense, their status and as a bargaining point between South Korea and Japan. Part of the agreement was for the government of South Korea to work with the activist group to remove the original statue placed in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

Now, it should be noted that it is against international convention to stick a protest statue in front of another country's embassy, regardless of the cause. We don't do it, the Americans don't do it, nobody in Europe or Africa or the Subcontinent does it, Japan certainly does not do it in retaliation, not even Israel does it to the German embassy.

If the agreement of 28th December 2015 is to stand, the South Korean government has to remove the original of the statue. That's what they agreed and signed upon, and eight months later they're yet to do it. It is therefore in incredibly bad faith (and bad taste) to be sticking a replica of that very same statue in the streets of Sydney proclaiming it to be an act of peace. It's extremely disingenuous of this Reverend Bill Crews to be talking about apologies an peace.

Be that as it may, it should be asked of the Korean community if an equivalent statue ought to be erected in tribute to the Vietnamese comfort women the South Korean Army procured for itself during the Vietnam War.

During the Vietnam War (late 1960’s – early 1970’s) South Korea sent troops to Vietnam in an attempt to keep South Vietnam free from communism. It was reported later that many South Korean troops raped Vietnamese women and committed atrocities such as massacring farmers and aged people, and many others were forced into working as prostitutes for the South Korean soldiers. Many of these women would then later become pregnant and after these mixed Korean-Vietnamese children were born they were shunned by Vietnamese society and their soldier fathers returned to South Korea never to be seen or heard from again. The plight of these women was lost to history and not discussed until the late 1990’s when many of the victims began to speak out against the Vietnam and South Korean governments and demand recognition and compensation. To date the South Korean government has done little to acknowledge the issue but has continued to pursue further financial compensation from Japan for their own comfort women survivors and some say that their actions have become hypocritical and they are using the issue as their own political tool. In fact, South Korea orchestrated with Korean-American’s politically-driven campaign in the U.S. continent against Japan.

Yes, that's right.

I'd be okay with the statue going up in Ashfield if the Korean Community acknowledge what their troops did in Vietnam and build a plaque next to it, mentioning it. I doubt they would - it's all about bullshit nationalist fervour. So unfortunately for the Reverend Bill Crews, there's not much moral high ground going around there.

It's kind of pathetic people are still fighting over this terrain, seventy-one years after the conclusion of World War II, but that's what happens when identity politics is given full rein.