News That's Fit To Punt - 07/Mar/2016

A Snapshot Of Sweden And Refugees

Here's a rather scary article about how Sweden is doing with its refugees. What's scary about it is that it flies in the face of the picture of tolerance and open-mindedness as being the absolute norm in Sweden. The demographic breakdown in the article goes into some depth, but I found this little bit of the interview a little startling:

ET: So why is all this happening? We have seen this dire situation unfold over many years, and yet the government seems intent in doubling down, bringing in even more immigration in recent years. The majority of the Swedish population even seems to be supportive of this policy.

TS: That’s actually not true. We have a biased media here that likes to portray the situation as you described, but we have serious scientific polls that clearly state that the majority or plurality of Swedes support reducing refugee immigration, even going back as far as the 1980s. There has always been more saying that Sweden should take in less refugees and this number has probably skyrocketed in recent months.
One recent poll I have seen, and it excludes the past months, shows very high opposition: only 8% said we are not taking enough immigrants, where 58% said we are taking too many. It’s the elite opinion that forms the consensus that Sweden should take many more immigrants – it’s almost like a religion, but it is not the popular view. 

ET: But that consensus correlates with election voting right? There is only one party that is openly against immigration and they scored very low in the last election. 

TS: Yes, it’s because that party has its roots in racism and it was taboo to vote for them. Despite that they went from 3% around ten years ago to perhaps 20% now. What’s also happening in the last few months is that the right wing moderate party, the Swedish “Tories” if you like, has shifted to the right on immigration very rapidly. You know in Sweden things shift very rapidly, it’s a consensus society. Now they are saying close the borders, deport a large number of migrants, very vociferously. The Liberals and the Christian Democrats are following suit. And even the Social Democrats, the ruling party, closed the borders in the end.

The picture we get from this interaction is that Swedish society reached some kind of saturation point whereby immigration policy overwhelmed the social capacity for Sweden to take in the refugees. Correspondingly, the vote for the far right leapt from 3% to 20% tells us that this issue is adding fuel to the rise of the far right. The tide the discourse has overwhelmed the polity to the point that Sweden has all but closed its borders to refugees. For the Swedes, as it is the case in Australia, the incredulity became, "what are they coming all the way to Sweden?"

ET: There is a huge number of male migrants that went to Sweden last year, vastly more than women. We read that the demographic imbalance in Sweden is now even worse than China. Is this correct? 

TS: Maybe in some age group, but not in overall terms of course. Some 92% of those unaccompanied migrants were male last year… 

ET: … Wait a minute, 92% of them are male? 

TS: Yes, there is definitely something strange going on. More than half of the world’s refugees are women. In World War II, when Sweden took refugees from Finland, they were children and 90% were below the age of 10. But now almost all of them are late teenagers – supposedly; we know many are older for a fact. When other countries age test it turns out that the majority are not children. And when there are crimes committed and the age is investigated, often we get these absurd reports where some of these guys are older than 30 and yet the government puts them with other real minors in schools or housing, and this is creating a lot of anger now. The media created this taboo where because they are officially supposed to be children we can’t question it, and you are fascist if you do. Yet most people can see that many are adults.
Now I’m not moralizing this. If you have an open door policy and you are incentivizing Afghans to take advantage of the system, can you really blame them? But it is an idiocy to equate anyone who questions the claim of being a minor with being a fascist.
You know, it’s really funny that the tale about the emperor having no clothes is a Scandinavian tale. Everybody can see many are not children, but then the political and media consensus will fire or at the very least censor the people who point out this plainly obvious fact. Because how can you question children running from war, using circular reasoning that anyone who claims to be a child escaping war is one and cannot be questioned. You know, a self-reported 70% are not even coming from Afghanistan but safer countries like Iran, seeking a better life.

And there you have it, the gnawing suspicion by Swedes that Sweden's good nature is being taken advantage thereof. I dare say these 92% male asylum seekers who are actually economic migrants are hoping to catch on with some nice Swedish blonde and live happily ever after on Swedish social security. I mean, heck, if I'd got thrown out of my country and had nowhere to go on the planet, I'd probably want to claim asylum in Scandinavia - it's not that hard to imagine why that number is skewed the way it is. 

In a way, it was easy for Sweden to be tolerant and preach tolerance because Sweden was - for quite some time - mostly homogenous in culture. The sorts of problems that arise from intolerance were geographically distant. It was easy for Swedish society to be progressive in the context of its own population being homogenous because it never had to be tested. The moment it became overwhelming, the society shut its doors. When confronted with the reality of what that tolerance actually meant in the wider world, the country had second thoughts. 

This is a scenario that will likely repeat itself in the rest of Scandinavia. it may well repeat itself in Germany as Merkel's policy of taking in 800,000 asylum seekers turns into a kind of social demographic bomb. The argument that the first world can afford to take on any number of refugees is never really put under the scrutiny. 

This is going to be rather unpopular to even question this but I've often wondered about the validity of somebody who makes their way to Scandinavia or Australia hoping for asylum when there actually are other safe countries along the way. If you ran from Syria to Turkey and Turkey gives you safe asylum, is it really valid to then travel to Scandinavia (or Australia) in hopes of a better deal? Understandably, everybody wants the better deal, but does that make it into a human right? 

Peter Costello - Tax And Spend Liberal

Here's something for you to ponder. Peter Costello thinks he should have taxed the internet. 

I'm not quite sure how he would have done it. 

Speaking to Fairfax Media in his new role as chairman of free-to-air broadcaster Nine Entertainment Co, Mr Costello recalled sitting in his Parliamentary office in the 1990s in the early days of the web, and pondering the vast future revenue such a levy could generate.

"I was Treasurer at the time. It would have been the easiest thing in the world, by the way, for governments around the world to have put a charge on the internet. It wouldn't have had to be very big but it would have raised a motza," said Mr Costello. 

"Governments would all have to agree together to do it, and the OECD was looking it at the time. It would have been hard to police but once (former US President) Bill Clinton came out and said the internet would be free that was it. Once the Americans said the internet was going to be free, the rest of the world was going to follow suit." 

Mr Costello, Australia's longest-serving treasurer, who went on to introduce the goods and services tax with then-prime minister John Howard, said an internet access tax "could have been a fraction of a cent a year and it would have raised governments' unbelievable amounts of money".

We've got to be happy that crappy plan never came to fruition.

When Even Peter Reith Calls You Out

Peter Reith was an awful minister in the Howard Government. He had the charm of a dyspeptic shark and the compassion of a broken bottle of single malt scotch. All teeth-gnashing and ideological gumboots and all. Since his retirement from Federal politics, he's turned into a sometime columnist for the SMH, and forms a rather unappealing Tory-Tag-Team duo with Amanda Vanstone. I've noted before Amanda Vanstone has written a piece telling Tony Abbott to go disappear into the night. Now Peter Reith has penned his own version.

The next election is just around the corner. Abbott is not about to win back the leadership. The only issue now is who wins the next election. And one big issue is whether the Coalition can erase Labor's claim that the Coalition lacks unity. 

The first thing Abbott has to do is to shut down his handful of supporters in the Parliament and the Turnbull haters in the media. And, by the way, it wouldn't do any harm for Turnbull to try talking to Hadley, Jones and Bolt, just to even up the conversation. 

If Abbott cannot or will not stop the destabilisation, it could be a bad result for the Coalition and more importantly very bad for Australia if Labor were able to return to the government benches.
The only other option is for Abbott to leave Parliament before the election, and to stay out of the campaign.

What I don't understand is why some people who were exasperated by Abbott's paid parental leave and its new tax, his support for changes to the Constitution, his captain's picks and many other shocking decisions now want him back, with Credlin and all.

It's because they're stupid, Peter, but then that would be a concept you would not countenance. Unfortunately for Peter Reith, this brand of stupid is particularly pervasive in the Coalition ranks. It's the special brand of stupid that forms from the fermentation of entitlement & smugness.

View From The Couch - 29/Jul/2014

Who Asked You, Peter Reith?

It's interesting Peter Reith has taken this moment to tell us he thinks the future Liberal Party leader has to be Julie Bishop. Peter Reith, an awful character at the best of times, did have a big mouth so it's not surprising he's chosen to speak out of turn; and yet he's basically sending up a weather balloon to see what happens when he nominates Julie Bishop. It's weird because it's hard to think of an equivalent happening right now where maybe a retired former minster like say Lindsay Tanner randomly nominating Tanya Plibersek to be the next Labor leader. Its hard to get my head around. basically, he's answering a question that hasn't been asked with an answer that probably isn't wanted by anybody. It might be true that Joe Hockey isn't the next best candidate after Tony Abbott - but why are we even talking about this now, when Tony is making his best impression as an international statesman?

I am not saying there is likely to be any leadership change in Tony Abbott's first term or even his second term. Gillard's knifing of Rudd with the support of Bill Shorten and others is not about to be replicated by the Coalition. However, of Australia's 28 prime ministers, only seven have been in office for more than four years so it's not unreasonable to suggest that after Abbott has had the job for at least four years or more, anything could happen.

Really now, Mr. Reith? Do tell!

We're Not Talking About The Band Severed Heads Here

The headline reads: Sydney man pictured with severed heads. It sounds like the guy is having a whale of a time.

However, a friend of the pair told Fairfax Media they have no intention of ever returning.
"They say they've never lived a better life than what they’re living now and 'you don't know what youse are missing out on, especially with the turn of events happening now [with the establishment of a caliphate in Iraq]," said the friend, who didn't want to be identified.

"People say they're worried these guys will come back but they understand that if they leave the country to go to Syria or Iraq they're not coming back. They're after two things - victory for Islam or martyrdom."

But the Attorney-General emphasised that home-grown terrorism remains a significant domestic threat.

He will seek to introduce legislation to parliament to make it an offence to encourage terrorism.

"One thing no one should think is that this is a problem on the other side of the world," said Brandis. "This is a problem that exists and germinates within our suburbs."

Argh. It's hard to tell who has the lower IQ - the guy who uses the plural of you as 'youse', or the Attorney General of this land - "Champion of Bigots" George Brandis - who thinks he can write a law to prohibit encouraging terrorism; especially when you consider the reason he wants to champion bigots is in the name of free speech and freedom of expression. The contradiction of his position had me in stitches of laughter until I realised he's going to try it anyway and waste everybody's time and money.

It's not good that there's some angry Arab-Australian running around chopping heads in Syria, but it seems the horse has bolted. The guy doesn't want to come back anyway. Meanwhile the rest of ISIS/ISIL is busy getting medieval on people's asses. They're placing decapitated heads on spikes. I mean, that's Vlad-Tepes-Krazy.

Work For The Dole Is A Kind Of Employment, No?

I don't get the conservative mental fixation about the imagined dole-bludgers. It's like they don't understand that at a certain point some people are not employable. That could be a point in time, or a point in the person's life, but being employable in the broadest sense, narrows so much that people cannot make the grade. They might be too old to do what is necessary; they might just be too inexperienced; or dare I say too stupid to do anything of value; and then there are some who are a combination of all sort of elements that make a person unemployable.

And at a certain point, society is better off just paying these people off in some way so they don't turn to a life of petty crime or become destitute and turn to a life of violent crime. It's not a difficult concept to understand but you keep meeting people who say, "but it's our tax money being wasted" as if how that money was spent was their decision to make (it's not, it's the government's) and ignores the fact that the money spent staves off enough desperation it probably is doing a lot of social good. This is why our society came up with a safety net in the first place. it really isn't a whole lot of money, and anybody living on it, isn't having a wonderful life unless of course they live at home with wealthy parents.  And yes, such people exist - I know a couple myself - but you still wouldn't want to be them. It seems stupidly ungenerous to want to begrudge them the pittance and punish the long-term unemployed or the young unemployed with "work for the dole schemes".

A burning question that ought to be raised is "do they work?" According to people who have made a study, they don't.

But Professor Jeff Borland from the University of Melbourne - who conducted the only empirical study of the Howard government's work for the dole scheme - says years of research show such schemes are unlikely to help people find jobs.

''The international evidence is overwhelming,'' he said. ''It's hard to believe that the government couldn't understand that this isn't the best way to improve people's employability.

''I guess you have to conclude that there are other reasons for wanting to expand the program, and the title of the scheme [work for the dole] suggests it's being done for political reasons.''

Labor has warned businesses will face a deluge of fake job applications under the government's measures.

Employment Minister Eric Abetz said that could be a fair criticism.

''We as a government do not want box-ticking to take place,'' he told ABC TV. ''We don't want red tape and inconvenience to employers, but what we do want is a genuine attempt by the job seeker to obtain employment."

No box ticking! It's going to be hell from next year when all these companies are going to get their inboxes of their emails stuffed with resumes from people who don't really want a job but are forced to put on a very good show of pretending to want a job. You wouldn't want to employ any of them, and they don't really want to be employed. The charade is going to be unbearable. And what good does the government think it's going to achieve? Especially when we know it doesn't do anything tangibly beneficial.

It's just bullying by the government. If this business of having to apply for 40jobs per month for 6 months before they get the dole comes into play, it's going to be unwanted-resume-hell for every company out there. It totally ignores the reality of the marketplace.