Peregrine

A difficult set of numbers

2008-12-15T15:40:00.005+11:00

The Rudd Government has released its CPRS White Paper which will form the basis of its emissions trading policy until 2020. The headline figure is the setting of an emissions reduction target of 5% (on 2000 levels) rising to an 'absolute maximum' of 15% if an international agreement is put in place.

Given the previous policy platform outlined on matters such as renewable energy, it is not surprising that the target ceiling has been set at 15%. The Garnaut Report stressed the significance of per capita emissions in setting targets and with Australia's population projected to grow considerably due to higher immigration and birth rates than European nations; it is not surprising that the Australian approach has been to adopt a markedly lower target range than Europe.

The revised CPRS design is reminiscent of the 'action target' approach that had previously been advocated by Argentina. The action target theory sets a target range which is varied based on economic activity, thus ensuring any cost burdens do not place an excessive lag on industry in vulnerable times. As the global economy has tracked downwards dramatically since the initial mooting of the CPRS, the ambition of the scheme has been scaled back to reflect the difficult economic position.

The difficulty in setting a target is demonstrated by the need to balance an existential threat of future damage from climate change against the immediate threat of the global economic downturn, particularly as the most trade-exposed industries that are in the vanguard of carbon emissions are the ones whose immediate prospects have been severely affected by reduced demand in places such as China. The need to maintain consensus is vital in this situation and keep the majority on board. This has led to the increased insulation of both businesses and households from price rises.

The unfortunate byproduct of this is a reduced emphasis on energy efficiency programs. Ideally, using energy efficiency as a means to both lower individual costs and streamline the economic structure to encourage more efficient use of energy would have both short-term cost saving and economic stimulus benefits and long-term restructuring advantages. It is important to note that during the Asian economic crisis, energy efficiency procedures actually broke down as lower demand reduced costs. The result was a Chinese industrial sector beset with out-of-control emissions growth. The introduction of the CPRS will not take place until 2010, so it is imperative that energy efficiency is promoted strongly for the next tweleve to eighteen months to prevent a massive shock when the carbon price signal takes effect.

A belated rejoinder

2008-09-09T18:44:00.007+10:00

A few weeks back, Sam Roggeveen of the Lowy Institute came across this post offering an intuitive response to a Cato Institute article on the uneconomical nature of climate change mitigation.

Roggeveen made two criticisms of the post. Firstly, it did not offer grounds for preferring one discount rate over another, so it's not clear why the 'do very little' school is wrong. Secondly, it suggested the post implied all attempts to analyse climate change in these terms are bogus without offering an alternative.

Why the 'do very little school' is wrong - preferring discount rates

The reason why Stern's discount rate is to be preferred over Norhaus is that the discount rate represents not merely the future trend of economic growth (itself a considerable presumption in the face of major climate change impacts), but two ethical decisions.

The first ethical decision is the value that a given generation places on a particular good. This theory is called prioritism. Prioritism in this context means that future generations can make a lower claim on goods.

The second ethical decision is the choice to disregard events in the future simply because they are so far in the future that it really does not matter. This is called temporal impartiality. Economists have a fairly short-term view of the world which treats what happens in 2050 as almost negligble importance. Treating the future welfare as of little importance leads to a rapid rate of discounting for future costs. Norhaus ultimately ends up with the conventional discount rate of 6% per annum which applied to the finance market from 1900-2000.

Temporal impartiality and prioritism are thus interrelated ethical judgments rather than mere economic factors which go to the value one places on the position of future generations. The usual underlying assumption is that future generations are going to be richer and able to look after themselves so we in the present do not need to worry about their fate. The problem arises when one considers that future generations may not have the same easy access or unconstrained ability to deal with resources that we currently do, not to mention being further hampered by climatic conditions.

Stern's reduced discount rate means that the welfare of future generations is valued far more highly than conventional financial models and thus takes into account the principle of intergenerational equity which usually plays a very limited role in financial decision-making. It is to be preferred to Norhaus as it encompasses both the economic and moral implications of climate change.

Are all economic models wrong - the alternative?

Remarks made in my post regarding problems with economic modelling related to the assumptions included in them by 'do very little'-favouring economists. The rule to remember with all modelling is that models are the children of their creators. The outcome of a given model depends entirely on the assumptions used in its design. If one believes for instance, that climate change is really not likely to be a problem, humans have little agency to affect climate and/or that any constraint on progress is a bad outcome, it is very easy to take the best case scenario of the IPCC Report, apply a high discount rate and conclude that climate damage costs do not justify reforming the entire economic structure. Underestimating the potential real cost of climate change on this basis constitutes a statistical lie.

In dealing with economic costs from climate change, we are dealing with two levels of modelling, economic modelling and climate effect modelling. The magnitude of risk from climate change comes from the likely outcome of differing concentrations of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Host of variables such as sea level rise, feedback mechanisms such as increased sunlight absorption, decreased carbon sink capability of vegetation, release of permafrost, ocean current variations can affect the ultimate outcome.

So the best approach to economic modelling on climate change would adopt a low discount rate and a medium to high range assessment of climate impacts. This would ensure that there was enough fat in calculations to take into account feedback mechanisms and policy could be developed on a prudent basis rather than the 'wishing and hoping' exercise that doing very little would entail.

It is patently obvious that we need to develop technology that involves less reliance on finite resources and more reliance on renewable energy. It is surprising that economists who believe in growth without end have not pushed this argument further and instead lead us down the path of using a finite supply of resources from an increasing number of inefficient sources such as shale oil and tar sands.

Hudson Recruitment goes Middlemarch

2008-08-15T18:44:00.004+10:00

From the files of one very frustrated literature graduate...

Don't let the economists get too close

2008-08-13T14:59:00.004+10:00

Over at The Interpreter, there's an interesting dance going on vis-a-vis the merits of raising the price on carbon by schemes such as emissions trading and carbon taxes. In the red corner we have the 'rapidly evolving' views of the Lowy Institute's Sam Roggeveen and in the blue corner, East Asia Forum's Peter Drysdale.

Roggeveen appears to have taken on board the work of Warwick McKibbin, who noted that many early adopters of Kyoto targets have failed (in some cases absymally) to meet them. The argument is further supported by the comments of Ted Norhaus, who argues that the UK and Germany only reduced their emissions because of pre-Kyoto reforms. In this light, Roggeveen offers up the Cato Institute's Jim Manzi's paper for comment highlighting the following conclusions:

In summary, then, the best available models indicate that 1) global warming is a problem that is expected to have only a limited impact on the world economy and 2) it is economically rational only to reduce slightly this marginal impact through global carbon taxes. Further, practical knowledge of the world indicates that 1) such a global carbon-tax regime would be very unlikely ever to be implemented, and 2) even if it were implemented, the theoretical benefits it might create would almost certainly be more than offset by the economic drag such a regime would produce.

What Roggeveen has come across is the great paradox of the collision of economic instruments to manage environmental problems. While the tools of economics such as trading schemes are designed to increase efficiency in achieving environmental outcomes at least cost, the assumptions that economists apply to the world come into conflict when dealing with issues such as the precautionary principle and intergenerational equity.

Much of the economic commentary on climate change discounts the effect of the problem for two simple reasons. Firstly, economists discount the future interests of individuals compared to the present generation based on the fact that there is a 100%probability that the living exist, whereas there is a less than 100% chance of subsequent generations. Second, economics assumes a continuing narrative of economic expansion and hence discounts current estimates of the value of today's paper money. The Stern Review was praised in some quarters for using a very low discount factor to cost future damage from climate change. However the Productivity Commission took issue with its figure of 1% discount per annum over a hundred years for precisely this reason. The cited economist, Ted Norhaus, prefers to discount future impacts by 6% per annum. The net result is that while Stern costs climate damage in 2100 at 37% current value, Norhaus costs it at 0.0295%.

Conversely, when estimating the cost of climate policy, the tendency of anti-action economists is to count the carbon cost imposed by trading, exaggerate it out to a projected level of equality with renewables based on years of underfunding, factor in extra costs such as lost land usage for renewable plant and completely discount a commensurate surge in the renewable industry. One does not even need to include the ramifications of lost productivity through the risk of interruption to the mythical baseload power supply to see the carbon reduction ledger firmly in debit.

The piece de resistance of this argument is the 'best available models' line. Economics demands certainty, but we have very little when it comes to climate behaviour. We can only postulate about the speed and magnitude of changes caused by retention of increased heat in the atmosphere. When these figures are fed into economic theories of discount and growth, we get a series of statistical lies which speak to the Bjorn Lomborg school of climate change being an overhyped waste of resources.

What Norhaus, McKibbin et al fail to note in their critique of Kyoto targets is that Kyoto should be judged versus business as usual, not whether targets were met courtesy of Thatcher's coal mine closures or the fall of communism. It is painfully obvious that investment follows return, and that means that creating markets through the introduction of trading systems and renewable energy targets allied with clean energy funding is the way to go. Governments need to understand their role is to promote good policy and secure their nation's welfare into the future and not rely on the prejudices of the past.

The merits of climate change action will depend on the scope of that action and its capacity to reduce emissions while promoting sustainable development. Thus developing programmes that can gradually build from a national to regional to global level, buttressed by agreements ensuring common but differentiated responsibility is far more desirable than a 'do nothing', rely on technology alone approach.

Encouraging SMEs to act on climate change

2008-08-11T19:38:00.000+10:00

Peregrine apologises in advance for any viewers who may be offended by advertising...

I am in the process of starting up my boutique consultancy for small and medium businesses. It's called ClimateEasy and offers a range of cost effective services for business to prepare them better for the challenges of climate change.

Check it out here.

Perhaps these two gentlemen have explained climate change to Brendan Nelson

2008-07-30T17:43:00.004+10:00

As part of its ongoing 'climate change is a myth perpetrated by green leftists' series, The Australian recently published the work of Messrs Evans and Jensen. Dr David Evans, a self-styled 'rocket scientist', is a former employee of the Australian Greenhouse Office. In hindsight, that appointment was probably as constructive as say, appointing Senor Fawkes pageboy for the House of Commons, for the good doctor appears to have had his head turned rather too swiftly for someone intimately involved in the climate modelling process. Dennis Jensen is one of the handful of Western Australian MPs who subscribe to the 'Howard as demigod' thesis, and are on the record as skeptical of the IPCC-inspired policies adopted by almost every social democratic party in the world.

Evans' piece, which has been dissected by Tim Lambert, boils down to three essential points. First, Evans does not give credence to the very modelling he was engaged to produce and hence will not accept any conclusions that either correlate observations with modelled outcomes, or predict the effect of various phenonmena on climate. This means Lambert's references to such visions of orbital forcing or carbon dioxide effects on temperature will fall on deaf ears.

On top of this rejection of modelling, Evans also rejects data showing temperature rises and adopts a very short-term view of climatic variability, suggesting the Earth is now cooling again. What makes me suspicious of such claims is the fact that climate skeptics do not suggest the Earth is reverting back to normal service but is in fact cooling (from the hottest part of the last several hundred years!).

Evans' third tenet is that the Vostok ice cores no longer support the C02-warming causal link as the warming follows the C02 by 800 years. This is widely accepted. He uses this fact as a stick to beat Al Gore as a misleading alarmist politician. Evans' problem lies in the second bit of data: for 800 years the temperature rises but C02 does not, then the two rise together for around 4200 years as the Earth emerges from an ice age. This supports the argument that increased sunlight raises temperature, gradually warms the earth and releases C02 and methane via melting permafrost. Has anyone spoken to Putin and Medvedev about the double-decker carbon sink they have in Siberia?

Basic common sense should cause someone with a scientific background to act cautiously and take appropriate precautions. Evans makes no mention of what will happen to the oceans absorbing ever larger concentrations of C02, nor the chemically proven fact that carbon dioxide is less soluble in warmer water. He ends his piece with the charge of 'criminal negligence and ideological stupidity' against the ALP. I would counter that by saying that if the ALP knew of both great environmental risk and the impending threat posed to our major coal and steel industries and did nothing to reposition the economy the charge would be made out.

Mr Jensen appears to be following Kipling's injunction to keep his head when all around him are losing theirs. His piece is basically a cry for nuclear power, regardless of climate change. It is also a cry for debate, although given those who seek that debate are largely disinterested in observations, conclusions, logical inferences and fair play, one does wonder what sort of debate the member for Tangney is advocating. Jensen believes that energy measures are tokenistic and that solar and wind are 'as yet unproved'. He implies climate advocates are today's flat-earthers, suggesting he subscribes to the Galileo Complex. Given most of Jensen's fellow-travellers would gladly locked Signor Galilei up for the term of his natural, it seems an odd piece of identification.

On the cost of emissions trading, Jensen states:

If all carbon in the stationary power sector were to have a $50-a-tonne price of carbon dioxide imposed (as is the case for the European price for CO2), it would mean a cost burden of $660 a year for every Australian, or more than $2500 per household, according to data I have received. These would not all be direct costs from the emissions-trading scheme, but also from higher prices of products that would flow through as a result of increased production costs. Those higher costs would make some businesses unviable, and they would have to close or move offshore.

Firstly, the Rudd Government's Green Paper indicates that $20 per tonne is the starting carbon price. Australia is years behind the EU and the $50 per tonne mark is unlikely to be reached for some years. Jensen makes no allowance for increased use of gas or an escalation in renewables (Rudd's 20% 2020 target seems to have escaped his notice). If we use the average power bill of $1020 per annum, we get a $163 rise at $20 a tonne for carbon. This means a $50 per tonne price adds $407.50 to your average bill. Assuming no renewable uptake, this means $252.50 is the price rise from stationary energy usage alone by business. All of which is great, except Jensen fails to include the compensation payable for price increases: remember, it's supposed to be the polluter pays, not the consumer. Also Jensen needs to answer, if these businesses are unviable because of associated emissions costs, is that because they cannot pass them onto the consumer? In which case, his $252.50 per household secondary emissions costing is surely higher.

Being a nuclear advocate, Jensen does not include the transport sector in his calculations, and the imposts created by high oil prices on freight costs. The biggest threat to business at present comes from oil prices and interest rates, and it will only be businesses that do not reform their practices early that will be vulnerable to the degree Jensen postulates. Given nuclear will require tremendous government support, surely that would feed into major stationary energy price rises of the very ilk Jensen criticises.

It is these true believers in business as usual (with nuclear variations) that Nelson's policy seeks to placate. Rather than offering certainty, the central demand of business, these dictates would add great uncertainty: whether any action would be taken at all under a Coalition Government and indeed the very viability of an export sector propped up by extractive carbon-intensive industry.

For the rest of us, we should learn some basic chemistry about carbon dioxide, keep a weather eye out to see if the birds are singing earlier this year and do what we can to make a difference, whether that be recycle, turn off the lights or push our politicians for action. Those are our best guides in sorting the climate fact from fiction.

Another global warming challenge

2008-07-22T22:14:00.006+10:00

In the spirit of that fabled freedom of speech, Tim Dunlop has issued an invitation for any unpublished scientist whose (scientific) views are contrary to the global warming orthodoxy to send him a thousand word dissertation. Tree of Knowledge ups the ante to include explanations of why they differ from their fellow contrarians.

Global warming denial is both an inherently frustrating and fascinating phenomenon. Fascinating because of the psychological history, the experiences and influences that shape the views of the individuals that hold them. Frustrating for the standard political reasons. A level of intransigence by scientists and commentators either genuinely convinces politicians and the public the problem lacks urgency or provides a convenient excuse for inaction. It is not helpful in the modern massaged world of mass politics to be presented with the need to instigate a revolution across the economy and stimulate a domino-like consensus of opinion across both the developed and developing world.

It is understandable that conservatives in all walks of life, be they businessmen, unionists, politicians or commentators do not want to see the certainties of the modernity turned on their heads. Some see global warming belief as a triumph of faith over reason, others see it as an admission that the technologies of modernity cannot overcome the trials of nature. Both of these impulses have been criticial to the development of modern capitalism. Dependency on oil and baseload power are ciphers for an ideological conviction of humanity's inevitable progress. A narrative that despite the occasional conflagration has moved on apace since the medieval era.

The problem with this view is it ignores the inescapable facts that the oil reserves we rely on are finite and that it is simply unsustainable for the entire world's population to have the ecological footprint demanded by the modern western lifestyle. By definition, there are limits that constrain our access to resources. Hence in order to grow our way economically out of trouble, either we will have to find more arable and exploitable land or make our resource usage (across the whole gamut from food to metal production to energy itself) progressively more renewable. In short, while dealing with an exponential culture of achievement we will have to rediscover the cyclical resource use culture of our forebears.

As interesting in a 'angels dancing on a head of a pin' way as the global warming denial debate is, it does nothing to explain how proving the non-existence of anthropogenic global warming will solve humanity's forthcoming problems. It offers no solutions towards sustainable development and appears to buttress an ethic of land use and interaction which may be out of date and is certainly counterproductive.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for those poring over statistics, dissecting graphs and drawing conspiratorial conclusions is how are those intellectual endeavours going to secure the health, wealth and happiness of your grandchildren and their grandchildren. When the oil runs out and every nation from Guyana to Nepal demands a McDonalds on every street corner.

Dr Nelson slips his Freudian

2008-07-22T19:29:00.004+10:00

I wonder if when the erstwhile Dr Nelson was responding to the indefatiguable Australian campaign to draft our former Formula 1 treasurer to the opposition leadership, he intended to say this:

"If Peter decides he is going to continue his political career, and serve the people of Higgins, and indeed the Liberal cause, I can assure you he will be on the frontbench with a bullet"

Would that be Mr Rudd's missing silver bullet or one to the back of the head, in the traditional manner of deserters?

Rudd's political honeytrap

2008-07-16T22:56:00.004+10:00

The Rudd Government's Green Paper will no doubt earn the ire of some climate and environmental organisations for its gradualist approach to emission reduction.

Petrol is in the scheme but compensated by 'cent-for-cent' excise reductions until 2013. Agriculture is out until further notice (possibly starting in 2015) and coal power generators will receive government assistance. The Government appears to be easing voters into copping nanoeconomic pain, by hitting them first with upfront power bills (softened to an extent by increased government payments). This suggests that fast tracking renewable energy - as indicated by the proposed 20% national renewable energy target by 2020, is seen as a more palatable and effective option for achieving emission reductions. If stationary energy emissions make up 50% of all emissions, rising to close to 60% by 2020, a 20% rise in renewable market share would achieve between 10-12% emission reductions. That would suggest that Rudd's interim emissions target cannot be much higher than about 15% by 2020 from the current nominated suite of abatement options. Even to achieve these savings will require a considerable improvement in fuel efficiency and or energy efficiency at the current target levels. Such a target looks low by world standards and will barely be in the pack once developed nations crunch the carbon numbers.

This may well be the genius of Rudd's plan. The bar is so low that it reflects a pragmatic Liberal policy wish list. So low that in one sentence Nelson chastisted Rudd for lifting their excise-permit neutral idea and in the next called it a petrol tax. The end result of Labor's policy is that it puts the onus on the people to push it to take more action. It is almost the minimal possible response without jeopardising the integrity of action altogether. Rudd has effectively offered an election year handout with the electricity rebates and absolved the government of responsibility for excessive petrol hikes.

Nelson is left in nanoeconomic limbo. He has to either junk the scheme entirely or have a technical debate over the merits of 2012 action. Nelson has flirted with a faux policy debate about the hybrid model but if anything has smacked of 'The Hollowmen' in national politics, that search for an alternative was it. Possibly locking Turnbull, Hunt and Bishop into his Central Coast caravan for a weekend and designing a proper policy alternative would be more beneficial both to the debate and the long-term coherency of his party.

At the minute his argument boils down to 'there's a right way to do it (mine) and a wrong way (Rudd's)'. If the excise cut is my idea it's good policy and if it's his policy it is bad. The fact that all this operates in the future - i.e. after the battle has been won at the polls, makes Nelson's 'Rudd's 2013 review is Rudd-speak for ending the excise cut' ring hollow. If Rudd is to pay for injudicious action it will be in 2010. If he is to pay for inaction it will be 2013.

The scheme offers so much to the vulnerable polluters and the kind of targeted compensation scheme now becoming the Rudd trademark that it is highly unlikely the final draft will be any weaker. If anything, the challenge is being thrown down to voters to tell the government they want action and are prepared to pay for it.

Watching Penny Wong at the Press Club demonstrated a player in control of her material, confident in the merits of the argument and open to being pushed to further action. Watching Greg Hunt on Lateline demonstrated a puppet forced to parrot a line he did not believe in, wishing he had something coherent if not constructive to say. Only when Hunt got onto his pet subject of solar panel rebates did he seem to have conviction. Perhaps he should show some boldness and adopt the German bipartisan solar feed-in tariff where homeowners get four times the price for their surplus solar energy fed into the grid.

The danger with Rudd's policy is that in forcing the Liberals over the climate cliff, it will force a very swift acceleration of targets in the medium term. But by then Greg Hunt might be PM.

A Liberal dose of climate chaos

2008-07-13T11:22:00.005+10:00

Opposition is tough enough when your party is roughly on the same wavelength. When your party is undergoing a crisis of relevance and historical purpose, it becomes akin to herding cats. Brendan Nelson was elected to the leadership based on being a compromise candidate. Instead, he has become the compromised candidate who seems to be the last person to know when his policy has changed.

This has been the case on WorkChoices, the apology debate and now climate change. Nelson is frequently trying to be both progressive and conservative in the same sentence and the first thing that goes is the syntax of his sentences, then subjected to Rumsfeld-style ridicule.

The diabolical mess that is the Liberal party's position on climate change comes from Nelson's futile attempts to reconcile two mutually exclusive positions. On one wing we have the bipartisan actors such as Greg Hunt and Malcolm Turnbull who genuinely want to get the carbon reform ball rolling. On the other lie the science deniers led by Tony Abbott, representing the growth-is-king mantra of the Howard era. One suspects that they hold exorcism ceremonies around a portrait of Bob Brown clad with faux-Viking horns such is their distrust of Green policy. Whereas a compromise on the apology was possible but looked churlish and nonsensical, there is no way to balance these two positions down the middle. Either Nelson must lean towards the do-nothing denialists or he must lean toward the progressive wing of the party.

Nelson seems to have realised this himself but has not conjured up the escape route. His first attempt was to stand by the Howard policy of an ETS commencing in 2012. However, while Rudd can deal with both nanoeconomic and enviro-economic issues in turn, Nelson has based his entire leadership (if that's what one can call it) on nanoeconomic pain alone. He emotes on behalf of carers, pensioners, shoppers and motorists and is thus rendered allergic to price increases.

So by default Nelson is left with a leadership philosophy which does not allow him to support any price rises. Hence the compromised nonsense of 'petrol included but no net increase in taxes'. Perhaps he got caught in the GST comparison. While both the GST and the ETS result in pricing realignments, the essential purpose of an ETS is to input the price of carbon emission rights into the economic system. That means that products requiring higher level of carbon emissions will increase in price relative to those that require lower levels. Its operation can only be revenue neutral in the short term by government recompense.

However the reality that caused Howard to adopt the 2012 ETS in the first place has not changed. So Nelson cannot ditch the policy entirely but reopens it to consultation, digging up the hybrid alternative that Howard's Shergold report left on the cutting room floor. It will not take very much effort for Penny Wong to start citing Shergold's reasons for rejecting Nelson's proposal and exposing it as a fig leaf for denial. Denying climate change is as politically toxic now as advocating for asylum seekers was during the Tampa saga.

Further, the incoherency of Nelson's position makes him look an incompetent and weak leader and will do nothing for his electoral stocks. By not developing a progressive, innovative, liberal-philosophy based position on climate change, Nelson is not just undermining bipartisan action but his own party.

Rudd's Climate Change Game Plan

2008-07-12T18:14:00.002+10:00

Much of the media talk, well at least prior to the spectacular Liberal policy implosion, on climate change has centred around the difficulties it presents to the Rudd Government. This is largely based around a conventional view of Australian politics which casts Labor as the union-worker party and the Liberals as 'good economic managers'.

However the odd thing about this analysis is that it ignores the fact that it was the previous Labor government that introduced free market reforms which made the market economy paradigm a bipartisan project and hence an inherent part of the political landscape. Consequently, the supposed opposition of former ACTU members such as Martin Ferguson is seen as fatal to Rudd's project. The narrative goes that coal mining unions will revolt and suburban battlers concerned with the new nanoeconomics of interest rates, fuel and grocery prices will descend on Canberra with pitchforks and lead Kevin to the one-term electoral guillotine.

The flaw in this theory is that it relies on the assumption that the public's long held interest in climate action will dissolve in the face of the economic consequences. It is clear that when Rudd was elected, the public flicked the switch from concern over Labor's macroeconomic credentials to a more nuanced worry about nanoeconomic issues and the integration of environmental and economic concerns. Not only that, but whereas immigration eroded Labor's position (roughly 70% of voters supported Howard's detention programme at its height), a similar level of support exists among Liberal voters for climate action. Given climate change and its economic underpinnings challenge the very basis of conventional politics, failure to act with bipartisanship may deal a cruel blow to the future of the Liberals.

In order to turn Liberals to the Labor cause, Rudd needs to complete the evolution process begun during the 1980s by breaking the final bonds with the vested coal industry interests. He also needs a second economic reform programme. Hence the Garnaut Report. It is no coincidence that Garnaut played a key role in the 1980s reforms. Rudd's plan appears to be to offer bold action on climate change, hence his defence of the 2010 starting date for the ETS. Thus he will get credit for 'strong action', but also leaves the way open to 'listen to the people' if problems arise that need a 2012 date. If the Liberals fail to at least meaningfully contest the climate action field, they are setting themselves up for irrelevance.

The draft legislation for the ETS is not due until late this year. This will give ample time for the customary Rudd technique of kite flying to see which measures the public will bear and which need more careful handling. Hence the equivocation on petrol, which may depend as much on the oil price in November as anything else. Rudd will probably remove the GST on excise as a minimum and possibly mandate no GST on carbon permits. As the essential purpose of an ETS is for prices of carbon fuels to increase, the Liberal policy of 'no net tax increase' contradicts this basic aim. A coherent policy either leaves petrol in and increases the price, or leaves it out and places the burden on other sectors. Energy price compensation will be means tested in line with the strategy pursued with the solar panel rebate, remembering of course that while energy usage does not change much versus income, the ability to purchase energy efficient appliances does.

On the global front, Rudd will push for Australia to play a major role as an emissions intense middle power, bridging China, India, the US and Europe into some kind of coalition. China has expressed interest in an emissions trading scheme and expect Rudd to cite the ETS and Chinese moves as complementary. This also dovetails with Labor policy to increase the role of Australia's financial services sector in China and India.

The Rudd Government has demonstrated a committment to climate action and expect to see a lot more claims to be exercising national and diplomatic leadership in this area, while we are told how we are acting behind the rest of the world. This paradox is vital to understanding the politics of climate change and their implications. The need to act is clear but the traditional sense of caution towards major reform is also alive and well.

A random plug

2008-07-10T18:08:00.003+10:00

The political inversion of the climate change debate

2008-07-04T15:13:00.003+10:00

A number of journalists ranging across the spectrum from Fairfax's Annabel Crabb to News Limited stalwarts Dennis Shanahan and Andrew Bolt have identified the apparent contradiction between Rudd's 'I feel your pain' pitch to 'battlers' (or as the Piping Shrike has put it 'The New Sensitivity') and the inherent need for energy prices to rise to combat climate change.

On paper, it looks like a recipe for a Latham-Downeresque implosion. However, it both gives the voters no credit by implying they cannot hold two ideas in their collective heads at the same time and misunderstands the reasons for Howard's demise. Firstly, it is a well-established fact that voters can differentiate between state and federal politics. For at least two terms of the Howard government, large swathes of the country voted for completely different parties at the state and federal level. In fact, where Labor has run into trouble in the past is by dismissing many voters as 'ignorant' or 'unsophisticated'. The key basis of politics is persuasion, and a failure to persuade, while open to inteference from outside forces, ultimately comes down to whether the audience sees an essential truth in your message and your capacity to deliver. Rudd seems to be aware of the dangers of underestimating the public mind.

Secondly, Howard's fall from grace came from Rudd altering the economic debate from the macroeconomic level to the nanoeconomic level. Hence he recognised the problems of petrol and grocery price vulnerability and promised government assistance around the margins. Petrol and food prices operate however as free markets without government command and control influence, so real power here is limited to a 'watching brief', keeping an eye on price fluctuations and opening up the field for more competition.

What Rudd aims to do with climate change is again redefine the economic debate, this time on the macroeconomic level. Setting a price for carbon will integrate environmental costs into the economic system. That is the first step. The second will be for environmental and economic management to be seen as covalent. The third step is to break the nexus between economic growth and environmental emissions growth thus ensuring a political, economic and environmentally sustainable future. Unlike previous reforms such as the GST, support for an emissions trading scheme is consistently over 50%, while opposition sits around 25% with around 20% of people waiting to hear more details. Thus aligning economic and environmental action is what the people want at this point in time.

Unlike petrol and food commodities, the Rudd Government will have the power to set the starting price for carbon, define the parameters of the market and redistribute revenue from carbon permits to compensate the people. This market will afford government a measure of control rather than the watching brief seen in the nanoeconomic field.

The other thing that climate change does is transform energy increases into issues of personal responsibility. It thus becomes almost a civic duty to accept and embrace higher energy prices and encourage a larger share of renewable energy usage. In this climate, the goodwill to government is not dependent on keeping prices down but ensuring there is appropriate action being taken which is manageable on both the national and personal level. So government will both have more power to act and a proportionally lower need to act to ease public concerns.

The critical factors with the climate change carbon transition process will be the quality of the Rudd Government's communication with the people and its capacity to persuade voters that action is in all our interests. On this, expect to see a lot of Garrett and Rudd, and very little of Wong, who will be behind the scenes dealing with business and other large stakeholders.

Something is missing from this picture

2008-07-01T18:24:00.004+10:00

The Australian Astronomical Society has just announced the release of a rather obtuse-sounding paper "Does a Spin–Orbit Coupling Between the Sun and the Jovian Planets Govern the Solar Cycle?". This would normally pass into the scholarly ether but for the efforts of numerous global warming deniers to promote it as evidence of 'global cooling'.

The paper contains various observations regarding the orbit of the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn which have been helpfully translated to mean the Earth will experience diminished sunlight in the next decade and a consequent lowering of mean global temperature by 1-2 degrees. This trend is predicted to last around twenty to thirty years.

Precisely why certain blogs have immediately accepted this one paper rather than the weight of scientific opinion that anthropogenic climate change is unclear. However, even if we do accept these findings that a new global dimming is upon us, this only delays the impact of temperature rises from increased carbon in the atmosphere.

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report offers a range of scenarios for temperature change, giving a projected increase of between 0.8 and 1.2 degrees C by 2040. It is quite possible that the two phenomena, if scientifically sound, could offset one another. However, the dimming period is predicted to last only 20-30 years which means by 2050 there would be a reasonable chance that the full force of high atmospheric carbon levels would be felt.

In other words, far from evidence that global warming is bunk, the global dimming phase at best offers a temporary reprieve and an unexpected opportunity to make better, more strategically sound long-term decisions.

Rather than use this as evidence for opposing any climate action, it should give us hope that we can adapt out society for sustainable development over the long term. We need to gain a better appreciation of both the dynamics of carbon in the atmosphere and the trends towards higher or lower solar radiation. At the same time, we need to continue picking low-hanging efficiency fruit and researching long-term fossil fuel replacements.

These decisions will be best made with open minds rather than ideological obsession.

Rudd's first statement: in debt according to the voters of Gippsland

2008-06-30T10:00:00.003+10:00

By-elections are traditionally unfriendly terrain for governments. They are something like a political Twenty-Twenty match, exaggerating the effect of local issues and suppressing the overall standing of the party leaders. With the government out of election mode, there are few policy handouts to focus self-interest. This leaves the voters to 'judge the government' on its operating machinery, rarely an enterprise the government comes out on top in.

The Gippsland result was consequently never likely to produce a Labor win, however the magnitude of the defeat bears some examination. It is questionable whether Labor's candidate was particularly strong, being neither particularly popular nor having much of a message for people straining under high petrol and food prices. It is possible that he was the fourth or fifth best candidate running. Labor did terribly in La Trobe, Victoria's coal heartland, which was no doubt due to concerns over climate change mitigation taking jobs, living costs and the 'Bundy and Coke' backlash, plus the Liberal candidate was well-known in those parts. It suggests that Gippsland will become a progressively safer seat for the conservatives as time goes on. Indeed, it points to a loss here being catastrophic for both the Liberals and Nationals.

Sheer mathematics may have exaggerated the size of the defeat. There is some argument that the Liberals' decision to field a candidate contributed to some of the anti-National protest vote going to the Liberals and then back to the Nationals via preferences. Certainly Gippsland has a high proportion of former One Nation voters who would not be in broad sympathy with Rudd's agenda on climate change, Asian engagement or reconciliation.

However the effect of these local factors does not excuse Canberra altogether. Following Rudd's election last year, Peregrine made the following observation on the reasons for his high approval:

Rudd's approval rating seems to not be giving him the type of blank cheque voters offered a Coalition government running on 'keeping interest rates low' and border security. It is a loan that he has taken out on promises of taking concrete action on climate change, restoring the position of employees in the labour market, fixing the health system and improving the position of 'working families' on housing affordability, rents, grocery and petrol prices and child care.

The big question will Rudd have the political capital to pay up when the voters collect their debts.

The early evidence from Gippsland is that Rudd might not have spent much political capital but he has not repaid the trust shown in him yet either. The nanoeconomics of petrol and grocery prices are dwarfing all other issues, and Rudd has yet to have any concrete policy achievements on health or housing affordability. On the Gippsland climate change index he is even further behind. Here not only will action be critical, but retraining and business restructuring will be vital as the coal industry plays a major role in this part of Victoria.

In short, Gippsland represents a vote of confidence in the local National candidate and a vote of concern against a government that has not done anything to inspire confidence that jobs will be protected and services will improve. Instead all some voters have seen are long-term aspirations and short-term price rises, things they find even less appealing than Brendan Nelson.

Breaking the economic - emissions growth nexus

2008-06-25T18:51:00.003+10:00

The realpolitik challenge of climate change lies in its economics. Although governments and environmental movements alike have long advocated the use of market mechanisms such as emissions trading in concert with traditional regulation and conservation measures, the major stumbling block to building a universal consensus for action is the link between economic growth and emissions growth.

It is axiomatic that, while powered predominantly by fossil fuels, economic growth will result in an increase in carbon emissions. This makes economic transitions from developing to developed countries have an exponential effect on carbon levels and push the atmosphere into dangerous territory. It paradoxically makes the problem more urgent and less amiable to agreement and action. Hence overtly capitalist, free-market theorists and commentators dismiss the need for climate change and heavily critique emissions trading despite its core reliance on market principles.

It is clear that unless this nexus is broken, we will find out exactly how much effect carbon can have in the atmosphere. The key to breaking this nexus comes when our power supplies need to either be replaced or augmented with new installations. That means that renewable energy and low emissions technology such as gas have to be utilised in a way that makes them economic competitors with fossil fuels.

The key tools for this task are a thorough assessment of power station requirements, an emissions trading scheme recognising the true price of carbon, international targets for renewable energy production to stimulate development, international accounting charting a decline in emissions growth versus economic growth, adequate compensation mechanisms for people overly affected by increased prices, vigilant regulators preventing profiteering, removal of artificial barriers supporting coal and oil over gas and encouragement of technology adoption through government initiatives.

We need to attack assumptions such as the supposed inability of renewables (or anything other than nuclear or coal) to produce baseload power. We need to encourage innovative technology and find ways to exploit our geothermal, solar and wave resources rather than our oil. Gas and energy efficiency can set the ball rolling, but wave, solar and wind technology must be facilitated to become more efficient and cheaper.

In short, we need to recast, redefine and adapt our economic structures and the energy delivery systems that power them to subsume environmental and economic responsibility into the one concept. We need to set meaningful targets, design appropriate processes and coordinate action and encourage innovation.

Taking a carrot and stick to Mugabe

2008-06-25T18:17:00.002+10:00

It seems that with Mugabe's virtual declaration of war on the MDC, the global community has suddenly started mentioning the 'g' word and the 'R' word. Visions of genocide and the absymal failure of the UN in Rwanda have given a new urgency to measures to rein in the Zimbabwean dictator.

One 'r' word that is key for Mugabe is rejection. Rejected by the international community, he discredits European and American attempts to counsel his behaviour as colonial interference. Rejected by his people, he has manipulated the populace through fear. He has shaken the country like a tree until all the MDC supporters fall out. He cannot accept rejection, so the agents of that rejection must be purged.

Mugabe will continue to menace Zimbabwe unless either saner heads in the ZANU-PF roll him into retirement or his advanced age (or an assasin) catches up with him. A third option is military intervention under the emerging 'duty to protect' doctrine. However it is likely that China would veto an excessively aggressive pursuit of such intervention unless there was broad agreement with its African trading partners. China may not like a human rights mililtary incursion precedent to be set with the ongoing issues in Tibet and Nepal.

A negotiated settlement with Mugabe is not an option. However, a deal for an interim power sharing agreement might be possible under a moderated ZANU-PF. The trick to moderating the ZANU-PF is to allow Mugabe's liberation-era allies the option to give Mugabe a graceful exit and retirement. Zambia has pushed for action, yet South Africa's Mbeki demonstrates a reluctance to push too hard, given his apparent sympathy to some of Mugabe's land-distribution policies.

The international community's role is to freeze Mugabe's influence on the world stage and encourage external nations not to bankroll the regime with either cash or arms. It can also prompt Mbeki to act by offering South Africa either advantageous trade inducements or diplomatic positions on the world stage.

The 'liberation' club could appeal to Mugabe's vanity by reminding him of his advanced years and that his role as 'father of the nation' would best be preserved by not declaring a civil war on his own people. A nation such as Equatorial Guinea, which has done deals with Mugabe in the past, could provide his cronies suitable accommodation. The stick option lies in authorising military action, with a force led by a suitably neutral power such as India under UN auspices, with logistic support from Europe, US and Australia. This could encourage a new solidarity, not between leaders but between people as Africans.

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold

2008-06-24T18:19:00.003+10:00

Our political culture is in great flux. The admirable work of the Piping Shrike has detailed this in a series of posts as a political realignment. The major parties are catching up to the fact that they have no social base and hence are hostage to the nightly news cycle. This gives an apparent fragility to Rudd's stratospheric polling. However it rather forgets what has happened federally is merely an extension of the decline of state Liberal parties to the point of irrelevance. So much so, that in South Australia the Liberal party is now experiencing defections to the federally moribund Family First. A small group of pundits have either diagnosed Rudd as acting as permanently on campaign or like a political bubble ring - held in a kind of stasis by the vortex of his activity. Presumably they believe that Julia Gillard is the dolphin responsible.

Rudd has decided that the media is for the dissemination of this messages, and his chief conduit to said media is rumoured to have a nasty habit of abusing them. Consequently they are taking it personally and according him very little favourable coverage. It also fits within their frame of reference that budgets mean something to politics and that the opposition is merely dormant, to be revived under the appropriate leader once Nelson nicks one to the slips. Hence Rudd is nothing remarkable and will come down to earth once his honeymoon ends. The thought does not enter their collective heads that this is the new reality. Instead, we hear the Whitlamesque fairytale that Gillard will storm the barricades and burn the Treasury benches to the ground like Boudicea. Some in the Canberra Press Gallery witnessed the Whitlam crash firsthand, no one has ever witnessed a federal government sustain ratings in the high 50s.

Into this breach step the Howard-era acolytes, now spurned by the new regime and left to ply their trade on the fringes of mediocrity. They demonstrate a bitter, visceral resentment of Rudd for removing their great leader Howard. The great citadel of Howard's media support is the Australian, which has now altered its brief from acting as government gazette to Her Majesty's loyal opposition. Loyal to Washington, specifically the neo-conservative, market vision, where private wars and global hegemony are de rigeur. Ad hominem argument suits this band as their voice, their tribe, their man is always right and their opponent is always wrong. Hence distracting bloggers by trolling and pouring vitriol is acceptable in the name of new-age Foucauldian information politics. So while taking down those that support the agendas they oppose, they also fly assorted kites to either make the Liberal position appear mainstream, or change the mainstream altogether and push the polity in the right direction. This ad hominem strategy extends to the truly bizarre and inconsistent criticisms of the Rudd government, one minute pro-business, then anti-business, pro-China, then anti-China.

As the polity has moved right through waves of economic prosperity, the traditional Liberal party's role has become almost irrelevant. With Labor concentrating on technocracy, encouraging education and removing the complexity of business regulation, politics shifts to the nanoneconomics of petrol and grocery prices. The Liberals are left with an emoting leader and little else. Climate change represents the position perfectly. The agreed solution is an emission trading scheme - a market mechanism - yet the free market, user-pay Liberals strain to support it and even now seek to make political capital.

If Labor wins the battle on emissions trading, the Liberals will be split between the caterwauling right and the moderate left. The caterwaulers will most likely head to Family First. How much of the party ultimately survives depends on whether Labor can successfully manage this fundamental change into a new political constituency. If economic management becomes covalent with environmental management, then Labor could well benefit from demographic change and make serious realigning inroads into those leafy seats that polls make so tantalising. If the green barrier dissolves in the political sphere, it will dissolve in the minds of voters. One suspects though that long-term ideological, logical and intellectual poverty will eventually cause the party to split unless strong leadership can hold the strands together.

If, however, the politicians fail to act appropriately, then the results could be apocalyptic for all of us.

Wow! Some action from the ICC

2008-06-21T10:34:00.006+10:00

Common sense has prevailed

Perhaps they can get their act together and do something about allowing Zimbabwe to play international cricket?

On fatuous comparisons and foolish rules

2008-06-19T16:48:00.003+10:00

Tiger Woods' latest major tournament victory has led some headline-challenged commentators to declare he is the best sportsman ever. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to say an athlete is the best ever in their sport is unfortunate, to say they are the best anywhere of all time seems like carelessness. It seems a relative easy call to make - yet narrow down the test and see how difficult it becomes. For Woods to be America's best athlete alone would rule out Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz, Michael Johnson, Michael Jordan, Pete Sampras and Jimmy Connors alone. Not to mention women of the calibre of Martina Navaratilova and Chris Evert.

To even compare across the same sport, one needs to take into account four criteria: quality of performance, consistency, opposition and technology. In golf, Woods has the benefit of incredibly enhanced distance and accuracy due to a revolution in club design. It is impossible to know what Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan or Norman Von Nida for instance might have achieved with the same equipment. There is an argument that Woods' level of achievement has come at a time of great depth on a highly professional tour, but balancing these factors requires a chat around the bar rather than mathematical precision.

It is hard enough trying to compare Sampras and Federer, and they almost overlap with only the interregnum of Hewitt between the two masters. They have near identical records in terms of tournaments won, but whereas Sampras had several titanic tussles with Agassi, some won, some lost, Federer's battles with Nadal appear almost dictated by the surface they compete on. Federer is a great frontrunner, but can he win from behind? All of these factors make comparing one champion, seemingly a prototype of another, highly problematic.

However one thing cannot be in dispute. One athlete stands above all in terms of his uniqueness, if not all-round achievement. That man is Sir Donald Bradman, whose incredible personal average not only made him the greatest batsman ever but carried his entire team, and at times the morale of his nation, along with him. While the quality of his opposition is debatable, his consistency is beyond comparison. Perhaps the closest in icon status is Babe Ruth, whose defection led to the 'curse of the Bambino', which was blamed for the Boston Red Sox failure to win the world series for eighty two years.

Other players have averaged a hundred for a couple of series, but no one has gone near that for longer, despite questionable bowling and batsman-friendly conditions. Yet Bradman could not simply be the best cricketer - cricket has bowlers in it too. So we are left with players who cannot be compared across the same sport, even at the same time, as they have different roles in the team. Everyone can have their own personal favourites, but comparisons of the greatest ever really belong as arguments to be had at the pub, and not in serious journalism.

An argument that should be had in public is the ridiculous outcome in last night's match between England and New Zealand. Sixteen thousand people waited through some of the most depressing weather Birmingham could dish up only to have the game end one over before it could be a full match due to rain. Of course, despite the match being reduced to a 29 over game and not starting til 3pm, the dinner break was left at 30 minutes. This kind of nonsense makes cricket, particularly one day cricket, an international laughing stock. It has not been adequately explained why 10 minutes is sufficient to adjourn a match after twenty overs in 40 degree heat, yet an extra 20 minutes is required when the match lasts twenty four overs in 15 degree drizzle. The ICC should axe this regulation pronto, and allow the interval to be a minimum of 10 minutes with the consent of both captains. Oddly this happens in a test match, but once players set themselves for a fifty over pyjama battle, it appears they will wilt without 30 minutes break.

The Shanahan Principle

2008-06-17T12:01:00.003+10:00

That the prominence of Tuesday's Newspoll on the Australian's website is in direct proportion to its favourability to the Coalition.

Can anyone actually find the 59-41 poll on the Australian's website?? Is this a case of not 'Where's Wally' but there are the wallies?

Pop goes the alcopop proxy

2008-06-16T00:35:00.003+10:00

It is undeniable that there has been an increase in alcohol-related harm in recent years, whether this be measured by hospital admissions, police reports or sheer anecdotal evidence. It seems that the latest generation of teenagers to run the gauntlet of adolescence have taken to drinking (more) early and (more) often. In response to this, the Rudd government took the most immediate policy action at its disposal, imposing by regulation the same tax scheme to pre-mixed drinks as conventional spirits. The uncharitable have criticised Rudd's move as 'spin and symbols', yet the problems raised by alcohol are so complex that the alcopop tax served as a proxy for real action while that massive effort was weighed, planned and negotiated.

The alcopop tax loophole was created when for reasons best known to itself, the former government chose not to adjust the excise rate charged on alcopops to match conventional spirits. This created a very slippery pathway for young teenagers to move from soft drinks into spirits while not experiencing the paint-stripper style symptoms associated with higher alcohol drinks. While teenagers have always taken up drinking through the high school party scene, the government's tax policy should have assisted in them choosing something other than sugar-coated rum as their poison. The spike in the ready-mixed drink share of the alcohol market, from 3% to nearly 12%, points to a very substantial increase in alcohol consumption through this fiscal misadventure.

However the alcopop debacle is only part of the problem. Greater disposal income, more stress being felt by adolescents in a world of unstable employment prospects and the collateral effect of older siblings' own drinking habits have caused the problem to snowball. The ridiculous hours clubs are open to, coupled with the relaxation of planning provisions and the introduction of mega venues where responsible service of alcohol is not in management's interests create a cocktail of potential violence, drunken behaviour and potential major health ramifications.

Clearly, to address all these problems will require a coordinated effort between local, state and federal government, alcohol manufacturers and club management. The accessibility of alcohol, the concentration of venues and the attractiveness of excessive drinking need to be considered carefully. The idea that it is acceptable to consume twenty drinks a weekend for ten to fifteen years is unsustainable. Yet that kind of intake is more norm than exception. The assumption appears to be that consistent drinking through the week is bad, a sign of alcoholism, but the weekend binge is culturally acceptable. This assumption needs to be examined and researchers must develop responsible guidelines that speak to the long-term effects of 'the binge', rather than just the per diem intake.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon seems intent at present to cover the time lag in taking tough action with party politics against the former government's inaction. The former government's actions in allowing the pre-mixed drink preferential tax treatment and failure to develop any response beyond the obligatory alcohol campaign are worthy of censure. However Roxon would be better served not battering her audience into submission but laying the groundwork for a major social overhaul - one that may eventually see the weekend binge as unwise a social choice as the pack a day cigarette habit.

Setting liberal democratic parameters for free speech

2008-06-11T11:43:00.003+10:00

It is interesting to note the minor blogging brushfire breaking out over the prosecution of the Canadian neo-conservative columnist, Mark Steyn, for alleged hate speech comments under British Columbia's anti-vilification laws. The problem anti-vilification laws are bound to run into is the issue of free speech - the purported essence of democratic society. The introduction of anti-vilification law - legislation specifically designed to change behaviour through language and attitude -raises questions as to how to set the boundaries of free speech.

Anti-vilification laws represent a laudable attempt to protect minorities from abuse and work towards a harmonious multicultural society. However, they have failed to address the philosophical challenge posed by an insurgency of conservative commentators. Progressive thought is constantly under attack from those who oppose it. Anti-vilification law, with its focus on behaviour change and centralised control, is tarnished with images of Maoist-Soviet re-education. The sanctions offered by the laws are weak, yet the challenge remains strong. The result is a hatred of the laws, rather than the behaviour, and the false assumption that other cultures are 'protected species'. Anti-vilification laws are seen as a dangerous fetter on free speech, rather than valid laws which should be upheld by the archetypical law abiding citizen.

The idea of anti-vilification is to set parameters for what is and what is not acceptable conduct in society in line with internationally recognised human rights principles. In other words, it goes to fundamental questions of humanity. Rather than being seen, however, as 'behaviour change', instead it should be recast as 'the law of the land'. This is particularly important in the post-terrorism era, where aggrieved persons are easy prey for fundamentalists of all persuasions, and a 'free speech incident' such as an ill-advised cartoon in one country can lead to bombings in another. Failing to bridge the divides between communities, and worse, reinforcing the prejudices as justified resistance to 'political correctness' makes all of us vulnerable to bad neoconservative foreign policy adventures in Iraq, Iran (or insert Muslim country of their choice) and increases the likelihood of terrorist attacks in all corners of the world.

There is a loud chorus of concern that moderate Muslims do not take action to rein in their extremist counterparts. Yet that chorus also sings loudest about the evils of political correctness and refuses to accept that the crude remarks of Jones and his acolytes also demand action. This lack of a causal link speaks to a deeper and perhaps wilful misunderstanding of both other cultures and the nature of terrorist outrages.

Australian speech is partially protected by the implied constitutional guarantee of freedom of political communication. That guarantee means that any law that is not appropriate and adapted to preventing obscenity, libel or incitement to violence and restricts the ability to criticise government policy or access to media during political campaigns is likely to be unconstitutional. It is arguable that in the present climate, a strong anti-vilification law which inteprets say, Jones' laissez-faire response to the Cronulla text messages as worthy of sanction may meet this test for incitement, but it is a grey area.

To play their role to best advantage in the Australian polity, anti-vilification laws need to be remodelled in consultation with those very players who are at the pivot point of the problem. Conservatives and cultural representatives should be brought together for a thorough-going summit on social inclusion, freedom of speech and incitement to acts of violence, vandalism and discrimination. This would be an act of true national leadership and may provide an environment of goodwill and understanding, where issues can be rationally debated. This summit should then lay out a nonpartisan programme for uniform anti-vilification legislation, allowing for strong sanctions such as suspension of broadcasters and ultimately broadcast licences for repeat offenders. This would give the conservatives (and their media masters) most likely to be affected by law changes a hearing in the process and mitigate their concern about the threat to free speech.

The continued attack by conservatives such as Steyn on anti-vilification and other similar laws is neither liberal or democratic. However, without consultation with such parties, the resentment and martyr mentality of the 'political correctness' mindset will continue to thrive and plague our supposedly liberal, democratic and mature society.

Fuel poverty and the emissions trading debate

2008-06-05T13:10:00.005+10:00

Much as I hate cheap jargon, expect to hear a lot more of the phrase 'fuel poverty'. Basically it means paying a high percentage of your income in fuel costs (whether that be electricity or even petrol). Given high interest rates, rising inflation particularly in essentials such as food and constrained wages, the usual fury over fuel prices has been exacerbated as people actually start to feel like they are impoverished, not just inconvenienced by petrol prices. The potential for political trouble with the impending emissions trading scheme is palpable. Peter Garrett getting into contortions about including petrol into the emissions trading scheme demonstrates this clearly.

A major problem with emissions trading is the impetus for power companies to pass on the permit costs to their customers, namely the 90+ percent of them who have not taken up Greenpower schemes. The obvious solution is to redistribute the permit costs back to consumers. It seems likely this will be done by a tax credit system, which will probably have to pay credits quarterly in line with utility bills. The system would then be revenue neutral, provide almost no cash-flow issues for ordinary people and achieve carbon reduction targets by the government's overall cap on tradeable permits. The ACCC would have a key role in preventing price gouging by power companies inflating their carbon abatement costs.

However energy usage does not necessarily equate with income either, so government, in conjunction with power companies, will have to even out the discrepancies by commissioning large scale insulation and energy efficient appliance roll-outs to retrofit existing homes in line with new standards. Water companies are currently using similar tactics to improve water usage habits. Another option may be to commission a buyback of inefficient appliances and vehicles, an idea that Tim Flannery has recently floated. For those still under grave threat, short term payments could be made to top up tax credits for excess bills. A further key part of the puzzle lies in switching new power plants to gas co-generation or renewable sources. Government could mandate all new vehicles be run on either LPG or hybrid technology systems.

Running some decent advertising equating energy usage (or abuse) to extra power costs would create more of a sense of personal responsibility rather than government-imposed tax grabs.

The main challenges needing action are to compensate people affected by higher prices, spread the risk from energy bills more evenly across the population and most importantly, educate the people to understand how they can help with climate change and how the government is not committing daylight robbery.

A possible related reform could be brought into business taxation. Business could sign up for an eco-charter where they pay a reduced tax rate in exchange for signing up to stricter environmental standards and responsibilities. This could be particularly useful for corporations in counteracting the 'only duty is to shareholders' mantra, which has left corporate social responsibility aspirational at best. This would eliminate the need for onerous carbon input systems or providing wholesale tax credits for business.

Emissions trading is not a panacea but a market correction mechanism that allows lower emission fuels such as gas, renewables such as solar, wind and tidal and higher emission fuels such as coal to compete on an environmentally level playing field. Designed appropriately, it could potentially restructure our economic foundations in a way that promotes sustainable growth well into the future.

I shredded my economic credibility and all I got was this lousy 5% preferred PM bounce

2008-06-03T11:00:00.003+10:00

Forgive the headline but that may just be what's going through Brendan Nelson's mind this morning. For he has set up his party to either indulge in fiscal vandalism or show a fatal lack of policy consistency. Of course, when dealing with Brendan's Libs, you feel like Rosencrantz and Guildernstern in Tom Stoppard's play, as they vainly shout 'consistency is all I ask'! While there are occasional bursts of passion, there is too much confused thought between them.

There may be a large section of the media who believe Rudd is some kind of self-proclaimed messiah and an equally large section that feels he is well-qualified for the spin vacancy created by MacGill's retirement. However, if one looks at the nonsensical suggestions coming out of the Liberal bunker, it becomes clear that the Nationals are not the only party struggling for relevance.

Nelson's budget response appears to consist of blocking the alcopops tax and FuelWatch and raising the possibility of blocking the Medicare surcharge changes. It seems having totally mismanaged its Senate majority in government, the Libs are set to do so in opposition by a display somewhere between petulance and wilful obstructionism.

It is almost as if they believe some of the dribble that Rudd's government will implode in Whitlamesque fashion. Whereas Whitlam's mantra was crash or crash through, Rudd's mantra may as well be commission an inquiry to see if there's an obstacle ahead and then go around the back way.

Precisely how the Libs plan to pay for this nonsense is another matter. Given they cannot decide either whether there is severe inflationary pressure or not, it suggests they should seek to reduce government spending, not government revenue. The alcopops tax and the excise combined will cost something between $3-4 billion, and the Medicare surcharge (by Brendan's admission) around $500 million. It does not compute.

Nor should Nelson get too carried away with that 5% preferred PM bounce - it's not that they like him any more - his dissatisfied numbers actually crept up (within MOE) to 40%, they're just not too happy with Rudd's performance last week, probably based on a false impression of what he actually promised. Given the correlation between those who think Labor promised lower prices and those unhappy with last week, Rudd might become the first politician in history to run ads reminding us of what he promised at the last election.

So the Libs got nowhere from blanket media coverage on a hot button issue that Labor got major mileage out of in opposition, and what gains their leader made are based on a misrepresentation of Labor's election promises. That does not augur well for the future of a credible or responsible opposition.

Rudd's seismic faultlines

2008-06-02T11:58:00.002+10:00

Kevin Rudd has commanded a very degree of support against an initially stale then plain out incoherent alternative. However that megalithic support does not come without risks, some of which are now poking out into the collective consciousness. Most of Rudd's risks stem from a clash of worthy but contradictory policy positions, complicated by prejudices and assumptions inherent in the Australian political context.

The most obvious - and yet to be played out fully - is the clash between his firm support for climate change action and his emphasis on government minimising the pain felt to households through higher grocery, fuel and utility prices. This clash is further complicated by the national addiction to cut-price (compared to world standards) fuel. Complicating this clash further is the need to protect the mining workforce from suffering while alternative technology is being developed. It is interesting to note that the Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, is a former head of the ACTU and an advocate for carbon capture and storage. Ferguson is not going anywhere in the forseeable future, as he will clearly be needed to persuade the unions as much as Garrett is required to persuade the public.

Labor needs to work out a way to deliver meaningful carbon cuts, restructuring mining industries and protecting the public from economic pain in a way that is both environmentally and philosophically sustainable. One suspects one will need continuing, almost indispensable levels of popularity among the party faithful to push through such an agenda.

Another brewing clash operates on a more personal level, but still exhibits the dynamic of clashing policy imperatives within a wider political context. Rudd came to power with considerable support from the anti-WorkChoices juggernaut. While Rudd clearly wants to distance himself from the more onerous of the ACTU's demands, the issue of the infamous work/life balance remains moot. Rudd's slogan ad nauseam is working families - and an essential part of that work is not working them to the bone, like WorkChoices could potentially do without the compensation of penalty rates.

However at the same time, Rudd is an acknowledged workaholic. Whereas Garrett might have sung for Midnight Oil, Rudd burns the stuff on a par with China's growing carbon emissions. Not only that, Rudd is rumoured to suffer from a bad case of 'unempathetic boss syndrome'. Sufferers of UBS believe that their employees should work exactly the same amount they do, regardless of their other commitments or the level of importance of their work. Anyhow, this is bringing howls of protest from the public service, which Rudd is currently using to flay the previous government with. Fortunately for Rudd, everyone believes the public service is lazy, but if this problem escalates to strikes or mass resignations then it could potentially expose Rudd's position on work issues as hypocritical and counterproductive.

There is just the smallest possiblility that this crack in the facade could open up and start to make Hockey the WorkChoices salesman look like his amiable self again. If the Liberals do recast themselves as caring, sharing populists, it might lead to appalling policy on their part but at least keep them competitive when history suggests they are two steps away from being booted out the tenth storey window.

Under Nelson, the opposition looks set to capitalise on whatever whingeing group of disenfranchised it can and feel their pain. If they are genuinely badly off, that will give credibility to the whole approach. While Nelson and his acolytes seek to hold off their inevitable demise (either by extinction or Turnbull) they will clutch to any old piece of flotsam going past. Rudd needs to maintain integrity in his decision making and policy program to convince the people of the merits of his government and the flimsiness of the alternative.

Ten things we should be debating instead of FuelWatch

2008-05-30T18:07:00.003+10:00

How to turn the 122,000 plus vacant properties in Sydney into accommodation for the homeless, or at the very least lower the cost of renting.

How to reform our transport and power sectors so we don't go catatonic when oil goes up by $15 a barrel.

How to solve the problem of baseload power and how it can be sourced solely from renewable energy.

How to protect the less well-off from higher energy prices under a carbon trading/mass greenhouse abatement scheme.

How to ensure our farms can keep feeding us and save the Murray from becoming permanent sludge.

How to extricate US forces and allies from the mires of Afghanistan and Iraq while preventing those countries descending into theocratic feudalism.

How to prevent speculative nonsense like the CDO debacle happening again.

How to reform our international institutions on a multilateral, global and regional level to deal with problems of poverty, food security and irrational dictatorships.

How to manage the emerging power balance shift between the US, China, India, Japan and Brazil.

How to ensure our health and education systems deliver the best quality support for all of us at optimum cost.

On populism and political correctness

2008-05-30T17:02:00.006+10:00

Two phrases that pop up more than perhaps they should are populism and political correctness. Populism has connotations of supporting the 'people' over the 'elites' (another horribly abused phrase in recent times). That would suggest that any policy that favoured, say pensioners over pharmaceutical corporations could be termed 'populist'. There is a clear hint in the term that such a policy choice is bad. However, as almost any economist this side of Genghis Khan will tell you, the PBS represents a world best practice model for reconciling drug delivery with low/middle income patients. So while technically it is 'populist', it is not bad policy.

However saying that policy helps the people must surely be a truism if we even imagine to live in a democracy which works in the best interests of the people. A better use of the term 'populist' might be to describe policy ideas that are at first glance 'popular', but on closer analysis reveal themselves to be bad policy. Such an analysis might apply to the petrol excise debate. The difference made by a 5 cent a litre cut would save a family maybe $3 per week in fuel, yet the excise cut would cost $1.8 billion. The policy would have little real effect on its target audience (beyond the psychological comfort of 'something being done'), but would potentially eat into funding for other areas such as health. It would also seriously compromise greenhouse abatement efforts and provide a perverse incentive for people to use more fuel, rather than move towards energy conservation and efficiency measures. On those measures, the excise cut call represents a populist policy in its truest sense.

Political correctness is one rather horrid phrase dreamed up as a backlash by right-wing bigots and their acolytes in response to greater ethnic and gender diversity in workplaces and society at large. The phrase is viewed by its proponents as a form of 're-education', akin to the worst excesses of Maoist zeal. By assailing measures aimed at reducing prejudice, political correctness becomes a de facto assertion of a right to maintain and exercise prejudice free from either government or commercial interference. How this is a good idea in an increasingly globalised world where disenfranchised individuals are easy prey for extremist movements of all persuasions remains to be seen. The recent Camden school controversy demonstrates a large group of Anglo-Saxon Australians either think exercising prejudice is not racist or they are locked into conservative doublethink which inverts anti-racist policies as de facto racism against Anglo-Saxons. Clearly the Howard-era messages of the dangers of political correctness have permeated the fields of Albion.

The concept of political correctness should be scrubbed from the political lexicon. In short, it is a backward-looking victim-mentality view based on pig ignorance and wilful misguidance by so-called conservatives. If anti-discrimination provisions and policies were recast as part of the rules of democratic society, safeguards rather than fetters, it would improve the prospects that the shock jocks and columnists would get the message. It is interesting that the very people who claim to be law-abiding citizens of the highest order are the first to denigrate laws put in place to safeguard the very order of the society they seek to defend.

A curious irony

2008-05-28T12:09:00.002+10:00

One fact which no one appears to have picked up on in the current smoke and mirrors game which is the petrol debate is that the price could easily be even higher. Australian petrol prices are a function of two factors - world crude prices as indicated by the Singapore-based Tapis index and the exchange rate of the Australian dollar to its US counterpart. Due to our Indo-Chinese boom wake economy, our interest rates remain stratospheric compared to the US Reserve's offerings and consequently the Aussie dollar is worth a fair bit more. Those extra rate rises that so undermined the Howard government are effectively protecting people from paying (temporarily) in excess of $1.70 per litre.

What is odd about the current oil price surge is that it is counterintuitive. The Northern hemisphere is currently in summer, traditionally requiring the lowest demand on oil supplies. Further, the slow down across much of the world caused by the credit crunch and its aftermath is eating into economic growth and hence should result in less demand for oil. So that old adage applies, what goes up must come down.

One thing that is true though is that the higher a price peaks, the less likely it is to reset to its original level. Which means that an old oil price of around $60-80a barrel may well be history. So we should start adapting our fuel appetites by increasing fuel efficency standards and lowering oil reliance, rather than just talk of tinkering at the margins on issues such as Fuelwatch and beefing up the Trade Practices Act.

Some Climate Change Parameters

2008-05-08T16:18:00.003+10:00

Two debates have cropped up in the last week or so which touch upon resolving some of the hairy issues raised by climate change. The first is the global disaster unfolding that is the food crisis. Like the oil crisis, the food crisis has shown what happens when globalisation goes bad and instability in supply collides with growing demand. The second is the national issue of the Rudd Government's carbon capture and storage (CCS) dalliance. Both demonstrate the need to have a clear set of parameters in mind when considering how best to tackle climate change and produce a sustainable transition away from carbon-based fuels while maintaining standards of living and in turn the economic engine that supports them.

The food crisis has in part been exacerbated by the combined turnover of both beef pasture and wheat and maize crops to ethanol production. Like the Iraq debacle on oil, it is debatable precisely how great the effect on wheat and grain prices the ethanol trade is but it is inarguably contributing to global speculation in grain prices.

Ethanol and other biofuels may be a good option for climate mitigation, but they must be produced in a manner that does not compromise food security or worse become a climate fools' paradise by destroying rainforests to plant a crop. The turnover of corn crops in the US and Argentina to ethanol is akin to the Greek Titan Cronus eating his own children. If efforts to encourage climate change reform are to be successful in both developed and developing countries, a latter-day Zeus must step in and end this madness by penalising emission savings made at the cost of food crop production. Ethanol must therefore only be accepted from either non-edible sources (such as algae) or waste produce after the main food crop has been harvested. The US has shown that ethanol production can be rorted into a subsidy-driven carousel, compromising both food and climate security. This mistake must not be repeatedly globally.

CCS represents a tempting solution for coal-rich nations to have their climate cake and eat it. However it represents a tremendous gamble in unproven technology. The other point that CCS fails to deal with is its effect on developing other technology to cater for ultimately diminishing coal and oil supplies. This technology should receive some support to at least test its viability, but it should come within the existing subsidy structure for the fossil fuel industry and the accompanied by a considerable acceleration in renewable funding. Similarly, any CCS program must not be in conjunction with nuclear as this would greatly increase the problems associated with capture and disposal of carbon waste. Remember that CCS pipelines will be pumping noxious gases which in turn must represent a security threat if they can be breached. An excessive emphasis on extractive technology also reduces the prospects of creating innovative products that can be exported and installed in a variety of climates, not requiring access to the kind of fissures and chambers needed to store carbon or nuclear waste.

2020 Summit Part II - The Final Wash-up

2008-05-08T15:54:00.003+10:00

This is a very belated post completing this blog's evaluation of the 2020 Summit, now fading into the rear view mirror of history. The Summit represents something of a lost opportunity, with dark suggestions that ideas were planted to endorse government proposals and that many of the ideas were not especially revolutionary. The whole thing in hindsight looks like a bunch of high-powered minds locked in a gilded cage, constrained by the tight timeframe and need to fit the results of their labours into the pre-packed report summaries. It is hard to see how the Summit could have operated differently, as alloting more than a weekend risked reinforcing the idea of it being a think tank rather than a symposium. Perhaps cutting the numbers to 500, removing the government co-chairs and allowing a staged reporting of group conclusions might have been a less political approach.

On the ideas front, the main runner to date is the HECS-for-volunteering scheme which appears to be an adaptation of the Clinton (I) AmeriCorps program. Macquarie University has already mooted a compulsory community scheme for students from 2010. This idea looks useful for closing the gap between students from our various social and cultural backgrounds. One big negative of the Summit was the treatment of climate change. The recommendations of the climate change group are about as strong as miso soup. Green protests suggest that Rudd's hands were tied by virtue of the coal industry's efforts. More on this position in further posts.

The range of taxes suggested by most groups to fund particular initiatives such as preventative health centres was predictably attacked by the don't-tax-me-I-didn't use it crowd. Interestingly the much-maligned Cate Blanchett-steered Arts group did not propose any additional taxation, even offering a suggestion that the arts be directly financed by every other government department.

Curiously it was the economists who came up with some of the more innovative ideas such as the business-schools support program and the Golden Guru program to use the skills of older Australians. The governance stream produced the usual menu of republican sympathy and international institution building without providing clear pathways on solving the issues of governance and increasing the quality of democracy.

Overall, the Summit got the headlines, but hamstrung by offering few concrete solutions on either governance reform or carbon transition of the economy, it was left to the little nuggets to carry the day. The use of so many stars in the arts group risked turning the coverage into a branch meeting of the Hollywood Democrats and probably did not help public respect for the project.

High degree of difficulty but relatively modest success. 6/10.

Evaluating 2020: Part I - Perspectives

2008-04-21T22:47:00.002+10:00

Evaluating the 2020 Summit is a massive task which the Great Kevin has rightly decided cannot be guaranteed until the end of the year. It remains to be seen whether this is a Pizza Hut style deal where failure to deliver hot reasons will result in the delegates receiving their money back. Accordingly, Peregrine will devote two posts to the Summit. For openers, a brief look at perspectives of the Summit.

What you make of the Summit depends largely on your perspective. Conservatives largely consider it a contemptuous revival of Keating-era elitism, journalists a cynical political exercise in ideological suffocation, attendees a robust exchange of ideas and ultimate settlement on a surprising number of themes. Bloggers (of the idea-based rather than ideology-based kind) are divided between those who consider it the start of a new Rudd post-politics order, a stupendously unoriginal recycling of ideas and a wasted opportunity. Poor old Brendan Nelson does not seem to know what he thinks of it and appears to be still reeling from his encounter with the representative of the Sex Workers Union.

The Summit has again highlighted the discomfort Australians have with the idea of an elite group of intellectuals showing their faces in public, however it also offers the encouraging idea that we do not mind big thinking and ideas themselves. Nelson's political response could have been stronger, or at least coherent, if he had complimented the idea of the Summit but criticised the lack of ordinary Australians, or in the alternative, announced his own counter-summit, or some such gathering beyond his nebulous listening tour. The Summit's profile, focus, purpose and relevance stand in stark contrast to Brendan's aimless tour lacking both form and substance. If the good ship Nelson comes any further onto the reefs of irrelevance, he will be donning a black wig and taking up resident on Lygon Street.

In short, we like ideas, but as an egalitarian nation, we like our share in the conversation. The lesson from this weekend, a reiteration of Malcolm's Republic referendum, is talk down to the people at your peril. It will be very interesting to see how Liberal resident intellectual Malcolm Turnbull responds to the new climate of big thinking and government recasting given his form as head of the elitist vanguard.

Are we allergic to ideas?

2008-04-18T09:56:00.004+10:00

There seems to be a strange disconnect in the political psyche: journalists and the people alike keep asking for policy, something to be done about the big issues of our time, whether that be climate change, the health system or education. Yet the most public attempt to gather these ideas and have a conversation about them, the upcoming 2020 Summit has been largely derided as a stunt, a cynical 'rubber-stamping' exercise and a replacement for the ordinary political process.

These comments seem premised on the idea that while our politicians may have muddled along to the point of near-crisis in many of our institutions and industries, somehow they will right the ship without any assistance from the outside world. Worse, any such body chosen to assist them amounts to some kind of intellectual quisling regime, not really contributing anything and only granting legitimacy to the preconceived policies of the government.

So either Rudd and the ALP have no ideas at all, or they have plenty and just want the imprimatur of the 'best and brightest' to put them beyond political reproach. This amounts to a vote of no confidence that either Rudd is incompetent and merely a master manipulator or that he is a fascist of high order. Both conclusions seem wide of the mark. The mere act of calling the Summit suggests a willingness to listen to the ideas of others, whereas former PM Howard would be lucky to listen to his own deputy, let alone those outside his ideological echo-chamber. At least two of the co-chairs have had successful careers on the other side of politics. Before anyone trawls up Howard's bipartisan Constitutional Convention, remember that he was forced into the republican debate by his predecessor's enthusiasm, and he became increasingly enthusiastic to scuttle the whole thing by supporting the 'No' case.

There is another possibility that Rudd actually believes that community elders can prove a source of wise counsel and ideas for the future. We hear a lot about intellectual capital and the like, so what on earth is wrong with actually using it? The normal policy making channels favoured by the political process include a lot of party hacks of limiting degrees of intellectual skill and life experience. Calling on the thoughts of such a diverse range of people from a multitude of perspectives can only add to the cross-pollination of ideas.

It seems strange that Rudd's policies on indigenous health and education and climate change have met with suspicion, long -term targets in search of a strategy. Yet at the same time, the implicit aim of the Summit is to produce possible intermediate steps to reach these and other long term goals. To criticise one of these arms in isolation is fair, to criticise both is verging on the cynical.

The Summit is not being set up as some permanent vehicle of policy development but as a mega-symposium, with participants sharing their somewhat abbreviated pitches, the distillation of a great deal of research, reflection and thinking. The entire exercise will cost the taxpayer next to nothing and could produce all sorts of ideas to throw into the future policy mix. The expectations of the Summit should be proportionately low, and then we may be astonished at what may flow from it. We may find out then whether we are in fact allergic to ideas and having to think for ourselves rather than delegating the task to our assorted politicians.

Just because its spin, doesn't mean they won't win

2008-04-08T18:39:00.003+10:00

Much as I agree with Mr Andrew Bolt that free speech should be encouraged, I prefer not to have a torrent of that speech funnelled down my alternative media channels. That said, it has given me the opportunity to read his blog firsthand. Bolt has clearly set up his stall as chief prosecutor of the Great Kevin for crimes against statistics. Bolt's argument boils down to everything Rudd does is premised upon media management - i.e. it is spin - and hence it is of no consequence to the good governance of the nation. Rudd's astronomic preferred PM ratings are thus evidence of the greatest con perpetrated on the Australian people.

Spin is a useful tool in two great arenas of Australian experience. One is in politics, where politicians of all persuasions aim to put the issues in the best light for their side. The other is in sport, specifically cricket, where the ability to impart prodigious spin on the ball is one of the greatest assets a bowler can have. The key here is that it is one thing for a batsman to recognise the ball is spinning, but if seeing the spin was enough, Shane Warne would be nothing but an out-of-work poker player. Batsmen have to devise a method to anticipate the spin and respond to it with some smart footwork or composed thinking of their own.

At present, Australian conservatives are as hapless as the infamous Daryll Cullinan was against Warne. Currently Bolt's spin odyssey, where nothing Rudd can say or do has any substance, betrays the collective political poverty of conservative politics. The Libs and Nats are getting comprehensively smashed because they have old ideological struggles, internal machinations and arguments over nomenclature rather than offering alternative policies. Worse, the Federal party seems to be in freefall, with Nelson's leadership marked by walking contradictions.

Whereas Howard constructed a universe of his own making through wedging a hapless and flat-footed Labor party, Nelson is seeking to oppose the government by constructing either media beatups or acts of historical revisionism. He seems petty, carping, confused and irrelevant, a situation reflected in the preferred PM ratings.

The worst part about the spin defence is that it feeds in to a perception that no effort is required to win, indeed your side is the only party with the answers to the great questions. This leads to laziness, arrogance and an unhealthy sense of self-righteousness. The irony is that the more this attitude prevails, the less electable the party becomes.

The traditional division of politics has been on economic policy. What has happened is that Labor has adopted many of the economic policies of the conservative side and hence become indistinguishable. Only Howard's visible obsession with liquidating working conditions caused division to appear. Labor is now rebadging the debate to one where the community is their focus while grasping individualism is the residue left for conservatives. As the issue is now economic and service delivery, Labor is constructing impregnable fortresses against oppositions obsessed by foibles. While the conservatives rail, they become ever more irrelevant, left to fight over labels rather than ideas.

Peregrine rises phoenix-like from the ashes of the Olympic flame

2008-04-08T18:36:00.002+10:00

...or some other suitable hyperbole. This blog has been in hiatus for the last few weeks, having something of a holiday while the mother ship (alias Blogotariat) settles itself down after its problems with Russian hackers.

more shortly

Why applying the lessons of the past does not always work

2008-03-19T11:59:00.003+11:00

Brendan Nelson made his alternative PM debut at the National Press Club yesterday. After plumbing the depths of opinion poll hell by becoming Brendan 007, he has adopted the very simple philosophy of trying to be himself. Nelson's natural personality is a blend of emotion and protection of self-interest, which may explain why he initially joined Labor but rose to be the Liberal leader. It also explains this off-the-cuff plea to define our values against terrorism.

My children’s generation is facing something that isn’t all that easy to see in day-to-day life, but it is resurgent totalitarianism which in the form, in the main, of Islamic extremism throughout the world and we have to be clear about precisely what we stand for and what we will do with our allies throughout the world.

The problem with this rhetoric, which seems to be setting the Liberals up to become lock-stepped to McCain's policy of confrontation, is that it betrays the conservative belief that communism and Islamist philosophy are similar political doctrines. The only thing communism and Islamism have in common, other than being 'isms', is a tendency towards greatly curtailing individual freedom. Communism relies on individuals subordinating themselves to the state for the greater good, while Islamism relies on individuals wholly embracing a narrow interpretation of the Koran. One sees the state as the ultimate entity, while the other sees it as a collection of true believers.

The real difficulty for conservatives schooled in Cold War politics is that Islamism is a totally different beast. Whereas communism evolved into a struggle between two global superpowers, each offering an alternative view on government and political organisation, Islamism has no such power base. Islamism has control of no government, but in the age of globalisation it has employed the same kind of franchise and internet delivery systems favoured by corporations such as McDonalds and Dell. The Cold War relied on two mighty military machines conducting a series of proxy wars against each other. Islamism is not reliant on military might. It relies on winning the battle of ideas, a battle it can shape by using the modern media techniques of spin and alleging to speak for the disenfranchised.

The US seems to seriously believe that fighting Islamist inspired fighters in Iraq is equivalent to fighting the proxy Soviet forces of the Viet Cong. The problem is that the war on the ground does not itself frustrate the movement. On the contrary, it provides it with great media attention and a legitimacy it craves as the standard bearer for Arab and Muslim grievances from Morocco to Indonesia.

The best way to deal with the issue is not to promote Islamists to the level of the Supreme Soviet. The greatest mistake made since 2001 has been the invasion of Iraq, a high risk strategy which was poorly executed. The second mistake has been the mishandling of domestic terrorist legislation and investigations and the failure to bring communities together rather than harness division for political ends. If Nelson is serious about the values that bind us as a nation, he would drop his value-based assault on public schools, an assault that leads to less unity and greater secretarian education of the next generation.

Paler shade of Crean

2008-03-06T17:29:00.003+11:00

It appears that the most effective opposition to Kevin Rudd is coming from the grave. Not the graven undertaker like-manner of the Opposition Leader, but the political grave of one JW Howard and the physical one of one Joh Bjelke Petersen. Howard has lacerated Rudd's IR reforms and Iraq policy in one of his paid junket American conservative love-ins. Rudd turned up on Four Corners' Joh retrospective the other night in his former incarnation as 'Dr Death'. One of young Kev's coup de grace was the locking of a bunch of Joh-engrained civil servants in the basement until they dutifully resigned. Given this masterstroke, it is clear when the PM talks about dealing with the public service, he is not kidding.

From the actual opposition, we have the kind of attitude usually seen by schoolkids in the last days of Year 10, before the reality of study in senior school really kicks in. Downer, Vaille, MacGauran and the rest seem to be on an endless summer, turning up when they want and generally treating Nelson with the disdain usually reserved for casual teachers. His authority is crumbling at roughly the same speed as the programme that put him there, with nuclear power, workchoices, AWAs, Kyoto and the apology being dropped in the most mangled and painful fashion conceivable. Other than putting up candidates against Labor, there is not a lot left of the old Howard legacy and even less in its place. Nelson and Turnbull have mounted a token defence of the economic record, but quite frankly a bit of mea culpa about productivity might give the Liberals a bit more credibility in the eyes of punters still smarting at having their private economic hell consistently denied by Howard.

Herein we come to Nelson's problem. His poll numbers are lower than Crean because his voice disappears into a haze before it reaches the viewers, he is caught in the continuing gravitational vacuum left by the collapse of the Howard government and he has absolutely no policy ideas on the table. His opposition performance relies on picking holes in positive policy, but even this is ham-fisted. Until he at least comes up with something, those numbers will remain trapped in their downward spiral.

Throwing the baby faced out with the bathwater

2008-03-06T17:03:00.003+11:00

Ricky Ponting's appalling series with the bat has culminated with a 2-0 defeat in the CUB final series and the punters are tearing into Punter faster than a Brett Lee yorker. One of their key complaints is that Lee was preferred in the closing stages of India's batting innings in Brisbane than almost-match winner James Hopes. The argument being pushed is that Ponting himself should hand in his captain's arm band before he is pushed.

This course is a little knee-jerk in its nature. Peregrine called for Ponting to be rested early in the series and Michael Clarke to be given a run. There are two main styles of leadership among cricket captains: performance-based and tactic-based. Ponting is a performance based skipper par excellence, relying on dominating the game with his broad bat and imposing his character on his team and their efforts in the field. The one failing that performance-based skippers have is when their performance drops, so does this captaincy. Ponting has gradually developed some tactical nous, mainly through having to handle the formerly freewheeling Shaun Tait, and latterly through utilising Nathan Bracken. However he does have a tendency to rely on Lee to take wickets, even when Lee's form does not suggest this is a likely outcome.

Clarke demonstrated great tactical skill in his demolition of New Zealand and India in the 20/20 fixtures. He is the obvious choice to lead the next World Cup campaign. The resting Ponting theory would have allowed Clarke a trial run and given some more match experience to the likes of Haddin, David Hussey and perhaps George Bailey from Tasmania. It is extraordinary that Victoria and Tasmania played the one day final and none of their respective squads appeared in the one day international team. The staleness and stagnation of that national team, coupled with some inspired opposition led by the multi-talented MS Dhoni, have produced this igminious result.

The challenge for selectors now is to balance the need for rejuvenation against the need for continuity within the team. The trip to Pakistan, if it goes ahead, represents an opportunity to pick an in form, balanced squad, particularly if Symonds (who has clearly laboured under his injured ankle for much of the summer) does not go. The selectors erred by not persuading Ponting that a rest of his back and his mind were best for his and the teams long-term interest. Ponting now probably has one season to decide whether he should continue in the one-day format.

Symonds was treated in a similar manner. By my reckoning, he played every match of the season even when only 75% fit. As a bowling allrounder, he contributed less than ten overs for the one day series, while his best replacement in David Hussey massacred attacks in both 20/20 and one-dayers. Pakistan represents a chance to correct these mistakes. If the team decides to go. That is another matter entirely.

Battling cynicism inflation and the expectation deficit

2008-03-03T17:24:00.003+11:00

The wave of enthusiasm that swept Kevin Rudd to power creates a unique set of problems. There is an enormous sense of energy and movement about the government, with major milestones such as Australia's induction into the Kyoto Protocol's membership and the apology to the stolen generations already complete within the first hundred days. Such symbolic touchstones of policy formed one part of Rudd's appeal. The other was the promise to address those microeconomic 'kitchen table' issues such as interest rates, rent and grocery prices. The very issues accentuated by the Howard Government's blind pursuit of macroeconomic success.

The ruckus over the membership of the 2020 steering committee demonstrates one part of the danger for Rudd. As a progressive vehicle for facilitating the development of a future vision, the bald announcement of nine male (mostly balding) chairs and one solitary female chair was not 'a good look'. It later turned out that numerous women had declined posts, which Rudd swiftly remedied by appointing six female ministers as deputy chairs. The assorted complaints from Eva Cox and Susan Ryan, among others, that the committee membership was a hoary throwback to men-only decision making, meant that the somewhat oddly-maligned summit was overshadowed by more controversy. Rudd does however, need to be careful that in areas such as indigenous and foreign policy he is not seen to adopt the same posture as his predecessor. The controversy over the self-congratulatory 'First 100 Days' pamphlet, led more than the odd voter to say this behaviour reminded him of Howard's prolifigate use of government adveristing.

In an interview in his capacity as chair of the social inclusion committee, Tim Costello referred to the summit as an exercise in 'expectation management'. The danger created by high expectations is an equally high risk they will be disappointed. The great risk for Rudd that his gestures towards price insulation for his new constitutency will be seen as mere window dressing. It is very hard to be free market and cut red tape on one hand and use regulatory measures on the other. It is especially hard to maintain fair prices for items such as groceries and petrol, particularly in a climate with rising fuel costs. Rudd needs to be seen to maintain his empathy with struggling voters and they need to see his efforts to improve their position.

Garnaut throws down the climate gauntlet

2008-02-25T23:35:00.003+11:00

Professor Garnaut's interim report on Australia's climate change position contains some stark assessments of our situation. The news is not good: in our fossil fuel-reliant global economy, economic growth is intrinsically linked to emissions growth. The explosion of activity in China and India has acclerated emissions onto a dangerous trajectory.

Garnaut's final report will deal with mitigation and burden sharing strategies for Australia but his message is clear. In order to avoid the climate roulette wheel, we must find a way to uncouple growth in the economy with growth in emissions. This means that the relatively low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency and conservation must be picked as a matter of urgency, and interim targets set to begin the task of reining in the runaway pollution rate.

It is equally clear that the Rudd Government professed benchmark of 60% emission reductions on 2000 levels will be barely adequate, and will undoubtedly have to be extended on the negotiating table. The little-known fact that Rudd's methodology stabilises emission levels at 550 ppm of carbon dioxide is apparent when one crunches Garnaut's numbers. Garnaut favours the EU and IPCC recommended figure of 450ppm, but acknowledges that this will be politically onerous.

Back of an envelope calculations equate the 450 ppm target with an Australian emissions reduction of 55-80% by 2050, depending on global factors. Clearly, given the angst this will provoke in some quarters, such cuts cannot be embarked upon without the full cooperation of the new emitting nations. The successor to Kyoto then, will have to contain a table of targets for developed nations, intense research and development for renewable energy and implementation in nations, particularly China and India, and an accompanying table of targets for developing nations. Australia may well need to sign up to at least a 15% reduction target by 2020 to highlight the urgency of the emission reduction project to the developing world.

In search of the next compromise candidate?

2008-02-24T23:08:00.003+11:00

The Federal Liberal party is in a mess. Howard's failure to adhere to his own formula for departing, 'so long as it is in the best interests of the party', saw his leadership explode in the mighty supernova that was the 2007 election. Like many supernovae, the remnants of Howard's pull on the party have become a black hole, tearing the tenuous strands holding it together. Howard's legacy was to leave the party reliant on a motley brew of wedge politics and social conservatism. He ran hard lines on issues such as immigration, national security, climate change and reconciliation. His biggest problem was that he could parry Costello's fractionally less aggressive approach, but not his deputy's sense of entitlement. Costello did not have time to become Howard's slightly more innovative clone.

The result was a thrashing and a leadership no one either the electorate or the party could tolerate. Turnbull, the people's choice, has a Whitlamesque streak which gets straight up the nose of Howard's guardians. His style is pugnacious but his politics is dubious to the conservatives, being the former champion of Keating's republic. Abbott, the hardliners' choice, is nicknamed 'People Skills' in the same manner that redheads earn the moniker 'Bluey'. He is the perfect choice to lead a right-wing band straight into the wilderness and become the Iain Duncan Smith of Australian politics. As neither had the numbers and Julie Bishop's Liberal-model Julia Gillard was still in Frankstein's workshop, the hapless Brendan Nelson was drafted into the leadership.

In picking Nelson, the Liberals must have hoped for a concillator capable of ameliorating the harshness of Howard's legacy. Instead, they got a weak leader being killed by the kindness of Kevin. Nelson has been asked to join a war cabinet on indigenous health and take part in the great apology ceremonies. Nelson's speech was somewhere between a brave attempt at policy on the run and an absymal disaster. He tried to strike a Crean-like mood of supporting the people, but not the policy, imitating the former Labor leader's take on farewelling troops for Iraq. The audience got a mishmash of homily and 'rose coloured history' which was difficult to follow and even harder to swallow. The latest poll figures render Nelson the political equivalent of camomile tea, weak, soothing and of little consequence.

After Friday's farce, seemingly led by Joe Hockey rather than the morose Nelson, the Liberal leader seems well on his way to becoming an ex-parrot. The question remains do any of the contenders want the job. Turnbull is gaining traction against Labor's trainee Treasurer, Wayne Swan, and might want extra time to increase his stocks. Abbott still remains unelectable, but is running hard on the Burke links to Rudd to improve his profile as arch headkicker. Both may want to keep their powder dry behind a more moderately inclined leader. Bishop is still building her experience and profile, and has had to capitulate over AWAs, so she is not in favour.

This leads us back to Joe Hockey, who seems to have the appropriate taste for absurdity to take on the job. Anyone who declares Rudd to be lazy with a straight face has gumption. Whereas Nelson was the compromise for Abbott, Hockey would be the paler version of Turnbull.

Kentucky Fried Cricket's great leap into the unknown

2008-02-20T23:54:00.002+11:00

The curious beast known as the Indian Premier League (IPL), or according to the ICC, the 'good' barbarians, has entered a new stage. Its grand auction of talent has taken place and Mahendra Singh Dhoni has garnered top dollar, with Andrew Symonds a close second. The teams have faced a fascinating mix of imperatives, trying to build commercial franchises from scratch, with players having to provide all-round ability both on and off the field. It seems that the Monkeygate affair has no effect on Symonds' popularity in India, and his earnings were further boosted by his serious equivocation over the ill-advised tour of Pakistan. Precisely why anyone thinks it is a good idea to send Australia into the lion's den of extremism for an entire month, given the white hot atmosphere over Iraq and Afghanistan, has clearly replaced their brain with dollar signs. Rudd and his foreign affairs team should effectively ban the team from travelling for the tour unless a suitable surrogate option such as Sharjah, Sri Lanka (mmm, maybe not on second thoughts) or even a late-season Australian tour can be arranged.

Those issues aside, the IPL represents a grand attempt to reshape cricket in the Indian marketing image. Utilising the wondrous pulling power of Twenty20, the BCCI aims to redefine the parameters of world cricket. Instead of Indian one-day tournaments being sandwiched around other tours, with the Australia summer programme sacrosanct, the world will schedule the entire Future Tours Program, that much vaunted instrument that gave us a diet of constant floggings of Bangladesh, around the IPL kernel.

The colonel's secret recipe is to model a league on a truncated version of the English Premier League, with players playing for around six weeks of the year. An interesting development is the use of a salary cap and a restriction imposed by Cricket Australia that only two Australians can play in each team. These teams are geographically based franchises, with six of them hosting a local hero known as an icon. The icon commands megabucks - at least 15% more than their franchise's next highest earner. On top of this, the teams must include four players under twenty-two and can select players from within an international pool of contracted players. In effect, it is close to the AFL draft system but with each selection made on an auction basis.

Whether this will work remains to be seen. The question is will it turn out like an exhibition series and hence be a very expensive non-event, such as the unloved ICC Superseries or will it resemble a long-established marquee competition such as the Premier League or the World Series. It remains to be seen, however we should see some exciting cricket and intriguing captaincy as players learn a new game and have to deal with the specific strategy set by the team management, not just the teams offered up by selectors.

Stolen story sorry business for Nelson's character

2008-02-17T23:43:00.003+11:00

It is rather ironic that the Liberals have chosen to reheat the alleged links between Kevin Rudd and Brian Burke to assail the character of the PM. After much morning media theatre, Rudd's office released the full exchange. The worst one can say about it is that Rudd considered Burke's proposal for a dinner in his honour and then recanted on further reflection. This blog suspects that Rudd may have canvassed the idea of using Burke's influence among the Western Australian Labor party to turn members against Beazley. Beazley has spoken out strongly against Burke and hence those still aligned to Burke would naturally be less sympathetic to the former leader. Better judgment ultimately prevailed and Rudd cancelled the dinner. In contrast to former PM John Howard's dealings with the Exclusive Brethren and the government's general approach to such matters as the AWB affair, the degree of candour Rudd has demonstrated is quite extraordinary. Rudd is not, in his own words, 'Captain Perfect', but he does seem to acknowledge his mistakes and considers his actions before he behaves in a manner which may compromise his integrity.

Unfortunately, this blog has doubts the same words could be applied to his opposite number. Brendan Nelson was always going to be on the back foot in responding to Rudd's sorry speech. If he had demonstrated a tin ear by both apologising (thus alienating some in his party) and sounding churlish with his dirge of a sermon on Australia's history since white settlement (thus causing the indigenous viewers and their supporters considerable insult), he compounded this by his appalling misappropriation of the words of Faye Lyman. Ms Lyman is a Victorian woman whom Nelson claimed to be quoting in his speech.

The text of the speech includes this excerpt from Ms Lyman's story, credited as part of the Many Voices project at the National Library:

“Personally I don’t want people to say, ‘I’m sorry Faye’, I just want them to understand.
It was very hurtful to leave Dad. Oh it broke my heart. Dad said to me, ‘It’s hard for daddy and the authorities won’t let you stay with me in a tent on the riverbank. You’re a little girl and you need someone to look after you.’ I remember him telling us that, and I cried. I said, ‘No, but Dad, you look after us’ … But they kept telling us it wasn’t the right thing. I don’t want people to say sorry. I just want them to understand the hurt, what happened when we were initially separated, and just understand the society, what they’ve done….You don’t belong in either world. I can’t explain it. It hurts so much.”

The words were followed in Dr Nelson's speech by the phrase 'there is no compensation fund. Nor should there be'. Ms Lyman now feels 'stolen all over again'. Not only had Nelson used her words without consulting her, he had implied her father had approved of her removal. Dr Nelson rang her to apologise, which Ms Lyman recounted as him saying 'I just wanted them to know your story', When Ms Lyman asked why did he not call her first, he could not answer.

Dr Nelson may have been attempting to bridge the gaping chasm between the progressive and ultra-conservative wings of his fracturing party. He may have been trying to bring some belated understanding to the feelings of indigenous people. However, by treating the speech as just another departmental research exercise, amiable to anonymous googling, he revealed a lack of grasp of moment and the sensibilities of the vulnerable. Whereas Rudd reconsidered meeting Burke once he realised it was the wrong thing to do, Nelson did not even think to contact Ms Lyman, let alone advise her that he would use her words in contravention of her own suffering. To use a person's words without permission is unwise, to use them out of context, and in such an emotionally charged situation, shows a fault of character and bad judgment.

Rest Ponting and change the dynamics

2008-02-12T10:42:00.000+11:00

The Indian cricket team has done something remarkable. It has rendered Ricky Ponting irrelevant from the batting landscape. With the exception of his century in the Adelaide Test, Ponting has not registered a significant contribution in over two months, and the situation is starting to expose the weaknesses in the Australian team. Labouring under a back injury cannot be good for either his movement or his captaincy, and through the agency of Ishant Sharma and the ubiquitious Harbhajan Singh, India are exposing the lack of all-round contributors and defiant middle order batsmen. With Andrew Symonds hampered by his dubious ankle, threatening to become a problem of Flintoff-like proportions, the middle order is effectively carrying two less than fit players.

What Australia needs is new energy and to seize the initiative back from their subcontinental tormenters. Clarke's 20/20 captaincy was attacking and inspired and he showed a measure of responsibility sometimes lacking in his batting. He should be given the chance to match tactical wits with the all-out approach favoured by Mahendera Singh Dhoni, who seems to have channelled his batting aggression into his field placements. Resting Ponting would also allow the promotion of Victoria's prolific other Hussey, David. David Hussey is a hard hitting batsman and spinner who could compensate for Symonds' restricted state. It would certainly take the pressure off Ponting whom Sharma and his spinning mate are causing nightmares.

Why Hillary must get a tap on the shoulder

2008-02-10T23:32:00.000+11:00

The Democratic race has produced an extraordinary phenomenon. It effectively has two front runners in Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both splitting roughly equal portions of the vote. Aided by the proportional distribution of most of the delegates, neither candidate has made a decisive break. The Republicans have helped too, by closing many of their primaries to independent voters. These independents largely throw in their lot to the inclusive candidacy of Obama.

Because of Clinton's ability to hang on in the key states of California and New York, on the back of her position as junior New York senator and a large swag of Hispanic voters, she has held the tide against Obama's guerilla strategy, targeting caucases, individual voting districts and smaller, less-Clinton friendly states in the south and mid-west. The closeness of the race means it may be decided by the super-delegates, aka party bosses from each state, on the Democratic Convention floor. However, with the Republican nomination all but settled in favour of the combative John McCain, it is in the Democrats' interests to line up behind their best contender and begin the general election campaign in earnest. Otherwise, the Democrats will be like triathletes stuck in the transition zone while the Republicans have swept away in the next leg. The man best equipped to pilot them to victory is Obama.

On paper, Clinton may appear the stronger candidate, but those strengths are either ephemeral or negated by the dynamics of the electoral system. She has won in New York, California and Florida, although New York and California are solidly Democratic while Florida was not contested by Obama. Her core constituency is women and blue-collar Democrats, although none of these groups has delivered her victory in the south against Obama's black voting bloc. It would be even less likely to make a difference against the Republican evangelicals. Whereas Hillary would maintain the base, she has the major drawback of appearing toxic to independents and a motivating force for the Republican machine.

Obama by contrast, inspires large numbers of additional black and young voters to the polls. He does well in the middle ground with independents and may even turn the odd Republican. His victories have come in mainly Republican states, and he may spring surprises in states like Kansas, South Carolina and Louisiana if given the nomination. His big drawback is with the Hispanic vote, which delivered a number of delegates to Clinton in Nevada and California. A ticket with the Hispanic Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, may cure this defect to some extent. Richardson also has gubernatorial, government and foreign affairs experience, having been Bill Clinton's Energy Secretary and Ambassador to the UN.

Such a ticket would give the Democrats a powerful team, free from the Clinton acrimony of the past yet benefitting from its experience. It would be well-placed to win in Florida, for instance, and encourage a high turnout of blacks throughout the largely Republican-held south and mid-west. With doubtful evangelicals and conservatives offering lukewarm support to McCain, the Democrats have an opportunity to break back in to their old heartland and weave a new coalition between the progressive north and west and the religious south.

Rudd's 2020 vision highlights his approach

2008-02-04T23:27:00.000+11:00

Kevin Rudd's proposed Australia 2020 Summit has variously been described as a great innovation, yet another glorified talk fest and the ultimate in PR flummery. Which description one favours is as much about one's own personal prejudices as the exercise itself. The clear message from Rudd's symposium on the Australian condition is that unlike his predecessor, the new PM is willing to at least listen to alternative ideas and engage in reasoned debate.

John Howard's prime ministerial tenure was marked with a determined effort to remake Australia in his own image. The 'white picket fence' became a metaphor for the restoration of an Anglo-dominant culture where immigrants from Asian backgrounds strove to fit into that dominant culture. Consequently, universalist notions such as human rights, multiculturalism and indigenous self-determination were dismissed and a conservative bulwark of commentators cultivated to conduct a culture war with so-called 'elites'. The goal was to support an existing world view rather than seek new ideas and perspectives. Howard was a man with a legalistic grasp of language, aiming to control every ounce of meaning his words carried. His allies had a ready supply of labels to dismiss arguments contrary to their common project.

Kevin Rudd's background and general manner both in opposition and on the Treasury benches reveal a totally different approach. While Howard's view saw the world as malleable to his own design, Rudd's aim is to solve the problems that world presents. It is a utilitarian vision, with the common good firmly in the centre. Rudd's philosophical background is not the Methodist preacher or the Republican push-poller, but the Chinese cultural tradition. Rudd is known in China as Lu Kewen, 'the hard-working and enduring one'. As his many colleagues seem to frequently anonymously admit to newspaper columnists, these traits describe him aptly. Another principle advocated since the days of Confucius is to listen to elders and to value intelligence. Rudd's 2020 vision exemplifies such a belief that people of intelligence beyond the party machinery and political apparatchiks have some value to add to our major policy challenges.

It is notable that most of the criticism for Rudd's plan comes from the old Howard support group. The idea that strong policy outcomes could come other than through the echo chamber of the Parliament, a Parliament which Howard essentially exercised an iron grip over, is an affront to these stagers. Rudd has promised to consider suggestions he considers to have merit, while offering reasoned explanations for rejecting alternative options. Such a return to a civilised political debate is a refreshing change from the Keating - Howard years of polarisation and dismissal.

Warning! Emissions trading bogeyman approaching

2008-02-02T23:28:00.000+11:00

The casual reader of yesterday's Australian might be alarmed to see that power costs are set to double under an emissions trading scheme. This is reminiscent of the same logic that the McCain - Lieberman energy bill co-sponsored by the perennial Republican candidate is set to cost American consumers several trillion dollars.

The statement comes from the National Generators Forum prognosticating that a global carbon price of $80 per ton would effectively double the Australian retail electricity price. It is unclear whether this is Australian or US dollars, given that global estimates are usually given in the latter. That figure is at the upper end of predictions by European banks, estimating a price of $60-80 per ton. Interestingly, an EU Impact Summary Working Document noted that cuts of 30% by 2020 and 50% by 2030 would necessitate a carbon price of $60 per ton - in 2020. The price would not reach $80 until 2025, even allowing for the kind of deep cuts even the climate change champion Rudd will not counternance. By the way, those figures are in Australian dollars, based on the current exchange rate to the Euro.

In other words, even if Rudd signed up for a 50% global reduction on GHGs by 2030, the electricity price is not going to double until 2025. Given I would wager my electricity bill would be at least twice its face value as compared to 1991, this increase may well have been the natural course of utility price inflation. Rudd's target is for a total cut of 60% by 2050, which means he is unlikely to sign up, and nor is anyone else, to anything like this level of price increase. Further, markets are generally skeptical that these projections will prove correct and that energy improvements and efficiency increases will mean the market sets an ultimate lower price.

The headline of the article is thus little more than an idle speculation based on a straw-man worst case scenario. By making it the headline, a subeditor has promoted it to the status of fact. Expect to see a lot more of this given slow-to-move conservatives' have the perverse incentive to stir up community suspicion and discontent for short-term electoral gain.

Win California, win the Presidency?

2008-02-02T00:13:00.000+11:00

California is perhaps the one last key contest of the primary season. Merged into the hyperbolically renamed 'super duper Tuesday', where twenty-two states pledge their delegates, it remains a pivotal state in determining the outcome of the race, particularly on the Democratic side.

Since Bill Clinton's election in 1992, California has moved from swing-state to firmly Democratic. Two factors have produced this change. Firstly, demographic change in the form of a massive rise in the Latino population, who predominantly vote Democrat. This has been butressed by the centralisation of the party under Clinton and Gore. However, the picture is complicated by the trend away from registration among many on the left of the party and by the election of the popular Governor Schwarzenegger, a Republican, taking votes from the right. Even though 85% of voters in the San Francisco area voted for Kerry's Democratic ticket in 2004, only 50% of voters were registered Democrats.

Conventional wisdom says that California should be a Clinton walkover. The big question is will those disenchanted leftists turn out for her, or will they favour Obama. Obama faces a similar quandary as he needs a decent swag of the 35% Latino vote to get elected, and be competitive in the New York primary. Even union endorsement in Nevada did not get Obama over the line as many Latinos broke ranks on racial lines and supported Clinton. Even if Obama can pick up white voters here, his problems with the other, largely unreported racial clash of American society make capturing the nomination difficult.

McCain's libertarian streak and opposition to illegal immigration reform make him a chance to pick up significant crossover support in the general election. However, Republicans will not permit independents to vote in the Republican primary which means this effect will remain camouflaged until November. He will also have Governor Schwarzenegger in his camp, which must surely increase his chances on capitalising on any resentment either across race lines with Obama or party lines with Clinton. This prohibition will increase Obama's vote, but it will probably not be sufficient to carry the day.

Based on a cursory reading of the demographic and political trends in California, this blog suspects that Clinton will win a reasonably close contest, with Obama's support assisted by a large swag of independents. McCain should win the Republican primary with Huckabee splitting the small conservative bloc from Romney. As for November, an early prediction is that Clinton will hold the party numbers, but California will be a closer contest than in the past few elections.

Professional game, unprofessional behaviour

2008-01-31T22:59:00.000+11:00

The aftermath of the Harbhajan Singh- Andrew Symonds clash continues to roll on. Now it has experienced even vice-regal and prime ministerial intervention, with both those leaders calling for more grace in accepting the umpire's decision and treating fellow players as human beings. Some of this talk of grace and courtesy has the air of a halycon day which never actually happened. Be that as it may, the current crop of Australian cricketers, who for some time appeared to get a very lenient deal from umpires for misconduct on-field, has actively employed 'mental disintegration' as a key tactic. The line between valid remarks and outright sledging and bullying is very thin and it is easy to see young players forgetting it altogether.

The spectacle of several players from both Australia and India seated at the bar table of an Adelaide Federal Court room must surely be a wake-up call for the game. Clearly something was amiss, a perception heightened by the fact not one player was in shirt and tie - most members of the public would risk ejection from a court room in such attire and few witnesses would be so lax as to turn up in a tracksuit as both Ricky Ponting and Harbhajan appeared to do. However, perhaps the lack of respect for the surroundings was fitting given the appaling behaviour of the ICC and the BCCI, which seem to veer from one mindless crisis to the next.

The ICC has clearly been caught off-guard. Its umpiring panel is now run in a semi-professional manner, but the referees administering code of conduct infringements are different shades of amateur. No other sport would conduct legalistic tribunal hearings with an official with no legal training, as Mike Proctor, referee at the Sydney Test, admitted. For some reason, the ICC's most experienced referee, Ranjan Madugalle, was not available to referee the series initially. Given the tension expected following the Symonds controversy in India, one would have thought the ICC may have pre-empted trouble.

The prosecution of the case against Harbhajan has betrayed a lack of process and understanding. First, the evidence was not viewed sufficiently to establish the correct charge. Harbhajan was ultimately fined for abusive language, a Level 2 offence, but he was originally convicted of racial vilification, a Level 3 offence carrying a three match ban. Second, Proctor dismissed the contrary testimony of Sachin Tendulkar, a strange move in the absence of objective evidence. Then, having set up a formal appeal tribunal under former NZ High Court Justice Hansen, the ICC made one final blunder to discredit its own competency. It somehow failed to provide Justice Hansen with Harbhajan's disciplinary record. Hansen then mitigated the punishment based on the evidence before him, rather than all the facts that should have been taken into account at sentencing.

The net result of this is that ICC incompetence has fuelled Indian hysteria at perceived injustice and caused the BCCI to throw its considerable financial weight around with various threats about cancelling the tour. The apparent approval of the Sri Lankan board does not help matters.

This latest episode merely confirms the fact that the ICC has a woeful record in handling major issues on the global cricketing stage. The World Cup in the West Indies scheduled games in the Caribbean and then told the crowd to behave like it was at Lords. The final ended in farce, with Sri Lanka batting out the overs in the dark. That finale has proven an apt metaphor for the crisis that followed. The fact that the ICC still allows Zimbabwe to compete, and only dropped them from Test cricket when it became manifestly clear its team could not compete, shows a total lack of ethics and basic understanding of humanity beyond the corporate dollar and regional politics. If the BCCI wants to build bridges with the other unions in England, Australia and New Zealand, it would be best served working for the complete suspension of Zimbabwe until its cricket organisation returns to normality. At present, the Zimbabwe Cricket Union is an adjunct of Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, and hence allowing it to play is recognition of Mugabe's government.

All the cricket nations need to discover a spirited way to compete and cooperate, that encourages fair play and tolerance. They need to work together to balance spreading the game with commercialism, so that we marvel at the feats of players and not make hysterical appeals to nationalist sentiment.

Fear of the past masks fear of the present and future

2008-01-28T23:32:00.000+11:00

The report that Kevin Rudd has earmarked the opening of Parliament on February 12 as the due season for an apology to the stolen generation has set off some predictable caterwauling from the self-styled conservative element about intergenerational guilt and false priorities. The faux argument about an apology being inextricably linked to compensation seems to be rebuffed by the conspicious lack of actions against state governments who have issued similar apologies for past mistreatment. The real reason for the garbage associated with any call for an apology has to do with insecurity and a failure of political and moral leadership. The problem for self-styled conservatives in the mould of Howard and Nelson is that it is in their self-interest to encourage such false beliefs and insecurities to deflect attention from both social inequity and the pressures created by their free market brand of economics. If the punters cannot be bound together by a positive sense of the tribe's achievements but are forced to consider their possibly murky past, they may realise that men such as Howard and Nelson may not necessarily act in a bona fide manner and that such actions have a direct, detrimental effect on their lives.

The kernel of opposition to an apology is that the present generation is not responsible. This is a wilful misrepresentation of the issue. Rudd's proposed apology is on behalf of the nation, for acts performed on the orders of the state in the name of the citizens of that nation. It is a collective acknowledgement that such actions were in many cases detrimental to the people involved and the nation no longer believes such policies to be appropriate. For the Howard-Nelson clique, apparently pride in the achievement of one's forebears is perfectly acceptable, but regret at their actions is not. By making the apology issue personal, they actually undermine their project to develop a national mythology, enshrining the Anzac spirit at Gallipoli as the epitome of Australian virtue. It shows maturity to face up to one's mistakes, swallow one's pride and apologise for harm caused.

Instead, we are told that at least half the population is being misled so we behave like historical kindergarten kids. A society that cannot accept fault is on a collision course with disaster. With challenges such as climate change, an ageing population, diminishing resources and burgeoning health costs, surely our society is best served by encouraging us to think about how we do things, what effect our actions have on the present and future generations, and not just whether it suits us or makes us feel uncomfortable to think beyond the plasmascreen and picket fence.

Conservatism should be about preserving the institutions that make the country great and upholding the values that improve the country further. It should not be about misleading individuals with tales of ill-founded guilt or compensation-seeking bogeymen while pushing through reforms that undermine those very institutions and values.

The New Segregationists

2008-01-26T13:59:00.000+11:00

Heath Ledger's premature death is a tragedy for his family and for his many fans, colleagues and admirers of his work. Who knows what masterly performances he may have given us, with some acclaiming him to be a young Jack Nicholson. A further tragedy is the bizarre behaviour of the Westboro Baptist Church, who plan to picket Ledger's funeral on the basis that he was a 'fag-enabler' through his role in Brokeback Mountain. These petty-minded firebrands are making a mockery of the American ideals of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. One presumes that when Reagan and Bush went on ad infinitum about 'freedom', that was what they had in mind.

The Westboro insurgents present the Christian Right and those seeking its support for their presidential ambitions with a choice. They can draw a line in the sand and say that these proclaimed defenders of decency are a blight on civil society or they can adopt a craven position of expedient acquiesence. Westboro's rhetoric is reminiscent of the criticism levelled against whites who sympathised with oppressed blacks, a newspeak rendering of 'nigger-lover', a term so loaded in American discourse it can only be printed as 'n*****'. However taking a firm hand against such abuses does not seem to be on the agenda in a political climate where no one even mentions Governor Huckabee's evocation of the Confederate flag issue - code for slavery and all manner of inhumanity - during his South Carolina campaign.

In fact, the entire project of the Christian Right is reminiscent of the old segregationists. Segregationist policy was premised on Jim Crow laws mandating 'separate but equal' treatment for black and white. This fudge meant that as long as one provided facilities for both black and white patrons, one complied with the language of equality. In reality, Jim Crow was a vehicle to hide racist policy behind a legalistic veneer, upheld by the US Supreme Court for nearly sixty years. The Christian Right's shameless manipulation of its churches to deliver electoral success evokes such as a legalistic fudge. Under the Internal Revenue Code, churches can only retain tax-exempt status by not endorsing or opposing specific candidates. To get around this injunction, many churches publish the equivalent of how-to-vote guides detailing candidates positions on a broad range of issues. However, the key vehicle is the use of questions on abortion and marriage. The last US election was held in conjunction with marriage-related referenda in at least a dozen states. The implicit aim was to encourage voter turnout on these issues and hence maximise Republicans chances of re-election nationwide.

Interestingly, the only instance this blog has noted of criticism being levied at a church for involvement in politics was against an anti-war rector. However, not satisfied with this position of formalistic legality, Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma proposed amending the law in 2006 to allow churches to endorse candidates and maintain tax-exempt status. If such proposals were to come to pass, the American political system may look more like the Puritan English Commonwealth of Cromwell than the Jeffersonian Republic.

Lame excuse for a bunch of lame ducks

2008-01-21T15:45:00.000+11:00

The good burghers of the Liberal party are going to stick their collective heads together and ponder where everything is going wrong. In a unique inversion of recent Liberal machinations, the Federal leadership in the person of Brendan Nelson is not invited. In explaining the omission of His Hairship, Victorian Liberal leader (and now senior budgie-smuggler following the post-election demise of Peter Debnam) Ted Bailleu said that Nelson had not been elected when the invitations went out.

That seemed a little trite, given that Queensland's bunch of herded cats changed its leader after the elevation of Nelson to the Federal leadership. The new leader, Mark McArdle, appears to have been invited. Precisely what advice Mr McArdle, the compromise one step removed from the old Athenian 'draw straws' method could offer remains moot. Given the Nationals are trying to absorb the Liberals, it probably is not going to be on the subject of electoral viability. Furthermore, the newly minted Western Australian opposition leader, Troy Buswell, gets the pleasure of a phone-hook up. Troy-boy was elected last week, presumably on the basis of polls which showed that people want to vote for the Libs, it is just that the leadership is mediocre at best. After saying he needed more experience, the next story was Buswell's election. Apparently he needed only a couple of hours.

Apparently Nelson will call his own meeting later in the year to discuss the party's future direction. Which is fine, except it looks horribly like his fellow leaders are plotting whether they actually think he is in their best interests and that he announced his conference in response to theirs. That an octet of leadership with the collective colour of a miso-soup menu left him off their bill and that Nelson could not put a stop to this meeting and re-direct discussions onto his agenda shows a remarkable loss of coherency in the party and a marked lack of respect for the leader. Perhaps Liberal state leaders are left in a quandary: having determined public service provision was not their bag, and with the federal parties encroaching on their areas of traditional responsibility, they do not actually know where they fit in the modern political landscape. In that light, it would make sense to have a provincial level conference of leaders. However, given the discussion is about the essential role played by Liberal parties at all levels of the process, both practically and philosophically, and that Nelson has considerably more experience of anything close to power than most of his counterparts, his omission sends a not so subtle message.

Republican primaries - a race where the first prize is defeat?

2008-01-21T14:58:00.000+11:00

It is now a truth universally acknowledged that the US Presidential election is a race in want of a frontrunner. The Republicans want to find someone who fits their base and electability conditions in the mould of Bush (the Younger), while the Democrats desire a latter-day (Bill) Clinton. The irony is that the very models themselves are the subject of widespread opprobrium.

From Peregrine's distant vista, it appears that American voters favour candidates with gubernatorial experience. Being a governor requires a blend of popular familiarity and demonstrated competence. This dynamic is probably indicative of hardening party allegiances and the role of mega-media campaigning, replete with brief images and soundbite policy snippets. Senators rely on building local rapport within their state, but not so much on the machinery of electioneering. Many occupy their seats forever. Senators read an awful lot of legislation, but do not actually run much outside their own election. Note that two of the Democrats, Obama and Edwards have a net total of two terms of senatorial experience.

Of course, the American course of electoral honours only has so much influence on the voters. Beneath that litmus test of ability come a multitude of other issues. Race, religious persuasion, moral values and management and military credentials all feed in to determine voter allegiance, both for and against. Given the incredible diversity of the US, a race without a clear candidate that fits the profile is bound to throw up all sort of electoral college permutations. Add the issue of fundraising and the picture is further complicated.

The Republican electoral machine relies on a large number of poor whites voting on racial and religious lines against their own economic interests. With the entry of illegal immigration into the electoral mix, race issues are bound to come to the fore in the manner that gay marriage brought religious issues to the surface. Huckabee, Romney and Thompson are in battle for these votes, a battle Huckabee is winning. However, Thompson's presence in the race should dilute Huckabee's advantage and keep McCain's conviction and experience platform running. If Thompson drops out, Huckabee will get a lot more votes from the Republican base.

Romney's strategy to run on the economy (and target the empty fields of Wyoming and Nevada) means his true opponents are probably McCain and Guiliani. Guiliani and Romney have a lot of money to roll into campaigning, whereas McCain is on a tightrope given his poor showing. One thing is clear: Guiliani must get close in Florida otherwise he will simply lack the numbers. McCain needs to capitalise on his media attention to convince enough self-interested Republicans that he is electable.

Following the gubernatorial formula, Romney becomes a dark horse, although his candidacy depends on acceptance of his widely-commented Mormon faith. If he can overcome this prejudice, which is pretty unlikely given the depth of feeling among evangelicals, a Democrat victory would be assured because their energised turnout would easily overcome a lukewarm base. Hence he will not win the nomination. Huckabee's position depends on him winning states like Florida and Texas, because he has not got a candle in the west or north-east.

The big question is will McCain have enough money to take on a fresh foe in Guiliani. Romney and McCain will probably have to win either California or Florida to offset Guiliani's appeal in the north-east. Despite looking for all purposes dead, Guiliani's decision to conserve his energies gives him a good chance to gain late momentum. But he must convert Florida. One suspects that McCain, having campaigned hard and got a lot of attention, will hold Guiliani on national security. A poor finish by McCain in Florida would be dangerous, a poor finish for Guiliani could be catastrophic.

One interesting point is that Guiliani's moral record, Romney's Mormonism and McCain's bipartisanship make all of them dubious propositions in the South, where the majority of Republican states lie. Huckabee's popularist policy makes him a hot potato for Northern Republicans enconscened in Wall Street. Thompson, the other conservative white meat, lacks the vigour for a full tilt campaign. It appears the Republicans best chance lies with McCain: the maverick may finally get to have a tilt at the Democrats.

If McCain is the nominee, he will face hesistant supporters unconvinced on his social and moral stands, and against the tide on immigration. The Democrats will be waiting to avenge the Bush years, typified by the Bush debacle.

Heavy artillery key to Australia's streak

2008-01-18T23:44:00.000+11:00

Australia faces a Herculaean task to win the Third Test and become the side with the most Test wins in succession. As any all-conquering side such as the Melbourne Storm or Sydney Kings might tell you, winning a lot of games in succession only puts you closer to your next loss. Despite that somewhat gloomy axiom, Australia's dominance of the Test cricket scene has an inherent weakness. It relies on imposing its will on the opposition by a strategy of all-out attack. In a batsman-friendly era where bowlers are fairly mediocre, bats so dense as to seemingly exert their own gravitational pull on the ball and boundaries so short that Darren Lehmann's locks look luscious in comparison, this strategy is generally a winning one.

However, if the ball swings, bounces excessively or does anything beyond the parameters regarded as normal, the penchant for attack becomes self-defeating. Australia's kamikaze approach in the first innings bears this out. The divine wind for India sprang up from the east and they made full use of it. The normally cannon-fodder line of half volley outside off-stump became a Psiren call to the grave, as such level-headed souls as Mike Hussey perished driving through the off-side. That Michael Clarke still has a clear weakness against swing bowling (and a bizarre impetuousity to take off when hitting the ball to backward point) adds another wobble to the equation. Ten years ago, perhaps fifteen, Australia would have contented itself with a score of say, 4 for 200 after day 2. Caution, however, is in short supply in the dominating mindset and hence the entire side lasted a paltry fifty overs.

If Australia are to complete the streak, they will have to win in spite of the manner in which they won sixteen Tests, not because of it. Already in this innings, Rogers and Jaques have perished courtesy of Pathan's rejuvenated movement. The pitch itself possesses relatively few terrors at this stage and is as benign a fourth-innings surface seen since Gilchrist and Langer won the Hobart Test against Pakistan. The dangers, much like with the original kamikaze, are in the air and in the psychological disturbance those raids create. Australia's relentless charge is reminiscent of the great conquest of Sulemain, the Ottoman emperor who took the Turks all the way to the gates of Vienna. However Sulemain's campaign relied on its great cannons for its success. When the rain fell, the cannons became stuck in the mud, rendered useless by the elements. The Austrian army escaped, and the Turkish charge was halted.

To win tomorrow, Australia will have to bat judiciously, seeing off the swinging ball and making the most of tiring bowlers. Both sides have found it hard to remove middle-order batsmen once the swing slows and the wind dies down. If Australia have sufficient wickets in hand to capitalise on those opportunities, they may well find themselves in rarefied run-chasing territory.

On YouTube everyone can hear you scream, just ask Marcos Baghdatis

2008-01-18T23:01:00.000+11:00

Just when communicating had reached new heights, things have gone a step further. We have now become accustomed to the incredible utility of email to send both professional and personal correspondence. It has become second nature to 'google', tapping into the meta-searching oracle of the modern age. These changes, while revolutionary, give all but the most careless users control over their information and reputation. Individuals can maintain a level of privacy without taking too many precautions.

The next wave of social networking sites changes the equation. Sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube offer users a tremendous opportunity to tap into the global information stream and gain instant notoriety. The massive increase in processing capacity means that videoclips are now the media of the moment. The important detail here is that video can be both in the form of a deliberately devised skit or simply filming the activities of others. It appears this has happened to the (Greek) Cypriot tennis player Marcos Baghdatis, who has some fairly unsavoury friends who have recently developed a taste for pepper spray.

Clearly, there is a very high potential here for embarassing footage to see the light of day. An individual's control over their own image is greatly reduced. This may lead to greater accountability and accompanying caution by figures in public life. It is almost certain that many of these clips will end up in court. Lawmakers will shortly be faced with the challenge of how to handle possibly defamatory images of individuals taken and or published without their consent.

None of the above makes a late run to challenge Hillary

2008-01-15T23:39:00.000+11:00

The extraordinary machinations that make up the American political system may be about to turn the strangest result of all. In the bid to gain relevance, states have moved their primaries ever forward to the point where practically the entire race will be decided on one afternoon. The piqued Democratic and Republican parties have responded to this by penalising a number of states their seats at the September conferences to elect their party nominees. One such state is Michigan, which being without either historical or democratic reasons for its early primary, has provoked the Democratic party into voiding its entire one-hundred and fifty-six delegate representation. As there are no votes on the floor available, Obama and Edwards have pulled out, while Clinton will not campaign. Voters have the option to vote 'uncommitted', which translates to 'none of the above'.

Obama and Edwards have hit upon the unique idea of rather than handing a cheap win to Clinton, or possibly even a nonentity such as Kucnich (however worthy his programme might be), they are advocating Democratic voters vote 'uncommitted'. Uncommitted seems the perfect word to describe an American polity where the Democrats are locked in an acrimonious struggle, while the Republicans have one frontrunner in hiding hoarding his campaign cash, one yet to win anything beyond the backwoods of Wyoming and two others seemingly at war with the party. If anyone knows how this lot will play out, please give me a call with next week's lotto numbers.

Peregrine now believes that Clinton and Obama represent a true generational contest between opposing schools of philosophical thought. Clinton stands for the first generation postmodernist school of feminist power, playing on her standing with women voters and the politics of struggle for minority rights dating back to the Civil Rights era. Obama stands for the second generation, post-identity politics. Rather than run as a black candidate, Obama is running as a Democratic idealist, a self-confessed 'hopemonger'. Interestingly, Obama's reaching across the black-white divide continues a trend begun by Bush, with his open appeal to Hispanic voters and promotion of Rice and Powell to the Secretary of State position.

On the Republican side, Huckabee represents the party's adoption of a predominantly Baptist support base taken to its logical conclusion. Or illogical conclusion if President Huckabee, the Baptist preacher, has to deal with Pakistan. A hokey name may be the least of his worries. McCain has finally begun to mention his role in backing climate change action, which must surely be his best card in being the surrogate Schwarzenegger. One suspects that Schwarzenegger may play a key role in McCain's election chances, particularly with the California primary. As a conviction politician, McCain may command as many votes from respect as outright support, as rivals such as Romney and Guiliani are severely lacking in this department.

Can Hillary Clinton discover her inner Rudd?

2008-01-10T11:07:00.000+11:00

The new narrative of the US election is that Clinton is back. Obama's charge has been halted like the Ottoman conquest at the gates of Vienna and all is right with the logic of experience over aspiration. Except that the narrative changes so quickly it would dazzle a chameleon. Yes, Hillary Clinton did narrowly beat Barack Obama. There is much debate in the US over whether this was due to voter turnout among older women (very high for Hillary), much lower among young people (bad for Barack). One interesting stat is that exit polls state men voted 40/29 for Obama, which by my reckoning means that Hillary is going to have a big problem with the male vote.

My argument is that the mechanics of the actual result are less important than the core character of the campaign. Certainly Obama relies on a traditionally flaky set of demographics (young people and black voters), but by the same token he may be able to inspire energy in them to stand up and be counted when the candidacy is in doubt. The worst case for Obama is that his vote in Iowa was simply an echo of the Oprah effect, in which case he is in deep trouble against Clinton. Obama's big test will come in the Southern primaries and also depend on the involvement of Bill Clinton drawing on his traditional support from black voters.

There is an understandable tendency in the Australian media to compare Obama's campaign with Kevin Rudd's. Both on paper look like a serious of well-meaning, heartfelt statements centering on key themes. However, what comes across from the limited sampling of Obama's policies is that, even for an American audience, they are thin on the ground. Obama characters simply do not exist in Australian politics, because parties must at least run on something to gain election. Obama runs on hope, reclaiming the American dream and other appeals simultaneously to national pride and pesonal circumstance. It is reminiscent of 'the glory of Rome', although unlike Rome's clear pursuit of glory through military conquest, how Obama can lead America to that juncture remains unclear. Obama's success depends on no one actually questioning his credentials on issues such as Iraq, running as the anti-war candidate, or his comparative lack of experience in contrast to his opponents.

The real relevance of Rudd's success lies with Hillary Clinton. This blog last month described Clinton's candidature as like a Kevin07 reinvention without the self-deprecation. Faced with polls predicting oblivion (and a 10-15% loss would be oblivion), Hillary showed enough emotion to start rumours that she is actually a human being and not a political robot. Clinton is in an unusual position of being both the alternative and the figure of division. Turn her candidacy one way and she is the experienced, moderate force for change. Turn it the other and she is the reviled figure of Whitewater and Lewinsky, a sign of everything wrong with the morals of the nation. At the minute, Clinton's campaign is about the Democratic party base's belief in her electability. If she wins the nomination, the election could easily become a referendum on Clinton herself and the legacy of Bill Clinton.

In order to win this referendum, Hillary needs to show she has changed. She needs to demonstrate she is not the cold, calculating figure who apparently lacks the common touch of her husband. Rudd was similarly derided by his own party as someone the punters did not want a bar of. Now he is seen in the bar itself, partaking of a XXXX or two. The question remains whether Clinton's will for the presidency has clouded her intentions. If she can translate that will into a positive programme that can demonstrably illustrate how people's lives will be improved, she will go a long way towards curing the concerns over her past voting record and previous incarnation as Bill's wife. Clinton needs to demonstrate her private self-deprecating style in public, otherwise she runs the risk of becoming an American Simon Crean. Alas, poor Simon, was a personable man in person and in private, but in the glare of cameras came across like a rabbit in the headlights. Worse, a smarmy rabbit.

Crean engendered such desperation in his party that they replaced him with the risky and risk-taking Mark Latham. It is not beyond the realms that disenchanted Democrats would desert in droves to Obama. He would at least give them hope.

The problem is more complex than Ponting

2008-01-08T10:38:00.000+11:00

Cricket now appears to be in a state of rapidly escalating conflict. The main battle appears to be between the BCCI and vocal sections of the Indian media on one hand and the Australian cricket team on the other. Whereas first India was in apoplexy over perceived bias in umpiring decisions and the racial charge levelled against Harbajhan Singh and his subsequent ban, the outrage has now spread here with respected SMH cricket columnist Peter Roebuck's call for Ponting to be sacked, along with seemingly half his side.

The Australian team is partly to blame for this mess purely for its stubborn failure to recognise a large proportion of people cheer for its opponents simply because they see the team as arrogant and overtly aggressive. This has been a problem since Steve Waugh's era of psychological warfare. It was build around Hayden's imposing bulk and tendency to use expletives, plus Warne's boorish behaviour and McGrath's on-field crankiness. Ponting's snarling performance in England when run out by a substitute (a practice Australia later adopted) reinforced the view on the world stage. The Australian team's persistent tendency to target opponents through the media has further added to this resentment. The fact that Darren Lehmann was suspended for racial abuse for two one-day matches seemed to confirm this reputation.

All of this, plus continual criticism about team tactics such as late declarations and apparently conservative field and bowling choices has finally got to Ponting. He and his senior playing group have closed ranks and adopted their own siege mentality, behaving something like the West Coast Eagles immediately after Ben Cousins' initial ban. That Cricket Australia felt it appropriate to put them in an appalling triumphant KFC series of commercials, which show the team so bored with thrashing the opposition that all they can think of is the food to follow is an act of extraordinarily bad timing. Kumble would be best advised to show that ad to his team as motivation that Australia does not respect them and play to the utmost of their ability. Cricket Australia should have the ads suspended immediately.

Racism is clearly a hot issue in this series. Cricket Australia launched a zero tolerance policy at the beginning of the season to prevent retaliatory stupidity from the comments made against Symonds in India. It appears that Ponting's pique at accusations of sledging have caused the team to push home the idea that India are not squeaky clean in this regard. Unfortunately it could easily look like Ponting wants Harbajhan gone because he keeps getting him out, rendering him irrelevant to the contest.

The current fracas seems to blame Australia for umpiring in its favour. In the midst of this hysteria, perhaps there is an argument about 'bias'. Being a long-suffering supporter of the Sydney Swans and watcher of a large number of AFL games, it is very apparent that umpiring follows a pattern. Umpires are constantly exposed to players and have their own psychological impressions. These may subtlely affect their view of events. It is patently obvious that Swans players get a better deal in Sydney, and they get a better deal when they are in front. When the game is in the balance, decisions often go the other way. Conversely, a national team such as Australia with an imposing record will probably get a better deal as umpires perceive the stronger team should do better and that may affect their vision. On umpire imitation, India themselves are sensitive, having had three players suspended for it and then cancelling a Test match in retaliation. One of those players was Mr H Singh.

In to all this comes the turbulent climate of India. Fanatical to the core, supporters are whipped into a frenzy by the thousands of media outlets clammering for ever more sensational stories. The team are under incredible pressure - for many this is their last chance. That must surely go for the administrators with the crisis over the two Twenty20 leagues causing chaos among those running the game. Any opportunity to get sympathy rather than blame must surely seem attractive.

The best answer to this mess is for both teams to make a public show of harmony. The ICC may uphold the appeal and then the whole issue can be determined at the next ICC meeting. Ponting and Kumble should bury the hatchet, but for the rest of the series agree to defer to the umpire's decision on all appeals and make a determined effort to appeal only where they are reasonably confident. Cricket Australia could also assist its players by briefing them on the ramifications of their behaviour and issue internal fines for inciting remarks and excessive appealing.

Technology and common sense needed to calm fraying tempers

2008-01-07T13:16:00.000+11:00

The Sydney Test has descended into a barrage of accusation and counter-accusation. One would not be surprised if lawyers were drafting more than the odd defamation action. This sorry statement of affairs is an indictment on all parties including the authorities (namely the ICC and the BCCI, although Cricket Australia are not without blame), numerous media outlets, the extraordinary passionate, vibrant but sometimes self- harming beast that is Indian cricket and the boorish behaviour of Australian players.

Firstly, the cricket. Teams that tour Australia lose if they adopt a siege mentality. India are in danger of adopting a complain first and ask questions later attitude, blaming a bevy of unfortunate umpiring decisions. It is notable how crestfallen India were when Symonds was given not out on 30. The situation is complicated by the tremendous pressure placed on the players and the weight of expectation stirred up. The popular movement to reinstate Ganguly has given the sense that anything is possible if demanded by the public. The players and, more to the point, the apparatchik administrators are going to be extremely reluctant to take responsibility for defeat if it means having their effigy burnt in Mumbai and Kolkata. India genuinely believe they should have won last time here, a myth perpetuated by most of the world's media. The sense that their destiny has been denied has made for an explosive outcome.

Secondly, the Australian team itself. The spotlight of the media is on Australia, whose reputation is universally of a great team but poor winners (and even poorer, if rare, losers). No one pays much attention to the atrocious track record of India, particularly vehement appealing on the last days of Test matches. There is a considerable reservoir of sympathy available for an opposition player to criticise Australia's sledging. Australia have clearly lost the battle to portray themselves as a fair team, and they have had enough of constant criticism. More should have been done sooner, and action should certainly be taken now to stop the resentment building up.

Personally, sledging should only be demonstrative of a player's wit and not touch on anything that might be personally offensive. There is no place for any form of racial vilification. There is now an interesting exercise in cultural education going on, with what looks like a cynical counter-charge made against Brad Hogg. Whereas the use of the word 'monkey' against Symonds is well known to have racist overtones, the word 'bastard' allegedly used by Hogg (and quite possibly used) does not often mean 'illegitimate male child' in common Australian usage. This whole mess may require a list of terms to be drawn up, or at least common consensus on what players can and cannot say on the field.

On the umpiring issue, the ICC is paying for a good idea badly executed. Bucknor has stood in 120 tests because he was voted onto the ICC international panel and it is meant to represent the Test playing nations. The problem is that no other umpires have emerged on the panel to replace him, and that Australia's Simon Taufel, rated the world's best umpire, cannot stand in Australian tests due to a perceived conflict of interest.

In other words, we get substandard umpiring to avoid bias. Having said that, the two umpires in Melbourne made almost no errors until the final day. Clearly, umpires have good days and bad days. The question is how to maximise one and minimise the damage on the other.

The best way to deal with the current situation is for the ICC to put more money into training and supporting umpires. This should allow for say, a panel of 16 umpires to umpire Tests with sufficient time for umpires to recover and de-stress. Umpires would also have yearly sight and hearing testing plus complete a practical umpiring simulation. These results would then be used to determine promotion or relegation of umpires. Within matches, the ICC could direct umpires to pay less attention to calling no-balls to allow more focus on the play. Third umpires would be empowered to recall batsmen if replays showed the bowling over-stepping. Teams could have three challenges an innings. The challenges would relate to whether catches were bump balls and whether there was an edge or not on catches and lbw appeals and whether the ball pitched outside leg stump on lbws. Challenges could be made by both the batting and fielding sides, although a fielding side would only get the benefit on catches. The technology used would include Hawkeye (plotting the pitch of the ball, adopted in tennis) and the HotSpot heat-detection system, as both show objective evidence of where the ball ended up. In one-day games, two challenges would be allowed per innings.

Wheels within wheels

2008-01-07T12:16:00.000+11:00

Hillary Clinton's candidacy relies on the inevitability effect. It is the force by which a behemoth suffering from structural weakness relies to crush the hope of its opponents. Clinton has constructed this effect by a careful stage managing of her character, employing weather-vane voting behaviour in the Senate and occasionally relying on the star power of her tainted husband. She has seen the field cleared by sacrificing John Kerry in 2004 and now is her hour to triumph.

Except no one told Barack Obama. Obama is profiting from the fact that all modern campaigning is about image and perception. He is the candidate of change, not just from the Republican fiasco of Bush and his Caligulan extravagance, but from the Clinton-Bush/ red-blue polarisation. His transformative campaign has a second layer: running as the great unifier, he is seeking to reconcile the fissures done between traditional Democratic southerners and their northern counterparts over civil rights. Whereas Nixon and Reagan fashioned the Republican political realignment from the late 1960s onwards via harvesting evangelicals, Obama is seeking to bring back those lost souls and capitalise on the national disenchantment with the Bush regime.

Obama's win in Iowa at least proves that his brand of rhetoric can translate into votes. With non-compulsory voting, getting the vote out is about inspiring people to turn up, not just agree with the policies presented. Obama is already being compared to the Kennedy phenomenon and his credentials are pretty much on par with those mythological figures. It remains to be seen whether rhetoric alone can still win elections, but the flux on the Republican side means Obama has a strong chance if he does maintain his momentum.

On the other side of the fence, the Republican machine is heading for a crisis point. Its man appears to be Romney. Or is it Guilani? Does anyone know? How the Republicans thought backing a man from Massachuetts might be a good idea is anyone's guess, while Guilani is a polarising one-trick pony who alienates the bedrock 'Christian Right' support base. If he ran against Clinton, he would seriously dilute the anti-Hillary factor with his record of indiscretions. Romney is the slick campaigner whose very slickness highlights precisely what is wrong with a lot of modern politics. He has recanted on almost every position while he was governor and is throwing more mud than an errant four wheel drive. Given his inconsistency, he would be crucified by Obama, who at least is consistent if nebulous in his positions. Clinton's experience would probably outweigh Romney's lukewarm support among Republicans.

The Republicans have a machine designed to win power. They use religion to turn poorer evangelical voters against their own economic interests and support low-tax, pro-business policies. Edwards, the third candidate on the Democrat side, has picked up on the mass of underprivilege and run on improving the lot of these people. Huckabee, the self-propelled Republican governor, has picked up on this groundswell and is seeking to change the party's orientation from a pro-business to a pro-people party. His focus would be on small-town America. One suspects Huckabee would at least be competitive against Clinton and Obama, unless he comes across as a divisive figure. He would appear superior to Obama on his long serving record as Arkansas Governor, and is more likable than Clinton.

McCain has his own failings. A good old-fashioned conviction politican, the times do not suit him. He is not particularly enamoured with the CR base, who prefer candidates such as Huckabee and the positions stated by Romney and "Blokeman" Thompson. McCain could capitalise on his support for climate change action if he can gain traction, having supported a major bill on the issue. However that may only serve to remind Republicans of their wish to have Schwarzenegger as their nominee, whose profile, command of a traditional Democrat state and major status as a climate change statesman make him an imposing figure. As it is, McCain is best known for advocating an invasion of Iran. Having said that, his comments on increasing troop numbers in Iraq have been borne out over time, and if he can regain credibility with donors and the media, his campaign may yet make him competitive. A strong McCain candidacy is dangerous to both Clinton and Obama. McCain has the benefit of being a conviction politician against Hillary's hesistancy in the Senate, while he would look Obama look like a college sophomore.

On the basis of the above, Clinton's juggernaut needs to recover its momentum. However, her non-committal record and residual unpopularity from the Clinton years are major weaknesses ripe for exploitation. Obama sits in the middle of three political figures in the US Pantheon: Robert Kennedy (calls for idealism), George W Bush (next-door guy appeal) and Ronald Reagan (remaking old alignments, reaching out). Which one of those he ends up closest to in the American mindset may determine how far his campaign goes.

Ghost of Coonan past afflicts Conroy's filter plan

2008-01-03T09:48:00.000+11:00

It is truth universally acknowledged that Helen Coonan was not a terribly progressive Communications minister. During her tenure, cross-media ownership laws were diluted under the principle of not making existing media owners cross via the figleaf of 'increased outlets of new media'. Negotiations to build a high speed national broadband network went precisely nowhere and open warfare was declared by Telstra's head honcho, Sol Trujilo.

Coonan had one other vaunted policy, the NetAlert campaign. NetAlert was conceived to appeal to the 'Christian Right' and poach traditional Catholic 'values voters' (to use despised American political jargon) from Labor, possibly via the agency of Family First. The original centrepiece was an audacious plan to filter undesirable content, primarily porn, from impressionable eyes. If that was the aim, then they would have been better off leaning on the moguls running the media, with platforms such as ninemsn frequently making available images of not especially clothed celebrities.

To Coonan's credit, the final mailout became a self-help guide to educating parents on the dangers of the internet and advised supervision. The plan to filter the net was deemed a quixotic quest when logic took hold. The thing could only be done by using a list of undesirable sites and checking the site requested against the list, a slow and cumbersome process reducing processing speed by between 16 and 78% for ISPs.

Enter Stephen Conroy. Conroy is the man charged with bringing Rudd's fabled fibre-to-the-node broadband network into reality. He also has carriage of the Beazley-era acquiescence on Coonan's NetAlert scheme. This contradiction should have been immediately obvious to someone of Rudd's intellect and logical thinking capability. However it has been retained presumably to protect against a Coalition scare campaign.

As Rudd is now ascendant, good policy dictates that he abandon this bizarre nanny-state filtering scheme. Government - corporate filtering of the internet has much the same connotations these days as imprisonment without trial or taxation without representation once did. It is a sign of intrusion and unfettered exercise of power which people simply do not like.

Leaving aside the philosphical issues, the hindrance of broadband speed makes a mockery of Rudd's vaunted vehicle to prosperity. The worst part of the filter plan is that the biggest delay happens to fast stream connections. A filter system does not appear compatible with a high speed network, particularly when that network will already be compromised by transmission loss over large areas. Rudd's best course is to first delay the implementation of the policy and then make it very, very clear that there are no feasible options for filtering.

Trend still missing in campaign blizzard

2008-01-02T23:40:00.000+11:00

Following on from this blog's recent reviewing of the US Presidential candidates, the situation is no more clear a month later.

Given the need for early momentum, it is imperative that candidates do well in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. Except if you are Rudi Guiliani, who has figured that he has zero appeal in the smaller states and is better off pursuing a winner-take-all strategy in California, New York and Florida. Guiliani, while a formidable opponent does have a plethora of skeletons on public display and may be a tempting target for Democrats. Following his own tradition, John McCain is attempting to repeat his primary success over Bush in New Hampshire. However McCain has to have a win or a highly competitive second here otherwise other states may be less keen on him.

Competiting for the 'Christian Right' mantle are Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Romney and Huckabee have overwhelmed Fred "Blokeman" Thompson, but effectively split the CR vote three ways. Romney looks the more polished candidtate, but his campaign may be just a little slick and convenient given his 2007/08 conversion on big conservative issues like gun control and abortion. To evoke Holden Caulfield, Romney wants to be real careful those folks don't think he's a phoney. Otherwise he is roadkill. One would suspect that Romney will probably win in Iowa, picking up a fair swag of Guiliani's support while Thompson takes enough CR votes from Huckabee to push him down to second. Expect to see a lot of Huckabee - Romney or Huckabee - McCain preferences, given Huckabee is probably viewed as a wishful thinking candidate rather than a genuine election chance.

On the Democrat side, John Edwards represents the ideal candidate with Barack Obama running as the Kennedyesque counterpoint to Hillary Clinton's establishment figure. To elude to Le Tour, Clinton's breakaway campaign is getting reined in in the mountains of the Mid-west. Iowa is likely to give Edwards a large number of supporters due to his Southern charm. I suspect that Clinton will probably win with enough of Edwards' idealistic supporters swallowing the realism of Clinton's ticket and giving her their preference. Obama is a very good chance in New Hampshire, but the race remains very close with the presence of two front runners in Clinton and Obama drawing Edwards back into competition.

Defiant but defeatist? India's half-hearted conviction

2008-01-02T22:44:00.000+11:00

At the risk of inciting most of the subcontinental cricket community, Peregrine (whose best performance was taking three or four wickets in a school game bowling considerably slower medium than Ganguly) offers the following observations on the Test series to date.

India have been determined to take the game up to Australia and not be intimidated by their opponents, the conditions or the media. The problem is that this very determination belies an internal siege mentality which afflicts most of the teams which arrive here. This attitude has manifested itself with the bizarre tactic of permanently stationing fielders on the boundary for any recognised batsmen, the quick removal of attacking fielders, the reluctance for spinners to flight the ball except within a few overs of taking a wicket and the adoption of two defensive openers at the start of the innings.

On top of these defensive tactics, there appears to be a great tendency to blame the umpires for making poor decisions and the administrators for their scheduling. It is well known that umpiring consistency is something of a chimera at present. Today, Symonds got one life from a caught behind, a second from a borderline lbw and was a split second from being stumped. However, India also failed to run him out from short extra cover, an opportunity Symonds may easily have taken himself. Ponting got a fairly ordinary lbw decision which triggered a collapse. He was batting imperiously at the time, having earlier got a caught behind go his way. Umpiring clearly needs to be improved either by better personnel or better use of technology.

On the administrators' front. Witness Stuart Clark's complaints that Cricket Australia held Perth back as the venue for the Fourth Test. Clark, not enamoured by the MCG pitch proceeded to wreck the Indian batting line-up on it. Despite being handed a low, bouncing and turning MCG pitch, India complained about inadequate acclimatisation. Possibly jetlag, but not bounce. The MCG pitch was exactly the kind of surface McGrath, Gillespie and even Kasprowicz plagued Indian batsmen on. Similarly, the Second and Third Tests are at Sydney (India have had the better of their last two tests there) and Adelaide where Dravid and Laxman carried India into a match-winning position.

Australia's attitude is quite simply to back their ability and work hard for their teammates. That is why it is almost impossible for most teams to put them away. On paper, Australia have a team of cast-offs and suspect performers, yet as an outfit they are extremely hard to beat. Only when England put the blowtorch on Ponting, losing bowlers left right and centre, did the team start to fray.

India must ensure they use attacking fields and maintain their spirit throughout the full day, not just when the wickets fall. They must bat with conviction and keep scoring runs. Australia rely on exhausting the opposition's patience as much as anything else, and failure to score runs keeps the bowling side on top.

Merry Christmas (and/or festive season of your choice)

2007-12-24T19:11:00.000+11:00

For those who still insist on reading blogs on Christmas Eve - Merry Christmas to you, and may you have a relaxing and happy festive season. Thank you to anyone who may have read Peregrine over the last three months, and all the other tireless bloggers who have taken on the tyranny of computing to bring their unique collection of perspectives to the world at large.

Peregrine wants to know what those perusing its pages want to hear about. Please feel free to drop me a line at peregrinect@gmail.com on topics for discussion, analysis or amusement for 2008.

Merry christmas!

Does the present justify the past of monarchy?

2007-12-24T12:42:00.000+11:00

UK historian David Starkey's incendiary remarks vis-a-vis Elizabeth II's cultural sophistication seem a timely segue into the republican debate. According to the Constitution, Australia's Head of State is Queen Victoria and her heirs and successors. This presupposes that the monarch continues to play a fundamental role in the governance of the nation.

The traditional purpose of monarchs was very clear. They were the apex of a feudal system, ultimate holder of all lands that were then effectively leased back to the various ranks. The monarch coordinated territorial relations and allowed a group of diverse regions to work together. The monarch thus played a major role in government, and in deed embodied the nation as a whole. However, as power gradually devolved to advisors and then to elected parliamentarians, the position became more ceremonial.

The purpose of a ceremonial monarch is to attend numerous functions and act as a symbol of continuity. Thus they are a living embodiment of both the present nation and its history. The question then becomes whether in a country like Australia whether the long tradition of English history is something we want to be tied to ad infinitum through our machinery of government.

In the current environment, a monarch represents the nation both on a ceremonial and economic level. This raises not just questions of identity but conflict of interest. Our constitution was written in the 1890s, as a cooperative agreement between a remote group of colonies. Over the last fifty years, the system has become inherently unbalanced, with the partner states being subordinated to the federal sphere. At the same time, the UK has become closely aligned to the EU rather than the old links of Empire.

In this climate, it is clear that the current arrangements are no longer suited to our present circumstances. On the domestic level, federal-state relations are imbalanced. States have responsibility for funding public health and education, massive systems to maintain and develop. The Commonwealth has control over the vast majority of the tax base. The GST transformed the state's residue independent tax collection into the benevolent grant of the federal government. The Commonwealth's chief sources of power are the external affairs power (implementing international conventions) and the corporations power. These two powers give a near total jurisdiction over most areas.

On the international level, it is hard to see a UK trade delegation actively pushing the claims of the Australian, Canadian or New Zealand exporter. As a matter of identity it seems disingenous for Australia to be represented by a largish power on the other side of the world.

Clearly the system needs renovation. Either the States need some form of guaranteed funding to justify their continued responsibilities or another method of delivery must be developed. On the national level, the monarchy does seem something of an anachronistic tie. A presidency based on a short-listing and direct election process, something like an elected Australian of the Year position, may deal with the partisan difficulties plus mass expenditure campaigning for the post.

When Historians Attack

2007-12-24T11:59:00.000+11:00

This programme, while B grade in name, will probably not be hosted by Larry Emdur any time soon. However it is making the headlines of today's SMH. Self-appointed chronicler of the English Monarchy, David Starkey, has described the present Queen as 'a housewife' having a 'little bit of Goebells' in her dislike of culture. Suffice to say, Her Majesty's British press and public are not amused.

What does this highbrow Christmas pantomine mean? Starkey has a reputation as the rudest man in Britain, who in fact was considered so rude by the British public that they acquitted the much-maligned Richard III in a TV special based on Starkey's manner under cross-examination. Starkey specialises in the Tudor period (as did his mentor, Geoffery Elton). The Tudors essentially used the power of legal argument to imagine into being the Divine Right of Kings. The DRK is alien to an English legal system operating on the 'ancient common law' and supported by rights derived from Magna Carta.

He clearly appreciates power, education and force of personality. He clearly has at least two of these, and yearns for the third through his historical writings and television apprearances. He has the kind of attachment and admiration for Elizabeth I which makes him particularly vulnerable to unfavourable comparisons with Elizabeth II. As a Quaker Tory, he believes in the character of the individual as the predominant influence, and he no doubt had his nose put acutely out of joint when Elizabeth II showed acute boredom at his exhbition on Elizabeth I. When his great work made barely a dint on the attentions of his beloved monarchy, it is understandable that he would scorn the lack of education that Elizabeth II demonstrated.

Starkey must suffer acute frustration that his sovereign is mediocre compared with her historical forebears. However Elizabeth II is a product of her time. The monarchy has had no real power since the days of Victoria, and has been on the wane from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when Parliament decided who should sit on the throne. Starkey's vision of Tudor power is a historical aberration. His criticism no doubt will generate further interest in his work and earn him a few more hundred thousand pounds a year, although one senses this is a secondary motivation. However, his true concern appears to be his relationship to power, as exercised through the royal line, rather than the short-term, populist and self-serving projects of the elected monarchy installed down the road in Westminister.

Garrett: Labor's environmental totem pole

2007-12-20T22:22:00.000+11:00

Peter Garrett was originally recruited by Latham as the celebrity candidate to carry the disengaged into Labor'a arms. Curiously Latham, the long-time prime ministerial aspirant, disappeared like a magnesium flash, a momentary blinding light fading to nothingness. Garrett, the celebrity politician, considered to be the least suitable Labor recruit since Cheryl Kernot, is in government.

Much was made of Rudd splitting off climate change and water from Garrett's environment portfolio, interpreting it as a product of Garrett's gaffe-laden campaign. This completely misunderstands Garrett's role under Rudd Labor. Garrett's job is to be a human beacon for Labor's environmental credentials. In a word, he is Labor's environmental totem pole. He is well known both domestically and internationally as the long time head of the Australian Conservation Foundation. That role was an advocacy role, imploring government and community action on environmental matters...which is precisely what he does under his environment portfolio. Climate change and water require negotiation between a number of diverse stakeholders, something it appears the new minister Penny Wong is extremely good at.

Rudd is in the process of establishing education and environment as Labor's cornerstone issues upon which it basis its future vision for social health and economic prosperity. Gillard's mega-portfolio highlights the link between education, employment and the very workings of the nation. Garrett's role is to act as advocate for action on issues under his brief such as whaling and electricity austerity measures and give a symbolic presence when environmental matters cross over into other areas. Hence his presence standing by Stephen Smith as the foreign minister articulated the government's position on Japanese whaling. He was also present at Bali, frequently in the background while Penny Wong made statements.

The Garrett totem pole is a highly visible symbol of the Rudd Labor project. His environmentalist background gives clear expression to the core role environmental matters play in Labor. For Labor, the economy is seen through the environmental context, not the other way around. As a non-aligned candidate, he is a symbol of Rudd's breakdown of the faction system. He is also like Rudd a frequenter of Parliament's Christian fellowship. Despite the seeming awkwardness of his stance, both physically and on policy matters, Garrett is part of the unorthodox network Rudd has formed to renovate Labor for the new century.

Reining in the Puritans

2007-12-20T21:51:00.000+11:00

Brendan Nelson, aka The Human Cockatoo, has adopted the radical policy of 'listening to the Australian people'. The first two manifestations of this are his approval of Rudd's lodging of ratification papers to the Kyoto Protocol and his declaration that workchoices is dead. These are fine words, although Nelson has also refused to guarantee fulsome support for the ratification legislation for Kyoto nor the repealing of workchoices. Until we see an unequivocal commitment to do so, doubts over the substance of these statements will remain.

Nelson has one small problem. He is the compromise candidate to keep both Abbott (unelectable) and Turnbull (unpalatable) out of the leadership. His leadership is underwritten by one Julie Bishop and her posse of WA MPs. They happen to believe workchoices was endorsed by their constitutents and that the eastern states failed to follow the one true path. Their zeal for the policy verges on the puritanical, and they have been beneficiaries of the Howard era purging of traditional liberal sentiment from the party. Most of them are of the less enlightened side of the party on climate change.

The Liberals have a real problem. In order to look even vaguely relevant, they have to junk their main planks of policy difference, which will also alienate the very people supporting the leadership. However, if they do not, they will fall further behind in the polls and run the risk of becoming a splintered conservative grouping rather than a coherent party. At some point, the Liberals will not be able to rely on voters who formed their opinions when either Chifley or Whitlam was in office.

Whether Nelson can keep a veneer of party solidarity on these issues remains to be seen. However, it is unlikely that the pro-Howard forces will go quietly into the centre. More likely, if concessions are made on workchoices and Kyoto, the Puritans will want some serious stands in return. This may explain the continued tough talking on refusing an apology for the Stolen Generation. It seems pretty clear that Nelson will have to try and capitalise on any disquiet caused by climate change policy purely to maintain the illusion of his own competitiveness.

Variety or venom: which would put you off your Christmas turkey?

2007-12-20T00:28:00.000+11:00

Australia has again failed to resolve the question of its spinning department for the Boxing Day Test and following series against India. Since the retirement of Warne and the injury and slow recovery of the less than vintage Macgill, Australia is left facing a gaping chasm in the quality of its next line of tweakers. Australia have been reticent to call on Hogg's services unless the pitch shows obvious signs of turn, preferring a pyjama battery of assorted medium and fast bowlers. This reluctance has now led to the team having no clear understudy considered suited to the Test spinner role.

The question then boils down to a choice between Hogg as the next best spinner or Tait as the next best pace bowler. Given the record of frontline spinners such as Warne and Macgill is not great and the record of bit-part spinners, namely Hogg and Robertson in India is positively awful, the smart money must surely be on Tait. Having variety is great. The question is whether that variety offers a competitive advantage to a captain who can call on the extra option as a viable wicket-taking or run-slowing option.

If India play Hogg without fear, then Tait must surely play. Tait is a law of nature, a whirlwind that either blows fiercely levelling batsmen and wickets with equal regularity or continually misses the target and gets carted to all corners. This unpredictability means Tait will only be seen as understudy to Lee or a fiery fourth bowler to unleash on bouncy tracks. Unless he is the more dangerous option.

The other aspect is whether Australia feel they need Hogg as back-up for Macgill until the next tier of spinners emerge. The situation is bizarre. Contracted spinner Bailey is playing second XI for South Australia, Cullen is on his way back, NSW has so many spinners but none in the side at the moment and poor White was injured at the worst moment. As an allrounder, White would have been a decent chance of selection if he was in good form.

This surfeit of spin options is a major headache for Australia, whose stocks more resemble South Africa's at the present time. Hogg may well have deserved his chance to play Test cricket by being the last man standing.

Save the whales...from the international lawyers

2007-12-19T23:35:00.000+11:00

Kevin Rudd made an audacious statement during the cut and thrust of the election campaign that he would be willing to take firm sction against Japanese whaling ships in the Southern Ocean. This promise got somewhat submerged under the other key election issues, but has now risen for air with the opening of the whaling (sorry, scientific research) season.

Rudd's position is that Australia needs to take firm action to gather evidence for presentation in a possible future action in the International Court of Justice. This is in line with his other policy promise to ask the ICJ to adjudicate on whether Iranian President Ahmenidjad's alleged statement that he would drive Israel into the Mediterranean amounted to genocide. Rudd clearly believes that international disputes should be subject to moral adjudication by international legal bodies.

The problem is that the situation vis-a-vis Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean is not clear cut. Japan claims a right to take whales for scienific purposes, conducting both lethal and non-lethal research to establish details about populations. Australia claims the right to intervene to protect the whales, for the purpose of preservation and conservation of living resources. Both claims derive from Article IX of the Antarctic Treaty.

It is arguable that Australia could employ military personnel and assets to further any peaceful purpose under the Treaty. Diplomatically it may not be terribly clever, given warships at ten paces is never the best basis for negotiation. However, the use of converted ships as coastguard patrols would arguably appear to come under actions allowable under the Treaty.

Domestically, one could see this, if one so chose, as a wedge issue. Nelson's Liberals are cautious in their support - opposition sets them against 90% of Ninemsn's readers. However, Peregrine does not believe that Rudd's aim is a Tampa-style conservation move, but genuine action to resolve a long-running international dispute. The other key point is that an Australian official presence will deter Greenpeace and other activists disabling Japanese whaling ships, actions that led Japan to warn it would seek Australia's cooperation to curb activists and even scramble Japanese police aircraft to protect whalers.

Hunt's frolic to outfox Rudd

2007-12-16T22:54:00.000+11:00

During the Bali Conference, a rather extraordinary thing happened. The Greens' Christine Milne welcomed Greg Hunt, officially the shadow minister for the environment, appearing to accept the need to set 25-40% domestic binding emissions targets by 2020. Given until earlier this year it was not even certain his leader, the Colossus of Roads, John Howard, put climate change theory on a higher pedestal than the Easter Bunny and Santa, this would seem to be an almighty party conversion on the way to Damascus. Or Bali, which I presume some flights to Damascus have been known to stopover at.

Sensing a majoritarian issue, Hunt tried a remarkable piece of sophistry dressed up as environmental commitment. Rudd was welshing on his climate promises because he would not sign up for the 25-40% range. Hunt allegedly gave Rudd 'the green light' to sign up to a text stating a 25-40% negotiation range.

No he did not. Hunt got a licence from the party firm of Nelson, Turnbull and Downer to try and wedge Rudd. Nelson listed five criteria for the Bali text to meet the national interest:

The first was that no targets should be binding and the second that targets should not be set for each country. Dr Nelson also wanted to be able to have time to do economic modelling on any proposed targets.

So Hunt wanted to sign up to the text precisely because the targets were non-binding. Rudd firmly believes in a 60% binding target by 2050, regardless of the economic modelling. It is the interim that he seeks the modelling on, an approach which has drawn flak from both sides. The only modelling Brendan could conceivably do is either to find where in the 25-40% spectrum Australia could sit or to junk the Bali committment. The entire approach is either economically or diplomatically unsound.

A Liberal leadership constituted as a compromise to appease Howard loyalists and propped up by the kingmaker from WA, Julie Bishop's numbers is not going to take kindly to an emission reduction target set without any modelling. WA Liberals may behave something like their northern cousins in Alberta on such reductions and become positively mutinuous.

Greg Hunt clearly does believe that action is required on climate change. However he is constrained within a party where denial was de rigeur for the best part of a decade. Unfortunately, his attempts at autonomous policy are at best likely to be used as a good old Howardian wedge. At worst, they may have all the substance of a maringue - sugar-coated hot air. A serious Liberal climate conversion will not come until the party undergoes a major reexamination of its role in the new order.

US demonstrates why we need the UN to handle climate change

2007-12-16T22:00:00.000+11:00

The Howard regime's constant refrain was that the best way to handle climate change discussions was through a series of regional pacts such as the Asia-Pacific Climate Partnership. Shadow Environment Minister Greg Hunt tried to attribute India and Indonesia's enthusiasm on climate change to another regional forum, the APEC talks. Perergine disagrees with Hunt's take as India's support is pretty lukewarm given its deep poverty below its still proportionally small middle class and Indonesia's support comes as much from the home-ground hero aura that comes over the host nation at such events. Hunt's clear import was that getting the big phase 1 emitters, the US, Australia and Japan around the table with the big phase 2 emitters, China, India and Indonesia would produce better results than the all-in environment of the UN.

The US position at Bali demonstrates the monumental flaw in this reasoning. The US has an imperial conviction in its own power and self interest. There is an abiding belief in the primacy of American values which principally include free enterprise and exploitation of resources. That said, the federal system of the US has worked to produce a gradual building of momentum towards an national environmental oonsensus. It may soon be impossible for a candidate to win enough electoral college votes for election without a clear vision on limiting the damage posed by climate change.

Unfortunately for the current global position, the last throes of the Bush administration, the most-pro capitalist government yet seen, coincide with the most urgent stage in climate negotiations. Bush is an oil man who does not comprehend curtailing either personal wealth or development or the conservation of resources, choosing to support the mining of Alaska for oil rather than renewable resources.
It is no surprise that the other northern oil mining nation, Canada, is supporting Bush to the hilt.

The US had consistently opposed binding targets in the Bali Conference communique, saying this 'prejudged' the outcome of two years of talks. Unfortunately for its credibility, it dropped support for non-binding targets appearing in the final draft. Worse, it did not like the reference to green energy aid to developing countries. This led to a chorus of boos, so much so that one suspected Bali had turned into an international pantomine.

Then the PNG delegate decided he had had enough and told the US if it could not lead, it should get out of the way. Within minutes, the US agreed to non-binding targets being mentioned in the final text. Under the US preferred system, PNG would not even have a seat at the table, and the views of the Alliance of Small States would have been relegated to the pages of the Green Left Weekly rather than the mainstream media.

In order to solve the problem of climate change, we must all accept the need to be efficient in our use of resources, explore different energy options and make a paradigm shift away from an economy reliant on excessive use of carbon-based fuels. Under its traditional philsophical outlook, the US, global superpower and master of most of the world financial, trade and military markets is ill-suited to playing the lead role in negotiations. Until we see such a paradigm shift in the US, it will still be playing the pantomine villain.

Strengthening the weakest link in the climate chain

2007-12-14T00:01:00.000+11:00

The Bali Conference is intended to produce a road map for negotiations to prevent the planet falling off a carbon emission-created cliff. It is about navigating through a minefield of national interest issues, innate political caution and diplomatic obfuscation in search of the common goal.

The recalcitrant parties here are the developed nations of the US, Japan and Canada. They are engaged in a game of me-first you-first with developing nations such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa which at first sight looks vaguely ridiculous. It threatens to stall progress as none of this alliance of inconvenience will accept the negotiation range of 25-40% targets for developed countries to be set as the parameters for negotiation without developing country committment.

Then one considers the Canadian predicament. Canada is the silver medallist behind tiny Austria for Kyoto non-compliance, a staggering 34% above its emissions target (6% reduction on 1990). Amazingly, given Howard's constant refrain of how Kyoto would damage industry, Australia would not even be in the same weight division as its northern cousin. Herein lies the root of the problem. Canada is actually being sued
by its own Friends of the Earth NGO for breach of its Kyoto committments. Interestingly, New Zealand is almost as lagging in its targets, having paid a rather large fine for its breaches. This has not deterred Helen Clark's push for binding targets.

Perhaps Canada may need to be bailed out - it is now so manifestly out of whack with developed country emissions it should almost be treated as a special case for the sake of getting a viable agreement. Canada could argue that countries like Spain got cover for their Kyoto sins from emissions being calculated under the EU umbrella. Canada has no friends to help it out here.

Compunding the difficulties is the fact that Canada has two provincial delegations, Ontario and Quebec, which are at Bali and embarrassed by Ottawa's position. What's more, they represent two-thirds of the population, namely the ones not directly responsible for most of the greenhouse pollution.

Canada's former Liberal government clearly took its eye off the ball and has committed the environmental equivalent of letting the chip fat skip out of the deep fryer. Instead of trying to quell the flames, the Tories have tried to evacuate the building and wait to collect on the fire insurance.

A target of 25%, the minimum demanded by the negotiation range, amounts to a 53% cut in emissions (on a severe upward trajectory) within thirteen years. Ouch. Methinks this seriously constitutes some recognition, albeit through gritted teeth, that Canada be allowed to chart a course towards a long term goal rather than the 25% range.

In an earlier post, Peregrine proposed that a successor instrument to Kyoto should include differed emissions targets for developing countries and a package of preliminary measures for developing countries. Canada should be read the Riot Act vis-a-vis its non-compliance and forced to sign up for afforestation, renewable energy and energy efficiency targets. It should also make a hefty contribution to the fund to cover the costs of climate amelioration in the developing world. Only then should the international community agree to place it in its own special box, with differed targets. Chastened by being put back on its international training wheels, it should be offered an incentive for participation towards binding targets in the near future.

Defending the pass at Thermopylae

2007-12-13T13:09:00.000+11:00

Kevin Rudd's debut on the world stage must be perplexing to his global audience. On the one hand, he has speedily entered the ratification papers for the Kyoto Protocol and made a number of statements which come straight from the Al Gore playbook. On the other, reports filter through from the negotiations that Australia is either 'not being as forceful as it might' or is actively watering down the text of the Conference communique to remove references to 2020 targets. In some quarters, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is seen as spokesperson for the recalcitrants.

Rudd is in a bind to act responsibly. To act responsibly on climate change and stave off the eternal skepticism about Labor's economic management he needs to have the Garnaut report to hand to buttress its credentials domestically. This is basically what Rudd told the assembly yesterday.

Rudd's posse of ministers and diplomats is playing the role of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae. They are desperately defending the pass that links the global goodwill shown to Australia on ratifying Kyoto and condemnation for inaction on climate change. Like the Spartans, they are waiting for the token Athenian response, i.e. the Garnaut Report, to sweep in and save the day.

It is not clear how much carriage Rudd has of the negotiation strategy, but it appears that Australia is attempting to use the lag required between Bali and the Garnaut Report to strengthen its influence over the recalcitrant countries, namely the US, Japan and Canada. Rudd is clearly building on Australia's Howard-era tardiness alliance with the US (and latterly Canada) to build bridges towards a tenable agreement.

The federal system in the US is working well to counteract Bush's inertia, with a network of Pacific and Atlantic states developing a domestic emissions trading scheme and legislating mandatory targets. This has created a groundswell of opinion in favour of climate action by the next administration. At a Republican presidential debate, candidates were asked whether they agree with global warming - it is now an ethical issue relevant to candidates' credentials.

In Canada, the federal system is under pressure from the massive divergence between the eastern provinces, namely Ontario and Quebec which favour climate action and the vulnerable western (and very affluent courtesy of the mining and oil boom) provinces of Alberta and British Columbia which do not. Harper's climate-skeptic government is entirely composed of the western mindset, making it seriously unrepresentative in the international forum.

Peregrine suspects that the role of countries such as Australia and the US will be vital in getting any agreement. The key issue is going to be whether Canada can be dragged to the table. That in turn will require heavy influence from the US. Given Canada's outlier position, it does not seem likely that a text demanding immediate agreement to a 25-40% negotiation range will pass.

Rudd is attempting to use the same strategy on the world scale that he has to win domestic election. He is making a promise to sign up to 25-40% targets once the economic impact is in. It remains to be seen whether the UN will accept credit for its climate measures.

Certainty required, uncertainty required: the Bali paradox

2007-12-11T17:42:00.000+11:00

The Bali Conference on climate change is now being described as a 'road map' for further negotiations re the setting of emission reduction targets. The UN Secretariat wish is for a text to be initialled 'KMR' et al sometime this week which contains a committment for developed countries to reduce targets by 25-40% by 2020. This appears to be what the UN is defining as proceeding within the Kyoto framework.

This is an indication of how serious the post-Kyoto round of negotiations are. The non-binding position advocated by the US, Canada and Japan demands that a 'global goal' be pursued to cut emissions by 50% by 2050. Canada and Japan are unequivocally telling developing countries they must accept targets before they will sign on. This fit of pique stems from the Canadian government's skeptic attitude to climate change - it attempted to repudiate Kyoto and was forced by the opposition Liberals to pass a bill binding the Canadian government to cut emissions at gunpoint. The Calgary based Conservatives could best be described as the lumberjack-oil drillers alliance.

Japan has lost face from the failure of Kyoto, and has experienced problems with nuclear energy since an earthquake damaged a plant earlier this year. It is also exposed to Chinese and Indian development.

The US position is schizophrenic. Like Canada, opinion is divided between the progressive states allied to the Democratic Congress and the regressive Bush administration. The official US delegation is under Bush's imprimatur, but US politicians attending the conference include the guru Al Gore and John Kerry. Kerry's role appears to be emissary for the Democratic administration-in-waiting, saying that the US would accept binding targets of 25%+ at some point in the future.

Australia's vaciliation on binding targets stems from Rudd's committment to be economically responsible while ushering in revolutionary change. Nelson's ploy of ratifying Kyoto and then exploiting angst over short-term target pain is cheap politics and a decided headache for the PM.

Against this backdrop, the EU's alliance with China and a group of developing countries such as India, Brazil and South Africa acknowledges the necessity for action and their common philsophical belief that developed countries must accept targets before developing countries.

Rudd's position is a diplomatic tightrope that requires either an expedient piece of fudging or a leap of good faith. The clear import of the UN's desired negotiation range is that 25% would be the minimum target. The range is merely the set of numbers available under the common-but-differentiated principle that Kyoto utilised. Rudd is not going to jeopardise a global agreement, but nor is he going to look like a fiscal gambler so early in his term. Given Rudd needs the Garnaut report, due in June, to set a target, he would surely push to settle the target question at the next COP. His '60% target by 2050' could be the circuit breaker: if he can push for a compromise for the US, Canada and Japan to accept a binding 50% target by 2050, rather than a global goal, it might satisfy the developing-EU bloc.

This would explain why Rudd is making a procession of statements stating Australia is fair dinkum about climate change. It also explains why Greenpeace are accusing Australia of not going hard in pushing for the binding 25-40% negotiation range in the Bali text.

In spirit, the Rudd government wants to support the binding target range, but practicality demands it delay. The US in a state of flux pending its next presidential epoch. The other procrastinating nations may not be so sanguine.

Bald eagle flys blind on election choices

2007-12-08T20:59:00.000+11:00

Having seen the demise of the deputy, the quest (and it is a long and arduous journey, one half expects it to be directed by Peter Jackson) to find the global sheriff's replacement is on in, well, stage-managed, media confected earnest. Unlike our wonderful system of internal machinations, Americans are rather fond of ritually electing every position possible. Which brings us to the primaries.

Owing to the malignant albatross around Bush's neck, Dick Cheney, being the Vice-President and Condoleeza Rice showing no current interest in higher office following the 'pick up seashells' adventure in Iraq, the Republican candidature is about as clear as the chowder unfortunate candidates get served up on a myriad of campaign stops. So we have both the Republicans and Democrats running competitive primary races.

Both sides have apparent front runners. The Democrat juggernaut-in-chief is attached to one Hillary Clinton, Senator for New York. Curiously, the putative Republican frontrunner is former New York mayor Rudi Guiliani. Has some odd revolution occurred where people suddenly listen to the Yankee states again? Probably not, but the mid-term elections demonstrated the visceral hatred held for the Iraq deployment and disapproval at the abject presidency and behaviour of Congress.

Hillary's campaign is based around the idea that she is the professional, assured and experienced candidate from central casting. Peregrine's distant observation here is that it is Kevin07 without the self-deprecating humour. Hillary's rivals are Barack Obama, who seems to be trying to be the postmodern Kennedy with his appeals to a hope for a better America while being tough on terrorists, John Edwards, whose candidacy is towards the left of the US spectrum is the other frontline contender. Behind them are Bill Richardson, former energy secretary, US Ambassador to the UN and governor of New Mexico and Joe Biden, senator and haunter of foreign policy committees. Hillary's fanbase constitutes a solid bloc of Democrat voters in the larger states, but she has to rely on enough generic Democrats to feel she will provoke the Republicans marshalling to prevent her return to the White House. Hillary is viewed in the traditional Livia mould of the scheming hand behind the throne by her Republican adversaries.

In order to get the nomination, candidates need a coalescence of fundraising and consequent advertising capability and the ability to carry voter support in various states. On paper, Clinton and Obama are competing for the same solid Democratic areas on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, Edwards should pick up support in the Mid-West and the South and Richardson should do well in the South-West. Interestingly, Obama is doing better than Clinton in the Iowa polls. Peregrine suspects that the key factor will be whether nagging doubts about Obama's capability or concern over the polarising Hillary phenonmenon win the day.

On the Republican side...oh dear, oh dear. The party is wedded to bringing out the 'Christian conservative' vote for it to carry the day. The only reason the Republican party can ever even win a presidental election these days is because it relies on a lot of voters voting against their own economic interests. A big factor may well be the pain Iraq is causing to small town communities voting Republican. Early leader John McCain really won't do it again because of his hawkish attitude to Iran. After recent intelligence revelations, he is not likely to improve his ground. Rudi Guiliani has the 9/11 gravitas angle to run on, but has been accused of exploiting it. Not to mention his curious way with women (including one he announced his separation from via a press conference) which is not likely to endear him as a champion of family values. Still Guiliani does remain competitive as a moderate candidate with national security credentials.

Behind these two is the strange case of Mitt Romney, the Mormon who dare not speak his name about anything. On values, it is as though he took his paintball gun loaded with enlightened positions on abortion, gun control and taxation and traded it in for an NRA rifle, fully loaded with the views of the 'Christian Right' (or as Perergine prefers 'the Unchristian wrong'). Compared to Romney, the hapless Kerry was a model of consistency. Mitt might have a name for baseball but it is only the sheer apparent hopelessness of the Unchristian wrong's prospects that even led to his candidacy being taken seriously. What the Republicans really want is to have Schwarznegger run for president.

In the meantime, another Unchristian wrong pretender, Fred Thompson, was drafted to run. Fred reminds me of Comedy Inc's superhero Blokeman, who saves the day but doesn't work Sundays or me day off. Fred has a youthful wife who is a high powered operative, and is probably hoping to run as Messalina to Fred's Claudius. Only Fred seems by his lack of enthusiasm to be doing the pumpkinification for his opponents, even walking out of a campaign stop to eat a burger on his bus.

The search for a credible contender has led to Mike Huckabee, a hoky multi-term Governor of Arkansas. Huckabee is playing the Bush Trojan horse game of appearing folksy, conservative and ingenue. No he is not. A former Baptist minister, Huckabee espouses rejection of evolution and a flat tax policy. Huckabee has flown under the radar but one does wonder what the media might do with him once he gets into their sights.

Huckabee is going to do pretty well in the southern states. The critical question is whether he can eliminate Romney's plastic challenge and get into a direct fight with Guiliani. If he can, he has some hope of getting the nomination. If not, Guiliani has to be a strong chance.

When America finally votes, we will have some idea of the conviction the various campaigns have instilled in the voters.

Nelson in search of Trafalgar...he won't find it with Garrett

2007-12-07T13:12:00.000+11:00

Possibly the best thing about the unlikely ascension of Brendan Nelson, possibly the only medical doctor to sit on a front bench and never go near the health portfolio, is the ready list of allusions to that great English naval hero. Nelson, whom Peregrine took to calling The Human Cockatoo some years back owing to his unique coiffure (perhaps the real reason why Bronwyn the anti-socialist has been recalled was as special advisor on hair care?), sounds like the sort of soft-spoken individual needed to soothe the ructions in the post-Howard Liberal party.

The key target at the minute appears to be Peter Garrett, who Nelson has promised to chase down every foxhole, alcove and locked vault Labor attempt to hide him from scrutiny. Aha! perhaps if Labor had gone after Tony Abbott when he was elevated to the frontbench many moons ago, it would have got itself elected prior to the Sydney Olympics. Nelson appears to be chasing a chimera. Rudd has separated out climate change and water from Garrett's responsibiities. This has much more to do with the fact that both the jobs require negotiation and economic management, whereas the environment portfolio is essentially cause-based. Hence appointing the negotiator, Penny Wong, to the job makes more sense than the advocate Garrett. If memory serves, there is no hard and fast relationship between answering questions in one house or the other and any similar portfolio.

Nelson has an unenviable problem in the fact that he has to balance 'the Howard legacy', the raging bull, Malcolm of Wentworth and a complicated set of factional rivalries. The Liberal kingmaker, Julie Bishop, is trying her darndest to model herself on Julia Gillard, shadowing her in both the deputy and IR roles. This should in no way surprise given both are IR lawyers. Meanwhile, the good doctor has decided to rely on the wisdom of another Kevin, the disembodied 'tremendous amount of wisdom' and former minister Kevin Andrews. Apparently he is an authority on federal-state relations. Given Andrews' views are best typified by his skillful use of s109 of the Constitution to invalidate the NT's voluntary euthanasia law, it appears the cooperation he will advocate will be of the jackboot variety.

Given the kingmaker's followers are WA work choices supporters, there is a serious question about how they are going to react on supporting Labor's legislation. Nelson is the compromise candidate elevated because Abbott is beyond redemption, not because anyone seriously thinks he is the best leader. He would look like a total mug given his ALP background if he rejected the legislation, but he could well lose support from Bishop's posse if he accepted it.

Malcolm's support comes from a very small group who actually believe in liberal principles (at most maybe ten or so), plus a somewhat larger share of pragmatists. Pragmatism plays a key role here as none of the candidates have both a core group of party supporters or widespread public appeal.

Personality-wise, Nelson conveys an image somewhere between calming and comatose. Depending on how things are going, this either works to his advantage or runs the serious risk of appearing like Crean without the character. Abbott is a hopeless case who will probably inadvertently end up apologising for everything. He is more like Latham than Michael Duffy ever knew and hence no one would put him in charge of anything. Malcolm has something of a Whitlam-esque pompousity to him. He very much conveys the idea of a crash or crash through persona. He undoubtedly has a high intellect and equally high opinion of his own capabilities. The question would be could he fashion sufficient stability in the party and his support base to justify his election.

All of this is a product of the chaos rent by Howard's treatment of Costello as a latter-day Tiberius. Howard did not want Costello to succeed him and did everything possible to set up alternatives. Abbott and Nelson were both elevated and both proved unelectable. Turnbull was then introduced, but he went feral. Brough was the last to be groomed, but he went down with the ship.

Nelson's column of support is made of less stern stuff than its namesake. His key challenges are to find a sensible and coherent partyline on workchoices and climate change. At the minute, the Liberals are behaving like they haven't lost the election, but mum and dad have popped out for the afternoon and left the kids running the house. Mum and Dad are never coming back and the kids have to grow up if they want to get themselves seen as a competent alternative government.

Rudd's rhetorical game of Twister

2007-12-07T12:45:00.000+11:00

Kevin Rudd has been elected on a platform of responsible change. Herein lies his essential difficulty. He must plan major transformations to policy in the areas of education, the economy, health and perhaps foremost of all, climate change, while causing the minimum level of disruption and operating in an economic and historical straitjacket. Like the wayward partner given one last chance to prove he or she can change, Rudd must be on his economic best behaviour.

Rudd is effectively left trying to hold down a series of rhetorical committments without being able to committ to the substance necessary for their immediate fruition. This pattern is most obvious in relation to the education revolution that while criticising the Howard government's woeful performance, does not provide any additional funding for universities.

It is also now playing out on the world stage with Rudd all but suggesting he was verballed by his delegation at Bali. Rudd continually emphasises the long term 60% reduction target by 2050 and refuses to be drawn on specifics until the Garnaut report is released. Determined to be a leader and a honest broker with China and the developing powerhouses, he has to sign up to big cuts but cannot actually say that until Garnaut reports. Here again he is making grand rhetorical statements while fudging on the detail until the evidence of economic responsibility is available.

The perils of retail politics - particularly in a country given five years of successive tax cuts - means that Rudd was forced to offer some tax cuts. Swan is running two messages that are true but inherently contradictory, namely that Howard was the highest taxing PM in history and that the economy is subject to inflationary pressures. He cannot very well turn around and cancel the tax cut because he would look like a hypocritical Scrooge. This puts $31 billion of extra pressure on Rudd over the budget cycle which constrains his ability to close the gap between rhetoric and real spending. On the other hand, a number of economists have commented that while Rudd gets some credit for his dramatic end to the spendathon, his record is tarnished by acquiescing on the original tax cut.

Rudd is thus left with a sackload of aspirational promises with very tight constraints for their delivery. At some point, responsibility demands that the community will be asked whether it carea more about microlevel relief or solving problems on a national or internaional scale.

Drafting the Bali Protocol

2007-12-05T15:25:00.000+11:00

The Kyoto Protocol was intended to be a test drive of applying market mechanisms to achieving environmental policy objectives. In addition to this, it has proven what happens when skeptical neoconservatives interfere in a process they never understood nor were party to in the first place. Given the Peugeot model neoconservative, Nicolas Sarkozy, is a firm believer in the need for climate action, there is hope this nonsensical stalemate will not detract from the main game.

The Bali Protocol is the main game. The IPCC's warnings on climate peril are now becoming so strong that it would be a monumental disaster to not at the very least get underlying agreement on a timetable for binding targets for all countries. The question remains how should this be done.

The crux of climate negotiations is how to accommodate both the need to cut greenhouse emissions and the right of countries to develop their economies. The fundamental principle here is that targets must be equitable both on an intergenerational and intragenerational level. Kyoto operated on the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, which in short means coal-fired Australia got a small increase entitlement on 1990 emission levels while hydro NZ got a small decrease.

Taking this principle up collectively, what the international community should do is divide the emission share of the developed world and the share of the developing world. The first step is to construct a business as usual baseline (BAU) for emissions by say 2100. Then using the IPCC science, establish a desired stabilisation level (DSL). The period during which greenhouse emissions have been sent into the atmosphere could then be broken up into a past and future industrialisation phase, representing the two ages of industrialisation, one for the developed and one for the developing world. The phase change could be the year 2000.

The past and future industrialisation phases can then be calculated by seeing when the DSL will be reached. Say the DSL is 500 ppm and this will be reached by 2050 on BAU. Developed nations could take targets based on both phases, while developing nations could take targets for only 2000 onwards. Developed nation targets could be effective immediately, while developing nations could be deferred until a phase-in date, such as 2020. In the interim, developing nations could sign up for a range of preliminary programmes such as renewable energy targets, afforestation targets or energy efficiency standards.

This would mean that developing countries would have probably met sizable targets during the non-binding period, giving them plenty of scope and development capacity to handle targets once the phase-in date was reached.

Liberal recipe for chaos

2007-12-04T00:50:00.000+11:00

Having just had the building Howard locked them in burn down around them, the remaining Liberals now have to regroup into something resembling an alternative government. At present, the temptation appears great that they will resemble Iraq after the fall of Saddam. Devoid of their strongman, tribal tensions and personality clashes will rent a suitably mindless civil war upon the landscape.

The problem the Liberals would always have was what would happen when they lost control of the agenda. Howard prospered by constructing his own virtual reality where ideology reigned supreme. Once Rudd became leader, Howard lost control permanently. The election merely made this official. His wise heads, Costello, Downer and Ruddock are so repugnant to the public and vulnerable to attack that none wanted the thankless job of heading Howard's faction.

During Howard's tenure there was a large majority backing him and a smaller group backing Costello. At various times, Abbott and Nelson rose briefly before proving unelectable. Late in the term, Turnbull arose to challenge Costello as successor-in-waiting. When Howard lost, a vaccuum arose which Abbott attempted to fill. Unfortunately for Tony, his not so good friend Bernie Banton had died and so his first official duty was likely to be attending the state funeral of a man he had accused of 'not necessarily being pure of heart' a few weeks earlier. Hence Nelson was drafted from the deputy candidate ranks to fill the Howard void.

Costello mused on his career prospects and then reinvented himself as party whip. Costello's former faction fell in behind Turnbull, who also picked up some of the more pugnacious realists in the party who considered him to be some kind of Australian Schwarzenegger capable of taking his green Wentworth appeal national. However Howard's faction could not swallow Malcolm's prescription and preferred Nelson's apologia to genuine contrition.

Complicating matters is the Thatcherite kindergarten teacher from Perth, Julie Bishop. Bishop seems to be labouring under the illusion that she has been elected leader of the autonomous state of Western Australia, primarily on a platform typified by workchoices. In her kingmaker capacity, she has the potential to create a mighty headache for her eastern leaders for whom workchoices is electoral poison. Methinks she rather fancies a celebrity death match with Julia Gillard and will stay in the deputy position until Gillard takes over. This raises the prospect of Abbott and Costello returning to create further mischief as bearers of the workchoices mantle. Costello's stocks may rise if the economy performs badly over the term and economic management comes back into vogue. Abbott has proven to be accident-prone, nasty and out of touch and is totally unelectable.

Given Turnbull lost by three votes, he is unlikely to give up the fight when so many observers consider him the best chance of unseating Rudd, not least the Australian newspaper, former loyal supporter of Howard's regime.

Washup on Howard's Wipeout

2007-12-03T13:01:00.000+11:00

Peregrine has been on not so much a seven second as a seven day delay and hence this summary comes somewhat after the collective bloghorse has bolted (although no one has heard much out of Mr Bolt himself recently).

Rudd won this election because he found a persuasive narrative that gave concrete reasons why Howard had passed his use-by date. The key to his success was to restrict Howard's economic advantage to the Liberals' citadel seats. The swings in many citadel seats were lower in this election than the previous one with Latham as leader. It seems a proven leader is required to challenge generational incumbency.

Rudd's economic wedging of Howard first on microeconomic issues like grocery and fuel prices and housing affordability then on the macroeconomic issue of interest rates effectively neutralised the economic trump card in the marginals. Throw in workchoices resentment and a swag of outer suburban and regional seats voted Labor, particularly in Queensland where Rudd had both home ground advantage and a swelling band of former One Nation voters suspicious of economic reform. The fortuitous replacement of Peter Beattie seemed to diffuse the council amalgamations issue.

This also explains Rudd's curious assurance that he would not push for referenda on a republic or reconciliation during his first term in office.

This election was thus similar to 1998 - except the marginals preferenced Labor, not the Coalition.

Climate change acted largely as a consensus issue with most voters who turned on economic issues in agreement with Rudd on the environment. The seats of Corangamite and Eden Monaro fell largely on this issue, while swings in numerous South Australian and Victorian rural seats appear to correspond to water concerns. However due to the failure of citadel liberals to consummate their flirtation with progressive politics, few seats fell on this basis alone.

The net result is a clear rejection of workchoices and inaction on climate change. It also indicates a residual concern among liberals that Labor cannot manage the economy. Thus Rudd has a provisional licence to govern and prove his credentials to the community.

Plenty of room for Rudd's souffle

2007-11-23T13:32:00.000+11:00

Galaxy's latest poll, which either shows we are all on Mars or David Briggs' outfit is polling the Andromeda system, provides just a dribble of sustenance for those Liberals bravely clinging to the-historic-16-seat margin argument as a reason why Labor will not win.

It is true that 16 seats is a very large buffer to make up. But it is by no means unprecedented. Labor oppositions have traditionally come off shockingly low bases, hence they have needed two steps to get close enough to win power. Whitlam won 18 seats in 1969 with a 7% swing. Hayden, while winning only 13 seats in 1980, did so from an appalling position. He received a 4.2% swing, mainly from minor party voters swinging behind him.

Hayden's result would give Rudd a statistical tie - 51.5 to 48.5 is the exact point on the pendulum where there is no clear majority. Whitlam's result gives Labor a 54.4to 45.6 win - in short a landslide. This is also almost exactly the current average of the four major polls.

History shows that when the opposition gets an insufficient swing to govern, the average swing since 1949 is 2.25%. That swing would give Labor 49.6%. Clearly, this is not your average election. Rudd's standing and perceived competence is daylight compared to Latham and he is on track to at least pinch votes from the Liberals. A conservative estimate would be a swing of 4.5% - and even that includes 1.8% for the anti-Latham swing, 2.25% for the average swing and only 0.5% for other factors.

Latham's result in 2004 was appalling. Labor achieved just 37.6% on primaries. Interestingly, because of the post-modern third party politics era, that awful primary left Labor at 47.3% of the two-party preferred vote. The Liberal-National vote cannot go much higher than its 2004 position. Labor can thus move from a terrible position to a very good position with a relatively small change in primaries.

The minimum primary vote swing from the polls is 4.4% (Galaxy) ranging up to 10.4% (AC Nielsen). Using the unscientific approach of avergaing these results gives a 7.4% swing - i.e. 45% on primaries. That is in line with a 1969-style swing.

Both in polling and qualitative terms, this election's trend looks more like 1969 than 1980. Rudd is not taking votes solely from minor parties - in fact he may be losing some of them back to the Greens. We know that 35% of unionists voted for Howard last time - bet they will not do that after being labelled thugs. We also know that there is a big swing among mortgage holders who may well switch straight from one major to another. This points to Labor gaining the majority of its new votes from the Liberal-Nationals and putting it in the box seat to take advantage of Green preferences to win marginal and safe seats alike.

On this basis, I predict that Labor will get around 45% of the primary vote, the Liberal-Nationals around 40.5% and the Greens around 9%. Labor to win 54.7-45.3% on two-party preferred around 90 seats.

Will 'Lindsay-gate' be gold for Labor in Goldstein?

2007-11-22T12:18:00.000+11:00

Andrew Robb, Liberal Minister for Mudslinging, appears to be suffering from a political case of papal infallibility. Not content with making unsubstantiated allegations that twelve Labor candidates has not properly resigned from their 'offices of profit under the Crown', he has now attempted to bury the disgusting leaflet distributed by Liberal party operatives in Lindsay.

Robb has point blank refused to withdraw or apologise for his earlier allegations, which even the Herald Sun were a 'glitch' to the campaign. In fact, he even repeatedly demanded Penny Wong, Labor's campaign spokesperson, apologise for stating the widely reported suggestion that a member of the NSW Liberal executive was involved in the leaflet scandal. He does not seem to realise that his seat of Goldstein is mentioned in numerous dispatches as one reliant on true liberals maintaining their allegiance to his party. Even with a margin of 10.1% he is not safe. Just ask Joe Hockey and Michael Johnson.

If the false allegations which eleven of the candidates promptly refuted were not bad enough, Robb has two scandals to contend with. Both of them try to make political currency out of the Bali bombing.

In the Melbourne seat of La Trobe, the high profile Labor candidate, Rodney Cocks won the Medal of Conspicious Honour for acts in the aftermath of the Bali bombing. Anonymous Liberal sources contacted The Age to offer 'discrepancies' between Cocks' account and a journalist's report on his actions.

The extraordinarily inflammatory pamphlet distributed in Lindsay thanked Labor for supporting clemency for the Bali bombers. The lame defences of retiring MP, Jackie Kelly, suggest she either has an extremely nasty sense of humour or other intentions. Somehow I do not think that the Bali bombing is a source of humour.

It is blatantly obvious to anyone viewing the demographics and politics of Western/Southern Sydney seats such as Lindsay, Macarthur, Greenway, Banks and Hughes that they have low proportions of non-English speaking residents, high proportions of identified Christians, high votes for One Nation and swung higher than average behind Howard in 1996 and 2001. It is also known that there is currently a considerable controversy surrounding a proposed Islamic school in Camden. The area is under one of the highest levels of mortgage stress in the country and polling puts Lindsay as a lost Liberal cause and Macarthur and Greenway in Labor's sights.

It does not take Einstein to make the correlation that pushing an anti-Islamic barrow might be worth a few votes for a desperate government. After all, the loss of seats like Macarthur and Greenway would be a total repudiation of Howard's economic program and undermine the fostering of religious and cultural intolerance.

With the news that the Labor candidate for Dobell, Craig Thomson, is now being accused of being of bad character because of evidence he gave in an industrial hearing a decade ago, it seems that Robb is leading a counter-offensive, seeking to knock Labor's national issue-based campaign off-balance by putting local candidates on the defensive on dubious character grounds.

The question is whether any of the tarnishing of Labor candidates in marginal seats will be offset by a true liberal backlash of Robb's mendacious behaviour. Will he become the poster boy for sleazy attacks in the same way Joe Hockey is paying as the face of workchoices?

King Canute and the Lucky Country

2007-11-21T00:05:00.000+11:00

Our language is peppered with unique phrases harking back to other times. Fossilised imprints of ideas remain in the collective mind long after the actual knowledge they represent has died away. Often the intent of the phrase is ironic. Language is a subtle creature where the merest tilt of a word can provide sufficient wiggle room to squirm out of most predicaments.

The caretaker (or possibly undertaker PM judging by the tenor of the anti-union scare campaign) PM has attained the status of a Jedi knight for his use of lexiconic gymnastics. As a tribute to this virtuosity, I offer two such allusions which demonstrate the fragile nature of meaning: King Canute and the Lucky Country.

King Canute was a Danish king of England during the 11th century. He is best remembered for attempting to hold back the tide. The tide was not so obliging. A Canute in common parlance is one who resists the bleeding obvious to no avail, possibly involving a spectacularly conceited act of hubris. Only it does not really mean that at all. The whole point of Canute's placing his throne on the beach was to demonstrate to his sycophantic courtiers that there were limits to the king's power. The real cautionary tale is lost by losing the edge of meaning. It is a lesson that rulers of whatever colour forget at their peril. This is clearly the case with the aforementioned PM's contemptous treatment of workchoices and climate change.

The expression 'the lucky country' was popularised after the historian Donald Horne's book of the same name was released in the 1960s. Horne warned that an Australia blessed with agricultural riches should not be complacent and rely on utopian (or perhaps for Kevin Rudd, brutopian) abundance. The warning tone of the message seems to go missing at times, the title seen as a note of thanks or an observation that 'she'll be right' on a national level.

The current context of the 'lucky country' phrase relates to economic prosperity, particularly in relation to securing the future post the China/India boom. The binary opposite popularised in the 1980s was that Australia should become the clever country, an idea that seems to have collapsed on the Howard watch. Clearly a student of Horne's true meaning would advocate upskilling our students to function in an information economy and have a forward planning approach to issues such as climate change.

When next you hear one of those obscure allusions like Canute and his penchant for paddling consider the true meaning behind the easy phrase. It will surely be more enlightening than listening to 'working families' and 'union bosses' repeated five hundred times.

The Gore Election

2007-11-20T15:30:00.000+11:00

Al Gore may have seemed something of a historical curiosity to most Australians when he was in power. As Vice-President, he did not seem particularly remarkable beside the charismatic Clinton. He achieved minor notoriety for allegedly claiming to have 'invented the internet'. At that stage, it seemed far fetched he may play a defining role in an Australian election.

The first stanza of Gore's influence is now fairly well-known. Gore's Oscar/Noble Prize winning An Inconvenient Truth, not so much polemic as persuasive pleading, crystallised the mist of concern Australians have long felt on climate change. Suddenly the issue became mainstream and Howard's economic colossus was left stuck with feet of clay. There is a major revolt on from true liberal voters, so much so that Howard is launching all manner of warnings of the 'red-green menace'. Undoubtedly, Gore played a key role in turning climate change into a mainstream issue.

What has previously not been apparent is the relevance of the flipslide of Gore's career. The reason Gore got the time to pursue climate change is because he lost the 2000 election to Bush in highly controversial circumstances. The Florida outcome came about because of the closeness of the election.

If one reviews the polls here, at first glance it looks like a rout. Look closely and Labor's vote is staggered, ever so neatly to give it enough seats to construct a decent majority. Seats like Bennelong (margin 4.5%), Robertson (6.9%) and Leichhardt (11.1%) could all conceivably fall to Labor by about one percent. The closeness of these contests creates a question of legitimacy, and if legal grounds can be found to challenge that election, Liberals playing from the Republican playbook are sure to find them. In the regard, the conservatives best friend is section 44 of the Constitution.

Under section 44(iv) no person occupying 'an office of profit under the Crown' can nominate for election. The key time is the time of nomination. The only problem is precisely what that means.

We have already seen this with the furore over George Newhouse's slipshod nomination in Wentworth. According to the Herald Sun, 13 other Labor candidates may be ineligible. This begs two questions: firstly, assuming it is correct, why are so many candidates so bad at crucial paperwork and secondly is the Liberal party planning to go quietly into the night or quietly into the Court of Disputed Returns. I find it highly unlikely that these Labor candidates did not resign from their positions or that they held them without seeking legal advice on the nomination requirements.

It beggars belief that so many candidates, at least seven of whom are in very tightly contested seats, could have made invalid nominations. The Parliamentary Library has expressed concern that using these provisions in an 'unduly technical manner' leads to costly by-elections which only return the original winner.

Either this does not bode well for the propriety of Labor MPs or it does not suggest the Liberal party will be overly keen to accept the umpire's verdict.

Either way, Al Gore and the two heads of his political career may have a big bearing on the outcome of the election.

The real election contest

2007-11-18T14:18:00.000+11:00

Kevin Rudd's Labor juggernaut has all but dispatched John Howard's spluttering Liberal machine (with unhinged National caboose) to the annals of history. However, Rudd's success is not total. The same political shift to the right that has facilitated Rudd's centralisation of Labor has opened up a new contest: with the Greens. Whereas Rudd has been fighting his battles on the right flank, neutralising Howard's wedges and attempts to posit him as economically irresponsible, the Greens have been agitating to be both the true believers on climate change and the 'third party insurance' in the Senate.

Labor lost a large number of disgruntled voters to the Greens at the last election, mainly disenchanted with the parties' incompetence as much as environmental policy. Under Beazley Mark II, Greens preferences elevated a pretty ordinary 40% primary vote to a stratospheric two party-preferred lead. Rudd's ascension consolidated Green defectors into Labor's primary vote. The Greens suddenly found an electorate focussed on water and climate change issues poised to turn away from it. On a micro level, this perplexed position may have given them something in common with Liberals facing annihilation in 2001.

The Tasmanian pulp mill - and specifically Garrett's forced acquiescence - is akin to the Tampa boarding for the Labor/Green dynamic. It focussed attention back on a physical environmental issue rather than the perception of Labor's competence. Just as in 2001 when children overboard reventilated the Liberals' Tampa show of strength, Rudd's perceived repudiation of Garrett's 'sign-first-and-ask-questions-later' approach on climate change solidified concerns on the Labor/Green faultline and caused Labor's credibility on environmental issues to fall.

The result is starting to show up in marginal seat polling. In Tasmanian seats, the pulp mill issue is felt most keenly. The seat of Bass has turned from Labor winning on primaries to heavily reliant on Green preferences. However, the real key may be on the mainland. Climate change is consistently rated among the top issues with Liberal voters, particularly in seats with a high proportion of 'tree/sea changers' such as Eden Monaro, Corangamite and Richmond. Seats such as North Sydney, Wentworth, Ryan, Sturt and Stirling have a high number of true liberals flirting with crossing the line to Labor.

It has been assumed that these voters are frightened to move across the 'Green barrier' on economic grounds. This may be the case, but the primary source of their disillusionment is inaction by Howard on climate change. If Rudd is seen as not a lot better, then it is possible that Liberal voters may go halfway and vote Green but preference their local Liberal. This probably won't affect the result: Howard's stocks with the 'battlers' are at an all-time low. However it might turn a potential annihilation into a close defeat. A primary swing of 4% from Labor to Green will cost Labor 1.2% of their margin in each seat, and in seats with big margins to make up that may be the difference between winning and losing.

In any case, a government elected heavily on the back of Green preferences will have to take serious notice of Green policy proposals across the board.

Market failure: Wood demonstrates inadequacies of economy-based approach to climate change

2007-11-14T15:22:00.000+11:00

The Australian's Economics editor, Alan Wood, is a champion of the free market. His latest article targets the issue of clean energy targets and how they contradict the philosophy of an emissions trading market. In the process, he demonstrates precisely why a market approach to alleviating climate change will not work if its sole ally is economic principle.

He first makes the common mistake of eliding Howard's clean energy and Rudd's renewable energy targets. Clean energy encompasses clean coal and nuclear. As Guy Pearse has demonstrated, the locked in funding for coal companies means that the entire Howard clean energy target is subscribed to clean coal. This mistake is equivalent to allowing cordial as a substitute for fresh fruit.

Wood then makes the claim that the chances of meeting Rudd's target of 20% renewable energy by 2020 without 'massive taxpayer subsidies or a technological miracle' are negligible. The current market share for renewables is a tick over 9%, mainly contributed by hydro. In reality, the required scale-up is then 11% over 13 years. My understanding of Rudd's definition incoporates natural gas, which could feasibly be scaled up to provide equivalent baseload power in the required time. That aside, I will assume that on face value emissions-laden coal power is significantly cheaper than renewables.

The key phrase being at face value. Wood's analysis assumes that coal operates without subsidies from government as compared to renewables. Greenpeace estimated that the average annual subsidy to coal, oil and gas companies is $9 billion, whereas renewables receive $330 million. Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane justified this state of affairs on the principle of proportional representation, saying that renewables did very well for the share of power they produced.

Wood's premise is that the coupling of emissions trading schemes with renewable targets amounts to triple taxation of energy consumers, paying first for the cost of carbon through trading, then through higher renewable energy costs and finally being hit by having their income tax spent subsidising the renewables. Renewable energy targets pick winners which is by definition undesirable.

First, an emissions trading scheme adjusts the price of carbon. Renewables produce lessening levels of carbon and hence become more competitive in such a scheme. Secondly, as renewable market share increases, the cost of production decreases for consumers. Thirdly, if the true subsidy position is considered, taxpayers get a much better deal from renewables with future potential compared to a coal industry which will inevitably contract. If anything, propping up an industry by reducing competition and innovation is uneconomic and ultimately counterproductive.

Wood then has two further objections to the policy framework. He questions the efficacy of emissions trading altogether and then, telling, suggests that haste is not desirable as emissions can be stabilised at 650-700 parts per million. He may well have a point on emissions trading, which is susceptible to problems such as an inconsistent or inappropriate carbon price and integrity in monitoring emissions.

However, the 650-700 ppm is a dangerous theory which smacks of an unawareness of his material. Although past emission records are imperfect, current carbon levels exceed those of any of the interglacial periods during the most recent geological era. The IPCC has estimated that they exceed anything seen since prior to the most recent pattern of Ice Ages (20 million years ago). Nobody is quite sure when the carbon levels were last at 650-700 ppm, but the dinosaurs might have done fairly nicely in those conditions and they were cold blooded.

The argument that abatement will cost 'trillions of dollars' fails to recognise the level of subsidies given to fossil fuels and the ability of renewable energies to do a lot when given a bit of support by governments. It merely takes government allocation of trading permits, calculates their monetary value and adds them together, then factors increased fossil fuel prices across the economy. In other words, it misinterprets the starting baseline, leaves out the benefits, manufactures negatives and then extrapolates them unreasonably.

It is bad science dressed up as bad economics. The market does not have all the answers, but it at least needs to have all the information at its disposal to work properly.

The gap between self image and reality

2007-11-14T09:52:00.000+11:00

John Howard was quite willing to stand before his entranced party on Monday and proclaim 'love me or loath me, the Australian people know what I stand for'. In light of this, I checked out the Liberal party's website for what the party publicly states it stands for. The website cites eight core beliefs which define Liberal party values:

1. We believe in the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples; and we work towards a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives; and maximises individual and private sector initiative.

* Except we don't recognise the rights of Aboriginal people to self-determination which is why we abolished ATSIC and latterly the permit system and consistently attacked High Court decisions (Mabo and Wik) on native title.

* Except we have introduced the most draconian legislation to control payments to the unemployed, including single mothers and the disabled, where failure to perform fifteen hours of work a week can lead to losing payments for eight weeks.

2. We believe in government that nurtures and encourages its citizens through incentive, rather than putting limits on people through the punishing disincentives of burdensome taxes and the stifling structures of Labor's corporate state and bureaucratic red tape.

* Which is why we introduced the GST and Workchoices, two of the most hideous complicated legislative programmes in history. Not content with that we introduced the ad hoc fairness test with no guidelines as to what constituted 'fair compensation' for lost conditions.

* Into the bargain, we turned remote NT shopkeepers into micro-accountants, quarantining support payments based on printouts sent from Canberra.

3. We believe in those most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy - the freedom of thought, worship, speech and association.

* Which is why we accept donations from the Exclusive Brethren which was implicated in interference in the NZ election, forcing the resignation of the opposition leader.

* Which is why large sections of the party actively discourage involvement by people from non-European backgrounds or anyone who has views contrary to those of the so-called Christian right.

* Which is why we are trying to destroy the remainder of the union movement by making it almost impossible for union organisers to visit workplaces and involvement akin to social death.

4. We believe in a just and humane society in which the importance of the family and the role of law and justice is maintained.

* Tell that to Izhar Ul Haque.

* As long as you are not actually suspected of either being involved in anything remotely close to terrorism or being disorientated from a non-Anglo Saxon background (Cornelia Rau or Vivian Solon).

* Families are so important we made it easy for workers to lose their penalty rates so they didn't have to be together on weekends.

5. We believe in equal opportunity for all Australians; and the encouragement and facilitation of wealth so that all may enjoy the highest possible standards of living, health, education and social justice.

* But if you did not have equal opportunity to start with, bad luck. University education should be confined to those who will use it responsibly and not flirt with radical ideas like postmodernism.

* Education should be about the 'three rs'. Nothing else, and Australian history.

* We really believe that the highest possible standard of living involves buying lots of stuff whether you can afford it or not.

* We believe everyone should get the best health care so long as it's private and the drug companies get a fair go at getting their R&D budget back.

6. We believe that, wherever possible, government should not compete with an efficient private sector; and that businesses and individuals - not government - are the true creators of wealth and employment.

* We really believe that there is no such thing as an inefficient private sector. All private sectors are by defintion efficient. Some just need support against public sectors.

7. We believe in preserving Australia's natural beauty and the environment for future generations.

* We like whales but we don't really think the environment is that important compared to the economy.

* We don't think climate change is a problem, but if it is, little old us can't do anything anyway. Windmills kill birds. If we need to protect the Barrier Reef, we will cover it in shadecloth.

8. We believe that our nation has a constructive role to play in maintaining world peace and democracy through alliance with other free nations.

* Except through anything that looks like the United Nations. National interest is the only way to go and we can only do that through other forums.

Bigger crash than Ben Hur?

2007-11-12T23:42:00.000+11:00

The faux Roman epic Ben Hur is famous for two key reasons. For both its spectacular length (in some quarters tedium) and its extremely nasty chariot race where most of the contenders get disposed of by a variety of means unknown to the Marquis of Queensbury. In fact, its shares much in common with the Coalition's election campaign.

The entire enterprise appears to be a barely disguised mirage rather reminiscent of the Bank of Queensland commercial where no sooner have a young couple signed their home loan papers than the desk, walls and personnel of the bank evaporate into dust. The message presented to voters, the campaign organisation and the visual presentation of the ads themselves borders on shambolic.

Rather than demonstrate any convincing alternative policy, Howard's launch chose to augment funding for Rudd's policies. This must surely have killed the 'me-too/ vision' debate where he was finally getting a hint of traction. Somewhere between Howard's 'go for growth' slogan and the wish to have an 'opportunity society', Howard's agenda-setting mojo failed to make its customary appearance.

However, today's newfound embrace of bipartisanship poker is only the latest episode where Howard and his campaign staff have failed to take a trick. Basic issues such as getting Tony Abbott to the church (or even the National Press Club) on time appear to be secondary to finding new and unusual ways of alluding to trade unions.

On policy, the obvious weakness is Howard having no clear plan for the future. The whole point is that Howard only had one plan he ever told the voters about in 1998, then surreptitiously introduced everything after he gained re-election based on Labor's perceived incompetence. Howard failed to realise that Rudd steadfastly refused to be wedged and did not adapt. Despite early attempts to turn climate change into an economic issue, Howard had no idea how to. A lame duck to the even lamer Costello.

The slogan 'go for growth' was absurd in the face of a workchoices mutiny and rising interest rates. Even the ads themselves are incompetent. The attack ads linking federal and state Labor go through the union hoop thus diluting their message. For some bizarre reason the Liberals are running the word 'grow' in italics. To paraphrase a Labor ad, people want a 'better' life, Mr Howard. They do not necessary care about nebulous ideas of 'growth'. Not only does this look painful, it reinforces the feeling of resentment those not sharing in the boom are feeling.

The most incompetent use of text in an ad must be the banners inserted into Howard's presentation on the ABC. Liberal party staff must have thought it would be great to emphasise Howard's key themes in the fashion of Sky News. Only someone forgot to tell them that the ad was broadcast in Widescreen format and most people still have ordinary analogue TVs. If anyone in plasma land was even watching Howard on the ABC at 9:30pm on a Saturday night, they would have got the old spiel about unions and states being the sources of all ills. What the plasmaless people for whom Howard has developed a tin ear saw was how 'ions' would ruin the economy and that 'ate' are to blame for interest rates.

Well, perhaps if we did pursue nuclear power and relied on fate to get us home, we would have economic and interest rate problems.

Blank cheque mandate gives away to credit election

2007-11-12T00:20:00.000+11:00

Nick Minchin's claim that 'our workplace relations policy last time set out the goals for the current laws' is partially correct. Technically speaking, the Liberals have long advocated removing unfair dismissal laws and constructing the labour market system around AWAs. However, the key question is the degree to which those reforms were impressed upon the Australian public.

The big change on unfair dismissal was the scope to which Howard's exemption applied. The Democrats had beaten back forty-one attempts to introduce laws abolishing unfair dismissal claims for small business between 1996 and 2006. However, the figures presented to the Democrats limited this exception to ten employees. Workchoices applies the exemption to all business employing less than a hundred people.

The key change on AWAs was the removal of the no disadvantage test. Prior to 2006, all AWAs had to meet a no disadvantage test. This test meant the employee did not suffer a disadvantage in comparison with the relevant award. In announcing the abolition of the test, the Coalition described it as 'absurd' and 'ridiculously complex'. The pale attempt to diffuse the furore these changes provoked, the so-called 'Fairness Test', merely provided for employees to receive compensation for lost conditions including leave and penalty rates. The catch was that this compensation need not be monetary and had to be determined on a case by case basis.

This arrogant view that the electorate granted the Coalition has aroused concern that governments not be given such arbitrary power in future. This is demonstrated by polls suggesting the Greens are getting traction as the party to hold the balance of power in the Senate. Rudd's approval rating seems to not be giving him the type of blank cheque voters offered a Coalition government running on 'keeping interest rates low' and border security. It is a loan that he has taken out on promises of taking concrete action on climate change, restoring the position of employees in the labour market, fixing the health system and improving the position of 'working families' on housing affordability, rents, grocery and petrol prices and child care.

The big question will Rudd have the political capital to pay up when the voters collect their debts.

Ignoring the lessons of Bill and Bertie

2007-11-11T22:47:00.000+11:00

The latest descent into the gutter attributed to the Liberal party 'dirt unit' demonstrates yet again the spectacular stupidity of launching personal attacks on the character of politicians. The allegation that Julia Gillard was somehow involved in some kind of union fraud exercise are no more likely to garner voter support than 'Strippergate' or any other pile of dirt. Whoever is pedalling this and Strippergate has clearly failed to understand that recent character accusations have created public sympathy for the accused and been counterproductive for the accusors. In short, they have not learnt the lessons of Bill and Bertie.

Bill Clinton and Bertie Ahern come from opposite sides of politics. One was US President and as most of the known universe knows was subject to the most tawdry investigation in political history owing to his penchant for a certain intern. After initally denying the whole affair, Clinton admitted involvement with Monica Leewinsky then ran a technical argument over the issue of 'relations'. The net result was that Clinton received public sympathy. It was however, very useful in galvanising the Republican vote at the following election.

Bertie Ahern is the Irish PM who seems to have been involved in everything from signing blank cheques for his party leader to rather shady dealings with wealthy businessmen. Ahern was confronted with evidence of donations he had received and apologised to the parliament and repaid monies. When the opposition Fine Gael party tried to make capital out of the situation, the opinion polls showed a rise in Ahern's support earning a lecture from the Irish media. The dodgy dealings of the so-called Teflon Taoiseach were immaterial to the election outcome, if anything garnering public sympathy for the embattled leader who subsequently won the election.

It should by now be clear that unless an accusation comes with hard evidence of gross misfeasance by a public official, it is likely to backfire on the accusor. Enter Kevin Rudd and Strippergate. Rudd's wonkish image was feared in some quarters to be off-putting to the electorate, but when details of his inadvertent strip club visit became known, plus his public apology, the result was a surge in popularity.

Apart from effectively conceding that Rudd is untouchable by not concentrating their policy attacks on him, the attack on Gillard is extraordinarily stupid as there are valid policy reasons which should engender concern among some conservative voters. Gillard was intimately associated with Latham's uncosted Medicare Gold policy. This big ticket item seems to have been erased from the collective political memory. Couple that with her membership of the Left faction (which unofficially makes her ineligble to be Treasurer) and there is sufficient ground to instil doubt in voters.

Instead we have the bizarre strategy of treating her like some kind of Antipodean Hillary Clinton, complete with murky dealings during her legal career. I suspect Labor is quite happy to see her image as the Australian Boudicea, standing up to the evil empire of muck-raking journalists and unreconstructed misogynists such as Bill Heffernan get further support from such unfounded allegations.

Politics of 'smear and fear' may have some utility to galvanise one's (extremist) base, but they are unlikely to endear the accusor to the public at large. Unless someone does have some evidence that compelling ties an official to a heinous crime, then in the current climate they would be best advised to concentrate on policy.

Something does not add up

2007-11-08T12:12:00.000+11:00

A quick perusal of the Newspoll marginal seat figures offers a beacon of hope for the Liberals. At first glance, it appears that the Ruddslide is making a mess of the Nationals vote while their city cousins are holding up.

Newspoll's survey covers the seats of Dobell, Bennelong, Eden Monaro, Lindsay, Parramatta and Wentworth. The average Liberal primary vote in these seats was 47%, while the average Labor vote was 34.8%. Newspoll has the current Liberal 6 seat average at 46%, a swing of precisely nothing, while Labor is at 47%, or around 12%. The upshot of this poll is that all the voters in the 'other category' have turned around and given their primary vote to the Libs during the campaign.

One would expect a high primary vote in Bennelong, given it is the Prime Minister's seat. Even if you buy this argument, one must assume Labor will pick up several percent off the Libs in Eden Monaro (swing seat), Parramatta (a Sydney version of seats like Adelaide and Brisbane showing big Labor swings) and Lindsay in Western Sydney (retiring MP, mortgage stress). I cannot believe that Labor's primary vote is 47% in Wentworth as this is a traditionally conservative seat with a multitude of candidates running on 'Turnbull Minister against the environment'.

I equally cannot believe the corollary of this, that Malcolm of Wentworth has picked up almost all of the (12%) of King defectors and lost none to either the Ruddslide or the bevy of environmental campaigners. An outside possibility is the seat of Dobell is holding something close to the 2004 result on the back of the retiree vote, but that would suggest that Central Coast voters are not under housing stress which is quite simply wrong. I suspect Dobell may end up with a line ball result, which means that the Liberal primary is probably 2-3% less than 2004, similar to the figures in Bennelong.

I suspect that Newspoll is underestimating both the others' vote (i.e. independents) and Green vote in these seats, particularly in Wentworth and Eden Monaro. This also points to an overestimate of the Liberal primary vote 1.5-2% and the Labor vote being exaggerated by 2.5-3%...which sounds remarkably like Galaxy's polling but for the Liberal primary vote.

From this analysis, I would put Lindsay, Parramatta, Eden Monaro in the definite gain category, Bennelong a line ball contest with Labor favoured and Wentworth coming down to preference flows, particularly from climate change candidates, leaning towards Turnbull. Dobell could go either way, although I suspect the figures may have been inflated by the proximity to Howard's grey vote seeking largesse.

Formula one economy driven by reckless P plater

2007-11-08T00:25:00.000+11:00

I suspect that the Reserve Bank must be getting ever so slightly sick of warning the Coalition government to listen to its warnings regarding inflation. Lo and behold, John Howard admitted in the face of the imminent rise:

"If you have a strong economy, you have high world oil prices and you have a drought - some inflation in the system is unavoidable,"

Costello has been telling anyone who listens that he is fiscally responsible in holding a surplus of 1% of GDP as a check on inflation. Perhaps this would be sufficient in a textbook ideal economic climate. Clearly an oil price of $90+ a barrell with an export sector weighed down by an agricultural depression and a high exchange rate does not fit this scenario. One would expect the 'greatest Treasurer in Australia's history' to do something different. But Costello sails merrily along, sitting on the Treasury benches doing...well, not much other than glorified administration.

According to the ABS, the main causes of inflation pressure are vegetable prices, housing and rents. The exponential oil price has not yet fed through, but is sure to put up the price of almost everything. Given the peak oil predictions, a prudent economic manager would be planning for the future, managing a carbon transition program so that oil dependence would be scaled back progressively and reducing our exposure to oil shocks.

On housing, rent and associated costs such as insurance, the Coalition's steadfast refusal to acknowledge the problem has created an inflationary cycle. Rates rise to slow inflation, which causes rents to go up to cover the rate rise. Meanwhile homeowners cannot afford a mortgage, so demand goes up pushing rents up.

If the IPCC climate predictions eventuate, Australian food prices will be permanently higher. This means that some serious planning has to occur to manage those price increases keeping both rural suppliers viable and urban consumers able to afford quality produce.

The main way that the impact of higher oil prices on inflation could be reduced is to encourage rail as a means to transport goods. Either this or greater use of biofuels or gas must be considered.

A major inflationary pressure is the capacity constraints on the economy. Simply put there is insufficient infrastructure (a product of Labor governments terrified of running deficits and Coalition disinterest) to maximise production through major ports such as Newcastle. A further pressure is the skills crisis, particularly in trades, causing wage pressure for those tradesmen.

Australia's economy does behave in some respects like a Formula One vehicle, growing at an average 3.6% a year for the past sixteen years. However, the government's continued insistence on spending money on a cynical basis without a wholisitic long term plan amounts to economic recklessness. It is notable that when Costello produced the Intergenerational Report plotting the challenges of the next 30 years, the main priority was the tax base adjusting for an aging population. There was barely a mention of the need to take any measures to alleviate climate change.

Who do you trust to keep these rates under control?

2007-11-07T17:40:00.000+11:00

In the midst of the interest rate rise commotion, there is another set of rates that we should be asking the leaders whether they have a plan to keep them under control.

The CSIRO reported in May this year that Australia has the most inefficient economy in the developed world in terms of GDP per ton of C02 emitted. The US economy is increasing its carbon efficiency at twice the rate of Australia. Not only that, Australia's carbon emissions have grown at approximately twice the global average over the last 25 years. If emissions proceed on a business as usual basis, they will increase by 70% by 2050.

According to the Prime Minister's Taskforce on Emissions Trading, the medium term outlook in stationary energy production and mining is bleak. The stationary energy sector's emissions are set to increase by 84% based on 1990 levels by 2020 and resources sector emissions by 97%.

I suspect these rates may be of considerable interest to voters, and not just in the so-called marginals.

Differing politics on interest rates

2007-11-07T11:49:00.000+11:00

Today's interest rate rise should on paper be a free hit to Labor to attack the Coalition's economic credentials. However, the politics of the issue are far more complicated than this.

The Coalition, either through good luck or good management, has had the fortune to have held power during a period of unprecedented growth. On top of this, Labor has been terrified to engage the Coalition on economic management with Beazley reserving his attacks to the GST, Latham ignoring the issue entirely and Rudd offering that 'there is not a sliver of light between us and the government on economic management'. On the question of macroeconomic policy, Rudd has launched half-hearted attacks on productivity, skills and infrastructure and attempted to offer an alternative path via his high-speed broadband network.

Rudd's overall dominance over Howard allowed the gap to close on economic management, but recent speculation over rate rises appears to have closed the gap. This is hardening Howard's vote and probably saving him from total obliteration, but as Possum Comitatus has shown, this superior economic management does not effect the Liberals' national vote.

Rudd's key success in this area has been to wedge Howard using his claim that Australia has never had such a strong economy, therefore Australian families have never been better off. However, this wedge is vulnerable if the macroeconomic conditions supersede the microeconomic position of the household budget. The most likely seats where this dynamic is viable are ones where the mortgagors feel they are going forward with an increase in the value of their home.

New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland are the three states where the issue of economic management has played a major role in the Coalition's victories. One of the biggest trouble spots for the Liberals is the former 'battler-heartland' of western Sydney. The median house price in Sydney has dropped by 9% in a year, while interest rates have increased. This perceived gap between household pressure and wealth improvement is showing up in polling. Add the insecurity of Workchoices and it is easy to see a reversal of fortune. The seat of Lindsay is swinging around 9%, likewise the seats of Macquarie and Parramatta. There is even talk of seats such as Macarthur and Greenway, with high levels of mortgagee sales, going to Labor with swings of 12-14%. Ditto that for the Central Coast seats of Dobell, Patterson and Robertson, showing swings well over 6%.

Coalition sources had previously been confident that they would hold seats in Queensland. The multitude of issues in the Sunshine state (traffic/ infrastructure issues, health, council amalgamations, Rudd's Queenslander appeal and nuclear power) dilutes the dynamic somewhat on economic management. However it is no coincidence that it was the Lair from Blair, Cameron Thompson, who was caught on tape calling the interest rate rise a positive for the Coalition. Houseprices in the Ipswich area in Blair have risen by 10% this year. Given the equity improvement, this would give hope for the Coalition that they could counteract the micro experience of workchoices and interest rate rises with the macro trend of increasing prosperity. That sense of making families better off feeds into confidence in the Liberals' economic stewardship. It won't save seats like Bonner and Moreton, but may just muddy the waters sufficiently in bigger margin seats like Bowman and Dickson. Blair is right on the knife edge.

It is likely that the swings in seats like Aston, Dunkley and Casey in the outer suburbs of Melbourne will be curtailed by the effect of increasing house prices. They are certainly not going to behave like their Sydney cousins where all the indicators point down for the Coalition.

Thompson's Garrett-esque candour may be more successful than Rudd's interest rate con argument in reversing Labor's fortunes. Rudd's purely factual argument that Howard has overseen six interest rate rises since 2004 reminds voters doing it tough that Howard has failed to deliver on keeping interest rates low. Adding the 'con' comment might be counterproductive. If the Liberals overtly claim they are using the rate rise to get elected it may open up open hostility among some voters.

The net effect of the interest rate rise in the wider electorate may be to reinforce Howard's economic credentials to undecided voters by having the election conducted on his turf. This deprives Labor of the ability to focus on workchoices and climate change. This may trim margins in seats like Eden Monaro but is probably not going to stop too many marginals going to Labor.

Rudd's Environmental Disaster

2007-11-06T00:06:00.000+11:00

The latest Newspoll has come out with Labor ahead 53-47. No doubt Possum Comitatus will be ripping this supposed 'Liberal creep' to shreds shortly. The upshot of this poll is that despite Garrett's gaffe getting two days' coverage throughout the polling period, the Labor vote went down a solitary point. Howard's preferred PM rating went up 2 points, but this is recognition that he has done a pretty good job. Rudd's rating barely moved, giving a net change of 3 points in the preferred PM stakes. Remember Rudd spent a lot of time talking about interest rates (Howard ground) and Howard spent a lot of time giving away road funding.

However, the story of this poll may turn out to be the 'which party best handles the environment question'. Labor's commanding lead, 39-24 over the Coalition has collapsed. The bad news for one J.W. Howard is that the beneficiary is the Greens with 'Someone Else' posting a comparable 27%. This suggests that the electorate thinks that Rudd is too close to Howard on climate change, with only the older voters favouring Turnbull's stewardship. That would suggest that the thing that cut through was Rudd's perceived 'backflip' to cover Garrett's first gaffe, not the 20% renewable energy target. Rudd got no positive benefit from his grand climate launch and the Al Gore walk-on ads did not permeate.

Rudd must hammer Howard's inaction and misleading solutions to gain this impetus back. I suspect that real conviction on climate change might even sway some worried true liberals thinking of voting for conservative independents or climate parties and preferencing Liberal candidates on economic grounds. The mainstream media commentary is peppered with phrases like Rudd has a 20% clean energy target while Howard has a 15% one, plus the bizarre suggestion that Howard will post-election announce a 50% reduction target by 2050. The simple fact of the matter is that Howard is an extremely reluctant mover on climate change, being outpaced by the melting glaciers in Greenland.

Note that Howard has 6% of voters - identical to the 'other' category as it happens, sitting on the fence about his performance. Rudd has 13%, giving him an extra 7% of people he can convince to firm up his standing as preferred PM. By my estimate, the Liberals are officially dead in at least 10 seats and a couple of extra percentage points for Labor's primary vote will kill them off completely. Reminding them of the positive policies Labor has and demonstrating their difference from Howard's creative accounting on issues such as climate change and workchoices may be one way to get them on board.

No planning equals no hope for Howard

2007-11-05T00:46:00.000+11:00

I strongly suspect that the Liberals, despite what their boosters in some sections of the media might say, are heading for a rather nasty thrashing. The magnitude of the swing brewing against them comes from a conflagration of factors which a combination of hubris, vanity and groupthink have brought upon them.

The single biggest cause to the upcoming defeat is the abject failure of Howard to plan his leadership succession. I suspect that the failure to pension off Costello comes from Howard's personal view of the world not fitting best with modern circumstances. Howard relied on the Treasury to provide the stable runs on the board to build the government around. If he knew his history, he would have realised that Menzies sent two possible rivals to alternative employment and that Hawke appointed his former leadership rival Hayden Governor-General. All Howard's preferred choices, namely Abbott, Abbott and Abbott are so politically unpalatable as to make Costello look attractive. More modern leaders such as Costello, Nelson and Turnbull are a little too liberal for his liking.

Howard's almost feudal campaign style built a great level of personal loyalty to him, which is exemplified by the high satisfaction ratings. This might look great on paper, but it means that without a plan for the future, Howard will shortly be called into the nation's office and told 'thank you for your work but we'll have to let you go'.

Because Howard has hopelessly mishandled the succession issue, when the party sought salvation from the massacre during the APEC summitt, no options were available. No one was willing to stage a partyroom coup, because they believed Howard a political demi-god. Costello is so unpopular that he would make Crean look good without the assistance of a major policy makeover. Clearly he would need time and scope to redefine himself. Howard clearly believed the myth of his own invincibility and has treated this term like a true oriental despot. Hence his extraordinary imposition of Workchoices (turning up like an unannounced Fightback! package).

Howard's view of the world, particularly on the question of climate change, made him a ticking time bomb if the issue ever became a mainstream concern. Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' made the issue mainstream. Howard either completely ignored or failed to see that Rudd would eventually become a formidable leadership contender. Once Rudd did become leader, Howard did not hone his economic message nor demonstrate even the hint of a plan for the future until it was far too late.

This acute failure of both historical perspective and knowing what your opponent is doing gives an idea of the historical magnitude of defeat. The average swing for a government to lose an election is 4.7%. However, most governments lose over two elections (e.g. 1969-1972, 1980-1983). Howard won in 1996 with a 5% swing, but this time round Rudd has to scale the swings created by Beazley's loss and Latham's loss. That's an extra 2% than Howard had to make up in 1996. Couple that with the distribution of Howard's vote across his seats and it means Rudd has to have a swing of at least 7% to equal Howard's 1996 result.

Which is precisely what the polls are showing.

Message in the madness?

2007-11-04T23:52:00.000+11:00

John Howard and his Liberal party machine have become famous for winning elections by defining the parameters of the election, honing a negative message to not risk the opposition and a positive message to sell the government's credentials. When they have got into trouble during the electoral cycle, they have poured bucketloads of money on their problems and neutralised the threat, thus arresting their opponents' chance to capitalise on policies that serve a narrow, rather than national interest.

This year, the issue of climate change has come back to haunt Howard as his Achilles heel was cruelly exposed. The answer was clearly blowing in the wind (but Fran Bailey was too busy claiming how wind power damaged the tourist industry). Climate change is something Howard wishes would just go away: his inconvenient truth is it won't and has turned his cabinet (and the seat of Wentworth) into an unruly contest between those who can see the writing on the wall and those who consider it to be indecipherable graffiti. Workchoices stubbornly failed to die as an issue as the government's spectacular self-inflicted harm betrayed the battlers.

The Liberals have been totally clueless as to how to fight the election. They have no idea how to get to Rudd and keep vacillating between the old game plan that Rudd has neutralised and the brainstorming ideas Liberal HQ is making up on the run. Rudd has seized the high policy ground and defined the terms of the campaign. Howard has jumped around all over the place on climate change, saying simultaneously that his stands for jobs which will be lost by Rudd's dangerous policy and then that there is no difference between the two parties. I find it fairly hard to believe that Julia Gillard and Mark Vaille have the same view on climate change, nor that the fact that Howard reportedly refused cabinet proposals to adopt emissions trading in 1999 and 2003 suggests we should entrust him with setting our climate course in future.

The economic message which should be Howard's bread and butter has become so scrambled it should probably be served with a side order of hash browns. Howard has said that the economy is going really well, working families have never had it so good. Yet Tsunami Pete sees dark clouds on the horizon. Labor is an irresponsible economic manager, yet Pete acknowledged Labor deregulated the setting of rates. The Liberals are almost embarrassed by their own tax cuts, and their exploratory 'the economy is everything' ad lasted one night.

The Liberals don't seem to know why they are losing support and hence have not the slightest idea how to fix the problem.

Hockey's hamfisted union attacks that unions are both irrelevant and so dangerous that they cannot be put in a position of power demonstrates the deeper disconnect from reality held by his party.

The Liberals seem to be running two messages: growth (greed) is good and unions are the root of all evil. The growth message totally ignores the fact that Rudd has wedged them on the economy - focussing on kitchen table economics rather than macroeconomics. It actively drives voters away. The union message plants an idea in voters' minds which has no connection to the present reality. It drifts the ideological bubble the Liberals exist in out into the community, where I suspect it will receive an almighty pricking.

Ruddy hell: Now Howard's turned into Kevin

2007-11-01T00:02:00.000+11:00

Over the weekend the then irremediably cranky Liberal leader, John Howard, made only a cursory appearance to campaign in Parramatta before taking the weekend off.

Peregrine can now reveal that he was attending a new production of 'Extreme Makeover'. If he now proclaims he's 'been there, done that, got the t-shirt', the t-shirt will be emblazoned with the logo Kevin07.

This week, he flew to Victoria and found himself talking to an FM radio station, something he had steadfastly refused to stoop to during his entire career. Having entranced his listeners with tales of lonely breakfast, he then uncomfortably handled a plush bear on morning television. Still he throughly enjoyed himself, even if the only sexagenarian dancing that day was Patti Newton's paso doble.

Following Kevin's Sesame Street renewable energy target, brought to you by the number 20, John Mark II and a half announced, not just that a 20% target would wreak untold damage to the jobs of those poor coal miners, but that he was not opposed to renewable energy and he would look at the detail. Having taken the media persona of Kevin, John now appears to have swallowed his lexicon. Next he will be starting each sentence with a rhetorical question and proclaiming that he's a 'climate change moralist'.

Having snookered Malcolm of Wentworth for having the temerity to raise the prospect of ratifying Kyoto, John appears to be trying to have his yellowcake and eat it too. If he does decide that Kevin's sensible (but conservative) proposal to increase renewable energy share by 12% by 2020 is the way to go, he may need to seriously amend his clean energy target (including clean coal and nuclear). Unless he's planning a clean energy target of something in the order of 30-35%, he might not need his 25 cooling towers to get Ziggy with it.

This election campaign threatens to become acutely boring for political buffs. However, it is a fascinating example of human psychology. One man wants the other's job, while the other wants the other's tactics. Ross Gittins believes much of Howard's legacy is entrenched in Rudd's first term obligations. Perhaps Kevin can teach John Mandarin while they wait to appear on Nova.

One of these seats is not like the others

2007-10-31T23:34:00.000+11:00

Three safe Liberal city seats. One in Brisbane (Ryan) and two in Sydney (North Sydney and Warringah). All three seats have margins of around 10-11%. Here the adjective blue ribbon is not just applied to ice cream. The Courier Mail has listed Ryan as one of two seats the Coalition is in dire straits. Labor has released polling showing it leads 53-47 in North Sydney. Labor only released the candidate's name in Warringah after the election was called.

What is going on here? Perhaps it is Warringah's track record of never returning a non-conservative MP? True, North Sydney was held by the independent Ted Mack and Ryan revolted to Labor at a by-election in 2001. However, this ignores the 2001 election result in Warringah, where former NSW independent MP, Peter MacDonald forced the race to preferences, only losing on the back of the Tampa-September 11 kinghit.

Maybe the redistribution has put Warringah above even the high watermark of a tidal wave of Rudd support. Why then did Labor pre-select its candidate for Bradfield, margin 17.6%, weeks before Warringah?

In fact, Warringah was the last seat in New South Wales, and possibly the country, where Labor even preselected a candidate. Having latterly announced the candidature of Hugh Zochling, Labor appears to have cordoned off campaigning. One group of citizens is so concerned at the lack of interest by candidates that it has launched something called the Warringah worm to register issues of note in the electorate.

Certainly Labor has to ration its resources somewhere. With so many Coalition seats on the table, the chance to capitalise on a favourable redistribution in neighbouring Bradfield is probably more appealing. Or is there something more strategic at play?

The local member for Warringah is Tony Abbott, the Health Minister whose bedside manner clearly needs some work. Perhaps Rudd is banking on unpopular Coalition figures like Abbott keeping their seats and being the ugly face of an unelectable opposition. Given the somewhat questionable feelings of Peter Costello towards a long dark night of opposition, the tacticians may be looking at future contenders.