Life Under Covid, Year 3

Unpacking Domicron Perrottet's Fateful Decision 

The conservative (small c here) thing to have done  with respect to the pandemic as it stood, coming out of lockdown in NSW would have been to maintain some of the controls in place. This isn't a controversial thing to say. After all, the whole point of the response to the pandemic carried out by governments has been to mitigate risks of infections spreading. All this talk of needing to "flatten the curve" back in 2020 as well as the QR codes used to track the comings and goings of citizens (and in the process the citizens giving up their privacy in exchange) as well as restricting numbers of people at indoor events and so on was to ensure the pandemic did not go out of control. It seems crazy to have to write this out, but the reason I have to say small-c conservative is because the capital-C Conservative leaders of NSW then let go of controls.

Ever since the fateful decision on15 December 2021, the pandemic has been out of control. Having no controls in place immediately led to the explosion of numbers as well as long queues at PCR testing sites. By the end of the week Rapid Antigen Testing kits were sold out everywhere. Just about every place anybody went to for food pharmaceuticals would lead to a belated alert days later that they might have been exposed to COVID-19. For 8 days the NSW government let the virus have its way with its population.

And the mind boggles as to why people claiming to be conservative in nature and practice would want to do such a thing. The only explanation is that they were not conservative at all, and were in fact libertarians. Perhaps they may even be capital-l Libertarians of the variety we might abhor - for it is hard to recall an election whereby we voted in a Libertarian government. This then, was the moment the nut job far right libertarians of NSW had finally obtained controls to the levers of government. What they did with it was tear a gaping hole in the fabric of society and then pretend this was some kind of state of natural law. 

It is deplorable and abhorrent - but it seems to be what we are living with. As such I wish to exercise my libertarian choices right back at them and no longer pay any taxes. What's the point of paying into a government that doesn't look after you in a time of crisis at all? 

How My Christmas And New Years Went Down

Thanks to Perrotet and Hazzard-the-Buzzard I was too leery to go watch the one movie I had been waiting for all year, 'Spider-Man: No Way Home'. I still haven't watched it. I hear the cinemas are still packed - which sounds like infection clusters waiting to explode. 

At close to midnight on Christmas my better half got a notification that she was in contact with somebody who was positive, only 3 days before. So on early Boxing Day we decided to go get a PCR test even though we were asymptomatic, only to find the queue to the local testing clinic a mile long. Sensibly - I must say - we decided we shouldn't wait for a PCR test when we were likely not going to test positive, which was a call I made based on common sense and the dread of sitting in a car inching towards a PCR test for 3-4 hours. Instead, we opted to go to the local pharmacy to see if they had RAT kits and of course, they were sold out. In the 1 minute I was there to ascertain they didn't have them and everybody was sold out, I would get a notification 3 days later. 

Naturally as the regulations would have it, we sat in self isolation monitoring our non-existent symptoms for 7 days, and watched a lot of TV. I think we got to the end of Season 6 of 'Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.',  a show we had been watching on and off for some months. We even got through the final 10 episodes of Vikings Season 6 and then New Years came rolling in. 

We only staggered out on the 3rd January to get some meat at the butchers - because hey supermarkets have run out. I did manage to get my Moderna booster shot that day, with was a highlight. No side effects, so that was good. On the 4th I visited my sister's place to learn about managing quails. Later that night we got pinged with a notification again for that visit to the butcher. That meant we were still monitoring symptoms until the 10th and really only got out that night. I fed some quails that night. 

It's been real, y'all.  

'Personal Responsibility' Says The Guy Who Takes None

Amid this turmoil in NSW which has now led to the turmoil of all Australia, we had the personally irresponsible Prime Minister Scomo the Lame-o declare it was all a matter of personal responsibility now. It sounds good, but it would have helped to have made taking that responsibility a feasible thing. As it is, the RAT kits are nowhere to be found and when you can get them, the price gouging is pretty steep. 

The way taking personal responsibility has worked out for me is to essentially go back into lockdown on my own account to the extent that is permissible and sustainable. I feel sorry for people who cannot avoid going out to work, and I'm completely basking the luxury of being able to self isolate as much as I can. Yet, to be told by this incompetent Prime Minister that it's all on my responsibility ledger now is a bit rich. 

This is the same Prime Minister who ran off to Hawaii during the 2019 bushfire crisis. 

I don't see these coalition governments - Federal and NSW - surviving the next election, but I felt the same way in 2019, so I don't know what to think any more. Clearly I live in a country with an idiot electorate. We've got to vote out these jokers. 

Speaking of Jokers

This business of Novak Djokovic and his no-vax ways is to put it mildly, a sick joke. 

First, he's a champion that not many people have warmed to because he's a Serbian asshole. To make things worse, while he's a great player but he is also an anti-vaxer. The second part sort of rules him out of visiting Australia during the pandemic - because that's the law. Then, he gets some kind of exemption because he's a tennis champ and really, the Australian Open really needs its drawcards right now. But Scomo and Border Force are natural born cunts so he gets pinged like some refugee (hilarious). He goes and stays in the quarantine facility with real refugees while his case is heard in court. The judge is a tennis fan and says he can stay, and that Border Force were out of line. And yet somehow the Minister in charge of border bullies Alex Hawke has the option to send him packing. Will he or won't he? Stay tuned. *gag*

The twists and turns are like a bad soap opera. Nobody except Serbian Anti-vaxers seem to like this guy - but people still want him to hit the ball at the Australian Open. It's a mystery who we're supposed to root for in this miserable story. That, in a nutshell is life during the pandemic in Australia, year 3.   

Quick Shots - 30/Dec/2021

Failure Of Politics, Politics of Failing-By-Design 

Far out. We're coming up to the end of 2021 and I feel like we're not far removed from December 2019. That's weird, right? I'd kind of hoped that I could spend more time here writing up some stuff but even with all the time spent at home with lockdowns I didn't get much done here so apologies. 

I've mentioned it before but at some point in the mid-2010s I hit a wall where I felt there was nothing more to be said. I think we have Rupert Murdoch and his media empire to thank for that as  it shared in the triple-threat-triple-heartburn era of a Abbott Government, Brexit, and a Trump Presidency across Australia, UK and the USA. You can't take politics too seriously when people clearly a lot less intelligent than you are wilfully dumb things to curry the bogan/chav/redneck vote. It's enough to make you lose faith in democracy, and I guess that gives us insight into how democracy might have failed so hard in Italy, Germany, Spain, and Japan, roughly 100 years ago. 

Be that as it may, we live on - but that probably is just a matter of luck. 

On 15 December the NSW government removed all restrictions pertaining to the Covid Pandemic. There suits were predictable in that case numbers exploded. People queued up in cars trying to get their drive thru PCR swabs for hours on end. Rapid Antigen Testing kits sold out everywhere and before you knew it, half the city had to self-isolate. If the aim was the throw of the shackles of pandemic controls and let business thrive, it had the unfortunate effect of immediately shuttering businesses because their staff got infected and had to isolate. For 8 days the NSW Government took its hands off the wheel and blindfolded itself. Eventually, an attempt to bring back some semblance of sanity prevailed, and QR code check ins and mask mandates were brought back. Of course by then, the horse had bolted with Pestilence on its back. 

So the same people who irresponsibly did the above, turned around and said everybody had to take 'personal responsibility'. I mean, does it get richer than that? Then they said we would all get infected by Omicron at some point and we may as well learn to live with COVID. I mean... hullo. We wouldn't be in those straits had the same government not wilfully chosen to let things go out of control. 

On the 19th December when the cases started climbing and shit got scary again, I happened to drive down Oxford Street on the way out to Randwick. I'd say a good 2 out of 3 shop fronts were empty with For-Lease signs in them. Two years of the Pandemic really has done a number of businesses, so I get it. There's a tremendous amount of urgency in trying to kick start the economy and have those businesses come back. 

The problem with that mentation is that the businesses can't stay open if people have to self isolate. But I get it. They were trying to privatise the Pandemic, because if there's one thing a Liberal Government hates, it's spending money on things that are the necessities of society. 

Seriously. Fuck these idiots. 

The Return of Boba Fett

I've only watched the 1 available episode, so I don't really know where it's all going but I will say this. This is a retcon nightmare. I like Temuera Morrison and his Django Fett, as well as how the casting made the Kiwi accent the de facto accent of Clone Troopers. But when you watch this Boba Fett carve its way out of the Sarlacc Pit, one is overcome with a weird cognitive dissonance. I always remember Fett's actor to be a dorky white haired English bloke. And come on, that's not a spoiler. Fett had to get out of the Sarlacc Pit to begin with in order for there to be any series.  

I Haven't Seen 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' Yet

Thanks to our idiot government, it suddenly became very un-enticing to sit in a cinema for 3 hours. I put the blame squarely upon the shoulders of Domicron Perottet and Brad Hazzard. It was the one film I was looking forward to all year, and here we are. I'm furiously dodging spoilers but, ...what the hey. 

Didn't See Bond Either

The thing is, it came out while the lockdown was still going. Somebody said "he dies at the end". So I thought "fuck that. That's too depressing to watch." And I may never watch it. I don't care how good it is. 

I guess it's been 60 years since Dr No said "Kill Bond now!" I guess they finally got him. Killed by a sense of obligation to social justice. That's worse than Kirk's death in 'Star Trek: Generations' - another un-asked for character death. The world is full of knowing, smug, fuckwit screenwriters. 

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. :)

News That's Fit To Punt - 18/Apr/2016

The End Of The Road For Bronwyn Bishop

It's minor news but I love it anyway. Bronwyn Bishop has lost her preselection for her seat of McKellar. She had long overstayed her welcome in Australian politics and she really won't be missed by the middle Australia that had no influence over her pre-selection. The more interesting aspect of her demise as a political figure might be that her ideological lovechild Tony Abbott had a hand in unseating her.

Tony Abbott has publicly praised Bronwyn Bishop amid anger in sections of the Liberal Party that the former prime minister urged his supporters in Mackellar to end Mrs Bishop's political career in Saturday's preselection vote. 

A bloc of 12 votes for Walter Villatora, a member of the hard right who was backed by Mr Abbott, became instrumental in Mrs Bishop's defeat by Jason Falinksi. 

Mr Falinksi is a member of the Liberal left - the moderate faction - and it is highly-unusual for the hard right to work towards the ascendancy of a moderate in a seat previously held by a conservative like Mrs Bishop. 

The 73 year-old former Speaker retained the backing of the centre-right in NSW despite loud public calls for her retirement and agreement in the senior ranks of the Turnbull Government that her time was up.

Members of the hard right were playing down talk of an official deal on Sunday. "There was no deal done, this one was free of charge," said a source. 

But the centre-right is convinced that the hard right planned the hit on Mrs Bishop in collusion with the left and that Mr Abbott had been "hitting the phones hard" to ensure that outcome.

It doesn't really matter. The woman was an ideological nut job that foreshadowed the Tea Party style partisan politics coming to Australia. She was also responsible for running up a huge bill on the public purse, flying around in helicopters on private business, while her resume shows she didn't really do much except be a big noise on behalf of the hard right. 

She really was a terrible human being before being an awful member of Parliament and even an awful Speaker of the House to boot. Together with Sophie Mirabella, it is best we consign her to the dustbin of history as soon as possible.

Double Dissolution Coming Down The Pike

Malcolm Turnbull recalled parliament early to debate that ABCC bill for three weeks. The Senate voted it down in a day. That now activated the 2 July date for a Federal election.

The sanguine news for both major parties is that the polls are pretty even.

The latest Fairfax-Ipsos poll conducted over the weekend put support for the Coalition and Labor across the country on a knife-edge at 50-50, assuming an allocation of preferences similar to those at the last election.

The national survey of 1402 electors was conducted between April 14-16 and showed support for the Coalition had dropped by a statistically significant 3 percentage points since the March poll. 

This equates to a 3.5 per cent swing away from the Coalition's share of the vote achieved at the September 2013 election, raising the prospect the election could produce a government with a wafer-thin majority or even another hung Parliament.

The only thing the Coalition have got going is that Malcolm Turnbull is far more popular than Bill Shorten. It's not much to go on if you're a backbencher looking to be wiped out in a 3.5-4.0% swing, but Bob Hawke with his personal popularity won on the back of such numbers in incumbency so it's not like they're toast just yet.

I'm sure I'll get plenty of opportunities to bitch even moe and louder about this truly horrible Coalition Government in the coming weeks so I'll just leave that bit for now. Stay tuned, I shall be whinging with all my might.

Meanwhile The NSW Government Wants To Go Orwellian On Our Sorry Butts

This is just awful, and it's flying under the radar.

On March 22, 2016, a set of bills was introduced to the New South Wales Parliament by Deputy Premier and Minister for Justice and Police Troy Grant that included the Serious Crime Prevention Orders Bill and Criminal Legislation Amendment (Organised Crime and Public Safety) Bill. 

The acts upon which this amendment is based are shockingly outdated bases for common law. Most date back to the early 90s and one was written in 1900, a time when the faces of both crime and civil liberties were starkly different than they are today. This would be one matter if the intent of the amendment had been to more clearly define violent crimes--such as differentiating hate crimes from others--but instead, the amendment's stated purpose was to "recast the offence of dealing with property suspected of being proceeds of crime so as to adopt certain provisions of the corresponding offence in the Criminal Code of the Commonwealth."

As another site puts it:

The bill would grant police the power to cut off your internet, terminate you from your job, tell you who can associate with, and where you can go if they think you have some association with a “serious” crime. 

These “serious crimes” can range from anything as minor as theft, possession of a cannabis plant or illegal gambling to major offences like homicide, kidnapping and extortion.

They are essentially the same laws used for a terror suspect, but they can be applied to any innocent person in New South Wales without their chance at a proper criminal trial. 

Why should you be worried?
If the police, who are often wrong, believe you were in some way connected to a crime, they can impose all of these restrictions on your life without having to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. 

One of the most concerning parts of the legislation is that it can apply to a range of potentially completely innocent people.

As the NSW Bar Association explained, it’s not just for people convicted of the crime – it’s anyone that’s seen to “facilitate” it, which is a very vague term.

You could even get done for simply lending your phone or car to a friend who uses it for a criminal act.

What’s even more sinister is that there’s also basically no reasonable way to appeal the control order once you cop it.

You can only prove it by way of ‘legal error’, which means it’s not a matter of proving whether you’re innocent or not, you have to prove the police didn’t apply the procedure properly.

Pre-crime here we come! It's sinister in that it tries to set up a zone where a person is not innocent because they're suspected of something, which would overturn the principle of innocent until proven otherwise. The government has minimal onus to present its case in any detail, is enabled into malicious prosecutions, and can't be stopped unless they happen to trip up on procedure. Keep in mind, we have no 'Miranda Rights' made explicit in this country, so procedural errors of the police are less likely to be spotted by the legal profession. This is like a leap back to the18th century. 

The terrible irony course is that the party wanting to do this is called the 'Liberal' Party. The party that supposedly values individual freedoms.  

View From The Couch - 11/Feb/2016

Barnaby Joyce, Deputy Prime Minister

The world is a cold, hard, cruel place. Then it reveals it has a wicked sadistic sense of humour by presenting us with the spectre of Barnaby Joyce as the next leader of the National Party, and as such will be our next Deputy Prime Minister. I'm sure he's over the moon, but watching this feels more like the lunatic-in-chief has been handed the keys to the asylum. Make no mistake, Barnaby is a 'close friend' of Gina Rinehart and shares her trenchant fascist views. He's a climate change denier and we won't even go into what he thinks about the gay marriage issue.

So it is that you get rid of one Dark Ages throwback Tony Abbott, and somehow the conservatives manage to thrust forward another devotee of Dark Age politics. It's enough to make you lose faith in Australian politics altogether.  It's the one arena where being regressive is rewarded.

Toll Rise, And Opal Hike

The NSW government really has so little control over private roads and public transport.  It's a shame because ostensibly they are in charge, but something strong seems to happen between the high offices of government and the lobbyists who come lobbying them on behalf of businesses looking for a big tender.

Transurban is hitting motorists with a 15% rise in tolls. They're cheering because tollroad operation is the easiest wicket to fleece citizens. Sydney tollroads are the centrepiece of the revenue stream, and transurban ants to build more of these things. It really is the pits.

Meanwhile the government wants to hike the Opal card, hitting up people who use public transport. So if you're lucky enough to have public transport, the government slugs you; but should you live far from public transport and you're committed to driving, the government abandons you to tollroads and tollroad operators.

Sydney is the worst-planned city of its kind in the world.

Work For The Dole Doesn't Work

In other (un-)surprising news, it turns out 'Work for the Dole' doesn't really work.
It's not that surprising really, given that its main purpose is to torture the unemployed and send them to do just anything that resembles paid labour, to justify the welfare being spent. It reflects a very idiotic view of what work is, and what employment truly is.

Now that they know it doesn't work, the government is committed to keep on doing it - which tells you quite a bit about how they think. It's not really all that important for the unemployed to find actual work, it's more important that they be made to do menial things for the satisfaction of people who imagine there is wholesale welfare fraud going on everywhere. I know a few welfare bums, but really, 'Work for the Dole' is just make-work-for-punishment. it doesn't address the underlying issue of why they're welfare bums.

On a more broader note, in the future there will be more unemployment. This is because machines will eat more and more jobs. The robots are coming, AI algorithms are already here. Increasingly, humans will price themselves out of work. There is no plan on how to deal with this phenomenon. You sort of wonder how that is all going to go.

Talking About My Generalisation

Generalising Generations

I was on the phone to Pleiades today and he sort of laughed and said I was a bit heavy on the Baby Boomers yesterday, and being one of them he wanted to appeal to me that not all Baby Boomers were bad. Which, of course they're not; and most certainly not even half of Gen-X is particularly good. They're really rough demographic handles to talk about a large chunk of the population, and any generalising is bound to contain gross, boundless, indefensible inaccuracies.

Still, my problem is that years ago when I started blogging, I put up the stupid line "Gen-X View of The Universe" like it mattered and have been somewhat bound by that less-than-stellar choice. Had I hoisted "Dissenting Voice In The Universe", I might have had some more leeway to be just as general (and generalising), but without putting myself in one corner of the universe all the time.

Yes, Justin Trudeau is a Gen-Xer, as is David Cameron, but they have hardly anything common with each other politics-wise, and as a commentator, I can assure you I have even less in common with both men. Waving around the banner phrase is simply a kind overstatement of something that is probably a lot more subtle and fleeting.

The moment the demographic question comes to the fore the most, at least in Australia is that policy-makers have drawn lines in the past and into the future whereby things like HECS and HELP have landed firmly on Generation X while the Baby Boomers hardly got touched by it, and even the extension of the retirement age out to 67 applies from Generation X. The different laws covering superannuation contributions and taxation are likewise demarcated on the line - and the only reason I could think of was that the people who have drawn the line there were not Generation X.

Thus, it's not about what we are like, or what they are like; it's that demographically speaking, different rules and regulations have applied to the different generations, and this has resulted in different outcomes for people in different demographics. As a long time observer, it has been clear that a lot of rules had to be rewritten for Generation X because the money that used to be there is somehow no longer there. And so compared to the Baby Boomer generation, higher education cost more for Gen X (and even more for Gen Y), public primary and secondary education was poorer for Gen X (and even poorer still for Gen-Y), and access to jobs and finance was harder and took longer for Gen-X (and is even worse for Gen-Y), and so on.

Is all this the Baby Boomers' fault? No. It's just the way things went, out of over-arching necessities. Yet I think the ramification of all this, is that when Generation X will hold high public offices, it will result in a realignment of the old social compact. This includes things like gay marriage and addressing climate change as the challenge it really is. Generation X won't be progressive because they were born progressive; on the contrary they're likely even more apolitical than previous generations but for the fact that they will be forced to be political on a bunch of issues, and the viable answers are going to lean towards progressive ones because the conservative ones sure haven't helped.

This is why there is a gulf of difference in understanding by the likes of say, Eric Abetz, who is fighting a furious rearguard action, and the future progressive government which will manifest itself at some point eventually. It may well be a sea change of the kind we haven't seen since Whitlam came to power the back of the Baby Boomer vote.

The Awfulness Of Pokies

Mrs. Pleiades put me on to this one. This is an honest-to-goodness scary doco about how Pokies work and what they do to you. It goes through the history of their development, and the behavioural science of rewards, running the gamut from Pavlov, to BF Skinner to the latest MRI scans the brain and how they respond to pleasurable stimulus and how dopamine is released in the brain to stimulate the pleasure centre. Really, it's all about the dopamine and the pleasure centre and conditioned reflex.

It's one thing to be a gambling addict. I could be accused of being one, seeing how much time I do spend poring over the equities market and its gyrations. I hate it, but I like it and as my accountant said, "it's not like you can stop, now that you've started". It's a bit embarrassing but it's true. Even when I sell up the losing dogs at the end of the financial year, I'm still somehow in the market. I must be in it because I like it. It is pretty much gambling in the sense that I like the days where my shares go up.

Yet there is a crucial difference with Pokies in that the Pokies offer endless stimulus and reinforcement to keep you playing until you lose all your money. I've never liked pokies because I can't even begin to calculate what the odds are, just from looking at the machine. This is totally against the spirit of proper gambling to begin with. Then, I can't stand the endless music cues and sound effects because they're not truly musical if we're being specific about music - they're more like walls of sound to fill the air. I hate the nonsensical graphics that purport to tell a story when of course the only story going on is you sticking money into the machine and losing it chunk by chunk. I say, if you're going to a casino, play a real game with the real croupiers - but that's just me being a minority-report sort of guy. The majority of gamblers in Australia go to the local club and start inserting money into these terrifying things.

The doco tells you just exactly how much they tune these machines to fleece you of your money. They call it "gambling to extinction". They're fine tuned to get you hooked in, and suck you dry.

Peter Garrett makes an appearance to explain his little story about the gambling lobby and how powerful it has become and how it stopped the Gillard Government dead in its tracks from regulating the most vicious machines. We know the story, and how it went down with Andrew Wilkie wanting the regulations and pretty much holding the government hostage, only for everybody in government to back down in the face of intense lobbying from the gaming industry and clubs. With a hung Parliament, there simply wren't the numbers to do the right thing. It's a shame, but the real shame is that these horrible machines are still out there, chewing through the vulnerable wallets.

Just as a side observation, Peter Garrett makes a small mention of how the pokies came in and displaced bands in pubs. As one of the musicians that found pokies displacing bands in the late 80s, I can tell you Peter Garrett's nonchalant commentary was annoying as all hell. He got the good bit where pubs were venues, and his band got to play them. My generation got shafted and turfed out by Pokies. So, you know, tell me about it..

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. 

How Did We Get Here?

Vicariously, Cannes

It's a weird sort of thing, but I have a project headed for Cannes to look for financing this year. It doesn't happen every year and it's been a while since I've had a script doing the rounds so it feels strange. The producer-director is an Australian citizen, a fellow graduate from AFTRS but he is a migrant from Lithuania, way back when it was a communist satellite state. He is, however, also a member of the European Film Academy. He's somebody in Europe, as opposed to a struggling borderline unemployable middle aged person back here in Australia; and this owes no small thanks to the complete retreat of the Australian government from supporting the Australian Film Industry.

We have approached Screen Australia for support but the answer we got was that the project was not going to be Australian content so we had no chance of getting any such support. We pointed out that 'The Great Gatsby' was hardly Australian content but received millions in investment from  Screen Australia, all on the back of its creatives being Australian and it being shot in New South Wales. The answer we got was "that was Baz and his team. You're not Baz."

In other words, Screen Australia supports only that which is already successful and doesn't need support. No surprises there. Who wants risks in the film industry? Crazier still, the institutional narrowness of having such a selection 'criterion' - while well known and understandable - can be a big filter that weeds out successful projects. It seems to be the negative imprint that matches the tremendously unsuccessful commerce that is the Australian Film Industry. Honestly, on some simple level my producer-director ought to be getting more support than he is, just as other producers I've worked with ought to have received more support, from their own government agency.

Frankly, it's a disgrace.

I've been wondering about how things came to this path for him and I. Obviously, I am neither European or the sort of screenwriter that aspires to the kinds of art house fare that is being planned with this project, but it still seems to me quite absurd that people properly credentialed as  Australian film makers should have to go look for funding overseas. I will point out that this is the third project in my life that the principal money would have to come from overseas before an Australian bodies would look to support it.

This is my blog, so I'm just registering my bubbling discontent right here. But really, I ought to be happy that my producer-director has hocked his whole life to get to Cannes on his own to look for funding. No? Instead, all I feel is a desire to kick Screen Australia in he crotch.

I guess if my producer-director does get his film up on the back of his trip to Cannes, that would be a kick in the crotch enough.

AUD At US 90c

As David Byrne famously sang "How did I get here?" Here's a random bit of information. Fox Studios in Sydney still has 22years left on its 40 year lease. For the last 18years it has been going, the second half has been marred by the high Australian dollar. In other words, the service subsector of the Australian Film Industry that faced America, has been knocked out by the mining boom and the subsequent high Australian Dollar. Screen Australia had to pay Baz Luhrman to shoot in Fox Studios in Sydney. The structure of investment right there is "good money after bad", without even getting into the quality of the project or the returns. In fact Julia Gillard as Prime Minister put money into 'The Wolverine' from her office to secure the shoot in Australia.

The irony might be compounded by the fact that the NSW Government gave 20th Century Fox a very favourable deal in that 40yar lease in the hopes that it would lead to a constant churn of projects at the Fox lot in the middle of Sydney, transforming the service sector and infrastructure. Back then, nobody thought the Australian Dollar would rise to parity or that it would stay over US 90cents for so long. The back of the envelope calculations that made it competitive and viable had the Australian Dollar between US45c and 55c.

It's easy to see that one of the most well equipped studios in the Southern Hemisphere is actually a bit of a white elephant infrastructure; a bit like an expensive Rolls Royce that only gets taken out on a rare Sunday. The Australian Film Industry's service subsector servicing Hollywood will not get viable again until the Australian Dollar practically halves in buying power again. There's really no other solution to the structural problem there.

 

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.