Quick Shots - 30/Jan/2017

SMH Gets Cold Feet About Younger Leadership

The editorial at the SMH is always a bit off-putting.  This might be because the editorial team at the Herald are decidedly not on the ball and seem to focus on the stupid problems of the world. Take this one here.

It started in 2011 as the O'Farrell-Baird show. Mike Baird as treasurer did a good job and built enough of a profile that when he rose to Premier it was basically a one-man band. His transport minister then treasurer Gladys Berejiklian did well too, although her public profile was subdued. 

Now the state's voters have an even more mysterious double act: Ms Berejiklian as leader alongside right-wing quid pro quo Liberal deputy Dominic Perrottet. 

While the Herald supported the factional deal that elevated Mr Perrottet at age 33, the economist-lawyer is hardly known outside his party. Having toiled away in the backrooms of Finance for a few years, he has served his apprenticeship and will be the face of the NSW economy as Treasurer from Monday. 

But add in the relatively unknown freshman Nationals leader, Deputy Premier and Regional Minister John Barilaro, and it's a Neville Nobody leadership trio to most NSW voters. 

Throw in the absence of old guarders there since 2011 – Mr Baird, Jillian Skinner, Duncan Gay and especially the much-respected Adrian Piccoli – and the nation's key state suddenly has a second-term government on trainer wheels.

Got that? The editorial thinks they were okay with Mr. Perrottet until they realised he was 33 and therefore not even Gen-X, he's a Gen-Y/Millennial. Surprise! We're all getting old here.

Frankly, the problem with these people - Berejiklian, Perrottet and Barilaro isn't their age. It's their political orientation and ideology - but let's leave that for the moment. If we're going to play demographics, then it's worth looking at these people a bit more through the prism of a more contemporary Australia. 

It's kind of nice that both Berejiklian  and Barilaro are second generation Australians with migrant parents, even though they come form the conservative wing of politics. It's also nice that they're not Baby Boomers trying to preserve some imaginary status quo from the 1950s and 1960s. Imagine Perrottet to be the kind of Liberal that make you want to throw up - sort of like Tony Abbott - but to be honest I don't know anything about him except he's from the Right faction which generally means, anti-science, anti-progress, anti-intellectual, pro-stupid-development, pro-fossil-fuels, pro-stupid, in the pockets of Mac Bank and likely a career plutocrat. And that's a problem. The fact that he's 33years old, seems much, much less of a problem than the ossified neo-liberal econo-babble he's going to bring to the table in a bid to privatise everything that isn't nailed down; but the SMH editorial is worried about his relative youth. *Ugh*. 

Go figure.

What No Quid Pro Quo Looks Like

This TPP business is kind of strange. You wouldn't want it the way it was phrased, and based on what was leaked via Wikileaks, you really wouldn't want a bar of it if you're a sovereign state. There must have been a huge carrot in it for the non-USA countries that signed on for it, but alas Donald Trump has put the big kibosh on the thing and it's dead; dead in Washington DC, dead in Tokyo, and dead in the water in the middle of the Pacific as a result. 

The Japanese government had even gone to the trouble ratifying it, which is more than can be said of Australia; they had to talk down to their own big agricultural lobby in order to get it through, which is a bit like the National Party whacking the interests of the Australian farmers in order to get it through in Australia. It's hard to imagine, but that's kind of what it took. 

Anyway, Malcolm Turnbull floated the option of keeping the TPP thing going, even without the USA and it got showdown by Shinzo Abe. 

Mr Turnbull on Tuesday said he had spoken to the leaders of Japan, New Zealand and Singapore about how their nations could "maintain this momentum towards open markets and free trade". 

But in a swift rebuff, Japan indicated it was not considering any further action on the TPP, repeating Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's declaration that the deal was "meaningless" without Washington."The fundamental balance of interests is lost without the US."

Japan was "not thinking about an action with 11 countries" at the present time, Mr Hagiuda reportedly said at a press conference.

It's hard to see what was in the TPP that made it viable only if the USA was in it, but apparently that is the case from Tokyo's perspective. Of course, the first thing that came to my mind was how Turnbull's government absolutely shafted Abe's government over the submarine thing, and it was just a sitter to swing at the dead TPP's head and kill it, if Turnbull asked to keep it. In other words, "how are them French subs working out for you Malcolm?"

Malcolm Turnbull's not going to get any favours out of Shinzo Abe, and Abe's popular enough to outlast Turnbull. Turnbull might want to avoid talking to Abe at the next G-20, and that's if he lasts that long.

News That's Fit To Punt - 24/Jan/2017

New Premier, Same Old Song

Gladys Berejiklian is our new Premier in NSW. The most interesting thing she said today might have been the fact that she considers housing affordability to be her top priority but she's not willing to consider replacing Stamp Duty with a Land Tax, and that her principle method of making housing  more affordable was to increase supply. It sounded like somebody insisting that flapping their arms harder will accomplish flight.

The best thing about Berejiklian becoming Premier might be that Alan Jones didn't want it "in a million light years". I guess that's already happened twelve parsecs ago.

More On (Moron?) Housing Affordability

SWTE Scott Morrison is off to London of all places to see what he can learn about making housing affordable. It's a bit like a heroin addict visiting a crack addict how to beat addiction.

Asking the Liberal Party to tackle this problem is a little like asking arsonists to join the fire department because they understand fires really well. The Liberal Party represents the investor class more than anybody else, and so they're hardly likely going to be able to bring themselves to do anything that would put the investors at a disadvantage. For the same reason Gladys Berejiklian won't look at replacing the Stamp Duty with a Land Tax, Scott Morrison isn't going to wind back Negative Gearing.

It's all very strange how this is likely to turn out because it's already slowing down comic growth because people can't spend money on anything other than their mortgages and rent. The rent-seeking in the real estate market has basically maxed out to capacity and nobody seems able to claw back down from the stand-off.

In the mean time, there is all this private sector debt that's waiting to go off like a time bomb and the Treasurer is more worried about finding bandaid solutions.

If The Russians Love Their Spanking Too

Here's a weird one. The Russians want to 'legalise domestic violence'.

Russia's parliament is this week expected to take a step closer toward decriminalising domestic violence that falls short of serious bodily harm or rape. 

Battery is a criminal offence in Russia, but nearly 20 per cent of Russians openly say they think it is sometimes OK to hit a spouse or a child. 

In a bid to accommodate conservative voters, deputies in the lower house of parliament have given initial approval to a bill eliminating criminal liability for such violence. 

If the measure passes its second reading in the Duma on Wednesday, when the draft can be changed, approval in the third and final reading would be a foregone conclusion.

It's hard to imagine it anywhere else but Russia.  I guess that partially answers Sting's rhetorical question in his lyric whether the Russians love their children too. It appears yes they do, but not quite as much as we do.  

"Alternative Facts"

Great scot, it's only been three days of Trump in da White House and it's been a non-stop parade ridiculous assertions and factually challenged statements. Kellyanne Conway has come forward with an eyebrow-raising explanation that the Trump Administration is in possession of "alternative facts". 

Still more chilling was when the White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared on “Meet the Press” on Sunday to assert that Mr. Spicer’s falsehoods were simply “alternative facts.” 

Ms. Conway made no bones about what she thought of the news media’s ability to debunk those “alternative facts” in a way Americans — especially Trump-loving Americans — would believe. 

“You want to talk provable facts?” she said to the moderator, Chuck Todd. “Look — you’ve got a 14 percent approval rating in the media, that you’ve earned. You want to push back on us?” (She appeared to be referring to a Gallup poll figure related to Republicans’ views.) 

And really, there it was: an apparent animating principle of Mr. Trump’s news media strategy since he first began campaigning. That strategy has consistently presumed that low public opinion of mainstream journalism (which Mr. Trump has been only too happy to help stoke) creates an opening to sell the Trump version of reality, no matter its adherence to the facts. 

As Mr. Trump and his supporters regularly note, whatever he did during the campaign, it was successful: He won. His most ardent supporters loved the news media bashing. And the complaints and aggressive fact-checking by the news media played right into his hands. He portrayed it as just so much whining and opposition from yet another overprivileged constituency of the Washington establishment. 

But will tactics that worked in the campaign work in the White House? History is littered with examples of new administrations that quickly found that the techniques that served them well in campaigns did not work well in government. 

And if they do work, what are the long-term costs to government credibility from tactical “wins” that are achieved through the aggressive use of falsehoods? Whatever they are, Mr. Trump should realize that it could hurt his agenda more than anything else.

It's going to be a long 4 years. 

News That's Fit To Punt - 30/Nov/2016

Can't Do Anything Right

It's really strange that it took a Liberal Government to put a light rail link in from scratch. Unsurprisingly, they've done a pretty bad job of it.

The NSW government failed to "effectively plan and procure" Sydney's $2.1 billion inner-city light rail project, resulting in a blowout in costs and reduced benefits. 

In a scathing report released on Wednesday, NSW Auditor-General Margaret Crawford said the government's management of the light rail project "suffered many of the same problems" as found with the $16.8 billion WestConnex motorway and the Albert "Tibby" Cotter bridge at Moore Park."Common problems include tight timeframes without justification, project scope defined too narrowly, underestimated costs and overestimated benefits," her report found.

The 2013 business case for the light rail line from Circular Quay to Randwick and Kensington in the city's east budgeted on the project costing $1.6 billion, but a year later it had blown out to $2.1 billion.

They were in such a hurry to green light major infrastructure, they seem to have literally thrown money at it willy-nilly. As with WasteConnex, they've shot through the budget, but they don't really care. No, no, no. Because when you think about it, all the money wasted goes into the lobby that asked for these infrastructure projects and it's the tax payer who foots the bill. The excesses are simply gravy.

It's amazing how vested interests can control a political party so effectively and the only people complain are those directly impacted. The rest of the polity just lets it happen.

But Do They Have The Balls To Follow Through?

Yes, the Federal government in its time of budget shortfalls finally notices the billions going offshore from Australia in the guise of LNG.

The numbers begged not to be ignored by Canberra. 

LNG revenue was set to mushroom from $5 billion to $60 billion over a decade but PRRT returns would sink from a paltry $1.2 billion to a frankly embarrassing $800 million. 

Currently, the only PRRT payments are coming from mature oil rig operations in Bass Strait. 

Effectively, Australia is giving away 85.5 million tonnes of LNG a year for free. Well, to be sold by fossil fuel companies to Japan, Korea and China. 

It was a dogged group of Tax Justice Network advocates - the same people who launched the corporate tax avoidance research that eventually resulted in the Coalition's diverted profit tax - who saw the scandal in the PRRT. 

TJN spokesman Mark Zirnsak, strategist Anthony Reed and researcher Jason Ward drilled into frightening numbers that contributed to a series of stories acknowledged by shadow treasurer Chris Bowen on Wednesday as having precipitated political action this week. 

Morrison's announcement of a "comprehensive" inquiry led by respected bureaucrat Mike Callaghan was a moment where the fiscal wood has been separated from the trees by Morrison.

So Scott Morrison is going to have a comprehensive inquiry he says. This is the government that killed the Mining Rent Resources Tax, so you wonder how they are going to get their silly little heads around 180 degrees in the opposite direction and actually get revenue from what is rightfully for and of Australia. We'll see how that goes. Lord knows there's enough stupid in Canberra but money is money and this is money just slipping off shore without any discussion, let alone any argument.

Dolly Is Dead

No, not the cloned sheep. It's the printed version of that magazine for young girls that is coming to an end.

In a statement, Bauer said the magazine is "responding to the changing demands of how readers engage with the brand by switching it to an exclusively digital model". 

It said November was the biggest month for online traffic in Dolly's history. 

"It is estimated that Dolly will hit 1.2 million [online] sessions this month," Bauer said. "As a result, Dolly magazine will cease to be published bi-monthly. 

"Dolly.com.au will continue to cover breaking celebrity news, fashion, beauty and lifestyle content, with popular fixtures such as Dolly Doctor."

A number of staff are expected to be impacted.

It's interesting that Bauer are putting out the line that the magazine is going to continue as an on-line entity, but that's a bit like saying people live on after death as ghosts and this is a good thing for seances. The writing is on the wall. Nobody buys magazines any more least of all those born this side of the Sydney Olympics. You can't sell media to people who are used to getting it for free.

It's amazing because if they're ceasing to print, they're giving up the ad revenue as well. It has got to be a sure sign that the rest of the magazine businesses are on death row. If there is a demographic coming through that doesn't buy magazines, you can see that there are a whole bunch of magazines that cater to the older demographic that will succumb to this generation not buying media as they grow older. When you add that tot he people turning off free-to-air TV, the mainstream media as we knew it is in massive retreat. Dolly quitting is indeed the canary in the coal mine of mainstream media.

You wonder if anybody will be able to do media and make money in the next 20 years.
So, yes, I'm calling it as a very significant moment.

BTW people, click on some ads on this page for me will you? I need to make a living too. :)

NSW Goes To The Polls And The Incumbent Wins

Less Polemical, More Brouhaha

Oh well. You know how it goes, you get up early in the morning after a rough night and trudge down to the booth to cast your vote. The Lower House is a short ballot with like 6 names on it while the Upper House is like a beach towel. The good thing about the NSW electoral process is you just have to put in a 1 for  1 box forth your voting. Given that this is an era of micro-parties trading preferences, the Upper House places demands upon you to either go through the whole damn ballot or pick a rough guesstimate and just vote '1' there.

Anyway... this being NSW politics, nobody was sending Tony Abbott any messages that I could tell. Stark was the contrast where most people just didn't talk about policy - not even the privatisation infer - and simply obliged to their electoral duty of simply voting. No polemical voices, no argy-bargy in the waiting lines like the 2005 Federal election when Mark Latham was running with actual policies. No, this was a snoozer despite the dramatic termination of the one-term coalition governments in Victoria and Queensland.

The local booths at the infants school had 10 people handing out leaflets for our local incumbent MP John Sidoti, with just 1 ALP dude sheepishly handing out his how-to-vote leaflet. The Greens weren't even there. It's tough in NSW where we are still reeling from the days of Eddie's "Morbid Obeidity". It's hard to go back and vote for the ALP as you wonder, have they really reformed enough to not let that crap happen again? Well, the ballot was too awful contemplate reading so I simply put my number 1 on both ballots and shoved them in the boxes as quickly as I could.

Even though Mike Baird is as clean as cleanskins come, the Liberals are still this bunch of conservative prats. He's going to win and he will proceed with the electricity privatisation. Then he'll hand over the proceeds from the sale to a bunch of Nick Greiner cronies to build WasteCONnex.

In the absence of a fundamental difference in what they will do with the WasteCONnex proposal, you have to surmise that the ALP would be doing this by going into debt some more while WasteCONnex is the central reason for privatising electricity in NSW for the Coalition. You sort of wonder if you could have any hope with either major party of junking WasteCONnex and building a metro instead, but no. In this light, it seems incredibly futile to claim democracies solve anything. It's certainly screwing things up in NSW, and it's not even polarised like American politics.

The true shame of this election is that there is no real, pragmatic way to oppose the building of this monster tollway. Even the ALP says it will build the thing (to appease the construction workers and their union) but it won't put the interchange under St Peters - which is like saying he'll put a different shades lipstick on the same pig. But there's really no wiggle room for the ALP. I feel a little for Luke Foley who is now cleaning up the mess left behind John Robertson who mostly exacerbated the mess left behind Kristina Keneally. If you were in his shoes, getting out of the doghouse with the electorate is about as good as you can wing it.

News That's Fit To Punt - 16/Mar/2015

We Said The Same Thing About Julia Gillard

The not so big news is that the Federal Liberal MPs are unhappy with their Prime Minister. Former Minister and prominent-blowhard columnist Amanda Vanstone was heard making this remark in a 'Four Corners' episode:

Speaking on the ABC's Four Corners program, Ms Vanstone said it would be a simple mathematical calculation in the end which would determine Mr Abbott's grip on his job. 

"Understand this, as you get closer, every marginal seat member is thinking 'I could lose my seat', every safe seat member is thinking 'we could lose government and I won't have a chance of being a minister and I might be too old next time', so they're gonna be looking at what the polling says and whether they can win and they will stick with a prime minister who can win and they'll cut one off who can't," she said.

They're not words you want to see spelt out if you're Tony Abbott, but I remember these moments on the ALP side when Julia Gillard's polls stayed at 27% approval rating for months on end. All kinds of arguments were mounted as to why she should be doing better but ultimately she never recovered, and the backbenchers removed her for Kevin Rudd in order to "save the furniture". Oh what fun times those weren't. 

So the rough locus of politics being what it is, it's unsurprising that Amanda Vanstone can see the writing on the wall for Tony Abbott's Prime Ministership. He might have gotten himself a 6month reprieve but if the next Budget dogs it like the last - and let's face it, the last one is still dogging it, - then he may not have that 6months grace that he thought he had won at the spill.

None of this is really new news. What's more interesting is that the electorate has moved on to a post-Tony-Abbott sort of brain-space and have essentially written him off. The SMH has pulled the article from its site but this morning it was reporting that the swinging voters Western Suburbs of Sydney had abandoned Tony Abbott and called him an embarrassment. It was so bad the article is now off the main page and has to be dredged up by Google. 

In the groups, Mr Abbott was described as "just very incompetent and an embarrassment internationally" by one participant. 

Another said Mr Abbott was "an embarrassment. He is an absolute embarrassment. Every time he opens his mouth he just says the wrong thing." 

Some participants viewed Mr Abbott as unreliable and untrustworthy.
"He doesn't present well," said one participant. "He doesn't give you ... no matter what he's talking about, you don't feel confident." 

One woman declared: "He could be talking about the weather and you'd still think, oh… I don't know." 

The latest Fairfax/Ipsos NSW poll revealed close to one in 10 voters who supported the Coalition at the 2011 state election intend to change their vote on March 28 due to the performance of the Abbott government.

You'd hate reading that if you were a Liberal MP, no? 

I Owe, I Owe, It's Off To Work We Go

It's not exactly news that Australia's private sector debt is a much bigger problem than the public sector (i.e. Government) debt. Here is an article outlining just how bad it is. 

Barclays chief economist for Australia Kieran Davies says private sector debt-to-income gearing is currently at an all-time high of 206 per cent, up from a pre-global financial crisis (GFC) level of 191 per cent. This put Australia just within the top 25 per cent of the world when it comes to leverage.

However, when it comes to household debt - which includes mortgages, credit cards, overdrafts and personal loans - Australia leads the global field, according to Mr Davies, with credit continuing to pile up while the rest of the developed world is paying it down.

Using nominal gross domestic product, the bank estimates household debt at 130 per cent of GDP, which is the highest level on record.

The ratio compares with 78 per cent globally, down from an all-time high of 81 per cent in 2010. However, Australia is not too far ahead of a range of European countries. 

"Examining the distribution of household debt, Australia has the highest gearing of our large sample of countries, although it was practically a tie with Denmark (129 per cent of GDP)," Mr Davies said. 

"Switzerland (120 per cent) [and] the Netherlands (115 per cent ) were the next closest countries."

And so there it is, in fairly easy to read charts. The problem of course is that the more government tries to cut its expenditure, the more the private sector takes on debt. So to some extent the private sector debt reflects the government cuts that have already taken place - except it's not businesses taking on the debt. 

Mr Davies also found that while consumers and mortgagors are busy racking up debts, Australian companies have become more thrifty.

It said that non-financial corporations reduced their gearing from 84 per cent of GDP in 2008, as the GFC began to bite, to 67 per cent in 2011. It was the first period in which outright debt levels fell since the early-1990s recession, said Mr Davies. 

Companies had since leveraged up again to where debt represents 76 per cent of GDP. Even still, corporate Australia was markedly more prudent than the country's individuals.
"Although Australian corporate leverage is high by past standards, it is surprisingly low compared with other industrialised countries," said Mr Davies. 

"That is, world leverage, calculated as the simple average of the sample of countries, is currently 106 per cent of GDP, down modestly from the all-time high of 111 per cent of GDP reached in 2009." 

The bank warns that risks continue to build in economy, particular as the Reserve Bank of Australia eases monetary policy.

So, to some extent the government is right in trying to contract and cut, given that the Private business sector can afford to take on more debt... but for the housing bubble. And so, the RBA can't exactly be cutting rates even more unless it wants the housing bubble to go even more ballistic. 

But back-tracking a bit, you wonder how the RBA might have found itself in this rather silly position. My best guess is that ever since they changed the way they calculate CPI, they've been under-reporting inflation; and this under-reporting of inflation has been going on for some time, which bolstered easier monetary policy in the last 20+years. We know this because the cost-of-living has been skyrocketing ahead of CPI for the duration. Which means households have been getting a sweeter deal on property in the last 20years which accounts for the great housing bubble we've managed to engender. It's easy to see in hindsight, but who's really counting? Nobody's owning up to it; they were denying it even existed as recently as last year. 

In a very real way, we can now see the interest rate should be sitting higher but for the GFC where every other central bank has embarked on easy-money and ZIRP and QE programs which has essentially dragged our own RBA towards a similar kind of easing. It really is a rock and a hard place. If they raise rates, it would cool down the housing market but it will discourage the already low business investment, smash confidence and raise unemployment. If they go towards ZIRP, the housing bubble will continue to expand, and when the next crisis hits, it would be time to print money so the banks that are too-big-to-fail, don't blow up. 

But, as the Demtel man used to say, there's more. If the AUD keeps falling past the US75c mark, the import prices will go up significantly enough that even the artificially suppressed CPI will register the inflation. In which case, interest rates would have to go up, and with it will go housing prices and consumer confidence. Inevitably we're going to hit a recession. The question is how deep it's going to be and for how long. If 20years of growth comes to a shuddering stop, then it might be a very long recession. 

And, as the Demtel man used to say, there's even more...

The Free Set Of Stake Knives In Our Backs

The engine for the 24year run of growth of the Australian economy, Communist China is - to not put too fine a point on it - pretty fucked up. 

So where does Shambaugh see evidence of imminent collapse? He lists five "telling indications of the regime's vulnerability". 

First is that "China's economic elites have one foot out the door, and they are ready to flee en masse if the system really begins to crumble". He cites a survey of 393 millionaires and billionaires by Shanghai's Hurun Research Institute; 64 per cent said that they were emigrating, or planning to do so. 

Second is Xi's harsh political repression: "A more secure and confident government would not institute such a severe crackdown. It is a symptom of the party leadership's deep anxiety and insecurity". 

Third is the hollowness of official belief in Xi's doctrines. Officials are only going through the motions, he says. He recalls sitting through a conference on Xi's call for a "China Dream" where it was "evident that the propaganda had lost its power". Demand for a pamphlet by Xi was so feeble at the Central Party School bookshop that the sales staff were giving it away. 

Fourth, Shambaugh says, corruption runs deep and will outlive Xi's anti-corruption purge, which will succeed only in enraging powerful interests. 

Finally, the economy "for all the Western views of it as an unstoppable juggernaut is stuck in a series of systemic traps from which there is no easy exit," he says. Xi's attempt to break the traps, his economic reform plan, is encountering stiff internal resistance.
The exact manner and timing of collapse, says Shambaugh, is impossible to predict.
Predicting the demise of China's regime is not quite as startling as it might seem. In some ways it's entirely routine. 

The blindness of the West to the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union was a chastening experience. Analysts since have been hyperalert to a Chinese Communist downfall.

And there we have it. Peter Hatcher spends the rest of article making a case for why it might not be so fucked up, but the economic problems are starting to mount up - and they are remarkably like the problems faced by the rest of the developed world. Too much government debt, a housing bubble, capital flight, ageing population and stagnant growth. And generally speaking the case against a Chinese collapse are just as based on inductive reasoning as those who predict it on the basis of history. 

Plus, we know that the GDP reported by the Chinese is often party wish-casting and no reflection of reality. It may take a while yet for complete collapse but the collapse in commodity prices is telling us quite a lot about how bad things are in China. It was enough to prompt Gina Rinehart to hurriedly sell up her stake in Fairfax Publishing. 

Absence Of Sustained Leadership

Just a quick note about NSW politics which goes to the polls in a fortnight. In the last so many years since Bob Carr retied, it has gone: Iemma (37months), Rees (15months), Kenneally (27months), O'Farrell (37months), Baird (11months). It's pretty choppy no mater how you look at it. Iemma won an election but Rees didn't get to one, Kenneally was booted out for Morbid Obeidity, O'Farrell did himself in with the wine bottle gift thing and Baird is trying to keep government with just under 12 moths under his belt. 

This has run parallel to Rudd I (30months) Gillard (36months), Rudd II (3months), Abbott (18months and counting to the end). What we can discern from all this is that even if you're offering good government from a managerial point of view or policy aspiration point of view or operational point of view, 3years is about the grace you get from your own party, and this is so short because the party gets so little grace from the electorate. And apart from Rudd and most parts of O'Farrell, bits of Rees and start of Kenneally, and Baird where polls were good, extreme unpopularity in polls essentially drives change. 

I would posit that what has happened is that the electorate has chosen the polls as a means of sending a message when they cannot vote. With the ever tightening news cycle and the advent of social media, everything has to be immediate, and this is reflected in the fast an furious change of leaders on both sides. It is no accident that Tony Abbott is in strife. If he thinks the people vote in a Prime Minister, then he has to accept that the polls are telling him they made a mistake and want him gone.  

I am yet to decide if this is an improvement or a form of political decadence, but I do think Australia has hit some kind of new phase in democratic politics that is quite peculiar. It may not end if and when Turnbull or Julie Bishop take over, and when they lose, it won't change with Bill Shorten in the Lodge. 

News That's Fit To Punt - 23/Dec/2014

Zero Dark'n' Dirty

I didn't want to bang on about politics this week, what with 2 days to go to Christmas, but I figured it's worth bring up this stuff because I still think we're all collectively numbed to the notion that troops and agents representing our government and therefore by extension us, are doing torture. We're so inured to this fact that we consume movies like 'Zero Dark Thirty' without really challenging the premise that torture got us the information that led to finding where Osama bin Laden was holed up.

Anyway, this week saw the cover blown on the agent upon whom the character Maya was based. Yes, the agent who allegedly tracked down Osama bin Laden's whereabout was also known as the Queen of Torture, and her name is now out in public.

I'm not going to name the officer here because frankly I don't know where that puts me legally. But you can find out her name if you follow that link.

What's interesting is that amongst other things she:

• was amongst other things, responsible for missing the 9/11 threat, bungling the sharing of information.
• misled congress about the Agency's use of torture.
• participated in the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
• witnessed the waterboarding of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah
• misrepresented intelligence in such as ways to send the agency on a wild goose chase in Montana
• over saw a three month rendition of another detainee whose detention was case of mistaken identity. 

She sounds like a real piece of work. She sounds like a sadistic psychopath who has found her dream job. The Intercept is leaking her name because it says otherwise the wider community won't be able to put 2 and 2 together to understand just want is going on and who is doing it. Sounds like she's the CIA torture mistress of your BDSM nightmares.

Get Dorky

The New York Times is saying the USA should prosecute the likes of Dick Cheney and the others the GW Bush administration who condoned torture.

Americans have known about many of these acts for years, but the 524-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report erases any lingering doubt about their depravity and illegality: In addition to new revelations of sadistic tactics like “rectal feeding,” scores of detainees were waterboarded, hung by their wrists, confined in coffins, sleep-deprived, threatened with death or brutally beaten. In November 2002, one detainee who was chained to a concrete floor died of “suspected hypothermia.” 

These are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law, which defines torture as the intentional infliction of “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture. 

So it is no wonder that today’s blinkered apologists are desperate to call these acts anything but torture, which they clearly were. As the report reveals, these claims fail for a simple reason: C.I.A. officials admitted at the time that what they intended to do was illegal. 

In July 2002, C.I.A. lawyers told the Justice Department that the agency needed to use “more aggressive methods” of interrogation that would “otherwise be prohibited by the torture statute.” They asked the department to promise not to prosecute those who used these methods. When the department refused, they shopped around for the answer they wanted. They got it from the ideologically driven lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, who wrote memos fabricating a legal foundation for the methods. Government officials now rely on the memos as proof that they sought and received legal clearance for their actions. But the report changes the game: We now know that this reliance was not made in good faith. 

No amount of legal pretzel logic can justify the behavior detailed in the report. Indeed, it is impossible to read it and conclude that no one can be held accountable. At the very least, Mr. Obama needs to authorize a full and independent criminal investigation.

Amen to that. Now we'll see if they have the balls to follow through. They need to get Cheney in the dock. It's nice that all this stuff is out there for once and not covered by official secrecy acts and the such. 

Spiritual Alzheimers

In other more delightful news, the Pope of Rome took the Curia to task for being greedy scheming careerists with 'Spiritual Alzheimers'. I don't quite know how that disease works, but it sounds pretty bad. The affairs of the Catholic Church are really none of my business but this is the sort of thing that makes you take up and notice. This Pope is trying to make a difference. In the scheme of things, it's not totally insignificant that he wants to effect a change of culture within the Church. After all, there's still too much Alexander VI and the Borgias about the Vatican and its politics. 

Still, it wasn't what the Curia were expecting. That's pretty impressive to go off script and put the boot in that hard.

John Robertson Falls On His Sword

Never has there been an ALP politician so happily seen off since, ...oh I don't know..., Kristina Kenneally? Anyway, it turned out John Robertson signed some document for Man Haron Monis. And that was all (s)he wrote, so to speak. Is this bad luck? Is this bad judgment? Is this a bad break? Is it just good fortune that John Robertson managed to crash his career on the name of the man who carried out the Martin Place Siege? Really, who'd a' thunk it? 

Anyway, the man variously described in the most negative ways by his own party - and given the leadership after the landslide election defeat because they couldn't stand him and wanted him to fail - has miraculously crashed out of being the Opposition Leader in NSW with only 3months to go to an election. Was this fair? He might even ask that himself but one thing's for certain in NSW politics: fair's got nothing to do with it (an invective otherwise known as "Suck Shit And Die"). 

The ALP in NSW have a long l-o-o-o-ong way back from the depths of reputation damage inflicted by Morbid Obeidity, and Joe Tripodi and the rest of the Terigals. The brand value of NSW ALP is about as good as Nickelback (maybe even worse). Finally being rid of Robertson at the helm might be the first step in rehabilitation. 

News That's Fit To Punt - 18/Mar/2013

Tin Ear Drum, Tin Ears, Tone Deaf

It's a new week and a new poll says Julia Gillard's got to go. As far as the electorate's concerned, she's a Dead Leader Walking.

The Prime Minister conducted a live-in campaign tour of western Sydney, announced $1 billion for the WestConnex expressway, promised a brace of benefits for workers, pledged $1 billion for aged care staff, attacked foreign workers on 457 visas and championed ''Aussie jobs,'' and presided over strong growth in the number of people in jobs.

All for no electoral gain. The only movement in Labor's primary vote was a 1 per cent rise, which is within the poll's margin of error of 2.6 per cent. Neither offers to meet voters' needs nor appeals to their prejudices made any discernible difference. The evidence of the last month is that, as a campaigner, Gillard is ineffectual. So if Gillard can't do it for Labor, who can?

The poll tested the standing of four alternative leaders - Kevin Rudd and the three Gillard ministers most commonly touted as leadership material, Bill Shorten, Greg Combet and Bob Carr.

Asked whether they would prefer Gillard or Rudd, respondents chose Rudd by exactly two-to-one, 62 per cent to 31. His edge over Gillard on this measure has risen by 5 percentage points in the last month. Asked to choose between each of the other three and Gillard, respondents chose Gillard every time.

''The voters are saying, 'if we can't have Kevin Rudd, we'd rather have Julia Gillard over any of the alternatives','' Stirton concludes. In short, there is no realistic option of a ''third candidate'' to lead Labor.

That's sort of the problem, though, isn't it? It's too late to go back to Kevin Rudd because even if they did, they're not going to win. That choice was way back in February 2012, so as far as we can tell, the ALP is accepting it's going to go down with all hands, thank you very much Captain Improbable.

Julia Gillard defiantly says she won't flinch. Well, neither does a corpse, so I don't know how not flinching is going to help.

''I'll just keep getting on with it and dealing with the issues that actually matter and all of this kind of side-commentary can do whatever it does. It's not going to deter me - or distract me.''

Ms Gillard has just emphatically ruled out any prospect of her stepping down before the election, insisting Labor made its decision on leadership when it rejected Kevin Rudd's challenge last year. ''I haven't revisited it since and I won't be revisiting it. The decision's made.''

But, in an expansive exclusive interview with Fairfax Media, Ms Gillard said Mr Rudd would play a prominent role in the election campaign, saying he would be ''asked to participate in the campaign more broadly than his own electorate''.She also indicated she would not resist a return by Mr Rudd to the front bench after the next election, saying: ''It would obviously be a matter for him that I would deal with in the circumstances of the time.''

Good heavens! After the next election when the ALP gets decimated in the polls, it might be only Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard remaining. She sure as heck won't be keeping the leader's seat after she presides over a mess that is likely to go down in history as the mother of all drubbings.

One of the more awful trends in the last few months has been the growing acceptance that come 15th September, it's going to be Tony Abbott as Prime Minister. It's like the 5 stages of grieving. We're done 'Denying' it. We've been 'Angry' for 3years now. Some people are trying to 'Bargain'.

The optimistic conclusion is this: Life under Tony Abbott may not be as bad as we fear. Perhaps. If we're lucky. Assuming he's fair dinkum and his mates don't succumb to the power aphrodisiac.

I forgot to mention the other finding from the German research was things never turn out as well as optimists predict.
Such is life …

This is what we have been reduced to. I guess I'm going straight to 'Depression'. It's going to be very hard to accept Tony Abbott as Prime Minister. There's something so insidiously  wrong about that - but what can you do? Vote of Julia? Puh-lease!

How Rotten Is NSW Politics?

If anything has been busily hammering the nail into the coffin of the Federal ALP, it's been NSW ALP with all the horrible bits and pieces coming out of the ICAC inquiry. For a start, the Morbid Obedity that is being explored doesn't just cover coal; it turns out it covers Ron Medich and the Michael McGurk murder. It even goes far back as Offset Alpine. Eddie Obeid's right in there with Rene Rivkin. (In fact, that mess of course leads to the Caroline Byrne thing but we won't go into that here.  The point of all this is that there was a cabal of people in and out of each other's deals, cleaning up on the scraps left over by government; and Eddie Obeid made sure that he left big scraps on the table and that a sizable portion of the scraps went into his own pockets.)

I seriously wonder if the ALP will survive this scandal. They may not come back for over a decade, both in NSW and Federally. We may be witnessing the end of the ALP. And they would only have themselves to blame.

Oh, let's never forget that Eddie Obeid's support and sway over the NSW Right Faction swung the numbers for Bill Shorten and Mark Arbib to oust Kevin Rudd. Julia Gillard may well wonder why she does so badly in NSW. If she could get her head around our deep disgust, then she might even get her head around flinching in revulsion and resigning.

Morbid Obeidity

'Obeidity': A New Word For Rampant Corruption

We knew the NSW branch of the ALP has been very odd for a long time. The depths of the corruption that is coming out in the ICAC hearings is at once unsurprising and yet so repugnant. From what we are to understand from the hearings, Eddie Obeid held the NSW Right faction hostage, placed Ian MacDonald ('Sir Lunch-a-lot') in a position where he would have inside knowledge, then used that inside knowledge to stake out a position wherein they would have to be bought out in order for a coal mine to be built, finagled his family trust into owning the mining concern that would win the tender on the back of knowing where the coal was, and by having Ian Macdonald decide who would win the tender. In the process, Ian Macdonald had side deals with Greg Jones and a cast of characters have either opted in (and out); all of it as a result of the shenanigans carried out by Obeid and Ian Macdonald.

The surprising thing in all this is that the fast and furious chopping and changing of Premiers from Morris Iemma to Nathan Rees to Kristina Kenneally may have been done to preserve Obeid's advantages in the various deals and had nothing to do with:

• Points of public policy


• Policy differences on public policy


• Inner ALP politics and machinations for political advantage


• Inner NSW Right factional politics for political advantage.

No, no, no, no, no! Eddie Obeid was pulling strings and throwing his weight around just so he could have his snout firmly entrenched in the comings and goings in these deals. That all the public incredulity and angst about the state of the ALP over these changes had sweet fuck all to do with anything of actual importance. It was all about the Obeids getting more out of the public purse. So, it may well be that since Bob Carr left office as Premier, NSW politics has essentially stood still, unable to do anything because these corrupt toads were  busy filling their own pockets and making out like bandits. And if nothing else it explains how the extremely insufferable and stupid Kristina Kenneally came to be our Premier. The Obeids played us all for suckers and stuck a muppet with hair up there, knowing full well that voting was just some kind of popularity contest when the real deal was the deal making to stuff one's own coffers.

The true tragedy in all this is that the ICAC can't lay charges, and that the DPP won't be able to prosecute the Obeids unto a conviction because the ICAC evidence won't necessarily fit through that tight door into the courtroom. That's right. Eddie Obeid and his family just might get away with all this. I *hate* saying this but the Angry Fat Man is right: this is moral turpitude at its most flagrant worst.

And we're all the poorer for it. All those policy points we've argued about and waited for our government to action, such as public transport or infrastructure spending never really took any part of Eddie Obeid's greedy little mind. It didn't matter who lobbied whom, none of it was ever going to happen (and didn't) because frankly this guy did not give a shit about public policy - at all - And he just rope-a-doped his way through office, hardly turning up, pulling down his salary (and the Parliamentarian superannuation now), just being generally obstructionist so that nothing that got in his way, got done.

So the question today is this: given the Obeid/ICAC thing, the Craig Thomson thing, and the Nova Peris/ Trish Crossin thing, (not to mention the Rudd removal) how can we bring ourselves to even contemplate voting for the ALP in all good conscience? How do we know the next candidate they put up in Dobell to replace Craig Thomson won't be some union hack or some low grade party apparatchik? How do we know Nova Peris won't become a corrupt politician with her snout firmly embedded in the public purse, and un-removable by dint of her ethnicity? Forget high ideals and lights at the top of the metaphorical hill; where the heck are we supposed to find any faith in this mob?

It's bad enough that we're confronted with a 2-Tax Systems Tony Abbott and his attack-poodle-of-death Christopher Pyne. Just what the hell are we supposed to do? Vote for these muthers?

Won't Have Kristina To Dick Around Anymore

No Splintering To The Left

I have to admit that I must be pretty radical when it comes to the political spectrum. I'm not exactly a communist - far from it, but I sure as hell don't run with the conservatives come hell or high water. Which chased me into my choice of voting Green. I don't regret it even though in my seat, the Green candidate won't come close to the line. The Liberal Candidate ended up with a 25% or so swing in his favour according to the election night telecast on TV. (Thanks Angela D'Amore, you are the gift that keeps on giving, like a Herpes virus).

I'm a little amused that Kerry O'Brien started off the night by saying it was going to be a bloodbath, everybody knows the result; the only question is just how much of a bloodbath. Even more amusing was the ALP colour commentator they had - Luke Foley, I think he's called - who came across as somebody with an IQ of about 75. He had to admit it was catastrophic, the resulting devastation was going to be cataclysmic and that the ALP were going to have to do a lot of soul searching. Well, d'uh.

I guess nobody looks smart when their heads are getting beaten in; and yet even he had one reason to crow and that was that Carmel Tebbutt was likely to hold Marrickville against Fiona Byrne, and went on to bag out Fiona Byrne for being a terrible  candidate for the Greens.

Which all got me to thinking how much of the ALP vote that might have been swinging votes and traditional votes ran to the right into the arms of the Liberal and National Parties. Luke Foley was saying that the 'Labor Heartland' no longer exists. That might be true, and by extension this might be one of those elections that changes the state for ever. The ALP may not be able to win in NSW until well past 2020. And if the Hawke-Keating years and  the Howard years proved something, 10+years can change the culture of a place dramatically. NSW might turn into an arch-conservative state.

So where does that leave me with my radicalised environmental vote? Gagging on my recycled materials wooden spoon.

The Rush To The Right

Given the sort of miasma and nauseating whirlwind that was the Labor government of the last 4 years, it's not surprising that the middle rushed to the right, just pull the handbrakes on the craziness. I don't know if it's even a rational choice given that 79% of the electorate don't know what the Coalition's policies are and that 65% voted them in.

The poll is at odds with predictions that the gap between the parties would narrow as voters paid more attention closer to the election. It suggests voters switched off long ago.

Asked how much they felt they knew about the Coalition's policies, 79 per cent said they knew either ''little'' or ''nothing at all'', with just 21 per cent saying they knew a lot.

Knowledge of Labor's policies was slightly better, with 68 per cent saying they knew little or nothing and 31 per cent saying they knew a lot.

This could mean that a lot of people are going to wake up tomorrow and wonder just what the hell they've done but I guess it's too late for that now. The ALP haven't done much for the image of stability. That Karl Bitar fellow and 'protected' US informant Mark 'The Mole' Arbib have done over Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees,while doing the same Federally for Kevin Rudd and helping Julia Gillard to a hung Parliament has made the ALP a laughingstock in most conversations I've come across.

The unfortunate upshot is that it's pushed a lot of people to the right, and it amazes me how unimaginative people are when it comes to their politics. Here's the thing. I voted Greens last time too, but I preferenced ALP. If Nathan Rees was still Premier, I might have been persuaded to still vote ALP even. As soon as they dumped Rees and put in Kenneally I vowed they would not get my vote, and it's a sentiment that's been shared by many people I've spoken to. I'm amazed that most of the people who felt that way took it as a cue to vote in Barry O'Farrell, but I guess that's the 2 party system for you.

In any case, it's not like all is lost for the ALP faithful of NSW. It's just a bleeding state election to kick out a tired, over-ripe, incompetent ALP government. Surely some of those who ran to vote in Barry O'Farrell will come back as prodigal votes. It's the nature of politics.

Can The Greens Get Beyond The Marginalia Of Politics?

On the basis of tonight's result, I think this is going to be a tougher ask than I thought. So far it's counting about 11%. That suggests that:

• 10 out of 11% are crackpot socialists and tree-hugging hippies and dope-smoking Newtown-ites.


• Only the extra 1% represent the people who jumped to the left. The 20% swing to the right represent the middle.

I think 1% is an incredibly hard basis to build a platform upon when you're already outnumbered 10 to 1 by the loonies in your own party. 13% at the Federal election was a good showing, but in closer examination, the Greens are still the party of feral-loonies, druggies, hippies the dispossessed and socialist-idiots.

By contrast, at 50% of the vote, the current crop of Coalition voters are people with desperate mortgages and the NIMBY crowd. Laura Norder didn't even factor into it this time around.

One Final Thought About Kristina Kenneally

I'll be flayed for writing this, but what the hell. Everything else is going down in flames.

I'm thinking that Kristina Kenneally has to represent the end of the line of that crappy brand of 1980s feminism that saw male chauvinism layered in to every text and wrote post-modern essays about gender politics in Shakespeare to Bananarama. Let's call it, 'Quota Feminism' for want of a better tag. It gave us Verity Firth and Carmel Tebbutt and Angela D'Amore and Virginia Judge and Kristina Kenneally in an awful hurry.

Here's the thing: If that line of thinking really had merit, Kenneally and company would have been more persuasive figures - And I do say this with my deepest condolences to the Po-Mo 1980s feminists I know, but the rise of Kristina Kenneally (and to some extent Julia Gillard) has got to be one of the more abstruse and disaffecting manifestations of that line of thinking.

Was it any good? Goodness, the proof sure is in the pudding tonight, isn't it? Half the electorate ran screaming to a patriarchal-looking Barry O'Farrell. Doubtless Germaine Greer is going to write an article for The Observer over in the UK saying how this proves we're all sexist shits in NSW, and how Kristina Kenneally was defeated by the forces of backward oppressive patriarchal men. But you see, that's exactly where the ideological rot is at.

On The Eve Of The NSW Election

Vote Green

I was at the usual shop picking up lunch when I ran into some people I always meet. One of them said he was thinking of voting for the Greens. The other was a gnarled mechanic in overalls saying the Greens want to bring in death duties. I interjected, "well why not?"

"Kerry Packer said why should his family give up money so you can misuse it?" the older guy retorted.

"For the common good. That's why. I mean Jamie Packer didn't exactly work for that money. Why the hell should he get such a big head start in life on account of his dad being obscenely rich?"

"Yeah but if my mum dies and she leaves half a million, why should the government tax that?"

"For the common good."

"...But they'll only waste that."

"...and you'd only sit on it for you own pleasure. How's that helping anybody? If it's all the same, the 15% they would take from it would be put to better use than you sitting on it," I offered. "I mean, you didn't earn it. Your mum did; and when she goes, she can't take it with her, so a portion may as well go to the state, because the state probably looked after her as much as you with its hospitals and doctors and nurses."

You should have seen the guy's expression. He was apoplectic with rage. I said, "mate, don't worry. I think they should tax everybody more, but that's just me. We don't pay enough taxes as it is and we wonder why our hospitals are clogged with waiting lists."

He looked even angier.

"I mean, tax everybody. Who really cares?" I continued. "The money you get taxed, do you really miss it? There's still enough for you to pay your bills and pay your rent and still have a drink with your mates. I mean what were you going to do with it that was going to change other people's lives? That's what governments do, so give them what they need."

"...But they'll waste it," he offered again. "That's what governments do. They waste it."

"What? On hospitals and ambulances and police and emergency rescue workers and all that? Roads and trains and water and sewerage treatment and electricity? How about schools for kids, day care centres for infants and libraries and colleges and TAFE? Apprenticeship schemes where you got your training, it's all a waste is it?"

"Bullshit mate," he snarled, grabbed his lunch, and stormed out. Couldn't say I blamed him. I'd hate to be harangued by me while picking up my lunch too.

The first guy said, "I've been back to Greece and when you go to the country side, they have nothing. No roads, no schools, no sewerage or running water. It's like medieval times. They don't even know about taxes. Never even heard of the idea, let alone paid it. And the place is so backwards and they wonder why. So yeah, taxes are fine by me," he said.

Apparently, that's the way things are in the spiritual home of democracy and a country racked with sovereign debt issues.

So vote green, peeps! Vote for higher taxes for the rich. Get a little Bolshy. Higher taxes never killed anybody.

The Lady Deserves A Beating

Sexism? I think Not

Kristina Kenneally may not indeed be the most odious Premier of NSW. It is a point I must concede. After all, Robert Askin sounds like he was as crooked as they come, and Bob Carr seems like one of the most insufferable human beings a man could meet. Nick Greiner left such a slimey impression what with his board memberships on so many dodgy PPPs, and Neville Wran was... Neville Wran.

The point being it is entirely possible she has not been the worst human being to grace the position of Premier of NSW. However, this puff piece had me choking.

During Verity Firth's husband's ecstasy scandal last week, Keneally's staff almost fell over laughing when asked if their boss had dabbled with drugs. She similarly fails to grasp sexual innuendo during office banter, they say.

For all these reasons the Premier is likely to recoil, rightly, at the disturbingly sexist view of her that has arisen in focus groups assembled by the Liberal Party.

A senior Liberal source says a theme has emerged, particularly among male voters, that can be boiled down to: Keneally is the one-night stand who was fun at the time but insisted on hanging around the next morning, even though you wanted her to leave.

It's always hard to know if selected snippets of internal polling like this reflect the true results or, more likely, illuminate one element for damaging effect. But there's no argument that opinion polls showed voters had an immediate attraction to Keneally when she took on the job from Nathan Rees in December 2009.

''It was a flirtation, or some sort of infatuation,'' the senior Liberal said. ''She's obviously attractive but it was more than that; it was a novelty to have an American as premier - an American woman as premier.''

Almost everyone is surprised by how hard and fast Keneally fell in the polls when the love affair ended - to the extent that she now lags the Liberals' Barry O'Farrell by 20 percentage points as preferred premier.

If people believe they've somehow been taken in by Keneally, that's their view, fine. But our first female premier deserves better than being objectified because of her gender.

The last bit  is nuts. What she deserves is the line from 'Unforgiven', "deserve's got nothing to do with it." along with the electoral bullet to put her out of her misery.

But before getting to that point, here are at least 2 problems of Kenneally's own links to scandal that this article glosses over. Number 1 is of course just how deep her dealings with Ron Medich (and the whole corrupt dealing aspect of Medich's empire) actually go, and number 2 is the allegation that the Barangaroo contract for car parks benefits her husband Ben directly. So no, it is not true to say she is scandal free herself.

The four women who marched in to replace Nathan Rees with Kristina Kenneally as Premier, if I recall correctly were Verity Firth, Angela D'Amore, Carmel Tebbutt and Virginia Judge. Of these 4 MPs, Verity Firth's in this drug scandal with her husband even if she had nothing to do with the said pill; Angela D'Amore has since been found to have been corrupt and been kicked out of the ALP; Virginia Judge has been accused of handing out grant money to her mates; which leaves Carmel Tebbutt the only one free of scandals.

I think the electorate has actually been highly supportive of the politically correct/anti-sexist line to the extent that when these women engineered the first female premier of NSW - though unelected she may be - the electorate perhaps was willing to give her a go. Okay, it's true, I made a commitment to never vote for her government - one which I will keep - but other people around me have been umm-ing and aah-ing. They've told me they like the reality of having a female mayor of Sydney, a female Premier of NSW, a female Prime Minister and a female Governor General, plus a Queen.

In other words, sexism isn't what's going to kick Kristina Kenneally out. In all realistic appraisal, when Kristina Kenneally's government does get voted out on 26th of March this year, it would be because of the collective shenanigans of all the NSW ALP members and staffers. That she contributed very little to the parade of scandals is not going to persuade people to keep this NSW government. Any argument mounted in favor of Kenneally's government should face up to that daunting, brutal, frank reality.

In that light, the article was one of the dumbest things I've ever read in the SMH in a long time.

Spin Control

Meet The F*ckers

Pleiades convinced me to go and see what the top Film Bureaucrats had to say for themselves at a function at Trackdown, at an ad hoc event organised by Tristan Milani. Fronting up for their policies were Screen Australia boss Dr. Ruth Harley, Screen NSW boss Tania Chambers and Ausfilm boss Jackie O'Sullivan.

The gist of the presentation was that the numbers are up and so far everything is much better than 5 years ago. The bad news is that the Australian Dollar is playing havoc with the part of the industry that subsists on American productions. The banality of the presentation was breathtaking and Dr Ruth Harley closed off her segment with a couple of trailers for films to come.

Maybe the numbers that were read out by both Dr. Harley and Ms Chambers bear out a recovery in the film industry in general, but it struck me more as spin. They were all busy predicting a trough to come, as if to forewarn and foreshadow bad news ahead. An unkind mind might suggest that if they're willing to take the credit for the peaks, perhaps they should take the rap for the troughs, but these bureaucrats were so wily, there's a reason they've got their cushy fat jobs and chumps like us are looking in.

There is a lot of angst in the wider film making community at various levels and in various sectors of the business. The gathered faces were surprisingly older faces. Some of whom were my instructors at AFTRS way back when, which while it is encouraging to see, was also depressing in that it showed the industry had let them down as well.

James Ricketson got up and in their faces about the 'anonymous assessor' process that has been put into place. Clearly this is is an abominable procedure but the top bureaucrats expressed the strong opinion that the anonymous nature of the assessment allows the assessors to be more frank.  Well, let *me* be frank - I think these film bureaucrats are full of themselves if they think this process is in any way helping the film maker. Yet, there they were, defending the process on the basis of numbers. Numbers of projects submitted, number of projects funded and number of projects that eventually went into production. And when you stop to think about it, you think, what if they just changed the rules so they *didn't* have to be accountable to the submissions?

Inquiring minds wanted to know, but these film bureaucrats were decidedly defensive on this point, saying it was a good thing. Clearly they have no idea what it is like to submit a project to these bodies. I started to laugh - I couldn't stifle my giggle response when Dr. Harley said with a straight face for the third time that they got better information through the frankness of anonymous assessors. Well of course you would. Much like NAZIs would from secret informants - but they just didn't seem to care that they came across as really hostile.

Some e-mailer made the charge that Screen Australia were only interested in genre pictures, to which Dr. Harley trotted out some statistical breakdown to show it was not, but in so doing, she entirely ducked the issue of accountability raised in the question. As in, "why do film bureaucrats get to keep their cushy jobs when they pick losers to develop and lose money?" No answer was forthcoming.

At one point Tom Jeffrey got up in support of a North American dude who complained about the intractability of the process and the procedures. Both men were politely told that they should get with the times and simply navigate the website and put in some study hours dealing with forms because the bureaucracy simply didn't have the man-hours to deal with all the inquiries.

And if you thought that was a bit rude - and let's face it Tom Jeffrey's an old bull of the business who deserves respect - these people were quite snide about it. The North American Dude made a metaphor that he wanted to  discuss Alaska, but the process involving forms always tried to reduce the discourse to a shoe box. The snarky remark from Dr. Harley was that they couldn't help him because nobody at Screen Australia knew how to reduce Alaska to a shoe box either - which ignores the fundamental question being asked. Why are these forms so difficult and contrary to the creative process, and why do they keep insisting on these mountain of forms?

Tom Jeffrey also got the short shrift by both Tania Chambers and Dr. Ruth Harley when they suggested it was all available online and it was his own fault or being so old so as not to be up to the times. How insulting was that? Pretty extreme in its insult, I thought. And Tom's not somebody I would consider a friend. Tania Chambers said that they simply didn't have enough people to talk through each project, so it had to be through forms. It seems they use forms and e-mails and bureaucratese to distance themselves from having any moral responsibilities.

Some of the ex-NSWFTO people made the point of saying that they would never try to go through these bodies for development. You could see why. The whole event was an interesting exercise in bureaucrats trying to substitute discussions of quantities in place of discussions about qualities, and thus try and avoid any moral responsibilities. All in all, it was a very poor showing.

News That's Fit To Punt - 10/Jun/2010

A Balanced Budget For NSW


I'm not going to vote for NSW Labor at the next election. It's on principle. There's nothing they can do to get my vote. They've pissed me off sufficiently that they are most definitely not getting my vote.

That being said, I want to note that the NSW Government's budget is in surplus. I was staggered by that fact.

Some of the commentary points out that it's not all their doing and there are may areas of policy where they are failing - and don't we all know it - but on one level they are being responsible. It may perhaps be the only level on which the NSW Government is being responsible, but I have to give them credit for the fact that they're not spiraling into deep debt, like, say Greece or Japan.

With all this talk of endless scandals, including the ill-conceived outing of David Campbell by Channel Seven, you'd think the state was deep in debt to the point that it was going to need a bail out by the Federal Government. Or that perhaps it was a basket case like the State of California which can't pay its employees so they're making them take time off without pay. It's not like Japan where they've been running up irresponsible deficits for 20 years, to the point that the accumulated debt is twice the size of the annual budget. But it's simply not that bad.

Compared to those places, the NSW Government is the model of fiscal responsibility. No wonder Barry O'Farrell hasn't made much inroads, seeing that the traditional way Liberal governments get in to office in NSW seem to be by screaming about mounting debts. If it's not there, then what exactly can they present that's so radically different? Barry's offering $5bn for infrastructure. Whoopee. That's $5bn coming out of somewhere else or $5bn he's going to borrow. Is there really much to be excited about in that? I'm not voting Liberal, that's for sure.

But I'm still not voting Labor at the next State election.

Hooray For Democracy

This one caught my eye today.

Alvin Greene has been on the phone all day. That's to be expected for the guy who just won South Carolina's Democratic Senate primary and is facing incumbent Republican Jim DeMint in November. But everyone calling Greene has just been trying to find out who the heck he is — and one thing reporters learned Tuesday is that a criminal complaint was sworn out against him last year for allegedly showing obscene photos to a South Carolina college student and suggesting they go to her dorm room.

Greene, a 32-year-old unemployed military veteran who lives with his parents, defeated Vic Rawl on Tuesday for the Democratic Senate nomination despite having run essentially no public campaign — no events, no signs, no debates, no website, no fundraising.

The result has baffled political observers, who had heavily favored Rawl — a former state legislator, attorney and prosecutor who had the edge inasmuch as he actually campaigned and tried to win. Many in South Carolina (which has grandly lived up to its reputation as a political circus this year) suspect that somewhere, a crafty GOP political operative is snickering.

As far as the local political press can discern, the only positive step Greene took toward campaigning was when he plunked down a $10,400 check in March to satisfy the state's filing fee and get on the ballot. He never registered a campaign committee with the Federal Election Commission or filed a financial disclosure with the Senate Ethics Committee.

You have to love the odd things electoral politics sometimes casts upon the shores of our awareness. He should run in NSW. He'd annihilate Kristina Kenneally.

Double Your Phil Hughes

Why Settle For One?


To me, an ardent Yankee fan, the name 'Phil Hughes' spells promise. Ever since the Yankees started drafting more high-ceiling talent since 2004, Phil Hughes has been that promise that more home-grown Yankees were on the way. He's shown stretches of that brilliance at the MLB level, but his story is largely yet to be writ. It's going to be interesting and exciting watching Phil Hughes come into his own, hopefully as an Ace-calibre pitcher for the Yankees.

He's even got a blog!

Of course, living in Australia, my sports fandom also extends to Cricket, and this summer I've become aware of another Phil Hughes that is knocking on the elite level of Cricket.

PHIL HUGHES didn't really need a coach. After school each day from age 14 to 17 he'd just drag his father, Greg, down to the oval at Macksville and have him feed the ball machine. Phil knew which shots he needed to work on. Then he'd have Greg wait while he did his fitness program. Alone. Almost every day.

"If we'd had a big weekend away he might miss the Monday, and maybe some Fridays he'd have off," Greg Hughes says. "But apart from that it was a daily ritual. It must have worked: he's scored 53 hundreds so far."

Phil had reason to work hard. Despite his tender years, he knew he had a rare talent. At 12, playing in a 50-over primary schools carnival final, he hit 159 not out, commanding attention similarly to earlier child prodigies Adam Gilchrist, Dean Jones and Michael Slater.

"That's the innings that started off all the talk about him," Greg says. "When Cricket NSW say they knew him from when he was 12, well, that's where that started. It was probably also about when I first realised he could play."

After that game Phil met Merv Hughes. Greg has a photo of the moment and marvels at the coincidence of his son meeting one of the men who now can control if or when he plays for Australia.

The thought of playing for Australia was first realistically conveyed to Hughes by Neil D'Costa, his coach since arriving in Sydney. D'Costa, who mentored Michael Clarke to stardom, planted the idea in Hughes's mind that "in a few years Matthew Hayden is going to retire and you should make that position yours". The pair have forged a solid link and mapped out a plan for Hughes's career.

"We looked at how he would attack his rise in cricket with a mental and technical approach," D'Costa says. "It's working for him - look at how many people said he would fail in his second year. But I don't see any second-year blues."

I started seeing his name in the last few weeks as my Google News kept spitting out this other Phil Hughes to the New York Yankee Phil Hughes. It's a common name and I might have just ignored it; but even when I know it's pure coincidence I want to ask what's in a name? To top it all off The latter Phil Hughes it seems is a New South Welshman. Well damnit, I'd better be rooting for him too, especially if he starts opening for Australia. It's not as if he's a South African or a Kiwi or Pom! :)

So that's my present for this Christmas. I get a second young Phil Hughes to root for in the coming years. I'm warning you all that if things get a litle confusing, well, you read about it here first.