Warning! Emissions trading bogeyman approaching

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?

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

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

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

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

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?

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.