Following the Government's release of its planned legislation trumpeted as Historic Regulatory Reform there has been a degree of kerfuffle in public about the policy.
The twin elements of this have been an accusation that this is some kind of general attack on capitalism or on Telstra shareholders in particular. The latter has a substrand to it that the Government engage in a form of insider trading by getting the Future Fund to offload a third of its Telstra shareholding.
The crazieness started when Phil Burgess was interviewed in the OZ, which he followed up with an opinion piece in the AFR. In this part of his mission seemed to be to paint the new management as failures saying;
The board is getting what it asked for. If you announce in advance that you are not going to stand up for your rights and your shareholders rights, bad things are going to happen and they have. It's the law of the jungle and if you act like prey, you will be preyed upon.
That this incorrectly portrays both the position of the Board and what the range of options for Telstra are and have been, but more of that later.
This then got a crowd of Telstra's institutional shareholders incensed, as also reported in the Oz. One of their number, using words very familiar when coming from the mouths of Burgess and Trujillo said;
I think the minister has made his position very clear that the government wants to rape and pillage Telstra. That means we have to convince the board that it should not be co-operating fully with the government to allow that to happen.
He was backed up by Burgess saying;
Sol has been gone six months and the new make-nice board and speak-softly, softly management hasn't worked. As Donald McGauchie said, 10 years of appeasement of the government led to a very bad result for Telstra. That's why we had to change and turn it into a real company with world-leading results..
Some of the more radical commentary seemed to suggest that the Government's action here would make Australia a country investors would avoid for fear of arbitrary decisions that would destroy value.
All of this is complete rubbish. Firstly, the Government has been determined to bring about structural reform in the industry since they announced their broadband policy. Both Minister Conroy and Finance Minister (and former comms shadow) Tanner had formed the view that structural reform was as important as was broadband.
Their initial hope was the the offer of a $4.7B investment would have been enough to induce Telstra to come up with a strategy to achieve that outcome. For a number of reasons - most notably the Telstra management's insistence that separation not be a requirement - this didn't come about. So the Government with NBN 2.0 has come up with a different plan.
Nothing in the regulatory package introduced requires Telstra to do anything more than has already happened to two other fully privatised former Government owned Telcos - Telstra's equivalents in the UK and NZ; that is functional separation.
The legislation makes explicit a view that Telstra should not be able to further grow its mobiles business while enjoying the market power it does today. This is also a very standard piece of global telco regulatory practice, it is not an interference at all with the rights of the company or shareholders.
Finally the option for Telstra to structurally separate requires only an undertaking that can be completed by 2018. That means it can be achieved as outlined in the explanatory memorandum by cutting its copper customers over to the NBN infrastructure as it is built. Why would a company not welcome the opportunity to utlise someone else's investment to service customers when their own asset is nearing replacement?
There is a process whereby Telstra can meet the Government's requirements without ever transferring a single asset to NBNCo. That strategy means that funds Telstra planned to reinvest in access network can be returned to shareholders in increased dividends, or spect on an international growth strategy.
Finally Lindsay Tanner in The National Times has explained that there was no conspiracy between the Future Fund and Government. He rightly points out that the stock has recovered its losses since the announcement. The surprising thing really is that the stock took the dive because any telco watcher should have known the Government was intent on that route. More importantly is Tanner's view that "It is foolish to assume that the Government’s telecommunications reforms are bad for Telstra shareholders".
What has been the most extraordinary part of all thoughh hasbeen the sub-txt that Government should not make decisions that could erode shareholder value. That would mean that no Government should legislate to improve OH&S standards, no Government should legislate on competition law, no Government should legislate on environmental standards. While there are certainly some whho would hold those views, I don't think they are by any mean mainstream.
In a battle between good public policy for 2 million voters, nd the shareholer interest of 1.5 M Telstra shareholders, public interest should and will win.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Capitalism vs Corporatism
I'm not sure about Michael Moore still. I think that he is a left-wing carictature - he's what the left craves in a prophet but he's not really it. A bit like our own chaser boys he's made fun of security guards at front counters, or store clerks - or even the frail and bewilldered Charlton Heston. At least that was the case in Bowling for Columbine which was otherwise a great movie.
I gave his 9/11 movie a big miss because the blurb suggested it was one of those "the US had it coming" types. I inhabit a strange world in which I can accept that revolution and terorism may be justified political expressions (though I'm reading Blood & Rage now which might change my mind), but even in that mode I can't figure out the 9/11 attack as any kind of justifiable attack.
Adrianna Huffington tells us that Obama and You must see Moore's new film Capitalism: A Love Story.
Having told us to see the film, and that in it Moore is replaying all the stories in Huffington's own head, she tells us though she doesn't agree with the film;
In the film, Michael describes capitalism as evil. I disagree. I don't think capitalism is evil. I think what we have right now is not capitalism.
In capitalism as envisioned by its leading lights, including Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, you need a moral foundation in order for free markets to work. And when a company fails, it fails. It doesn't get bailed out using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. What we have right now is Corporatism. It's welfare for the rich. It's the government picking winners and losers. It's Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It's socialized losses and privatized gains.
There is a lot to unpack in that - not least of which is that neither Smith nor Marshall were necessarily "envisioning" anything as opposed to merely describing how markets in fact work.
This raises an interesting definitional exercise - what is "capitalism". Some would say a market economy as opposed to a command economy. However, as anyone who has read about command economies knows markets still exist - often "black" but nonetheless real, and occupying as many areas of exchange as they can.
The Marxist definition of capitalism rests on the concept of the "private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange". In their "communal" idyll this ownership is vested in the workers - though possibly expressed in the form of their ciollective ownership throgh Government. (The battle of control between the local collective and the central authority was an interesting part of the Russian power struggles of the twenties).
The more economic version is recognising that an essential feature of capitalism is the accumulation of capital, that is the retention of surplus for reinvestment. This feature necessitates the existence ultimately of the common stock firm, including the conversion of partnerships to listed firms (part of what brought the investment banks undone). That is, absent some other rule - and ethics is not enough - corporatism is the natural extension of capitalism.
Discuss....
I gave his 9/11 movie a big miss because the blurb suggested it was one of those "the US had it coming" types. I inhabit a strange world in which I can accept that revolution and terorism may be justified political expressions (though I'm reading Blood & Rage now which might change my mind), but even in that mode I can't figure out the 9/11 attack as any kind of justifiable attack.
Adrianna Huffington tells us that Obama and You must see Moore's new film Capitalism: A Love Story.
Having told us to see the film, and that in it Moore is replaying all the stories in Huffington's own head, she tells us though she doesn't agree with the film;
In the film, Michael describes capitalism as evil. I disagree. I don't think capitalism is evil. I think what we have right now is not capitalism.
In capitalism as envisioned by its leading lights, including Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, you need a moral foundation in order for free markets to work. And when a company fails, it fails. It doesn't get bailed out using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. What we have right now is Corporatism. It's welfare for the rich. It's the government picking winners and losers. It's Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It's socialized losses and privatized gains.
There is a lot to unpack in that - not least of which is that neither Smith nor Marshall were necessarily "envisioning" anything as opposed to merely describing how markets in fact work.
This raises an interesting definitional exercise - what is "capitalism". Some would say a market economy as opposed to a command economy. However, as anyone who has read about command economies knows markets still exist - often "black" but nonetheless real, and occupying as many areas of exchange as they can.
The Marxist definition of capitalism rests on the concept of the "private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange". In their "communal" idyll this ownership is vested in the workers - though possibly expressed in the form of their ciollective ownership throgh Government. (The battle of control between the local collective and the central authority was an interesting part of the Russian power struggles of the twenties).
The more economic version is recognising that an essential feature of capitalism is the accumulation of capital, that is the retention of surplus for reinvestment. This feature necessitates the existence ultimately of the common stock firm, including the conversion of partnerships to listed firms (part of what brought the investment banks undone). That is, absent some other rule - and ethics is not enough - corporatism is the natural extension of capitalism.
Discuss....
Gerard picks it
Writing in his Media Watch Dog last week Gerard Henderson fingered The Age's Catherine Deveny for only recycling four topics; God is dead, marriage is out of date, private schools suck and "it's week four write about the family".
She obviously doesn't read Gerard - if she did she might have tried to break the mould and write about something different. What's worse her stuff now gets published in The National Times.
This time it is a supposedly witty diatribe about the agony of taking one's children to the show, and how she started with instructions about their healthy eating but "by 10.30am, we'd scoffed toffee apples, fairy floss and coloured popcorn, and we were on to the battered hot dogs on sticks."
She manages to try to make fun of her apparent ineptitude as a parent and a complete lack of understanding of the cultural significance of our great agricultural shows. As a parent I loved taking my kids to the show every year (in Sydney) and we never had expense blow outs (literally one ride, two show bags - an apple purchased at the fruit and veg displays etc).
Meanwhile we talked a lot about the challenges of farming, the significance of many of the skills on display.
I'm with Gerard - we don't need this kind of rubbish writing - certainly not under the masthead of The National Times (not sure about The Age - it is a Melbourne paper and hence has always been a little suss).
She obviously doesn't read Gerard - if she did she might have tried to break the mould and write about something different. What's worse her stuff now gets published in The National Times.
This time it is a supposedly witty diatribe about the agony of taking one's children to the show, and how she started with instructions about their healthy eating but "by 10.30am, we'd scoffed toffee apples, fairy floss and coloured popcorn, and we were on to the battered hot dogs on sticks."
She manages to try to make fun of her apparent ineptitude as a parent and a complete lack of understanding of the cultural significance of our great agricultural shows. As a parent I loved taking my kids to the show every year (in Sydney) and we never had expense blow outs (literally one ride, two show bags - an apple purchased at the fruit and veg displays etc).
Meanwhile we talked a lot about the challenges of farming, the significance of many of the skills on display.
I'm with Gerard - we don't need this kind of rubbish writing - certainly not under the masthead of The National Times (not sure about The Age - it is a Melbourne paper and hence has always been a little suss).
Great to see ...mathematics pull a crowd
As a fan of mathematics (while first degree qualified I really can't claim to be a "mathematician")it was great to see a blog post about a "sell-oout" crowd for a maths lecture.
The article contains a link to the Mathematics in Australia blog - an interesting read.
The article contains a link to the Mathematics in Australia blog - an interesting read.
Monday, September 21, 2009
New Democrats ... Old Democrats
Great story in Crikey today (but that's the e-mal version) that recounts the battle going on inside the Democrats between a "Christian Centrist" takeover from South Australia, battling what they perceive to be still blaming "the gays" for the party's demise.
There were a very sizeable number of people who wanted to put the Democrats down (like a racehorse) after it lost its final Senate positions. Their theory was that to try to continue would only further traduce the memory of a party that did have some significant achievements and influence.
To those who still want to coalesce around a "progressive" banner without feeling the need to bed down with the machine driven union dominated beast that is Labor, or to sell their sould to a single issue party like the Greens (and be a fellow traveller with unreconstructed Trots) it is perhaps time you did what the Australia Party and Liberal Reform Movement did all those years ago. That is find yourself a saviour, someone with a sufficiently high profile (and ego to match) to relaunch progressive politics.
Unfortunately, no names spring to mind. Brendan Nelso might almost get there if it weren't for the fact that his final incarnation (to win the leadership) was as an arch-conservative. It needs to be someone who acknowledges climate change, up to date with same sex relationship rights, who is otherwise highly liberal in the role of the State. Peter Costello with a smirk transplant is one option, but only if desperate.
There were a very sizeable number of people who wanted to put the Democrats down (like a racehorse) after it lost its final Senate positions. Their theory was that to try to continue would only further traduce the memory of a party that did have some significant achievements and influence.
To those who still want to coalesce around a "progressive" banner without feeling the need to bed down with the machine driven union dominated beast that is Labor, or to sell their sould to a single issue party like the Greens (and be a fellow traveller with unreconstructed Trots) it is perhaps time you did what the Australia Party and Liberal Reform Movement did all those years ago. That is find yourself a saviour, someone with a sufficiently high profile (and ego to match) to relaunch progressive politics.
Unfortunately, no names spring to mind. Brendan Nelso might almost get there if it weren't for the fact that his final incarnation (to win the leadership) was as an arch-conservative. It needs to be someone who acknowledges climate change, up to date with same sex relationship rights, who is otherwise highly liberal in the role of the State. Peter Costello with a smirk transplant is one option, but only if desperate.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
A small win
Earlier this year I pointed out in a Senate committee submission for Unwired that a legislative provision to require an instrument be "published on the Internet" was nonsense.
I'm pleased to note that the latest piece of legislation from the same Department uses the term "published on the Department's website".
I'd like to believe it is my own little victory!
I'm pleased to note that the latest piece of legislation from the same Department uses the term "published on the Department's website".
I'd like to believe it is my own little victory!
Monday, September 14, 2009
On models (following Krugman)
I already commented on the contribution of Paul Krugman on the GFC. There has been a flurry of activity since.
Our own Alan Kohler has contributed the view that economists just need to catch-up on the bit they missed, namely the behaviour of real people, writing;
The collapse of Lehman was neither the end of capitalism nor the end of economics; the capitalists have bounced back and it’s imperative that economists do the same and come up with a new theory that accepts that economies are run by flawed humans and that they are buffeted by a financial system that is subject to the madness of crowds. .
A different take was in a later article in The New York Times. In this a reseracher from the Santa Fe Institute (home of complexity theory of all kinds) was quoted as saying;
You don’t need a model of human psychology to see that there was a danger of impending disaster. But economists have failed to make models that accurately model such phenomena and adequately address their couplings.
So this is the theory that we can get it right if we just build in more terms to our model. (For the technically minded the failure in the modelling was an assumption that derivatives were spreading risk rather than compounding it. The theory worked so long as the risk in the underlying assets weren't correlated. In fact, the risks were correlated in the event of an overall slump in the housing market. The housing market could experience an overall slump because the terms of credit kept getting relaxed because the new markets in derivatives seemed to be diversifying risk. Hence, not only was the assumption about correlation wrong, the assumption about correlation was a contributing factor to it being wrong).
Also Glenn Dyer writing in Crikey noted a Professor Figlewski saying it was about not measuring the right kind of risk.
What wasn’t recognised was the importance of a different species of risk -- liquidity risk. When trust in counterparties is lost, and markets freeze up so there are no prices, really showed how different the real world was from our models.
And finally we had also in Crikey Steve Keen returns to explaining why it is still hard being a bear - his theme being that underlying all the rest is a failure of the maro-econmomic models to allow for total debt and that even if we recover through short term stimulus the underlying problem (tumour as he calls it in his analogy) is still there.
So what should we conclude? I think there is an awful lot here to note. The first is that simply adding more variables to the overall equations won't permanently solve the problem - because we are still likely to leave something out. More specifically the overall economic structure is so complex that it can't really be perfectly modelled. Our imperfect models will, however, give us an illusion of control and encourage us to pursue some extreme strategy till we have an encounter with the next flaw. This suggests a policy like the Roman one of eveything in moderation - regulatory systems should be designed to always dampen excesses.
The second is that at the very least the theory space is contended and policy makers should seek out the implications of a wide variety of advisers, not merely the established school.
Finally, thre is the position Eva Cox outlined in Crikey today - which was really in response to the Howard-Rudd stoush. She notes;
Neo-liberalism, or neo classical economics, assumes that human nature is predictable as individuals act rationally on the basis of self interest. Equations therefore can predict and explain our choices and there is no need to explore more complex bases for human behaviours such as relationships, optimism, irrational exuberance and idiocy.
These are excluded as tastes as are the pressures and pleasures of belonging to family, society, community or other groupings. Market theory is problematic to politicians because it is value free and creates winners and losers as power and resources are unevenly distributed.
This is not totally correct as an assessment of all approaches to economics - but it certainly is of the orthodox school of markets. There is an interesting conundrum in fact faced by market theorists that they cannot admit of "free will" as the perfectly rational decision making individual never has a "choice" to make, they follow a course of action determined by an array of factors around them but ultimately when faced by alternatives can only follow the one course that represents maximising their utility.
But the twin elements Cox describes are the focus of the school of behavioural economics (the psychology of decision making) and institutional economics (the behavioural rules and norms of a social grouping).
Cox goes on;
I am not arguing against markets, where appropriate, but against the ideological assumption that competition and markets are always preferable. This is what needs urgent reviewing to create more equity, efficacy and therefore efficiency.
The concession to markets begs the question of determining when they are appropriate. One of the outstanding errors in the reasoning of the orthodox is that markets are to be preferred because they are "efficient" which is deemed to be measured by the condition of a Pareto optimum. That condition is that no person can be made better off without making one person worse off. The matching concept is a Pareto improvement in which at least one person can be made better off without making one person worse off. But this also gets fudged, to the concept of a potential Pareto improvement, wherein at least one person can be made better off and could compensate those made worse off. A lot of policy is pursued to achieve potential Pareto improvements without compensation - and indeed the same market theorists argue that such compensation blunts the incentives of both the winners (the rewards are less) and losers ("rewards" for doing nothing).
Economics can do a lot better than it currently is, but should never be relied upon as the sole definitive tool for policy analysis.
Our own Alan Kohler has contributed the view that economists just need to catch-up on the bit they missed, namely the behaviour of real people, writing;
The collapse of Lehman was neither the end of capitalism nor the end of economics; the capitalists have bounced back and it’s imperative that economists do the same and come up with a new theory that accepts that economies are run by flawed humans and that they are buffeted by a financial system that is subject to the madness of crowds. .
A different take was in a later article in The New York Times. In this a reseracher from the Santa Fe Institute (home of complexity theory of all kinds) was quoted as saying;
You don’t need a model of human psychology to see that there was a danger of impending disaster. But economists have failed to make models that accurately model such phenomena and adequately address their couplings.
So this is the theory that we can get it right if we just build in more terms to our model. (For the technically minded the failure in the modelling was an assumption that derivatives were spreading risk rather than compounding it. The theory worked so long as the risk in the underlying assets weren't correlated. In fact, the risks were correlated in the event of an overall slump in the housing market. The housing market could experience an overall slump because the terms of credit kept getting relaxed because the new markets in derivatives seemed to be diversifying risk. Hence, not only was the assumption about correlation wrong, the assumption about correlation was a contributing factor to it being wrong).
Also Glenn Dyer writing in Crikey noted a Professor Figlewski saying it was about not measuring the right kind of risk.
What wasn’t recognised was the importance of a different species of risk -- liquidity risk. When trust in counterparties is lost, and markets freeze up so there are no prices, really showed how different the real world was from our models.
And finally we had also in Crikey Steve Keen returns to explaining why it is still hard being a bear - his theme being that underlying all the rest is a failure of the maro-econmomic models to allow for total debt and that even if we recover through short term stimulus the underlying problem (tumour as he calls it in his analogy) is still there.
So what should we conclude? I think there is an awful lot here to note. The first is that simply adding more variables to the overall equations won't permanently solve the problem - because we are still likely to leave something out. More specifically the overall economic structure is so complex that it can't really be perfectly modelled. Our imperfect models will, however, give us an illusion of control and encourage us to pursue some extreme strategy till we have an encounter with the next flaw. This suggests a policy like the Roman one of eveything in moderation - regulatory systems should be designed to always dampen excesses.
The second is that at the very least the theory space is contended and policy makers should seek out the implications of a wide variety of advisers, not merely the established school.
Finally, thre is the position Eva Cox outlined in Crikey today - which was really in response to the Howard-Rudd stoush. She notes;
Neo-liberalism, or neo classical economics, assumes that human nature is predictable as individuals act rationally on the basis of self interest. Equations therefore can predict and explain our choices and there is no need to explore more complex bases for human behaviours such as relationships, optimism, irrational exuberance and idiocy.
These are excluded as tastes as are the pressures and pleasures of belonging to family, society, community or other groupings. Market theory is problematic to politicians because it is value free and creates winners and losers as power and resources are unevenly distributed.
This is not totally correct as an assessment of all approaches to economics - but it certainly is of the orthodox school of markets. There is an interesting conundrum in fact faced by market theorists that they cannot admit of "free will" as the perfectly rational decision making individual never has a "choice" to make, they follow a course of action determined by an array of factors around them but ultimately when faced by alternatives can only follow the one course that represents maximising their utility.
But the twin elements Cox describes are the focus of the school of behavioural economics (the psychology of decision making) and institutional economics (the behavioural rules and norms of a social grouping).
Cox goes on;
I am not arguing against markets, where appropriate, but against the ideological assumption that competition and markets are always preferable. This is what needs urgent reviewing to create more equity, efficacy and therefore efficiency.
The concession to markets begs the question of determining when they are appropriate. One of the outstanding errors in the reasoning of the orthodox is that markets are to be preferred because they are "efficient" which is deemed to be measured by the condition of a Pareto optimum. That condition is that no person can be made better off without making one person worse off. The matching concept is a Pareto improvement in which at least one person can be made better off without making one person worse off. But this also gets fudged, to the concept of a potential Pareto improvement, wherein at least one person can be made better off and could compensate those made worse off. A lot of policy is pursued to achieve potential Pareto improvements without compensation - and indeed the same market theorists argue that such compensation blunts the incentives of both the winners (the rewards are less) and losers ("rewards" for doing nothing).
Economics can do a lot better than it currently is, but should never be relied upon as the sole definitive tool for policy analysis.
How not to launch a web news service
This morning Fairfax launched its new National Times online content - fairly rapidly conceived I think and probably a response to News Ltd's The Punch.
I really only realised that today was the launch day because Breakfast PoliticsM linked to a few stories from it. While I scanned the stories by K Rudd and M Turnbull, I closed them before I thought I'd have a look at the whole site.
So I googled "National Times" - interestingly the first items listed were all about the relaunch but not to the service. Even more strangely there wasn't even a sponsored ad link to it.
The online story on one Fairfax online site included the URL, but not as a hyperlink. There was one small ad on the SMH home page, but over the fold - and it linked to a static ad.
Anyhow, I finally found my way to the site. Not very impressed really with day one! Most importantly it doesn't look at all like a relaunched masthead - it is an amalgam of the content of The Age, The SMH and the two online services WAtoday and brisbanetimes. If I were Fairfax journalists I'd see this as the first sign that the move is definitely on to convert the existing two broadsheets to one national newspaper.
I'm not impressed so far with The Punch either. Though there is an interesting minor distinction - The Punch has a set of links headed "Opinion from Everywhere" that includes as its first link today the PMs contribution to The National Times. Meanwhile The National Times equivalent is labelled "Global Opinion".
I have to say I'm also disappointedthat The National Times gives you the opportunity to sign up for a daily newsletter but to do so you have to become a "Fairfax Digital" member. So terribly old school. The Punch has a similar service that asks for the e-mail address first then draws the user through the rest of the registration process - much more user friendly.
I wonder who will join me in relaunching the masthead of Nation Review online?
I really only realised that today was the launch day because Breakfast PoliticsM linked to a few stories from it. While I scanned the stories by K Rudd and M Turnbull, I closed them before I thought I'd have a look at the whole site.
So I googled "National Times" - interestingly the first items listed were all about the relaunch but not to the service. Even more strangely there wasn't even a sponsored ad link to it.
The online story on one Fairfax online site included the URL, but not as a hyperlink. There was one small ad on the SMH home page, but over the fold - and it linked to a static ad.
Anyhow, I finally found my way to the site. Not very impressed really with day one! Most importantly it doesn't look at all like a relaunched masthead - it is an amalgam of the content of The Age, The SMH and the two online services WAtoday and brisbanetimes. If I were Fairfax journalists I'd see this as the first sign that the move is definitely on to convert the existing two broadsheets to one national newspaper.
I'm not impressed so far with The Punch either. Though there is an interesting minor distinction - The Punch has a set of links headed "Opinion from Everywhere" that includes as its first link today the PMs contribution to The National Times. Meanwhile The National Times equivalent is labelled "Global Opinion".
I have to say I'm also disappointedthat The National Times gives you the opportunity to sign up for a daily newsletter but to do so you have to become a "Fairfax Digital" member. So terribly old school. The Punch has a similar service that asks for the e-mail address first then draws the user through the rest of the registration process - much more user friendly.
I wonder who will join me in relaunching the masthead of Nation Review online?
Friday, September 11, 2009
Writing history
What is the reason for the apparent Australian economic miracle?
Kevin Rudd has received plenty of criticism for his speech launching Paul Kelly's new book. His apparent crime is to claim all the credit for his own side of politics, both the Hawke-Keating reforms and his own stimulus.
Unsurprisngly John Howard has come out in the Oz and claimed that Rudd should come clean and realise it was the combined effort of his own term as Treasurer, then Hawke-Keating, and then his own reforms. In what mighht be a preview of his memoirs (now at 260,000 words I'm told) Howard claims there were five big reforms required from the early 1980s "financial deregulation, fundamental taxation reform, dismantling of high tariff protection, privatisation of government-owned commercial bodies and a freer labour market".
He catalogues how each was achieved, including his own inquiry to start the financial dregulation piece.
I have previously opined that the record dates back to the Whitlam Government. The choice by Howard of the five themes actually provides some support for that view, at least on two fronts. These are the 25% acoss the Board tariff cut and the move that split the PMG into Australia Post and Telecom Australia. This was really a far bigger step of corporatisation than we perhaps realised at the time.
I'm prepared to give the Fraser government more credit than Crikey did today, while it didn't act it enquired. It created the intellectual framework in which the discussions of the 80s could occur - and outside of the finance enquiry the notable achievement was the Davidson enquiry.
However, as noted by Rudd, the one thing Howard never got was competition policy. That was the one great reform of 1974 and 1995 that Howard did nothing to progress, and indeed as a Minister in the Fraser Government did a fair bit to damage.
However, the most extraordinary part is Howard claiming Rudd is belittling himself by his attempt to tell thehistory his way. I don't recall Howard being anywhere near as gracious to the Hawke-Keating economic legacy within two years of his first election, or, indeed for that matter, any point up to his own defeat in 2007.
Kevin Rudd has received plenty of criticism for his speech launching Paul Kelly's new book. His apparent crime is to claim all the credit for his own side of politics, both the Hawke-Keating reforms and his own stimulus.
Unsurprisngly John Howard has come out in the Oz and claimed that Rudd should come clean and realise it was the combined effort of his own term as Treasurer, then Hawke-Keating, and then his own reforms. In what mighht be a preview of his memoirs (now at 260,000 words I'm told) Howard claims there were five big reforms required from the early 1980s "financial deregulation, fundamental taxation reform, dismantling of high tariff protection, privatisation of government-owned commercial bodies and a freer labour market".
He catalogues how each was achieved, including his own inquiry to start the financial dregulation piece.
I have previously opined that the record dates back to the Whitlam Government. The choice by Howard of the five themes actually provides some support for that view, at least on two fronts. These are the 25% acoss the Board tariff cut and the move that split the PMG into Australia Post and Telecom Australia. This was really a far bigger step of corporatisation than we perhaps realised at the time.
I'm prepared to give the Fraser government more credit than Crikey did today, while it didn't act it enquired. It created the intellectual framework in which the discussions of the 80s could occur - and outside of the finance enquiry the notable achievement was the Davidson enquiry.
However, as noted by Rudd, the one thing Howard never got was competition policy. That was the one great reform of 1974 and 1995 that Howard did nothing to progress, and indeed as a Minister in the Fraser Government did a fair bit to damage.
However, the most extraordinary part is Howard claiming Rudd is belittling himself by his attempt to tell thehistory his way. I don't recall Howard being anywhere near as gracious to the Hawke-Keating economic legacy within two years of his first election, or, indeed for that matter, any point up to his own defeat in 2007.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The ABC
The history, role and function of the ABC is an interesting area of study. All the elements are ultimately as contended as any in the history or cluture "wars". The first distinction is whether the ABC exists as a piece of social welfare designed to ensure national availability of news and radio, a feature that one could argue is no longer required given the coverage of commercial outlets. A second distinction is whether it is designed to be some kind of higher form of broadcasting than that supported by mere popularity versus the idea that it too should be judged by its popularity. A final distinction is whether its role is to be a totally dispassionate broadcaster "of record" or whether a slightly pinkish hue is warranted to balance the interests of the owners of commercial media.
Alongside these contentions are questions of governance and ongoing questions of exactly what control the Board should, or does, have. At the same time it has always had an unhappy relationship with the commercial news organisations. When it first commenced the ABC was providing its news service by basically reading from newspapers, and then from the wire services (AAP) that supported the news. It was only in response to the denial of access to these services that the ABC started to build its own, now much vaunted, international news gathering network.
Now the battle is on again, with James Murdoch criticising the "chilling" growth of the BBC into new services and stiffling the opportunity of commercial operators. Reportedly ABC CEO Mark Scott is preparing to rebut Murdoch's claim.
Meanwhile however the ABC seems quite intent on pursuing aggressively their digital media strategy, seeking open access to the NBN, expanding their relationship with ISPs to deliver iView and reports that they have recruited Annabel Crabb for their digital channels.
Personally I am sure I want my ABC to be available in these channels, but am concerned about the idea that we need to rely on the Government owned media for "investigative reporting".
So at this stage I'm merely troubled and perplexed.
Alongside these contentions are questions of governance and ongoing questions of exactly what control the Board should, or does, have. At the same time it has always had an unhappy relationship with the commercial news organisations. When it first commenced the ABC was providing its news service by basically reading from newspapers, and then from the wire services (AAP) that supported the news. It was only in response to the denial of access to these services that the ABC started to build its own, now much vaunted, international news gathering network.
Now the battle is on again, with James Murdoch criticising the "chilling" growth of the BBC into new services and stiffling the opportunity of commercial operators. Reportedly ABC CEO Mark Scott is preparing to rebut Murdoch's claim.
Meanwhile however the ABC seems quite intent on pursuing aggressively their digital media strategy, seeking open access to the NBN, expanding their relationship with ISPs to deliver iView and reports that they have recruited Annabel Crabb for their digital channels.
Personally I am sure I want my ABC to be available in these channels, but am concerned about the idea that we need to rely on the Government owned media for "investigative reporting".
So at this stage I'm merely troubled and perplexed.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Nowwearetalking to close
I'll quote the e-mail in full;
Dear Subscriber,
Since we established nowwearetalking almost four years ago, much has changed in the online landscape. In Telstra's world, it is also a different climate now compared to when the site was launched in December 2005. After a review of where we were headed with our online communications and how best to engage with important stakeholders like you, we have decided to close our nowwearetalking website and develop a new, more engaging, interactive site under the main telstra.com umbrella.
In the process, we will make some changes to the content and the way we interact online with people who have an interest in all things Telstra. Be assured that the new site, which is under development, will provide ample opportunities to engage in genuine online conversations.
The new site will be dedicated to allowing us to talk with you, but more importantly – to listen to your views, opinions and ideas.
In the meantime, we have set up a temporary home where we can receive your comments/input and share our perspectives on the new site moving forward. You are invited to visit www.telstrablogfeedback.com.au and tell us what you think.
Thanks so much for your interest and support over the years.
We look forward to welcoming you to our new website when it goes live in the coming months, and will keep in contact with any news and updates on the way.
Best wishes
The nowwearetalking team
I welcomed the initiative when first launched and actively contributed in the spirit of open discussion. However, when the site did finally become more active it was highly populated by a small number of Telstra "shreekers" complaining about th regulatory regme which hadn't changed fundamentally since before the first float. I started to refer to it as "nowweareshouting" and stopped my engagement when the editor took to writing comments after almost all my posts.
Interesting to note that the new site will be more dedicated to genuine conversation - and listening.
Dear Subscriber,
Since we established nowwearetalking almost four years ago, much has changed in the online landscape. In Telstra's world, it is also a different climate now compared to when the site was launched in December 2005. After a review of where we were headed with our online communications and how best to engage with important stakeholders like you, we have decided to close our nowwearetalking website and develop a new, more engaging, interactive site under the main telstra.com umbrella.
In the process, we will make some changes to the content and the way we interact online with people who have an interest in all things Telstra. Be assured that the new site, which is under development, will provide ample opportunities to engage in genuine online conversations.
The new site will be dedicated to allowing us to talk with you, but more importantly – to listen to your views, opinions and ideas.
In the meantime, we have set up a temporary home where we can receive your comments/input and share our perspectives on the new site moving forward. You are invited to visit www.telstrablogfeedback.com.au and tell us what you think.
Thanks so much for your interest and support over the years.
We look forward to welcoming you to our new website when it goes live in the coming months, and will keep in contact with any news and updates on the way.
Best wishes
The nowwearetalking team
I welcomed the initiative when first launched and actively contributed in the spirit of open discussion. However, when the site did finally become more active it was highly populated by a small number of Telstra "shreekers" complaining about th regulatory regme which hadn't changed fundamentally since before the first float. I started to refer to it as "nowweareshouting" and stopped my engagement when the editor took to writing comments after almost all my posts.
Interesting to note that the new site will be more dedicated to genuine conversation - and listening.
Krugman on Macro
A really good article in the New York Times by Paul Krugman under the title How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?. I particularly love the line, "As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth."
Interestingly co-incides with my starting to wade through Tony Lawson's Economics and Reality which in its openings suggests a similar aspect to the orthodox school - that is, they are so transfixed by the mathematical elegance that they miss the point that they re increasingly describing something other than reality.
This does open up that other wonderful line of enquiry on the relationship between mathematics and science. In my earlier comment I didn't allude to the long history of the association between physics and economics through maths (see More Heat than Light or How Economics became a Mathematical Science). It is interesting to posit that both economics and particle physics have reached dead ends because of the mathematics they are choosing to use and that the path forward will entail a step out to a new sett of explanatory tools.
I believe those tools will be mathematical, though there is an alternative offered by Stephen Wolfram's New Kind of Science. His ideas have not received wide acceptance, though possibly because they are written in such a horrible self-promoting way. But the concept is alluring - that explanations can be sought through assumptins that the basic explanation is in rules not formulae. In economics this would be the ultimate end point of reserach in agent based computational economics. In physics it could just be that the fundamental "particles" could be replaced by "fundamental computations".
But that perhaps is fanciful - and I don't want to distract from Klugman's great work.
Note: My thanks to Richard Farmer in Crikey (behind the paywall) for writing about the article. Perhaps though he could learn to put the whole paragraphs he lifted from the original inside quotation marks.
Interestingly co-incides with my starting to wade through Tony Lawson's Economics and Reality which in its openings suggests a similar aspect to the orthodox school - that is, they are so transfixed by the mathematical elegance that they miss the point that they re increasingly describing something other than reality.
This does open up that other wonderful line of enquiry on the relationship between mathematics and science. In my earlier comment I didn't allude to the long history of the association between physics and economics through maths (see More Heat than Light or How Economics became a Mathematical Science). It is interesting to posit that both economics and particle physics have reached dead ends because of the mathematics they are choosing to use and that the path forward will entail a step out to a new sett of explanatory tools.
I believe those tools will be mathematical, though there is an alternative offered by Stephen Wolfram's New Kind of Science. His ideas have not received wide acceptance, though possibly because they are written in such a horrible self-promoting way. But the concept is alluring - that explanations can be sought through assumptins that the basic explanation is in rules not formulae. In economics this would be the ultimate end point of reserach in agent based computational economics. In physics it could just be that the fundamental "particles" could be replaced by "fundamental computations".
But that perhaps is fanciful - and I don't want to distract from Klugman's great work.
Note: My thanks to Richard Farmer in Crikey (behind the paywall) for writing about the article. Perhaps though he could learn to put the whole paragraphs he lifted from the original inside quotation marks.
Friday, September 04, 2009
Three views of the public service
The public service has been a bit in the news of late. Today we saw an interesting contrast between the desire for Kevin Rudd for the "best public service anywhere in the world" including "more prescient and creative policy advice, an emphasis on programs and services that put the citizens first, a continued culture of impartiality and honesty, greater flexibility, and to be effective and efficient in all its operations".
The contrast was the story that John Howard did not want advice from departments on whether to go to war in Iraq, only how.
I had my own experience of this discrepancy. The Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy has a document setting out itsstrategic directions. This includes a section headed Our practices: how we will approach our work which says they will;
* develop and implement effective policies and programs that clearly deliver the policy agendas of our Minister and the Australian Government
* set out our key strategies, priorities and performance measures for each financial year in the Portfolio Budget Statements
* adhere to our Service Charter standards and the Australian Public Service Values and Code of Conduct
* uphold good governance and public accountability practices
* align our planning, performance management and reporting to support Government policy
* encourage consumer and industry representation in policy development to stimulate innovation and improve outcomes
* nurture our relationships with key stakeholders
* continually review our processes to ensure that they support, and not hold back, the delivery of outcomes
* ensure that our people are working in a safe and healthy environment
*provide our people with support to perform and opportunities to develop their capability and build a career within the Department, and
* improve internal and external communication.
I was briefly working at the Department at the time this was finalised and suggested that perhaps the first item should be "ensure the Minister is appraised of the economic, social and technical developments that may require policy responses." I was not privy to any discussion of the suggestion. However it would appear that that is exactly what the Prime Minister expects.
Anyhow the Department has a new Secretary and this is where we find our third view. The new Secretary has been attacked by Senator Minchin over the course of electronic conveyancing. His first is somehow the idea that Harris might be "hopelessly conflicted" which is something I do not understand. Paid wage labourers regularly take on tasks at variance from their previous tas, most notably moving between firms. There is a real difficulty with politicians like Minchin have only served "the party" in its aministration or in parliament.
The second is that Harris's record of delivery might suggest he is the wrong person. this ignores the fact that th Secretary his Government imposed had an equally poor record with the Access Card, and the fact that NBN delivery will rest with the NBN Board and CEO not the Departmental Secretary. The latter being a perfectly good example of how to separate policy advice from program delivery - on which more another day.
The contrast was the story that John Howard did not want advice from departments on whether to go to war in Iraq, only how.
I had my own experience of this discrepancy. The Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy has a document setting out itsstrategic directions. This includes a section headed Our practices: how we will approach our work which says they will;
* develop and implement effective policies and programs that clearly deliver the policy agendas of our Minister and the Australian Government
* set out our key strategies, priorities and performance measures for each financial year in the Portfolio Budget Statements
* adhere to our Service Charter standards and the Australian Public Service Values and Code of Conduct
* uphold good governance and public accountability practices
* align our planning, performance management and reporting to support Government policy
* encourage consumer and industry representation in policy development to stimulate innovation and improve outcomes
* nurture our relationships with key stakeholders
* continually review our processes to ensure that they support, and not hold back, the delivery of outcomes
* ensure that our people are working in a safe and healthy environment
*provide our people with support to perform and opportunities to develop their capability and build a career within the Department, and
* improve internal and external communication.
I was briefly working at the Department at the time this was finalised and suggested that perhaps the first item should be "ensure the Minister is appraised of the economic, social and technical developments that may require policy responses." I was not privy to any discussion of the suggestion. However it would appear that that is exactly what the Prime Minister expects.
Anyhow the Department has a new Secretary and this is where we find our third view. The new Secretary has been attacked by Senator Minchin over the course of electronic conveyancing. His first is somehow the idea that Harris might be "hopelessly conflicted" which is something I do not understand. Paid wage labourers regularly take on tasks at variance from their previous tas, most notably moving between firms. There is a real difficulty with politicians like Minchin have only served "the party" in its aministration or in parliament.
The second is that Harris's record of delivery might suggest he is the wrong person. this ignores the fact that th Secretary his Government imposed had an equally poor record with the Access Card, and the fact that NBN delivery will rest with the NBN Board and CEO not the Departmental Secretary. The latter being a perfectly good example of how to separate policy advice from program delivery - on which more another day.
Monday, August 31, 2009
The NBN and ... phone books
In matters relating to the NBN David Thodey has been reported in Communications Day as saying "One of the big things for me personally is to get Telstra to a position that we have less regulation and more freedom. Because, living in this environment where we are constantly regulated, is not a good place to be."
Telstra has been on about regulation a long time, and mostly it is about economic regulation (access to their network or anti-competitive conduct). but there is a host of social regulation whose genesis was a desire that with the introduction of competition everything would change but nothing would.
The littany of this stuff is huge and in the NBN exercise we do need to get rid of it. One area to look at is the whole directory area. Firstly we should follow this lead and make delivery of the phone book an opt-in activity rather than automatic. We could also move away from the idea of free directory assistance since there are online versions.
These are just some of the more minor.
But this also gives me the chance to talk about the launch of ACCAN on 3 September (this post took a while to write!) I like the idea that ACCAN's focus will be on "making the market work for consumers". Where there challenge lies is in trying to explain why they think the market doesn't work.
I have my own views - one of which is an almost Galbraithian belief that firms do manipulate customers - but more aptly decribed in Havyatt's Aphorism "marketing is the set of activities of the firm designed to ensure that economists assumptions of the free market do not apply".
If ACCAN believes the rhetoric they need to espouse a theory of markets - I suspect they don't and judging by their performance thus far it is the same tired collection of special purpose interventions by regulation, not serious market design that they have in mind.
Telstra has been on about regulation a long time, and mostly it is about economic regulation (access to their network or anti-competitive conduct). but there is a host of social regulation whose genesis was a desire that with the introduction of competition everything would change but nothing would.
The littany of this stuff is huge and in the NBN exercise we do need to get rid of it. One area to look at is the whole directory area. Firstly we should follow this lead and make delivery of the phone book an opt-in activity rather than automatic. We could also move away from the idea of free directory assistance since there are online versions.
These are just some of the more minor.
But this also gives me the chance to talk about the launch of ACCAN on 3 September (this post took a while to write!) I like the idea that ACCAN's focus will be on "making the market work for consumers". Where there challenge lies is in trying to explain why they think the market doesn't work.
I have my own views - one of which is an almost Galbraithian belief that firms do manipulate customers - but more aptly decribed in Havyatt's Aphorism "marketing is the set of activities of the firm designed to ensure that economists assumptions of the free market do not apply".
If ACCAN believes the rhetoric they need to espouse a theory of markets - I suspect they don't and judging by their performance thus far it is the same tired collection of special purpose interventions by regulation, not serious market design that they have in mind.
The Rights of Indigenous Peoples
In 2007 the United Nations adopted The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The species known as homo sapiens evolved somewhere in middle Africa and dispersed around the planet. A good description of the current best theories of the global migration is provided by the Bradshaw Foundation. This highlights how various climatic events resulted in the routes which had been used being cut off and hence how groups developed separately. The first big event was the eruption of Mt Toba about 74,000 years ago eliminating the population in the India sub-continent and cutting off the population in South East Asia. Then during the last Ice Age about 20,000 years ago the American population that had crossed what is now the Bearing Straight was cut off.
History also records that across the planet there were very active trading systems over all of the last two millenia, over many different routes. These trading systems were regularly disrupted by various actions includng wars and conquests, but also natural events (such as the elimination of Pompeii which had been a important trading hub).
The descrption from the Bradshaw Foundation doesn't go as far as including the Austronesian migration through the Pacific Islands (the subject of a really great recent show at the National Museuem) and certainly doesn't cover the other mass migrations such as the Chinese diaspora through East Asia or the Slavic diaspora or indeed the various diaspora's including the one from which the term is derived in the Levant.
This results in seriuos difficulty in most of the world of genuinely identifying who are "indigenous" people. In Sri Lanka both the Ceylonese and Tamils are migrants from India, in the Balkans the racial mix is simply extraordinary, in Israel/Palestine both nationalities are migrants from the East, in the UK even the Celts are migrants from Northern Europe. This is componded by the fact that nowhere where nationalities (for the sake of discussion, language groups) share the same land mass have they maintained a consistent border resulting in large areas of co-mingled nationalities.
Further, while much mass migration has followed conquest, a great deal of mass migration has resulted from peoples who are fleeing either repessive regimes, invaders of their own lands or natural disasters. The more recent arrivals are not necessarily people whose intent was disruption. As an example, there was a surge in emigration from Germany to the United States after the failure of the liberal revolution in 1848.
It is understandable that there are peoples who feel "dispossesed" of their land. The ultimate question is how far back does one go in determining who are the "real" indigenous people. That is a core feature in the conflict in the Levant. In other areas of law there are very clear statutes of limitations, there are even under British Law ways that private land can be deemed to become a right of way if it can be demonstrated that it has been continuously used as such, even though each of those initial uses were technically trespass.
In the Australian case, the native title recognition only extended to land that had as yet not been "alienated" from native title, and for which the traditional owners could demonstrate a continuous connection.
The UN declaration includes many allusions to the concept of "national self-determination". This dangerous concept has had three main lives in global affairs. The first was in the national revolutions of 1848. While much of this activity was focussed on building "nation states" out of cultural/linguistic groupings such as the bringing together of principalities of Italy and Germany, or the attempts to separate out large ethnic groups from empires, such as the Magyars forming Hungary from Austria, they were as much liberal revolutions as national, the goals were more an end to autocracy than the need for a nation.
National self-determination was used as a rallying cry after the First World War as the basis for the victors dismembering the empires of the losers. Hence a plethora of states was created out of the fragmentation of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, and their foreign holdings (e.g. Papua) were often transferred as protectorates rather than as colonies.
However that partition only reflected the weakness referred to above with regard to disputed territory. The Second World War had many real causes, but symptomatic of these was the German ambition to reconquer lost territory and extend its own image (Greater Germany as opposed to Little Germany in the language of AJP Taylor's The Course of German History).
Following that War the USA again raised national self-determination as a principle of settlement, and a wave of activity followed - with the dissolution of the European empires in Asia and some in the Middle East and less in Africa. (In reality the Asian case was more a matter of the Europeans being unable to re-establish the control they had lost in the war).
But again these moves resulted in the vexed question of exactly what constitutes "national" boundaries. The partition of India and Pakistan has left a record of war and conflict for half a century over disputed territories like Kashmir.
Perhaps it is time that we got over the idea of the rightsof indigenous peoples and recognised instead that there are three sets of rights that are being conflated and should be dealt with separately; the right to cultural and religious diversity; the property right in land; and the right to be free of autarchy.
The first of these rights necessitates an acnowledgement of the separation of "church" and state, and the complete rejection of theocracies. It includes the right to pursue cultural practices so long as those practices themselves do not infringe the higher level "basic human rights" - as a consequence practices that entail bodily mutilation of minors other than on established health grounds (so circumcission might survive - but the way it is conducted might need to change) would be illegal without infringing the cultural right, teaching the traditional beliefs would not be outlawed so long as that did not also forbid the teaching of the non traditional beliefs that would allow the child to prosper in the modern world.
The property right in land needs to be defended. More importantly the existence of shared title as occured in the Mabo judgement needs to be respected. This does not mean that States can't move to the idea of individual title, as there are good economic arguments and evidence that this leads to more efficient utilisation, just that anyone dispossesd of their common title is due compensation. However, where that act has been in the past it is important that there be recognised some statute of limitation, and a timescale of a generation (20-25 years) seems appropriate.
Finally there is the right to be free of autarchy. I will write later (as I may have already) that simply displacing dictators will not result in functioning democracy. Citizens value first security and will surrender to a strong central power if they believe that is what the power will deliver. The biggest crime of autarchy is the exercise of "arbitrary power" rather than not having the vote. Hence the first step is the establishment of the concept of the rule of law.
These are the essential rights that get confused in creating the rights of indigenous peoples. The Australia government has erred in acepting the declaration and needs to instead move more forcefully for the recognition of the threefold rights that obviate the need for such a dangerous concept as rights of indigenous people.
Note: In all the discussion of anthropogenic climate change we seem to forget to discuss the potential impact of sudden massive change induced by natural phenomena. The megavolcano Mt Toba of 74,000 years ago could be repeated, with some suggestion it could be in the same region in about 2012. While it might be impossible to do much for the people that would be buried by the pyroclastic cloud we could at the very least think through what the rest of the response neds to look like - most impotant of all is likely to be how to keep world trade functioning.
The species known as homo sapiens evolved somewhere in middle Africa and dispersed around the planet. A good description of the current best theories of the global migration is provided by the Bradshaw Foundation. This highlights how various climatic events resulted in the routes which had been used being cut off and hence how groups developed separately. The first big event was the eruption of Mt Toba about 74,000 years ago eliminating the population in the India sub-continent and cutting off the population in South East Asia. Then during the last Ice Age about 20,000 years ago the American population that had crossed what is now the Bearing Straight was cut off.
History also records that across the planet there were very active trading systems over all of the last two millenia, over many different routes. These trading systems were regularly disrupted by various actions includng wars and conquests, but also natural events (such as the elimination of Pompeii which had been a important trading hub).
The descrption from the Bradshaw Foundation doesn't go as far as including the Austronesian migration through the Pacific Islands (the subject of a really great recent show at the National Museuem) and certainly doesn't cover the other mass migrations such as the Chinese diaspora through East Asia or the Slavic diaspora or indeed the various diaspora's including the one from which the term is derived in the Levant.
This results in seriuos difficulty in most of the world of genuinely identifying who are "indigenous" people. In Sri Lanka both the Ceylonese and Tamils are migrants from India, in the Balkans the racial mix is simply extraordinary, in Israel/Palestine both nationalities are migrants from the East, in the UK even the Celts are migrants from Northern Europe. This is componded by the fact that nowhere where nationalities (for the sake of discussion, language groups) share the same land mass have they maintained a consistent border resulting in large areas of co-mingled nationalities.
Further, while much mass migration has followed conquest, a great deal of mass migration has resulted from peoples who are fleeing either repessive regimes, invaders of their own lands or natural disasters. The more recent arrivals are not necessarily people whose intent was disruption. As an example, there was a surge in emigration from Germany to the United States after the failure of the liberal revolution in 1848.
It is understandable that there are peoples who feel "dispossesed" of their land. The ultimate question is how far back does one go in determining who are the "real" indigenous people. That is a core feature in the conflict in the Levant. In other areas of law there are very clear statutes of limitations, there are even under British Law ways that private land can be deemed to become a right of way if it can be demonstrated that it has been continuously used as such, even though each of those initial uses were technically trespass.
In the Australian case, the native title recognition only extended to land that had as yet not been "alienated" from native title, and for which the traditional owners could demonstrate a continuous connection.
The UN declaration includes many allusions to the concept of "national self-determination". This dangerous concept has had three main lives in global affairs. The first was in the national revolutions of 1848. While much of this activity was focussed on building "nation states" out of cultural/linguistic groupings such as the bringing together of principalities of Italy and Germany, or the attempts to separate out large ethnic groups from empires, such as the Magyars forming Hungary from Austria, they were as much liberal revolutions as national, the goals were more an end to autocracy than the need for a nation.
National self-determination was used as a rallying cry after the First World War as the basis for the victors dismembering the empires of the losers. Hence a plethora of states was created out of the fragmentation of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, and their foreign holdings (e.g. Papua) were often transferred as protectorates rather than as colonies.
However that partition only reflected the weakness referred to above with regard to disputed territory. The Second World War had many real causes, but symptomatic of these was the German ambition to reconquer lost territory and extend its own image (Greater Germany as opposed to Little Germany in the language of AJP Taylor's The Course of German History).
Following that War the USA again raised national self-determination as a principle of settlement, and a wave of activity followed - with the dissolution of the European empires in Asia and some in the Middle East and less in Africa. (In reality the Asian case was more a matter of the Europeans being unable to re-establish the control they had lost in the war).
But again these moves resulted in the vexed question of exactly what constitutes "national" boundaries. The partition of India and Pakistan has left a record of war and conflict for half a century over disputed territories like Kashmir.
Perhaps it is time that we got over the idea of the rightsof indigenous peoples and recognised instead that there are three sets of rights that are being conflated and should be dealt with separately; the right to cultural and religious diversity; the property right in land; and the right to be free of autarchy.
The first of these rights necessitates an acnowledgement of the separation of "church" and state, and the complete rejection of theocracies. It includes the right to pursue cultural practices so long as those practices themselves do not infringe the higher level "basic human rights" - as a consequence practices that entail bodily mutilation of minors other than on established health grounds (so circumcission might survive - but the way it is conducted might need to change) would be illegal without infringing the cultural right, teaching the traditional beliefs would not be outlawed so long as that did not also forbid the teaching of the non traditional beliefs that would allow the child to prosper in the modern world.
The property right in land needs to be defended. More importantly the existence of shared title as occured in the Mabo judgement needs to be respected. This does not mean that States can't move to the idea of individual title, as there are good economic arguments and evidence that this leads to more efficient utilisation, just that anyone dispossesd of their common title is due compensation. However, where that act has been in the past it is important that there be recognised some statute of limitation, and a timescale of a generation (20-25 years) seems appropriate.
Finally there is the right to be free of autarchy. I will write later (as I may have already) that simply displacing dictators will not result in functioning democracy. Citizens value first security and will surrender to a strong central power if they believe that is what the power will deliver. The biggest crime of autarchy is the exercise of "arbitrary power" rather than not having the vote. Hence the first step is the establishment of the concept of the rule of law.
These are the essential rights that get confused in creating the rights of indigenous peoples. The Australia government has erred in acepting the declaration and needs to instead move more forcefully for the recognition of the threefold rights that obviate the need for such a dangerous concept as rights of indigenous people.
Note: In all the discussion of anthropogenic climate change we seem to forget to discuss the potential impact of sudden massive change induced by natural phenomena. The megavolcano Mt Toba of 74,000 years ago could be repeated, with some suggestion it could be in the same region in about 2012. While it might be impossible to do much for the people that would be buried by the pyroclastic cloud we could at the very least think through what the rest of the response neds to look like - most impotant of all is likely to be how to keep world trade functioning.
Narcissist or man of steel - which is Malcolm Turnbull
An extraordinary article by Peter Hartcher is Saturday's SMH. He did a nice job of describing the retiring Brendan Nelson as a thoroughly decent chap before giving us the good doctor's assessment of his successor.
That assesment began with the comment "If you had any idea of what he said to me over those 10 months [of Nelson's leadership], you would be shocked." Well, perhaps not, since it is I think already on the record that Turnbull lectured Nelson on the inadequacy of his victory speech on becoming leader to the party room on that day, and somewhere in the first week said something like "Face it you are no god at this you should give up now".
Nelson went on to suggest that Hartcher should look up narcissitic personality disorder.
Of course, our good friend Tony Abbott took on the mantle this morning of defending Malcolm while not criticising Brendon. He said "Well, look, Brendan - terrific bloke, great contributor - but you've got to have some steel if you're going to be the leader of this country."
It had a nice resonance - recalling for some George W Bush's description of our last PM as the "Man of Steel". The worrying idea might be the implication that true leaders need to have psychiatric disorders! Well, Hitler certainly did, and look at the great infrastructure he built (don't you love the autobahn and getting the trains to run on time story, oh and the "peopl's car")!
That assesment began with the comment "If you had any idea of what he said to me over those 10 months [of Nelson's leadership], you would be shocked." Well, perhaps not, since it is I think already on the record that Turnbull lectured Nelson on the inadequacy of his victory speech on becoming leader to the party room on that day, and somewhere in the first week said something like "Face it you are no god at this you should give up now".
Nelson went on to suggest that Hartcher should look up narcissitic personality disorder.
Of course, our good friend Tony Abbott took on the mantle this morning of defending Malcolm while not criticising Brendon. He said "Well, look, Brendan - terrific bloke, great contributor - but you've got to have some steel if you're going to be the leader of this country."
It had a nice resonance - recalling for some George W Bush's description of our last PM as the "Man of Steel". The worrying idea might be the implication that true leaders need to have psychiatric disorders! Well, Hitler certainly did, and look at the great infrastructure he built (don't you love the autobahn and getting the trains to run on time story, oh and the "peopl's car")!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
A Bill of Rights, the Parliament and the Courts
John Howard has weighed into the Bill of Rights discussion in the Menzies Lecture reported in the SMH (and the full text provided by The Oz).
It is a most worrying speech because in it Howard repeats the conservative adage that all power should be vested in the Parliament saying;
Our parliamentary system has many flaws but ultimately it sets the tone of national debate and ought to be the ultimate decision maker. It is the identifiable and collective representation of public opinion.
In this speech Howard is building on his lecture on the media, and he repeats here his view of the underpinnings of our democracy;
The three great guarantees of Australian democracy are a robust parliamentary system, an independent and incorruptible judiciary and a free and sceptical press.
Presumably this means he is going to follow-up some time with a third speech on the "incoruptible judiciary". It is hard, however, to reconcile that view with the content of his speech. His speech mostly concerns the wisdom or otherwise of handing important decisions to unelected officials rather than to elected representatives, by which he means Ministers.
It is interesting that he doesn't draw the distinction that is drawn in republics between the separate roles of the legislature and the executive, that is really because that distinction has ceased to exist in Australia since the formation of the first Liberal Party under Deakin. Nowdays the parliament operates as little more than an electoral college to choose the "head of government" as Howard liked to style himself.
What is even more interesting is how seldom discussion refers to the written constitution as the greatest protection of all of the democratic state, and a constitution that in our case can only be amended by all the people in a national plebicite (with some interesting rules on majorities).
In his railing he misses the point that the idea of the Bill of Rights is not to empower just "any old" unelected officials - but the third of his guarantees being the judiciary. He called upon the US experience of 17 Chief Justices versus 44 Presidents and the number of very significant decisions that have been made by these courts. This argument is mostly spurious because what he is describing here is a conflict between the constitution and the executive and legislature, not between judges and the government. Should we conclude that there is a bigger conflict here, as we have had only one constitution but 26 PM's"?
More worrying was Howard's reference to an argument by Menzies that the great protection for Australians was "the common law". Howard seems to miss the obvious contradictio here - the common law is entirely judge made law, the kind of law he seems to loathe. How can judge made law not informed by legislation be superior to judge made law that is so informed (by a Bill of Rights).
In the other corner we have a former Chief Justice of the High Court in Sir Anthony Mason advocating for a Bill of Rights. It really is interesting because as a judge Mason points out that a Bill of Rights is mostly opposed by those in authority using the line that they in authority should be trusted and answerable to the people. Howard himself still waxes on about "the elites" and the idea that the elites want to embed some principles outside the remit of the ability of the common man to influence his elected representatives. But this latter idea is a fantacy - the masses may elect the politicians, but they hardly influence them. In fact the politicians are more beholden to the various "elites" than the judges.
Just how tenuous is Howard's grasp of the concept of law and an independent judiciary can be found in the failure of his legislation on military courts.
The other odd part of the Howard objection s the ongoing fixation of conservatives with the balance between rights and obligations. He writes;
I also reject a Bill of Rights framework because it elevates rights to the detriment of responsibilities. In a truly liberal and civil society we always need to balance the enjoyment of rights with the acceptance of responsibilities.
I do not understand how our current legislative framework can be claimed to represent this "balance". There are far more pages devoted to our obligations than our rights.
Finally, the most obvious rebuttal to Howard has not been made anywhere. That is, that as a legislated Bill of Rights it will not overturn the power of the legislatuure - it will merely mean that if the legislature wishes to introduce other legislation that would conflict with the rights then the legislature will need to expressly amend the Bill of Rights. That only adds transparency to the actions of our elected representatives, it does not restrict their power to act.
Note: I've often thought Howard delusional, but he exceeded himself when seeking to praise the man after whom the lecture was named, saying "Menzies ... founded the most successful political party Australia has yet seen" adding "Every political party owes it to itself, constantly, to weave a narrative of its ongoing contribution to the life of our nation."
The claim is presumably based on the cumulative years for which either party has provided Australia with its Prime Minister - at today's date 32.3 years for the ALP and 41.9 for the Liberals. But these are such insubstantial measures - for example, the "lead" rested with the ALP in 1996, and could rest again with the ALP with only two more election victories. If we measure State governments, the NSW story is vastly different, as is Queensland.
The ALP's achievements include being the first Social Democratic (or Labor) party to form Government in the world.
In the world of textiles to weave and spin are different things - but I suspect they are not in the field of political rhetoric.
It is a most worrying speech because in it Howard repeats the conservative adage that all power should be vested in the Parliament saying;
Our parliamentary system has many flaws but ultimately it sets the tone of national debate and ought to be the ultimate decision maker. It is the identifiable and collective representation of public opinion.
In this speech Howard is building on his lecture on the media, and he repeats here his view of the underpinnings of our democracy;
The three great guarantees of Australian democracy are a robust parliamentary system, an independent and incorruptible judiciary and a free and sceptical press.
Presumably this means he is going to follow-up some time with a third speech on the "incoruptible judiciary". It is hard, however, to reconcile that view with the content of his speech. His speech mostly concerns the wisdom or otherwise of handing important decisions to unelected officials rather than to elected representatives, by which he means Ministers.
It is interesting that he doesn't draw the distinction that is drawn in republics between the separate roles of the legislature and the executive, that is really because that distinction has ceased to exist in Australia since the formation of the first Liberal Party under Deakin. Nowdays the parliament operates as little more than an electoral college to choose the "head of government" as Howard liked to style himself.
What is even more interesting is how seldom discussion refers to the written constitution as the greatest protection of all of the democratic state, and a constitution that in our case can only be amended by all the people in a national plebicite (with some interesting rules on majorities).
In his railing he misses the point that the idea of the Bill of Rights is not to empower just "any old" unelected officials - but the third of his guarantees being the judiciary. He called upon the US experience of 17 Chief Justices versus 44 Presidents and the number of very significant decisions that have been made by these courts. This argument is mostly spurious because what he is describing here is a conflict between the constitution and the executive and legislature, not between judges and the government. Should we conclude that there is a bigger conflict here, as we have had only one constitution but 26 PM's"?
More worrying was Howard's reference to an argument by Menzies that the great protection for Australians was "the common law". Howard seems to miss the obvious contradictio here - the common law is entirely judge made law, the kind of law he seems to loathe. How can judge made law not informed by legislation be superior to judge made law that is so informed (by a Bill of Rights).
In the other corner we have a former Chief Justice of the High Court in Sir Anthony Mason advocating for a Bill of Rights. It really is interesting because as a judge Mason points out that a Bill of Rights is mostly opposed by those in authority using the line that they in authority should be trusted and answerable to the people. Howard himself still waxes on about "the elites" and the idea that the elites want to embed some principles outside the remit of the ability of the common man to influence his elected representatives. But this latter idea is a fantacy - the masses may elect the politicians, but they hardly influence them. In fact the politicians are more beholden to the various "elites" than the judges.
Just how tenuous is Howard's grasp of the concept of law and an independent judiciary can be found in the failure of his legislation on military courts.
The other odd part of the Howard objection s the ongoing fixation of conservatives with the balance between rights and obligations. He writes;
I also reject a Bill of Rights framework because it elevates rights to the detriment of responsibilities. In a truly liberal and civil society we always need to balance the enjoyment of rights with the acceptance of responsibilities.
I do not understand how our current legislative framework can be claimed to represent this "balance". There are far more pages devoted to our obligations than our rights.
Finally, the most obvious rebuttal to Howard has not been made anywhere. That is, that as a legislated Bill of Rights it will not overturn the power of the legislatuure - it will merely mean that if the legislature wishes to introduce other legislation that would conflict with the rights then the legislature will need to expressly amend the Bill of Rights. That only adds transparency to the actions of our elected representatives, it does not restrict their power to act.
Note: I've often thought Howard delusional, but he exceeded himself when seeking to praise the man after whom the lecture was named, saying "Menzies ... founded the most successful political party Australia has yet seen" adding "Every political party owes it to itself, constantly, to weave a narrative of its ongoing contribution to the life of our nation."
The claim is presumably based on the cumulative years for which either party has provided Australia with its Prime Minister - at today's date 32.3 years for the ALP and 41.9 for the Liberals. But these are such insubstantial measures - for example, the "lead" rested with the ALP in 1996, and could rest again with the ALP with only two more election victories. If we measure State governments, the NSW story is vastly different, as is Queensland.
The ALP's achievements include being the first Social Democratic (or Labor) party to form Government in the world.
In the world of textiles to weave and spin are different things - but I suspect they are not in the field of political rhetoric.
Petrol
On reading the latest announcement by the ACCC on petrol prices a friend wrote to me noting "how very helpful of the Commission to tell us that the petrol companies have changed the day on which they choose to exercise the market power that the Commission insists they don’t have." (The story is that the cheap petrol day is now Wednesday not Tuesday).
I've previously waxed lyrical on the subject of the abject error of the ACCC in permitting the "shop a docket" scheme for petrol retailing. But their ongoing gyrations on petrol pricing are a wonder to behold. I think someone needs to write a deeper piece about the economics of petrol pricing.
It can, of course, be explained under a competitive market model with the assumption that demand has been lower on Tuesdays and hence price drops back – put another way it is the efficient way to average the high fixed costs of petrol retailing to recover more of the fixed costs on the days of highest demand. The shift to Wednesday is then explained as a response by the market to the information about cheap Tuesdays – people have shifted their demand.
But this analysis begs two questions. The first is why the feature doesn’t occur equally in all Australian markets. The second is why motorists have needed a regulator to identify the cycle for them – petrol pricing isn’t exactly a secret.
To this could be added my friend's final comment "Also, why does this only occur in this market of all the petrol markets in the world?"
I've previously waxed lyrical on the subject of the abject error of the ACCC in permitting the "shop a docket" scheme for petrol retailing. But their ongoing gyrations on petrol pricing are a wonder to behold. I think someone needs to write a deeper piece about the economics of petrol pricing.
It can, of course, be explained under a competitive market model with the assumption that demand has been lower on Tuesdays and hence price drops back – put another way it is the efficient way to average the high fixed costs of petrol retailing to recover more of the fixed costs on the days of highest demand. The shift to Wednesday is then explained as a response by the market to the information about cheap Tuesdays – people have shifted their demand.
But this analysis begs two questions. The first is why the feature doesn’t occur equally in all Australian markets. The second is why motorists have needed a regulator to identify the cycle for them – petrol pricing isn’t exactly a secret.
To this could be added my friend's final comment "Also, why does this only occur in this market of all the petrol markets in the world?"
What have we done to deserve this?
The SMH among others has brought leadershiop speculation in the ALP to fever pitch - despite the fact that the critical players all seem to be out of the country.
This speculation is just one element of the current parlous state of NSW politics. Our situation makes the proposals in Tony Abbott’s book for constitutional change to enable the Federal Parliament to take over State powers look very attractive.
The ALP is in complete disarray, fractured between its parliamentary and organisational wings as a result of the power privatisation push and divided in the parliament between two main factions each of which has sub-factions. The factions no longer represent fundamental philosophical divides but merely clubs within which patronage is dispensed. Some of this, unfortunately, seems to be the consequence of the move to an elected upper house and the sinecures that can be dolled out to “safe” positions on the ticket.
Now we see more fevered speculation that the rearrangement of these sub-factions is aiming to replace the newbie Premier with an equally newbie one, with no public profile and more significantly with no real hope to “lead” the party. A core cancer in this horrible state of affairs seems to be the sub-faction known as the Terrigals – notably Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi, two people most notable for their complete lack of any achievements for the people of NSW.
The left and the remainder of the right need to unite now to remove this scourge from the party. The first act needs to be removing Tripodi from the front bench. The second is to act on long term ALP policy and abolish the Legislative Council.
It is too much to hope that the ALP will act. The consequence will be that we will stumble to the State election and elect Barry O’Farrell as Premier by default, leading an equally talentless and disorganised rabble. We don’t know what this mob would do – all they have done for two years is to promise more for less (more trains, lower fares). We will turn to them only in desperation, not in hope!
This speculation is just one element of the current parlous state of NSW politics. Our situation makes the proposals in Tony Abbott’s book for constitutional change to enable the Federal Parliament to take over State powers look very attractive.
The ALP is in complete disarray, fractured between its parliamentary and organisational wings as a result of the power privatisation push and divided in the parliament between two main factions each of which has sub-factions. The factions no longer represent fundamental philosophical divides but merely clubs within which patronage is dispensed. Some of this, unfortunately, seems to be the consequence of the move to an elected upper house and the sinecures that can be dolled out to “safe” positions on the ticket.
Now we see more fevered speculation that the rearrangement of these sub-factions is aiming to replace the newbie Premier with an equally newbie one, with no public profile and more significantly with no real hope to “lead” the party. A core cancer in this horrible state of affairs seems to be the sub-faction known as the Terrigals – notably Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi, two people most notable for their complete lack of any achievements for the people of NSW.
The left and the remainder of the right need to unite now to remove this scourge from the party. The first act needs to be removing Tripodi from the front bench. The second is to act on long term ALP policy and abolish the Legislative Council.
It is too much to hope that the ALP will act. The consequence will be that we will stumble to the State election and elect Barry O’Farrell as Premier by default, leading an equally talentless and disorganised rabble. We don’t know what this mob would do – all they have done for two years is to promise more for less (more trains, lower fares). We will turn to them only in desperation, not in hope!
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Comment word verification
Dear readers
Some robot somewhere has decided to start posting meaningless comments to my post about David Gyngell. This means I have had to turn on one of the single most annoying features on web sites - word verification - for comments.
If this becomes a problem for you please let me know.
On the subject of comments I do welcome any and all real comments, preferably named but happily anonymously. Part of my mission in my blog is to change conversations, not just to be a voice for one opinion. I know I have some small success from conversations from some readers. But even the occassional "Hear! Hear!" wouldn't go astray, or even a "What rubbish!". More nuanced responses are even more welcome.
David
Some robot somewhere has decided to start posting meaningless comments to my post about David Gyngell. This means I have had to turn on one of the single most annoying features on web sites - word verification - for comments.
If this becomes a problem for you please let me know.
On the subject of comments I do welcome any and all real comments, preferably named but happily anonymously. Part of my mission in my blog is to change conversations, not just to be a voice for one opinion. I know I have some small success from conversations from some readers. But even the occassional "Hear! Hear!" wouldn't go astray, or even a "What rubbish!". More nuanced responses are even more welcome.
David
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