(Yep,) It's War

As We Go To War Again...

What sucks more? That we're going to send troops back to Iraq again, or that we think it's going to be a long engagement? I'm sick of war, frankly. It's just been this horrible on-going aggravation for well over a decade, we just barely got out of the last fracas - knowing we'd be leaving behind a snake pit in Iraq, and hey presto, that's where we're going back to fight the next one which is a continuation of the last one.

One of the more pernicious things about this Forever War - and yes, it's turning in to exactly that - is that we're not even certain as to why we're fighting it and what we hope to achieve through fighting it. And war is like a corrupting influence on our society that erodes away our freedoms while claiming to protect them; erodes away our compassion when we most need to exercise it; erodes away hope in exchange for an imagined security; and erodes away aesthetics in favour of crude jingoistic symbolisms. And it seeps all over the place like some wretched ill-contained sticky oily fluid. It infects us, it coats us, it taints us.

I'm sick of the khaki and olive green and the grey marl and the bogus epaulettes on clothing. I'm sick of the movies that have good guys sporting military credentials and ranks and insignias. I'm sick of this statist claptrap that masquerades itself as 'security'. The rhetoric of war, the praise of the war dead, the erecting and commemorating of battles and things, are all killing us bit by bit. I'm not some peacenik either. I believe in the proper application of force where necessary but in this instance, I'm failing to see it. ISIL/ISOR are halfway across the planet and are yet to affect Australian interests. Yes, they've called for acts of terror on our soil but seriously, would that necessitate the expenditure we are about to make?

Even allowing for the possibility of it being a 'just war', there's the issue of us having spent the last decade fighting a war that was hardly just or called-for in Iraq. If this war is just now, it's only so because we screwed up Iraq so badly. This is going to be punishing exactly because it is punishment for our previous misdeeds.

Wartime Prime Minister? The Gods Laugh At Thee Abbott

If you asked any voter back in September 2013 as to whether anybody thought the last federal election was going to be about war, I doubt anybody sensible would have said 'yes'. I know Tony Abbott and his government have banged on about a mandate since that election, but I don't really recall the election being such a resounding win for Tony Abbott and the Coalition they could claim a mandate on anything, let alone going to war.

The turn of events that has led to this moment in history is deplorable, and by that I'm not talking about beheadings in the Levant, I'm talking about our idiotic polity. It's not just Tony Abbott or the Coalition, it's the ALP also and the previous governments of all Howard, Rudd, Gillard to boot. While we've been busy navel gazing, we've lost the ability to make mature nuanced decisions. Instead we've allowed ourselves to be led by stupid, simplistic slogans shouted by an eminently stupid sloganeer, and now we're about to send troops all over again to one of the shittiest places on the rump of the Earth.

Doubtless Tony Abbott thinks he's making history but I can assure you that he is more making-it-up-as-he-goes-along. What is going on is a travesty. That's right. Our government has gone from tragedy to comedy to farce, all the way down to unintelligible nonsense. Somewhere along the way, we have allowed people with the worst judgment to lead us into figurative political minefields, and there's no easy crawling out. This is a terrible war to be fighting and by the time when all is said and done, I'm pretty sure Tony Abbott's name will be mud in the history books. If he thinks this war is going to make him as a Prime Minister, I think he's going to be very surprised.

The Glorification Game

Pleiades sent in this article. It's about how militarisation has been creeping into our social fabric for some time. There is this paragraph that I think bears repeating:

Perhaps the most concerning feature of the spreading militarisation is the deliberate targeting of children. Schools across the nation are bombarded with free, professionally developed curriculum material including films, books, CDs and posters. Subsidies are provided for trips to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Essay competitions award winners with fully funded tours of European and Middle Eastern battlefields. There seems to be no reticence among the promoters of war as the defining national experience. They openly canvass the importance of reaching out to children from the earliest years of primary school and seem never to consider that their crusade is closer to propaganda than to pedagogy. And the sanctimony that pervades all treatment of the “fallen” stands in the way of healthy scepticism or dissident interpretations.

It makes you wonder about what we have in Canberra. There are two cultural museums in Canberra - the War Memorial and the Australia Museum. The latter is like the product of political correctness gone wrong. It celebrates things like the Hills Hoist and refrigeration, together with commemorating unknown indigenous people. It's boring and tedious, forced and guilt-trip-enforcing. It's like the creation of leftist academia with an axe to grind about Australia's incontrovertible colonial (and colonial-ist) past. Trust me, I'm a regular pinko, and I found it boring as hell and borderline idiotic.

The War Memorial stands in stark contrast where everything in it is the glorification of war. The entire Australian self-image is constructed around the great conflicts in which Australia was a participant. It's macho, geeky, nerdy, un-apolgetically colonialist, backward-looking, and dripping with repressed homoeroticism. It is in short, just as disturbing as the Australia Museum, except it seems to have become the favourite toy of the sort of conservative you laugh at for wanting to talk about the war all the time. It's a place that shows you how disturbing human affairs are, when you look at it just through the prism of war.

Together they compete to paint a picture of our national identity, coming out of different corners of ideology, talking at cross-purposes and largely astigmatic about the way they come across. Combined, it gives us a fractured view of our polity. One side loves to hate on the white mainstream. The white mainstream just likes war for its own sake because that's the only thing that is given any historic meaning. It explains at once the ineptness of the ALP opposition at stopping us sliding into this war as well as the eagerness and ease with which the Coalition has shoved us back into a war.

On this issue of going to war with ISIL/ISOR, Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek have been utterly useless, with terrible judgment.

Generation Change

The ALP's Gen-X Crew

The Herald was making the point today that the ALP have gone Gen-X with their choice of frontbench. When you think about it, Bill Shorten is 46 going on 47 so that puts him at the older range of Gen-X, and Tanya Plibersek at 44, it's true that the ALP have indeed gone Gen-X. I have a late Boomer friend who tells me that all this demographic stuff is just a construct not worthy of analysis, except I've been writing here under the banner of 'Gen-X View Of The Universe' for a good 5 years now. It obviously means something.

What could it mean?

The Generation X politician in Australia would have arrived at Tertiary education after the AUS was disintegrated by the likes of Peter Costello and Tony Abbott in 1983, Interestingly enough, Julia Gillard was the last President of the AUS when it collapsed in 1983. If you anted a model to the fractious politics of the Julia Gillard Prime Mininster-ship, you would have found it in the demise of the Australian Union of Students, with the same cast of late Baby Boomers thrashing and trashing institutions to make their political mark. What's scary is that they're still around aplenty in the Liberal and National party ranks, and they probably still don't think much of indulging in that sort of ratbag behaviour. This explains the histrionic opposition style Tony Abbott chose to work with - because it is the method he used in his youth to destroy the AUS , headed up by Julia Gillard. Worse still, it worked again, so that may be why he's so convinced he has some kind of mandate.

The demise of the AUS and the years where there was no student lobby until the NUS got up in the late 1980s allowed HECS to be brought in. Unlike the Baby Boomers, most of the Gen-X politician would have had to pay HECS. When they say education and the opportunities it affords are important, they know what they are saying. All these things are intimately entwined.

If there is one thing that I do think is encouraging about the Gen X ALP politicos is that they are of the generation that had to put back together the NUS and have the experience of rebuilding institutions. If the ALP under Rudd-Gillard looked positively fractured, then I think the current group might be able to start from scratch and build a proper agenda that suits the time. As I wrote the other day, I'm feeling fairly optimistic about the Shorten-Plibersek team, much more so than I felt about the Rudd-Gillard team when they first rose to the level of Opposition leader and deputy back in 2006. They're not perfect human beings and they will make their mistakes. I just don't think they're as fractious and crazy as the generation of politicians who were forged in the dying days of the AUS.

Right now, the Coalition are the party of the Baby Boomers much more than Gen-X or Gen-Y by dint of the ageing population and makeup of the Liberal and National Party demographic. The fissure hasn't been more stark than any other time since Mark Latham as late Baby Boomer was taking on John Howard who was born before the Boomers. That fissure sort of leaves the current ALP firmly in the Gen-X camp with the hope of picking up a big portion of support from Gen-Y.  The question then is whether Gen-X+Gen-Y interest is a big enough voting constituency to overcome the Baby Boomers' interests in their twilight years.

Demographically speaking, Gen-X is small and shorter than either the Boomers before or the Gen-Y that follows. That being the case the duo may never make it. And if they did, they may be seen off by a Gen-Y politician. Consider the American experience. Bill Clinton was the first Boomer President, who was followed by George W. Bush who was followed by Barack Obama, all of whom are Boomers. All three Presidents won two terms, so the Baby Boomer reign will last 24years. If a Gen-X candidate won 2 terms after Obama, the next election after that will likely see a pair of Gen-Y candidates. It's entirely possible there will never be a Gen X President of the United States.

Similarly, I don't see any Gen-Xers knocking on the door in the Coalition ranks. If Abbott is replaced for some reason, it's possible the leadership reverts to Malcolm Turnbull or goes to Joe Hockey - both of whom are Boomers. The longer the Coalition stay in power, the less chance there will be of a government of Gen-Xers in Australia.

So when you look at it through the demographic filter, that's what we have with Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek: The one and only shot at Gen-X forming Government in Australia.

News That's Fit To Punt - 15/Oct/2013

Tony Says He's Got A Man Date

It's a bit gay isn't it Tony?

Alrighty, so Tony Abbott is saying that he has a mandate to repeal the Carbon Tax. He's been banging on with this since winning the election and as far as we can tell, he's put the topic at pole position of his agenda in Parliament. I guess if you say you're going to do it and win an election it might look like you have a mandate but most people polled seem to think this is a terrible idea; and that the reason they voted for Abbott was because they reviled the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd ALP so much but hadn't really given much thought on the ramification of ousting the ALP government.

So much for the wisdom of crowds. Our electorate is stupid.

You can basically see that not too deeply down, Tony Abbott is still a Climate Change Denialist who has hijacked the agenda so he's in a hurry to sort this out in favour of his denialist position as quickly as he can. This then turns into the absurd spectacle of Tony Abbott trying to apply pressure on to the new Opposition Leader Bill Shorten like so:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott says he believes Bill Shorten will be forced to back the Coalition's plan to repeal the carbon tax, saying Labor's new leader is “nothing if not a political pragmatist”.

Mr Abbott dismissed the new Labor leader's repeated statements in support of pricing carbon, saying his government was “giving the Labor Party a chance to repent” on the issue.

It's interesting how he uses that word "repent", as if introducing the Carbon Pricing mechanism was somehow a sin. You imagine that in Tony Abbott's mind, any market driven mechanism to push down carbon emissions is somehow 'evil' (like 'adultery' or 'murder' - the mind boggles). Is it the tax part that bothers him? Or is it simply that he just disagrees with the mountain of scientific data?

Whatever little faith you had in his Direct Action policy to replace the Carbon Emission Trading Scheme evaporates like so much morning dew in the rising heat when you consider that word "repent".

I Voted For Him But He's A Terrible Pundit

Mark 'Arm-Breaker' Latham said that the ALP faithful shouldn't vote for Anthony Abanese because 'Albo' had terrible political instincts and was basically too wishy washy for Mark Latham's Liking. Whilst ranting on against union power and factional deals within the ALP, Latham said he was voting "ABA. Anybody-But Albo". Which is to say he voted for Bill Shorten but didn't really want to endorse Bill Shorten in any positive manner, no.

I guess Bill Shorten is a tough character to take given the Rudd Gillard years and the role he played in both PM swaps. As 'faceless men' go, he's been the very public face of the faceless men, and so, on some level probably deserves to be given the shot in the same spirit that led to John "I don't take bribes But I don't report Them' Robertson leading the ALP in NSW. I guess we could be heading for a travesty with Bill Shorten as Opposition Leader but I doubt Albo was a better choice.

While I am no member of the ALP - so this is completely an outsider's view - I think Albo was and still is a potential liability. One shouldn't cast aspersions but one has to ask how close Albo is to Eddie Obeid and whether he will get linked to those wonderful ICAC hearings slated to deal with the morbid Obeidity in NSW. Oh, and that Ron Medich guy who put out a hit on that McGurk guy. In that sense 'Deputy Prime Minister Albo' might have been the high point of Anthony Albanese.

Shorten has his failings. People have been writing about those in spades. In amongst reading all the bad press, one thing I did like about Bill Shorten was that after he switched back to supporting Rudd, he came out fighting. He wasn't fighting for his reputation, but for deeply core ALP values. You know, the stuff we always ascribe to Gough and Bob and Paul. On that level he appears to be a politician who speaks on behalf of a greater portion of Australia than Julia Gillard, while possibly not having the insane charisma of Kevin Rudd. You'd have to say the guy has a fighting chance; especially against a willful, dogmatic, Tory ideologue like Tony Abbott.

The other net benefit of the Shorten leadership over an Albo leadership is that you get Tanya Plibersek as Deputy Opposition Leader.I'll be honest with you, I think Tanya Plibersek has been great through the election campaign and into this post-election period. Any time I've seen her on Q&A, she's been setting the record straight and has countered the attempts by the Coalition to paint the Rudd-Gillard government as somehow a failed government. She's been logical, persuasive and very circumspect.

If you had to come up with a credible one-two punch, it's hard to do better than this duo, given the ALP's current state. Anna Burke might feel bitter and twisted about the shadow cabinet selection, but the Shorten-Plibersek team up gives you a lot of hope that the ALP can get their mojo back. When I think back to how negatively I felt about the original Rudd-Gillard team up back in 2006, I think this is a lot more promising. And I never thought I'd be saying that so early after an election loss. They haven't even gone back to Parliament yet.

Housing Bubbles Are Harder To Observe Than The Higgs Boson

Look, if a Nobel Prize winning economist says you're in a housing bubble, you probably are in a housing bubble.

Robert Shiller, the joint winner of the Nobel prize for economics, is worried about bubbles. The Yale University professor expressed alarm at the rapid rise in global house prices soon after the award was announced.

"There are so many countries that are looking bubbly," he said.

If he's right, and bubble trouble besets Australia, it's bad news for growth and jobs.

The Reserve Bank has cut interest rates to record lows to encourage businesses and consumers to spend and invest as the effects of the mining boom fade. The aim is to boost non-mining sectors like home building, retail and tourism so they can take over from mining as drivers of national economic growth.

But low interest rates have also stoked demand for established houses. Sydney has led the way – the city's median dwelling price (comprising houses and units) rose by a frothy 13.1 per cent in the year to September.

If house price growth becomes unsustainable the Reserve might decide to take some heat out of the property market by lifting interest rates. It would be unlikely to tolerate the longer-term risk of a devastating house price collapse.

But under that scenario, interest rates would be set at a higher level than required by the broader economy. The cost of containing house prices could be subdued growth and fewer jobs.

The really odd thing about all this is that the RBA has been insisting we don't have a Housing Bubble in face of the same evidence being presented to the Nobel Laureate Economist. I mean, we take the existence of the Higgs Boson on about the same level of scrutiny - and they gave Dr. Higgs his Nobel earlier in the month - so I'm sitting here wondering what exactly the RBA thinks is going on that makes it not a bubble; but here it goes...:

But AMP capital chief economist Shane Oliver believes many of them don't fully understand Australian property markets.

"The basic problem here is a lack of supply caused by chronic under-building," he said. "There is a shortage of housing in Australia and that partly explains why it is so unaffordable."

Given the blend of very low interest rates, a stable economy and pent up demand, it is no surprise property markets are showing signs of life. While Sydney property prices have grown strongly in the past year, this follows nearly a decade of weak growth. Data published by the Housing Industry Association this month shows the average annual growth in Sydney house prices over the past 10 years has been just 3.4 per cent – a rate that has hardly kept up with wages.

At this stage, the Reserve Bank isn't convinced by talk of housing bubbles in Australia. Last month the bank's assistant governor, Malcolm Edey, said those predictions were "unrealistically alarmist".

Dr Edey cautioned against reaching for "the bubble terminology" whenever house price increases were higher than average, because by definition that's half the time.

AMP Capital's Shane Oliver offers an explanation why Australian real estate is so expensive and unaffordable, but it's really not an answer as to why or how this is not a Housing Bubble. The RBA says if you take the average growth of property in Australia, it's only 3.4% p.a. which sits behind wage growth over that time, so it can't really be considered a bubble. I'm more interested in how that 'average' was derived, because the mathematician inside me smells a rat.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see how things play out.