Sunday, April 27, 2014

Fraser says get US forces out of northern Australia and close Pine Gap

Fraser says get US forces out of northern Australia and close Pine Gap





Fraser says get US forces out of northern Australia and close Pine Gap




Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has made a radical call for Australia to break its alliance with the United States and…












Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser does not see China as a source of future danger unless it is provoked unreasonably.
AAP/Mal Fairclough





Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has made a radical
call for Australia to break its alliance with the United States and
become a “strategically independent” country.




In his new book Dangerous Allies, released today, Fraser
warns that the ANZUS treaty – as now interpreted - might be the biggest
threat to Australia’s security, rather than its major protector.




Strategic independence would mean ending the US presence in northern
Australia, part of the American “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region, and
closing the Pine Gap facility, which he says nowadays could be used
almost in real time to target weapons systems.




Such a stance would necessitate Australia spending much more on
defence but it would not be caught up in any future conflict between the
US and China. “If a war between China and the United States were to
occur with a continuation of current policies, it would be very hard, if
not impossible, for Australia not to be involved.”




Fraser was a strong advocate of the alliance when he was prime
minister between 1975 and 1983, but argues that the end of the Cold War
has transformed the international situation and also that American
values have changed with the growth of its view of “American
exceptionalism”.




Fraser’s bottom line is that if conflicts break out Australia should
be in a situation where it has a totally open choice about whether it
goes to war.




He believes the alliance took Australia into costly wars, including
Vietnam (when the US did not share some vital information with
Australia), and especially Iraq, where the result “is, and was always
going to be, disastrous”.




He rejects the option that Australia should simply tell the US it
would no longer automatically follow it into future conflicts because
“we are too closely ‘intertwined with US strategies and plans.
Australian facilities are too heavily involved”.




Fraser admits the US would take “the strongest possible exception” to moves such as closing Pine Gap within five years.



“Every pressure would be exercised on an Australian government so
that the United States would maintain strategic control. We would need
to resist such pressures and make it clear that, in our view, the risks
of a strategic alliance with the United States, of being forced into a
war that was not in our interest, were so great that we had to cut the
ties.”




Writing a forward to the book former Labor foreign minister Gareth
Evans says some of Fraser’s judgements, such as that Australia should
have been a much more independent and less subservient alliance partner
in recent years, were unarguable.




“Others – in particular, his conclusion that we should now go it completely alone – are much more problematic.”



Fraser traces Australia’s stance of “strategic dependence” from the
country’s earliest days – first, dependence on Great Britain, and then
on the US, of which it is now “strategic captive”.




“I discount direct threats to Australia as a result of strategic
independence,” he writes. “It is strategic dependence that provides the
greatest problem to our future in the region.




“Indeed, the current interpretation of ANZUS by Australian leaders is
paradoxical – it might be the biggest threat to our own security
despite it being presented as the guarantor of our security.”




Fraser does not see China as a source of future danger unless it is
provoked unreasonably. “Such provocation could come from the United
States, from Japan or, much less likely, from a flare-up in the South
China Sea. It would be a major advantage not to be tied to the United
States in such circumstances,” he writes.




“An independent Australia could act much more effectively in concert
with other Western Pacific countries, on the one hand to avoid
flashpoints and points of danger, and on the other to promote
initiatives that would do much to maintain continuing peace throughout
the region.




“Yet, as part of the American network, we would not be able to take
such action. We would merely be regarded as a surrogate voice of America
and therefore wield no true influence.”




He says that a strategically independent Australia would still share a
great deal with the US. “Strategic independence does not mean ending
our relationship with America and cutting out ties. It does mean having a
different relationship, a more equal one in which we can feel free to
say no or offer a differing opinion.”

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Brandis confuses right to be heard with right to be taken seriously

Brandis confuses right to be heard with right to be taken seriously



Brandis confuses right to be heard with right to be taken seriously




In a recent interview, federal attorney-general George Brandis
laments that deniers of climate science are being “excluded” from the
debate. On the surface this seems a justifiable complaint, but the
point…












Believers in alien abduction do not have a right to be taken
seriously, and nor do those who simply reject the evidence of climate
change.
Photobank gallery/Shutterstock





In a recent interview,
federal attorney-general George Brandis laments that deniers of climate
science are being “excluded” from the debate. On the surface this seems
a justifiable complaint, but the point hangs on what he means by
“excluded”. Brandis said he was:




…really shocked by the sheer authoritarianism of those
who would have excluded from the debate the point of view of people who
were climate change deniers.


The literal sense of “excluded” implies that no commentary is permitted that does not resonate with accepted scientific wisdom
on climate change. This is clearly not the case. Australia boasts one
of the world’s best examples of mainstream climate science denial,
evident in both expressed political opinion and in the provision of media platforms for those wishing to express such views.




A more figurative sense of “exclusion” might be that those who do not
accept the scientific findings are under social or political pressure
to keep silent. This is where it gets interesting.




Echoes of vaccination and evolution ‘debates’



Debates over disparate areas such as vaccination and creationism
survive because of a call to see both sides of the coin. The truth, at
least for these issues, is that there is no coin. To pretend otherwise
is to perpetuate an irrational approach.




Climate change is not as well understood as vaccination or evolution,
and I would not put deniers of climate science in the same camp as
anti-vaccination and anti-evolution movements, but there is an
increasing trend among them all to adopt similar methods.




The most obvious of these is appealing to the right to be heard, to
see both sides of the coin. Brandis hopes that our natural repulsion at
excluding a particular view from the public arena will be aroused in
support of climate science denial. This, however, ignores a vital
characteristic of public debate: when ideas suffer body blows of
sustained scientific refutation any attempt to maintain their status by
appeal to an equal right of hearing is also an attempt to exempt them
from evidential requirements and argumentative rigour.




George Brandis ought to accept that the less credible a point of view, the less prominence it gets.
Daniel Munoz/AAP



The rules of rational engagement demand evidence and argument, not
repetitive appeals for a fair hearing. If the evidence in support of a
view is not forthcoming, or if the arguments in its favour are weak, its
public profile should diminish.




The very nature of a fair hearing is that evidence is weighed and
arguments heard, and the ultimate fate of an idea should be a function
of this process. This is not to say that it can never be resurrected,
or that investigation cannot continue, but simply that it must lose
epistemic credibility in proportion to its failings. Anything else is
dogma, and this is what much of climate science denial has become.




Brandis has confused the right to speak an idea with the non-existent
right that the idea be given credibility. He says in the interview that
the scientific community and its supporters simply attempt to
delegitimise “the views of those who disagree, rather than engaging with
them intellectually and showing them why they are wrong”. This is
demonstrably false, as many attempts are regularly made to do just that.




Continually arguing for the right to engage and then refusing
engagement is what earns the moniker “denier”. The explanation by
“sceptics” of climate science, vaccination and evolution
given to cover lack of engagement centres on conspiracy theories.
Conspiracies of scientists, political movements and business interests
supposedly explain the absence of argument.




Demanding a false balance of beliefs



The fact is that deniers of climate science are as free as anyone
else to make their case. That the case is not being made is not a
function of suppression, it is result of lack of evidence.




Other similarities with vaccination and evolution include
contemptuous use of the word “believe” (also seen in the Spiked
interview), which assumes an equality of cognition between belief in
climate science and belief in, say, alien abduction. It ignores that
belief can be the result of blind acceptance or the weight of evidence.
It also portraits belief as a weakness and scepticism as a strength, but
belief is not weakness if it based on evidence and argument, and
scepticism is not strength if there is no engagement.




It’s bad enough that the right to be heard is misunderstood or
misrepresented as the right to be taken seriously, but this is happening
in the domain of public policy.




There is a difference between public expression of an idea and urging
public support for that idea. The former is a statement of opinion;
the latter is a call for government action (or inaction). Brandis seems
to want climate science denial front and centre in debates of public
policy, in the same manner that a false balance has been delivered through media representation of the issue.




It’s one thing for media organisations or community groups to attempt
to represent scientific consensus as they will, but it is qualitatively
different and far more dangerous for governments to do the same.
Australians have the right to expect their government to act on
evidence, not to promote false balance.




Deniers of climate science are not being excluded, they are being
asked to step up. That they are failing to do so is nobody’s fault but
their own.


Monday, April 21, 2014

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Andrew Bolt Urges Abbott to Keep His 'No Cuts' ABC Promise



I never thought I'd say this but I agree with Bolt on Abbott Keeping his promises.

Hands off our icons

Hands off our icons

Hands off our icons

fair dinkumEvery
time I hear a politician say ‘fair dinkum’ I cringe. Aside from
sounding silly, it’s the desecration of an icon, the verbal equivalent
of spraying graffiti on the Opera House.



Much of it comes down to the individual – Bob Hawke in many ways
embodied the larrikin ideal, and his roughness allowed him to get away
with slang. John Howard, in contrast, made everyone feel slightly
uncomfortable and inclined to apologise on his behalf, when he announced
to the world that Saddam needed to be fair dinkum about whether he
possessed weapons of mass destruction.



In the televised debate in 2010 between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, Abbott dropped the term ‘fair dinkum’ four
times before Gillard started using it back in an ironic sense. Even
Kevin Rudd made his return to the campaign trail claiming that ‘I
actually don’t think Mr Abbott is fair dinkum.’



But Tony has now sent ‘fair dinkum’ into overdrive.


“I try to be fair dinkum with the Australian public and last night I was trying to be fair dinkum with Kerry O’Brien,”


“Who do you think is more fair dinkum? The people who stopped the boats in the past? Or the people who started them again?”


“Mr Rudd was talking about who do you trust? It’s really about who do you think is more fair dinkum? Who can you rely on to be build a better future?”


“Anything less than a fair dinkum paid
parental leave scheme would leave us poorer as a society, an economy
and a country and the test of good government, after all, is to leave
the country better off than you found it.”



Mr Abbott defended the policy – which cuts off at $75,000 for women earning $150,000 a year – as a “fair dinkum” plan that will deliver “workplace justice” for working mums.


‘If it’s right for people at the ABC to get a fair dinkum paid
parental leave scheme, why isn’t it right for the factory workers, shop
assistants and people like that to get access to a similar scheme, and
our scheme is fully funded.’



Mr Abbott has moved to reassure Indonesia that he is “fair dinkum” about respecting its sovereignty while also saying he “made it very clear that this was an issue of sovereignty for us”.


There are many more examples but you get my drift, and if that last
one, said in October 2013 (oops), is anything to go by, the words have
lost their meaning anyway.



Which is my point.


Fair dinkum means “true”, “the truth”, “speaking the truth”, “authentic” – at least it used to until politicians took it over.


Dr Evan Kidd, who has been researching Australian slang at La Trobe University, describes it like this:



“By using slang, politicians are trying to both align
themselves with ‘Mr & Mrs Average Australian’ by showing them that
they aren’t really different from anybody else despite their unusual job
that (sometimes) comes with a high profile.



Australian politicians probably use it to conform to a stereotype of
Australians as down to earth, no-nonsense, and a bit rough around the
edges. I like to call this the “Daggy Uncle” effect, where people feel a
slight tinge of embarrassment when someone is trying to sound cooler or
more hip than they are generally perceived to be, like when one of your
older family members uses teenage slang.”

But in this case I think it is far more sinister than trying to sound
folksy. Tony Abbott is trying to convince us, and maybe himself, that
he is a man of the people and for the people. “Who do you trust” he
says. He would have us believe he is the real deal, a man of his word, a
fair dinkum good bloke.



Well Tony, I call bullshit. You have no right to hijack our iconic
phrase for your self-advertising. Fair dinkum implies an integrity that
you seem to be completely lacking. Fair dinkum does not apply to
political spin. It is not one of your slogans to put in front of all
your crazy policies in a cynical attempt to validate them. You are
demeaning the value of the phrase and everything it stood for in an
Australia that is rapidly being taken over by PR image consultants and
advertising gurus who are anything but fair dinkum.



I wonder if you were fair dinkum when you said you would lead a transparent and accountable government?


I wonder if you were fair dinkum when you said “One thing that I’m
determined to do is build a country where no one ever feels like a
stranger, to build a country where the bonds of social solidarity, the
bonds of social solidarity, the bonds of community are stronger and
stronger.”



Were you fair dinkum when you made the commitment to the Australian people that “There will not be deals done with independents and minor parties under any political movement that I lead”?


Fair suck of the sav Tony, get off the grass. Don’t come the raw
prawn with us - Aussies can tell shit from clay yanno. ‘She’ll be right’
is wearing a bit thin mate. Seems more like ‘I’m all right Jack and the
rest of you galahs can bugger off’. And if ya don’t mind, use your own
bloody sayings, gawd knows ya got a million of em, and leave our fair
dinkum alone!





Rethinking Capitalism

Rethinking Capitalism






Professor of Politics at University of Sydney

Rethinking Capitalism



Readers interested in the emerging politics of the
human/non-human and the deep and difficult tensions between capitalism
and democracy are bound to find stimulating a recent public lecture by
one of the world’s leading social scientists, Bruno Latour.




Delivered in late February 2014 at the Royal Danish Academy of
Sciences in Copenhagen, ‘On some of the affects of capitalism’ is
Latour’s powerful attempt to raise questions about why it is that we’ve
come to accept commodity production and exchange as a naturally given
‘fact of life’, and what might be done about it. Note his reference to
the new science of the making and unmaking of public ignorance (‘agnotology’)
and to the global significance of a uniquely Australian model of wilful
ignorance championed by the Abbott government. Latour calls it the
‘Australian strategy of voluntary sleepwalking toward catastrophe’.




The full text of the lecture is available here. Followed by a remarkable Tony Abbott quotation, the opening moments of the lecture are pasted below:



‘“If the world were a bank, they would have already bailed it out”.
Such is the slogan painted by Greenpeace militants in one of their
recent campaigns. It says a lot about our level of intellectual
corruption that we don’t find such a line simply funny but tragically
realistic. It has the same bleak degree of realism as Frederick
Jameson’s famous quip that: “Nowadays it seems easier
to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism!”.



Bruno Latour, 2013
Polity Press

Click to enlarge


If you call the world, I mean the world we all live in, “first
nature” and capitalism our “second nature” — in the sense of that to
which we are fully habituated and which has been totally naturalized —
then what those
sentences are saying is that the second nature is more solid, less
transitory, less perishable than the first. No wonder: the transcendent
world of beyond has always been more durable than the poor world of
below. But what is new is that this world of beyond is not that of
salvation and eternity, but that of economic matters. As Karl Marx would
have said, the realm of transcendence has been fully appropriated by
banks! Through an unexpected turn of phrase, the world of economy, far
from representing a sturdy down to earth materialism, a sound appetite
for worldly goods and solid matters of fact, is now final and absolute.
How mistaken we were; apparently it is the laws of capitalism that Jesus
had in mind when he warned his disciples: “Heaven and earth will pass
away, but my words will never pass away.” (Matt 24-35).





Bruno Latour, Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, Copenhagen, 26 February 2014
Videnskabernes Selskab/Royal Danish Academy of Sciences

Click to enlarge


This inversion of what is transitory and what is eternal is no longer
a joke, especially since what should be called the “Australian strategy
of voluntary sleepwalking toward catastrophe” is being implemented to
the full after the last election: not content to dismantle the
institutions, scientific establishments and instruments that could
prepare his constituency to meet the new global threat of climate
mutations, the prime
minister, Tony Abbott, is also dismantling, one after the other, most
departments of social science and humanities. Such a strategy makes a
lot of sense: not thinking ahead is probably, when you are an Australian
and given
what is coming, the most rational thing to do.




“Not thinking” seems to be the slogan of the day when you consider
that in the United States alone something like a billion dollars, yes,
one billion, is being spent to generate ignorance about the anthropic
origin of climate mutations. In earlier periods, scientists and
intellectuals lamented the little money spent on
learning, but they never had to witness floods of money spent on
unlearning what was already known. While in times past thinking
critically was associated with looking ahead and extracting oneself from
an older
obscurantist past, today money is being spent to become even more
obscurantist than yesterday! “Agnotology”, Robert Proctor’s science of
generating ignorance, has become the most important discipline of the
day.




It is thanks to this great new science that so many people are able
to say in their heart “Perish the world, provided my bank survives!”. It
is a desperate task to continue thinking when the powers of
intelligence are dedicated to shutting down thought and to marching
ahead with eyes wide closed.'




Evidence that Latour is on to something was provided just a week later by the after-dinner remarks of Tony Abbott to forestry industry officials. His biblical words deserve deep meditation:



‘Man and the environment are meant for each other. The last thing
we do – the last thing we should want – if we want to genuinely improve
our environment is to want to ban men and women from enjoying it, is to
ban men and women from making the most of it and that’s what you do.
You intelligently make the most of the good things that God has given
us.’




The full video of Latour’s address in Copenhagen follows:



Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, 26 February 2014

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me

smokingThe following is an excerpt from a 2007 paper called The Cigarette Controversy.


“In 1994, heads of the major U.S. tobacco companies testified before
Congress that the evidence that cigarette smoking caused diseases such
as cancer and heart disease was inconclusive, that cigarettes were not
addictive, and that they did not market to children. Less than 1 month
after this testimony, a box containing confidential documents from the
Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation was delivered to the
University of California at San Francisco. What was revealed in these
documents was evidence that the tobacco industry had for decades known
and accepted the fact that cigarettes caused premature death, considered
tobacco to be addictive, and that their programs to support scientific
research on smoking and health had been a sham.



In 1999, the federal government filed its own suit against the
tobacco industry for violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations (RICO) Act. In August 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys
Kessler concluded that “…the tobacco companies conspired to violate the
substantive provisions of RICO…and…in fact violated those substantive
provisions”. The question of when tobacco companies knew or should have
known about the serious health consequences of smoking goes to the very
question of whether or not there was a real cigarette controversy.



Evidence linking smoking and cancer appeared in the 1920s . Between
1920 and 1940, a chemist named Angel Honorio Roffo published several
articles showing that cancers could be experimentally induced by
exposure to tars from burned tobacco. Roffo et al. further showed that
cancer could be induced by using nicotine-free tobacco, which means that
tar, with or without nicotine, was carcinogenic. Research implicating
smoking as a cause of cancer began to mount during the 1950s, with
several landmark publications in leading medical journals. The first
official U.S. government statement on smoking and health was issued by
the Surgeon General Leroy Burney in a televised press conference in
1957, wherein he reported that the scientific evidence supported
cigarette smoking as a causative factor in the etiology of lung cancer.
By 1960, Joseph Garland, Editor of the New England Journal, wrote, “No
responsible observer can deny this association, and the evidence is now
sufficiently strong to suggest a causative role”.



In their public statements, tobacco companies held that cigarettes
had not been proven to be injurious to health. For example, a November
1953 press release issued by the American Tobacco Company stated, “…no
one has yet proved that lung cancer in any human being is directly
traceable to tobacco or its products in any form”. In a New York Times
story based on this press release, the headline states that Mr. Hahn
(President of the American Tobacco Company) characterizes the evidence
of a link between cigarette smoking and an increase in the incidence of
lung cancer as “Loose Talk”. In 1954, Philip Morris Vice President
George Weissman announced that if the company had any thought or
knowledge that in any way we were selling a product harmful to
consumers, that they would stop business immediately. Senior scientists
and executives at tobacco companies, however, knew about the potential
cancer risk of smoking as early as the 1940s, and most accepted the fact
that smoking caused cancer by the late 1950s.



A 1962 report by the R.J. Reynolds scientist Dr. Alan Rodgman
characterized the amount of evidence accumulated to indict cigarette
smoking as a health risk as “overwhelming,” whereas the evidence
challenging such an indictment was “scant”.



In her decision regarding the allegation that the tobacco companies
had violated RICO, Judge Kessler observed that the trial record amply
showed a conspiracy to make false, deceptive, and misleading public
statements about cigarettes and smoking from at least January 1954, when
the Frank Statement was published, up to the present. The “Frank
Statement to Cigarette Smokers” was a jointly sponsored advocacy
advertisement published by tobacco manufacturers in January 1954. The
advertisement appeared in 448 newspapers in 258 cities, reaching over 43
million Americans. The advertisement questioned research findings
implicating smoking as a cause of cancer, promised consumers that their
cigarettes were safe, and pledged to support impartial research to
investigate allegations that smoking was harmful to human health.



The tobacco documents reveal how the tobacco industry worked together
since the early 1950s to create a pro-cigarette public relations
campaign to mislead the public about the dangers of smoking to advance
their collective interest to market cigarettes.



In 1955, Dr. Clarence Little, the first Scientific Director of the
Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), appeared on the Edward R.
Murrow show and was asked, “Dr. Little have any cancer-causing agents
been identified in cigarettes?” Dr. Little replied, “No. None whatever,
either in cigarettes or in any product of smoking, as such.” Dr. Little
was also asked, “Suppose the tremendous amount of research going on were
to reveal that there is a cancer causing agent in cigarettes, what
then?” Dr. Little replied, “It would be made public immediately and just
as broadly as we could make it, and then efforts would be taken to
attempt to remove that substance or substances”.



From 1964 onward, the Tobacco Institute (TI) frequently made
reference to the fact that qualified scientists challenged the evidence
that smoking caused disease. Yet, many of these so-called independent
scientists were recruited and had their research programs supported by
the tobacco industry. For example, in 1970, the TI sponsored the “Truth”
public service campaign that informed the public that there was a
scientific controversy about whether smoking caused disease. The “Truth”
campaign encouraged people to contact the TI to get a copy of a “White
Paper” that included quotes from scientists challenging the evidence
that smoking caused the disease. Lawyer-controlled “special project
accounts” were used to recruit and support scientists who were willing
to make statements and/or conduct research that would be favourable to
the industry’s view that causes other than smoking were responsible for
lung cancer and other diseases.



Internal documents from the industry acknowledge that TIRC/CTR was
largely a public relations asset for them rather than a real research
endeavour to address the smoking and health controversy. A 1970 letter
from Helmut Wakeham, then Vice President of the Corporate Research and
Development at Philip Morris, to the President of the TI summed up this
view: “nobody believes we are interested in the truth on this subject;
and the fact that a multi-billion dollar industry has put up 30 million
dollars for this over a ten-year period cannot be impressive to a public
which at the same time is told we spend upwards of 300 million dollars
in one year on advertising”.



The tobacco company conspiracy to manufacture a false controversy
about smoking and health is summarized in a 1972 TI memorandum, which
defined the strategy as consisting of three parts: (a) “creating doubt
about the health charge without actually denying it”; (b) “advocating
the public’s right to smoke, without actually urging them to take up the
practice”; and (c) “encouraging objective scientific research as the
only way to resolve the question of the health hazard”. In her analysis
of the purpose of the industry’s jointly funded “research”
organizations, Judge Kessler observed that they had helped the industry
achieve its goals because they “sponsored and funded research that
attacked scientific studies demonstrating harmful effects of smoking
cigarettes but did not itself conduct research addressing the
fundamental questions regarding the adverse health effects of smoking”.



The internal industry documents show how tobacco companies
deliberately confused the public debate about smoking and health by
creating and supporting research organizations that were never really
interested in discovering the truth about whether smoking was a cause of
disease.



In October 1999, Philip Morris Tobacco Company announced to the
public on its web site that, “There is an overwhelming medical and
scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart
disease, emphysema and other serious disease in smokers”. However, when
shareholders proposed a resolution asking the company to produce a
report on how it intended to correct the defects that resulted in its
products causing disease, the company responded that the shareholder’s
resolution had “… mischaracterizes the Company’s web site as
constituting a public admission that cigarettes cause illness. It does
not.”. Today, all of the major tobacco companies have web sites
acknowledging that smoking is a cause of disease. However, the current
web site statement of R.J. Reynolds on the health effects of smoking
continues to insist that smoking “causes disease in some individuals”
only “in combination with other factors”. In the courtroom, the
companies continue to challenge allegations about nicotine addiction and
smoking causing illness. The tobacco companies have not yet been able
to bring themselves to accept responsibility for their past illegal
acts.



It does not seem that the tobacco industry has changed since the 1998
Master Settlement Agreement but instead has found alternative ways to
support research and create controversy about the health risks of
smoking. For example, in the 2006 US election, the tobacco industry
spent over US$100 million dollars opposing state-initiated proposals to
limit smoking in public places and raise cigarette taxes. It is not
sufficient for the tobacco industry to merely concede the obvious point
that smoking is a cause of disease when it is evident that decades of
misinformation has resulted in a public that is massively ignorant about
the risks of smoking low-tar cigarettes, nicotine addiction, and
secondhand smoke exposure. Moreover, claims by tobacco companies that
they are involved in sponsoring programs to help smokers to quit and
discourage youth from taking up smoking must be seriously questioned in
light of recent findings that show that these programs have no
beneficial effect and may potentially be iatrogenic. There remains a
need for public education efforts to correct consumer misperceptions
about the risks of smoking along with government oversight to ensure
that industry is not permitted to use its vast marketing resources to
continue to mislead the public. Universities should also consider
adopting policies that prohibit their faculty from accepting funding
from tobacco companies. The implication of Judge Kessler’s ruling is
clear: the tobacco companies cannot and should not be trusted.”



The similarities between this and the campaign of misinformation
regarding climate change cannot be missed. Any organisation who accepts
money from the tobacco industry – the Heartland Institute, the Institute
of Public Affairs, the Liberal Party – must be regarded with suspicion.
Surprisingly enough, or not, these same organisations receive huge
funding from mining companies and they are all against action on climate
change.  Any ‘scientist’ who associates themselves with the Heartland
Institute will be tainted by their lack of ethics and obvious vested
interest.



Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Can our democracy be saved?

Can our democracy be saved?

Can our democracy be saved?




bananaWhen
you see Tony Abbott as Prime Minister, Joe Bullock elected in front of
Louise Pratt, Bronwyn Bishop as Speaker, Tim Wilson given a job as a
Human Rights Commissioner, Sophie Mirabella building submarines, and
Alexander Downer showered with gifts from every direction, you know
democracy is ailing if not already dead. It’s time for change.

As things stand politics in Australia is now the
province of a political class that now offers a lifetime career path in
federal and state parliaments, the public services and quangos. Entrance
to this world often involves nepotism and cronyism. There can be few
other legitimate jobs with salary packages over $300,000 that can often
be obtained with virtually no experience and qualifications and little
restrictions on second jobs or holidays.

Equating integrity with paying more money, flies in the
face of history. By paying politicians starting salary packages of over
$300,000, more people are attracted who could not get that salary level
elsewhere. In fact people pursuing material gain should be discouraged
from entering politics.

There is certainly no evidence that the massive
increases of salary packages in recent years has increased benefits to
the public or improved the quality of members or ministers compared to
governments of the past. Far from paying peanuts and getting monkeys,
paying more peanuts seems to attract gorillas.

Our system of government is an archaic farce. It was developed in the 18th
century and did not anticipate the corruption of process that the two
party system and the various factions, lobby groups and donors have
produced.



An enormous amount of time and money is wasted on useless bickering
and out-dated ceremony. This is an organisation entrusted with the role
of running our country. It’s important. But our system has led to many
professional politicians with little or no general life experience and
unscrupulous opportunists, unburdened by ethics, who obsessively pursue
power, money or both.  Parties gift electorates to family connections,
malleable party hacks and mediocre apparatchiks.



The money spent on spin doctors and advertising and polling and
campaigning and jetting around for photo opportunities is outrageous and
to what end? Why should parliament be adversarial? Do we really need an
Opposition? Why can’t it be a collection of men and women whose
experience and expertise make them suited for this most important
responsibility?



If the 150 federal seats were awarded by the percentage of first
preference votes received, the two major parties would have 118 seats
rather than the 145 they currently occupy, the Greens would have 13, PUP
8, with 11 “others”. This would actually represent the “will of the
people”.



Switzerland has been described as the closest thing to a true
democracy. Parliamentary elections are organised around a proportional
multi-party voting system and executive elections are organized around a
popular vote directly for individuals, where the individual with the
most votes wins. The third type of election, referendums, concern policy
issues.



Parliament, known as the Federal Assembly, is made up of the Council
of States (46 seats – members serve four-year terms) and the National
Council (200 seats – members serve four-year terms and are elected by
popular vote on a basis of proportional representation).



The two chambers of Switzerland’s national parliament meet several
times annually for sessions of several weeks and in between, conduct
meetings in numerous commissions. But being a member of parliament is
not a full time job in Switzerland, contrary to most other countries
today. This means that members of parliament have to practise an
ordinary profession to earn their living – thereby they are closer to
the everyday life of their electorate.



The government is a seven-member executive council, elected for a
four year term, that heads the federal administration, operating as a
combination cabinet and collective presidency. It is a Coalition of the
four major parties, each party having a number of seats that roughly
reflects its share of electorate and representation in the federal
parliament. The President, elected for a one-year term, has almost no
powers over and above his or her six colleagues, but undertakes
representative functions normally performed by a president or prime
minister in single-executive systems. They share the role around.



The Swiss executive is one of the most stable governments worldwide.
Since 1848, it has never been renewed entirely at the same time,
providing a long-term continuity. Changes in the council occur typically
only if one of the members resigns (only four incumbent members were
voted out of the office in over 150 years); this member is almost always
replaced by someone from the same party.  Most members retire after two
or three terms. Since 1990 Switzerland has had some 22 ministers in
federal government. In the same time we have had a kaleidoscope of
around 300 ministers.



The really remarkable thing about Switzerland’s political system is
Direct Democracy – the extraordinary amount of participation in the
political process that is granted to ordinary citizens.



Any citizen may challenge a law that has been passed by parliament.
If that person is able to gather 50,000 signatures (out of 5.1 million
voters) against the law within 100 days, a national vote has to be
scheduled where voters decide by a simple majority of the voters whether
to accept or reject the law.



Also, any citizen may seek a decision on an amendment they want to
make to the constitution. For such a federal popular initiative to be
organised, the signatures of 100,000 voters must be collected within 18
months.



The parliament will discuss the proposals, probably set up an
alternative and afterwards all citizens may decide in a referendum
whether to accept the original initiative, the alternate parliamentary
proposal or to leave the constitution unchanged. Initiatives that are of
constitutional level have to be accepted by a double majority of both
the popular votes and a majority of the cantons, while counter-proposals
may be of legislative level and hence require only simple majority.



The frequent use of referenda is not only encouraged by Switzerland’s
Constitution, but practised with enthusiasm by the citizens.
Approximately four times a year, voting occurs over various issues;
these include both Referendums, where policies are directly voted on by
people, and elections, where the populace votes for officials. Federal,
cantonal and municipal issues are polled simultaneously, and the
majority of people cast their votes by mail. Between January 1995 and
June 2005, Swiss citizens voted 31 times, to answer 103 questions.
Several cantons have developed test projects to allow citizens to vote
via the Internet or by SMS.



The threat of a referendum called by a party defeated in parliament
on an issue causes the parties to be more willing to negotiate and
compromise. As extreme laws will mercilessly be blocked by the
electorate in referenda, parties are less inclined to radical changes in
laws and voters are less inclined to call for fundamental changes in
elections. There is no need to dismiss the government after a lost
referendum, because the referendum solves the problem – preventing an
extreme law – more efficiently. On the very same day, three new laws may
be accepted and two others rejected.



Most people today believe they should have a right to
have their say in all decisions that affect them. Yet the usual position
of politicians is to say “we were elected to make the decisions and if
you don’t like it vote against us at the next election”. This view is
totally unsatisfactory. It is the decision people are interested in, not
revenge some time later. In addition general elections provide only a
mandate to govern – they do not provide a mandate for all or any future
decisions except in rare circumstances.

 Serious reform in Australia is perhaps many years into the future
and the obstacles and enemies of democratic reform are many. The
political parties and their partisan supporters’ overwhelming interest
is in gaining power and preserving the political duopoly. Big business
is implacably opposed to more democracy. It wants more centralisation of
power. It currently employs more than 600 registered lobbyists in
Canberra and spends millions of dollars to subvert democracy. Big media
is always constrained by its owners’ interests. Since the Second World
War there has been a growth of corporate propaganda to protect corporate
power against democracy.



With the possibility of a Republic back in the front of mind thanks
to Tony’s knights and dames folly, it is time to reignite the discussion
about just what sort of a democracy we want.


Simple minds

Simple minds

Simple minds

GoodBadPolitics
is a complex beast. The vast majority of Australians don’t want to even
think about how complex it is, let alone read articles about this
complexity. Which I assume is why the vast majority of political
journalists and commentators in this country make it their mission to
tame this complex beast into black and white, easily accessible and
ultimately lazy generalisations.

An
example of this sort of lazy writing aimed at perpetuating the
simplistic idea that ‘major parties are just the same, rotten to the
core, as bad as each other and can’t be trusted’ was predictably
contributed yesterday by
Waleed Aly.
Aly uses this theme as the frame from which he makes most observations
about politics. Before you say ‘I can already see where this is going.
Victoria is hell bent on defending the Labor Party so of course she is
going to be annoyed by Aly’s article saying Labor and Liberal are both
corrupt’, please read on, because I hope I’m not as predictable as Aly
is.

I
was mortified by the Labor Party’s decision to put Joe Bollock at the
top of their WA Senate ticket. Bollock is a dinosaur who doesn’t belong
in the Labor Party. I don’t care what apparently amazing work this
dinosaur has done in the union movement. His views on abortion, his
homophobia, his treatment of his Labor Party colleagues and his fondness
for his Catholic buddy Tony Abbott should disqualify him from being
president of a local branch of the Labor Party, let alone the number one
candidate on a Labor Senate ticket (the easiest way to become a highly
paid politician with a very generous pension).

I
am sick of seeing unqualified union parachuted Labor candidates
selected by a few Labor executive members with no consultation from the
community. But (and you will find complex politics requires a lot of
‘buts’) that is not to say that all union candidates are bad (as that
would be a simplistic analysis) and it’s also not to say that all Labor
politicians are ex-union officials because clearly these politicians are
in the minority in the party. In saying that, there is no reason why
the union movement can’t provide an array of highly qualified and
fantastic Labor candidates as it has previously (think Greg Combet, Bill
Shorten (improvement needed) and of course Bob Hawke). Union leaders
work every day to better the working, safety and wage conditions of the
workers they represent. For this reason, I would prefer a politician
with a union background any day of the week over a lawyer (even a union
lawyer like Julia Gillard), a self-interested business owner or, as is
the case for Liberals like Tony Abbott and John Howard, someone who
tried other careers and was no good at any of them.

So
as you can see, the issue of union involvement in the Labor Party is a
complex one. Community preselections should improve the quality of the
candidate, as those who have been put forward by the union or by the
community would be subject to scrutiny before they are chosen to
represent the party. I don’t count Craig Thomson and Joe Bullock as
ex-union officials who I admire, and nor do I count Kathy Jackson,
ex-union official and wife of Tony Abbott’s mate Michael Lawler as a
reputable human being. So just like in the private sector and the public
sector, and in any large community or social group, unions have good
people in them, corrupt people, hardworking and passionately committed
people, people with a sense of entitlement, and mixtures of all these
traits. Like any large cross section of the community, the union
movement can’t be generalised. Neither can union candidates to the Labor
Party, and neither can all members of the Labor Party. Major parties
are by their very nature full of a range of different people and the
behaviour of one, two or even a handful amongst hundreds should not
simplistically dictate how the entire population are framed in the
media. Complex, but not that hard to explain. Are you still with my Aly?

I wrote this week
about the way that bad behaviour, or even alleged bad behaviour, within
the Labor Party is portrayed by the media as a ‘whole of party’
problem, which I’ve even heard called a ‘disease’. Yet the exact same
bad or allegedly bad behaviour in the Liberal Party is treated as
unfortunate incidents in the careers of otherwise upstanding members of
the free market loving community. When commenting on bad behaviour in
the Liberal Party, just as I predicted, writers like Aly do their best
to make the behaviour of the likes of O’Farrell, Sinodinos and Tony
Abbott who stands by these men, a problem for the Liberal AND Labor
Party. In the same breath, Aly explains that this problem is why minor
parties like the Greens and Palmer United Party are seen as better
options to the electorate. And this is where the simplistic ‘major
parties are bad, minor parties are good’ frame becomes absurd.

You
only have to interrogate the values of Clive Palmer’s Palmer United
Party for three seconds to see that the party exists to further the
interests of billionaire Clive Palmer for the benefit of Clive Palmer.
Palmer doesn’t want to pay the Carbon Price. Palmer doesn’t want to pay
the mining tax on super profits. Palmer wants coal to be dug out of the
ground forever, and wants everyone to believe Greg Hunt when he says the
magic pudding of coal will never end. Palmer wants a coal port on the
Great Barrier Reef. Palmer wants the power to reduce the influence the
government can have on limiting his greed. But rather than interrogate
Palmer’s self-interested, anti-community values, the mainstream media
heaps Palmer in with the Greens using the simple frame that they must be
good and pure because they are ‘not a major party and therefore pure
just for the very fact they’re not a major party’. Palmer gets called a
‘larrikin’ politician, a ‘anti-politician’, a ‘colourful character’,
which might work for the simplistic sideshow, but doesn’t really help
the public to understand the policy ambitions of a man who has an
incredible amount of money to help sell his image to the public, and is
set to make an incredible amount of money by influencing government
policy in his favour.

You
would think the Greens would dislike being put in the same bucket as
Clive Palmer. Yet I see a lot of evidence on Twitter that Greens
supporters are happy that Palmer is growing his political influence. The
number of Greens supporters I saw enthusiastically celebrating the WA
Senate election result because there was a swing away from both major
parties towards the Greens, and to a larger extent towards Clive Palmer,
was scary. I thought Greens were progressives? I thought Greens wanted
to save the environment and stop mining coal? I thought Greens wanted to
keep the Carbon Price and wanted the Mining Tax rate raised? I
understand Palmer might have said something positive about the Greens
stance on asylum seeker policy once. Is this enough to make Clive Palmer
best friends with the Greens? Has the world gone mad or has the ‘minor
parties are by their definition pure because major parties aren’t’
attitude become a ‘disease’ infecting otherwise intelligent people
through reading too many articles by the likes of Waleed Aly? But wait,
it gets even more complex. The Greens did
a preference deal
with the Palmer United Party in the September election, preferencing
PUP ahead of Labor in South Australia in order to save Sarah
Hanson-Young’s Senate seat. For a party who paints themselves as pure,
surely the Greens have just added a complex layer to their brand of
identity politics that is about as coal-loving politically grubby as you
can get?

Next
time you hear someone simplifying politics down to ‘big parties are bad
and small parties are good’, think about the complexity of what is
really going on. Think about how many hard working, passionate,
intelligent, talented and committed progressive politicians in the Labor
Party are smeared by the ‘Labor is corrupt’ frame that the media
reports every political news story from. Time and time again, I ask
progressives to unite to beat Tony Abbott, and then I see Greens
supporting Clive Palmer and I realise to many, asking progressives to
unite is far too simplistic a plea in what is clearly a much more
complex situation than I can grasp.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

It's high time for a national corruption commission

It's high time for a national corruption commission


It's high time for a national corruption commission

For
federal party leaders looking to demonstrate their support for clean
politics, the place to start is by backing an Australian Greens bill for
a national Icac





Outgoing NSW premier Barry O'Farrell.
Outgoing NSW premier Barry O'Farrell. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/AAP


Premier Barry O’Farrell’s resignation was supposed to
indicate a break between the old-style way of doing politics in NSW and the
state Liberal Party, but it has emerged that new premier Mike Baird appointed
the lobbyist at the heart of the current scandal, Nick Di Girolomo, the chief
executive of Australian Water Holdings, to the state water board.


However, recent events in NSW parliament have little to do with a bottle of wine, Barry
O’Farrell’s poor memory
, or even Australian Water Holdings. They are about an
issue that goes right to the heart of our political system – the links between
our major political parties and the big end of town. The NSW Labor culture of lobbying has well and truly spread to the NSW
Coalition and to federal parliament – could revelations involving Liberal senator
Arthur Sinodinos and the relationship between NSW Liberals and Australian Water
Holdings be the tip of the iceberg?



At the federal level, very little has been done to combat influence peddling in
politics. Governments write their own ministerial codes of conduct. There are
no real consequences for failing to update the registers of senators’ and
members’ interests, and we have seen many examples of MPs forgetting about
their obligations
.


Lobbyists are barely regulated,
spending on political advertising is unlimited and both the government and
opposition have opposed attempts to establish a
national lobbyists’ watchdog. Although parties are required to declare
donations, there are few restrictions on who they can take money from.


In NSW, donations from developers and tobacco,
gambling and alcohol companies are banned, and for other corporations capped at
just over $5,000 per annum. But despite growing public cynicism about
the influence of corporate political donations, the Coalition and Labor parties
have stuck together to block any federal reforms. Donations from corporate
interests to both Labor and the Coalition run to many millions of dollars at
every election.


The Australian Greens currently have a bill for a
national Icac that is
before the federal parliament. Such a body is urgently needed to shine a
light on any situations where relationships between big
business and major party politicians go further than just political
donations into the realm of corruption in order to restore people’s
confidence in the
political system.


Like the NSW Icac, its powers must be
broad. It should be empowered to investigate and expose allegations of corruption
throughout the public sector, not just among ministers. This could include
public agencies and departments, the courts, public officials, and all MPs.


A federal ban on
corporate donations to political parties is also a must. This is one way we can
put the brakes on activities many in the community consider unethical.


It is a shame, but
telling, that earlier this year the Coalition government and Labor opposition
joined forces in the Senate to vote down a Greens motion backing greater
regulation of lobbying activities in the federal parliament.


Prime minister Tony
Abbott will attempt to isolate himself and the federal coalition from premier
O’Farrell’s resignation. The only way to get to the bottom of this is if
the Coalition and Labor get behind the Greens proposal for a federal corruption
commission.






Sunday, April 6, 2014

Mining tax: it's time for all Australians to realise they are being ripped off

Mining tax: it's time for all Australians to realise they are being ripped off

 


Mining tax: it's time for all Australians to realise they are being ripped off

The
mining boom has resulted in a huge extraction of wealth. Norway has
been turning its resource bounty into a fund for future generations,
while Australia is dangerously careless with it








Workers at the BHP Billiton's Macedon gas plant during its opening in Onslow, Western Australia.
Workers at the BHP Billiton's Macedon gas plant during its opening in Onslow, Western Australia. Photograph: BHP Billiton/EPA


Australians are routinely being told that hefty mining taxes would hinder the
country’s largest exports of coal and iron ore. This concern about the competitiveness of the industry has been the
basis of the Abbott
government’s drive to abolish the mining tax. However, it is hard to reconcile this view (key player Gina Rinehart, for example, claimed that Australia was “too expensive to do export orientated business”) with news this week that mining giant BHP
Billiton recently increased its profits by 83% to US$8.1bn.


Within the last year alone, there has been a 20% increase in BHP Billiton’s
Western Australian iron ore exports. In spite of this enormous growth,
the company only paid US$29m in minerals resource rent tax (MRRT).
As it stands, the tax is in no way making BHP uncompetitive – its bumper
profits are a testament to that.


While mining companies such as BHP Billiton
are making a motza, we need to be reminded that 83%
of Australian mining operations are foreign owned
. The net income
balance – the difference between the profits of Australian investing
overseas, and profits made by foreign companies in Australia – has
suffered as a result of mining companies extracting greater amounts of
Australian mineral wealth for foreign owners.


From 2003 to 2011, the net income balance
reduced from minus
2% to - 6% of Australian GDP
. In other words, Australia is being held at gun point by day light robbers.


Unlike Australia, Norway has kept their resource extraction wealth in their
control without it fattening up a capitalist exploiting of finite
mineral resources. Norway has a 78% tax on
oil and gas revenues – unlike Australia, where the effective tax rate
is a mere 13%. $60bn from gas sales to continental Europe is
annually deposited in the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. The fund has 5.11
trillion Krone (AU$930bn), or twice Norway’s GDP.


Pal Haugerud,
director general of the asset management in the department of the Norwegian
ministry of finance, has explained Norway’s policy:


It is a fund for
future generations, both current and future. And that’s a
responsibility for us to make sure that not only this generation, but also
future generations get their fair share of the wealth because it is a one off.
It is a transformation of wealth. We used to have wealth beyond the North Sea
and now we are transferring that into financial assets.
If the Norwegian experience has
demonstrated anything it is that resources cannot move, unlike factory
operations which can move to a jurisdiction with the lowest
regulation, wage or taxation level. If taxed heavily, corporations have no
option but to pay a fair price for those resources. If a company threatens to
cease operation, government should offer to nationalise the operation at a fair
price, so a public company similar to Statoil can extract the profits
and deposit them in a sovereign wealth fund, reduce taxation or improve
infrastructure and social spending. Norway’s example demonstrates that, after
20 years, private companies will remain and continue to make a profit – with margins reduced.


But while Norway has been prudent with its
resource bounty of $185,000
for every citizen
, Australia has not.


Fairfax economics editor Ross
Gittins
notes that Australia’s structural deficit emerged in 2002, when the
Howard government slashed taxes and increased spending. This spending took the
form middle class welfare: the baby bonus, private education and health care
costs, superannuation concessions, etc (no wonder the IMF
identified the Howard government in this period as one the two profligate
government in the last 200 years of Australian history). What does Australia
have to show for the mining boom? A few extra flag poles
in schools
and a $800bn infrastructure deficit – which the Coalition is now using as an
excuse to flog off everything from Australia
Post
to Medibank
Private
and even incentivise
the offloading of state government assets.


From 2012 to 2016, up to $50bn
of dividends of Australian wealth
will leave Australia. What could that buy? If
we increased taxation rates to Norwegian levels, imagine what that would
purchase.


It
is not xenophobic to believe that Australians should receive the maximum
benefit from their property. Australia’s mineral wealth is owned by the Crown;
the Crown holds those resources in trust so they may benefit citizens. Those
resources ought to be exploited by the Australian citizenry because they belong
to them.


Resources are a special case for protection
because they are finite and owned by the collective. For the sale of any
property, one would expect to get a fair price for it. The Crown
holds those resources for the collective which a majority of Australians (54%)
presently expect to receive significantly more tax, according to a recent UMR
Research poll
. Foreign multinational mining companies such as BHP Billiton
and Rio Tinto pay a mere 13%
tax on the profits (not the value) of our property; the middle man pockets the
difference.


Still think we’re getting a good deal? Imagine
the sale of another form of property. Say you want to sell your family home say
for a million dollars, the real estate agent takes a 87% commission and you
receive a mere $130,000 from the sale. Would you be fuming with rage, foaming
at the mouth, gnashing your teeth? That $870,000 is now in the pocket of
someone else, and you cannot get it back ever again; most of it will flow
overseas. That is the sort of loss of wealth Australia is experiencing.


The historian Philip
Mirowski
has argued the past three decades have been about using the
powers of the state to divert more resources to the wealthy. In Australia’s
case, a lot of the wealthiest do not even call
Australia home. Meanwhile, all Australians are ripped off. It’s time to change that.