A federal system of government (ie. a system of state and commonwealth governments) has many advantages. One of its disadvantages, however, is the ability of a government to pass responsibility or blame for various defaults to another government (eg. commonwealth to state and vice versa). The game of pass the responsibility is more likely to be played when the state and commonwealth governments are of different ideological persuasions…or if one of them is facing an election.
One might have thought that a nation-wide problem suggests that something may need to be done on a federal level, but passing the responsibility to the states is obviously a more attractive option. Kevin Rudd promised to re-establish the commonwealth dental health program, as part of the emphasis on preventative health. Whether that would ameliorate the problem is unclear, but this approach is likely to be more productive than the finger pointing that the government is engaging in.
Who is right and who is wrong is not the question. Perhaps both levels of government are at fault. But one thing is certain - our health is too important to play a game of pass the responsibility, even in an election year.
For the last few weeks, when reading any online newspaper I just felt like shouting - get that stupid girl out of my face! Enough already - do we have to have those vacant-eyed photos and meaningless snippets about Paris Hilton every day? What's so damn interesting about a young idiot who behaved like a young idiot and landed in jail for a few days. It's not news, so stop pretending that it is.
Well, it appears that Mika Brzezinski, a presenter on MNSBC has also had enough and demonstrated her displeasure in a very public way - by ripping up, shredding and attempting to set fire to stories about Hilton, which supposed to have been presented as a lead news item of the day.
If anyone else is annoyed at the endless Hilton mania, here's the video - good for getting satisfaction by proxy.
The Age reports that the Labor party are planning another "assault" on the Greens, with the aid of Dr Evil and Mini Me billboards and a website. The campaign is apparently to be based around the fact that the Greens have occasionally voted with the Liberal party opposition in Victorian parliament. No doubt the billboards will not allude to the fact that Greens voted with the opposition when "the issue at stake was the transparency of the Bracks Government."
Assuming that the report is true, the planned campaign seems nothing short of idiotic. Labor would do better to devote their energies to displacing the Liberal party from power, rather than fighting a party on its own side of political spectrum. One can also wonder why anyone would think that voters would respond positively to Austin Powers allusions or slogans such as "Gottcha" or "Why are the Greens being 'Mini Me' to the Dr Evils in the Liberal Party?".
Unfortunately, Labor's apparent fixation with fighting the Greens can be much more damaging than a few silly billboards. Recall the 2004 election when Labor allocated their preferences to the ultra-conservative Family First party, giving them the balance of power in the Senate. Whether that fiasco has taught Labor to be more responsible in directing their preferences remains to be seen, but the proposed "campaign" suggests we shouldn't get our hopes too high.
These days The Australian often reads like it is edited by the Liberal party. Today's editorial regarding Labor's IR policies is no exception. The backhanded compliments to Labor for "fine tuning" its IR policy do little to disguise the fact that the Australian apparently believes that the only way that Labor's IR position is going to be "acceptable" is if it mirrors that of the Liberals. The arrogant attitude that the only way that thinking of "the left" can be respectable is to become the same as ideology of "the right" was revealed in previous the Australian editorials.
This misleadingly complimentary editorial is perhaps more dangerous than the previous diagnosis of non right-wingers as "psychotic". Let consider the following statement:
The elephant in Labor's IR room, however, remains Ms Gillard's pledge to scrap AWAs. The Australian accepts collective agreements may be a beneficial safety net for low-paid workers. We accept that collective bargaining should be a right for those who seek it, but we fail to see the need for intrusion into the lives of highly paid workers who want to enter an individual non-union contract. To us, the Government's no-disadvantage test for workers earning less than $75,000 a year appears to be a reasonable compromise.
Let's forget for a second that the government doesn't have a "no-disadvantage test" - that's the test that it scrapped when it introduced WorkChoices. What it did introduce is the so-called "fairness test" (which is unlikely to remain for long should the government win the next election). Not only is the operation of the test uncertain, it is unreviewable by either the employer or the employee (except via the High Court). What is "fair" is decided by a government agency and there are no avenues for appeal or review. A right is not a right at all if it can't be enforced.
It is good to know that the Australian accepts the right to collectively bargain if an employee wants it, but that acceptance does not address the problem that employees face if their employment is made conditional on signing an AWA. The right to collectively bargain is meaningless if an employee has to chose between waiving that right and unemployment.
What the Australian editorial also seems to overlook is that, with or without AWAs, there is nothing stopping an employer and employee negotiating an individual non-union contract which is more favourable than award or collective agreement. What is objectionable about AWAs is that they can be used to undermine award or collective agreement conditions because they prevail over those agreements. Ie. AWAs remove the safety-net. An individual contract cannot prevail over collective agreements, but it will not stop "highly paid workers" negotiating more favourable conditions than the award safety-net.
The apparent reasonableness simply serves to conceal the disingenuousness of the stated position. The need to abolish AWAs stems not from "demands of unions", as the editorial suggests, but from the need to protect workers, especially vulnerable workers from exploitation. It is about our rights in the workplace.
By the way, yesterday I had the good fortune to attend a function where Julia Gillard gave a speech discussing, among other things, the impact of AWAs in the workplace, especially the impact on women. It was a very impressive speech and I'll do one or more posts about it in the next few days.
But even their documented abuse of Senate majority aside, the government's statement reveals an arrogant sense of entitlement to rule. They have the power and they do not believe they should ever have to relinquish it. It also reveals a lack of appreciation for the role of the Senate in enabling minor parties and independents to counterbalance the power strangleholds created by rigid party discipline and major party domination of the lower house. Australian democracy functions at its best when neither major party holds the balance of power in the Senate. For the last three years (and in no small part thanks to Labor's idiotic preference allocations in 2004) the ability of the Senate to check major party power has been eroded.
The Howard government does not wish to relinquish its power over the Senate. It wants to rule absolutely. A healthy democracy requires the opposite outcome.
A couple of weeks ago I did a brief post regarding a US administrative court judge Roy Pearson who sued his dry cleaners for $64 million because they lost a pair of his pants.
Well, not surprisingly, he lost the case. But if anyone thinks that justice prevailed, consider that the migrant family running the dry cleaning business have spent 2 years and some $100,000 in legal fees defending the case. In Australia, if you lose a court case, you will normally have to pay the other side's legal costs (or a portion of them), but in US the same rules don't apply.
Of course, the saga may not be over, Pearson may appeal and spend a few more years and hundreds of thousands of dollars pursuing what is clearly a frivolous and vexatious case. Only in America…
Yesterday, an Australian, Hew Griffith was sentenced to more than a year in jail by an American court for setting up a software piracy ring. There is no question that Griffith broke the law - he pleaded guilty to distributing pirated software.
However, the case is extremely disturbing because Griffith did not engage in piracy in America. He did it from his home in NSW, Australia. However, because Griffith pirated software made by American companies, because the US government is extremely anxious to suck up to the powerful copyright lobby and the Australian government is extremely anxious to suck up to the similarly powerful American government, Griffith was extradited to face trial in US, a country which he never visited.
Although he could have been prosecuted in Australia, the penalties are likely to have been much less severe. In US he faced up to 10 years jail plus substantial fines. As it was, he spent three years in jail in Australia while fighting the extradition request.
What is a triumph for the US prosecutors anxious to pander to the copyright lobby should be of grave concern to the Australian public. An Australian citizen was handed over to the US to be tried for something he did in Australia.
As Griffith's lawyer pointed out he "was sent to face charges in a foreign country where he has no knowledge of the legal system and no friends or family. He has been surrendered to a country where the penalties for such offences are much harsher."
This appears to be yet another example of our government's ignoble tradition of abandoning Australians to the tender mercies of the US authorities to score some political brownie points. It will be pleased that the US government was suitably impressed.
US Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said that "theft is theft" whether committed with a gun or a keyboard and that the US was prepared to play global cop again to catch " those inclined to steal intellectual property".
Yes, you heard it right - US intends to play "global cop" to ensure that its laws are enforced in every country of the world, including Australia. It doesn't matter that we didn't vote for the US Congress or the US President or otherwise submitted ourselves to US laws. It doesn't matter if we never set foot in US. They think that they can apply their laws to us. And our government is happy to let them do it.
While pondering the mistreatment of our citizens by our own government, it is useful to consider the warped sense of morality of the US Attorney Rosenberg. To suggest that distributing pirated software or movies (freely, without making any money out of it) is on the same level of criminality as robbing someone at gun-point is almost insane. Or, as Griffith's father succinctly put it "It's a load of crap".
The "victims" - being large US companies - claim that they lost some $60 million dollars takings. Their claim is based on the flawed assumption that those who download pirated content would have purchased it had it not been for Griffith's activities. It doesn't make sense. We all know that just because you take something when its free, doesn't mean you would have bought it if you had to pay for it.
But that is beside the point. Rosenberg's comment reveals an obsession with protecting American companies' IP rights, and this obsession is so strong that a presumably intelligent individual thinks nothing of comparing breach of copyright to violent crime. This is yet another reason why Australia (and indeed other countries) should not cooperate with US attempts to enforce their own laws around the globe.
Unfortunately, it is too late for Hew Griffith.
By the way, Anonymous Lefty has some excellent posts on issues of copyright - check them out if you are interested in the issue.
PS. Thanks to the contributors who pointed out that Hew is not an Australian citizen, but is a long-term permanent resident. The point remains the same, but accuracy is important!
Last Thursday the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) released the report of the Same-Sex: Same Entitlements Inquiry - a year long audit of federal laws that discriminate against same-sex couples and/or their children and the impact of these laws.
1. The 58 federal laws in Appendix 1 discriminate against same-sex couples in the area of financial and work-related entitlements. Those laws breach the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
2. Many of the federal laws in Appendix 1 discriminate against the children of same-sex couples and fail to protect the best interests of the child in the area of financial and work-related entitlements. Those laws breach the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The discrimination covers areas as diverse as superannuation and pensions, employment entitlements, taxation, Medicare, social security and family laws.
The good news is that discriminatory laws are easy to fix - all that is needed is a change of definition to include same-sex couples within the meaning of de-facto. In recommending that changes be made, HREOC stated:
There is no need to rewrite federal tax legislation, superannuation legislation, workers’ compensation legislation, employment legislation, veterans’ entitlements legislation or any other major area of federal financial entitlements. There just needs to be some changes to a few definitions at the front of each relevant piece of legislation.
The other bit of good news is that the vast majority of Australians support equal rights for same sex couples. A survey of 1100 people, commissioned by GetUp and conducted by Galaxy found that 71% of Australians support the idea that same-sex couples should have the same rights as those in heterosexual de-facto relationships.
Now for the bad news. The Howard government is, not surprisingly, not interested in effecting any change. It does not care that 58 federal laws treat people as second-class citizens simply on the basis of who they love. Responding to the GetUp survey, Howard said "We certainly aren't a government that supports discrimination". And in the next breath "We are not in favor of discrimination, but of course our views on the nature of marriage in our community are very well-known and they won't be changing."
That's right - we don't support discrimination, but we practice it and we won't be changing that! We aren't prejudiced, we just don't think that a same-sex relationship is on par with a heterosexual relationship. It's not prejudice, is it? We believe in equality before the law for everyone, except gays and lesbians. We care about the best interests of the child, except the children of gay parents disadvantaged by discriminatory laws.
Please also take a look at the great comment on this post which contains more information and an interesting campaign to inform Mr Anderson (who reportedly doesn't believe there is any discrimination against same sex couples).
A yet another embarrassing leak about big business plans to advertise in support of Howard's WorkChoices revealed that the business groups commissioned economic models to speculate on what economic benefits WorkChoices brings to Australia. The models are likely to be used as basis for advertisements to tell the voters about the inflation, unemployment levels and economic growth "penalty" that would result from employees having any rights in the workplace.
Of course you can get an economic model to give you any answer you want, depending on the assumptions and methodology you chose to adopt. Pick the outcome and there will be an economic model out there to justify it. Pick an opposite outcome and there will still be an economic model that will give you that outcome. Both of those models can sound feasible and yet be complete nonsense.
Interestingly, this economic modeling by the business groups seems to be inspired by government commissioned models, which ensured favourable results by assuming the outcomes that they desired to achieve. The business groups model was constructed according to (undisclosed) "terms of reference" (ie assumptions) given to the forecasters by ACCI. Apparently there were three scenarios to examine: "no change to Work Choices, an abolition of the industrial relations laws, and a return to the pre-1993 era before the Keating government made enterprise bargaining the main mechanism for wage negotiations." Needless to say that "a return to the pre-1993 era" is not on the agenda of either party. The only possible rationale for examining this scenario is to push the "Labor will ruin the economy and cause Australia to collapse into the Pacific ocean" type of scare campaign. Very much like the sort of campaign that the Howard government likes…
But even without the lack of transparency in assumptions and the flawed scenarios, economic forecasting is a bit like weather forecasting - it is occasionally right, but only by accident. As Laurence J. Peter so wonderfully put it - "an economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today." Economic models are not crystal balls that show the future, they are just guesses, based on a whole lot of (politicised) assumptions. And they make an excellent basis for misleading advertising.
Well, they are engaging in the heinous act of "trying to persuade migrant workers to become citizens so that they can vote."
How absolutely dreadful! Encouraging people who are entitled to become Australian citizens to actually take up citizenship - a "dirty trick" indeed! While Joe was huffing and puffing about unions, he obviously forgot about the ads that the government has been running, encouraging people to do exactly the same thing.
Remember those advertisements that "there has never been a better time to become an Australian citizen"? The ones sponsored by the federal government and paid for by the Australian taxpayers? How about the Australian Government Citizenship Initiative website - http://www.citizenship.gov.au/, which reminds us that the Australian citizenship is "much more than a ceremony" and tells us that:
"Australian citizenship symbolises our unity as a nation. It represents commitment to Australia and its people, the values we share and our common future. It also symbolises the sense of belonging to the country where we have been born or where we have decided to make our home."
But when it is a union encouraging migrants to show their "commitment to Australia and its people", "the values we share" and "to the Australian way of life" - it's a dirty trick, according to Hockey, an unworthy attempt to throw out the Howard government. Citizens can vote, you see. And if they can vote, they might vote against the Howard government. And that's just not on!
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. - Robert Frost
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