What a great night! Who would have thought that staring at numbers and graphs for six hours could be so exhilarating! The Howard era has finally ended.
I must say that Howard's concession speech was both dignified and gracious. He has (finally) accepted the responsibility for the Libs' woes. And, to be fair, a political career spanning a third of a century must be acknowledged and honoured, no matter how repugnant one considers his policies. Howard should also be given credit for remaining in his long-held, but somewhat marginal seat of Bennelong, rather than seeking a safer harbour. He looks likely to lose that seat, which would be symbolically appropriate - a captain going down with his ship.
Personally, I am not a Rudd fan (Gillard is closer to my end of political spectrum), but he deserves enormous credit for turning around the Labor party when it was drifting aimlessly in the political seas and leading the party to a decisive victory in a way somewhat reminiscent of Tony Blair. One can only hope that the party will be able to stay true to its principles and to its promises. We must also hope that the Labor government will repair some of the damage done to our values and our political institutions under Howard. That it will put a higher value on accountability, transparency, fairness, responsibility and intelligent public discourse. Eleven years is a lot of damage to repair and I'm not sure that Labor has the will to do it. But here's to hoping.
November 24th, 2007
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Howard government, Rudd and Labor, Australian election |
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It is doubly annoying having to listen to yet another Liberal party ad about how interest rates will be higher under Labor because of "union fanatics" "environmental extremists" and learner leaders, when we have now had yet another interest rise (the sixth since 2004) and the prediction is that the rates will keep on going up. Howard's solution is to boast about strong economy and bleat about his economic management credentials. Given that both the interest rates and prices for essential goods are growing at an alarming rate, those of us not earning $300K a year may think that an overheating economy is not so great.
And what is Howard's great plan to stop interest rates hitting 10% or more? Give people more tax cuts. That's right, create more inflationary pressures so the interest rates go up even further and for each dollar we get by virtue of tax cuts we have to shell out ten dollars to cover the additional mortgage repayments.
In the interests of fairness - Labor is not necessarily better. Rudd adopted Howard's plan for tax cuts. If they are elected and implement it, they would be just as much to blame for the subsequent rise in interest rates as Howard. The fact that Rudd keeps on reminding us about Howard's broken promise that he'll keep interest rates low is all good and well - we need a little dose of reality to counteract the blatantly misleading election campaign strategies of the Libs - but pointing the finger at Howard is not good enough. Rudd must be able to show why his party would be an improvement. Admitting that the planned $32 billion in tax-cut would put further pressure on interest rates would be a start. Ditching the plan would be even better, but I wouldn't bank on it in an election year.
November 7th, 2007
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Howard government, Australian election, Economics |
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As one might expect, in the leadership debate, Howard made a few claims about the IR "reforms". Lets examine the veracity of some of these claims, remembering of course that one does not need to tell an outright lie to be untruthful. For example, when Howard was asked whether, under his WorkChoices laws employees could be deprived of all their redundancy entitlements, he didn't tell an outright lie - he did not say "no". He also didn't tell the truth (ie "yes they can be and the so-called fairness test won't help them"), instead he launched into an irrelevant tirade about some old reforms to preserve entitlements of employees whose employer went into liquidation.
So what about some of the less obvious untruths? Let's take Howard's statement that Australia has the second highest minimum wage in the developed world. There are several ways that one could measure how high the minimum wage is. A raw dollar value is not particularly useful as the dollar will have different purchasing power in different countries. Wage adjusted for purchasing power ("purchasing power parity") is a better measure, as is percentage of average income.
Let's take a look at the OECD figures of minimum wage as a percentage of average income:
The first thing that is obvious is that in 2000 Australian minimum wage was indeed the second highest in the OECD. In 2006, this was no longer the case. While, at about 53% of the average wage, Australia's minimum wage is higher than the OECD average, it now ranks fifth, with NZ and Hungary following closely behind it. Another thing that cannot escape notice is that Australia is one of only 5 countries where the minimum wage has fallen vis a vis the average wage, and one of only 3 countries where this fall was quite significant. The other two countries are US (whose IR system Howard seems keen to emulate) and Mexico.
Lets look at the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) adjusted wage:
It is the same story - Australia was second, or maybe even first, in 2000, but slipped to fourth place by 2006. Minimum wages have been getting lower, not higher under Howard government.
If Howard had been truthful he should have said "in 2000 Australia had the second highest minimum wage in the OECD, however the last six years of my government saw a fall in the minimum wage, putting further pressure on low income families". But perhaps Howard wasn't trying to mislead - perhaps, as has been his habit, he was looking wistfully to the past rather than facing the present and planning for the future.
And while we are on the subject of the IR untruths. During the debate Howard told the nation that he believed unions had a legitimate role to play. This may have been comforting to those of us who don't think a teenager looking for her first job can effectively bargain with an employer, if it wasn't for Hockey saying completely the opposite just a few days earlier. In an interview on AM radio on the 18th of October Hockey stated that the role of unions in Australia is "essentially over". It is not quite clear whether it is meant to be a statement of fact or of Howard government aspiration, but it does not sit easily with Howard's statement in the Leadership debate.
October 22nd, 2007
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Howard government, Industrial relations, Unions, Australian election, Minimum wage |
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Well, it was certainly exciting watching the leadership debate, worm-free though it was. I must say that on the whole, I think Howard blew it big time - it is doubtful that he'll want a repeat closer to the election. Howard confirmed one of the most damaging perceptions of him and his government - stuck in the past, retrospective, with no new ideas. None of the policies he put forward did anything to displace that impression. His emphasis was on preservation, maintenance and restoration. The vision of the "future" of education was to restore "education standards" (bit hard to do, if you keep cutting funding), fix the mistake made 30 years ago of abolishing technical schools (what a novel idea!) and restore our teaching of history. There was nothing prospective about his plan.
On the history point, his "vision" of restoring the teaching of history was not one of development of analytical and critical thinking about history or of ways to make the study of history more appealing to students - it was to renew the "pride" in Australian history and in who we are - it is a good recipe for nationalism, but not a great one for learning from our past.
His vision on the economy was more tax cuts and that's it. The universal remedy to rising interest rates, rising food prices, rising education costs, decreasing housing affordability and increasing inflation! I'm sure a few hundred bucks will go a long way to alleviating the burden of an extra $10K in interest repayments on a $300K mortgage thanks to the interest rate rises in the last term of the Howard government.
Rudd performed better, although his emphasis on himself, constantly saying "I" rather than "we" (given that he is a spokesperson for the Labor party and a shadow front bench) was a bit disconcerting. Howard on the other hand placed a lot of emphasis on his new team strategy (which would have been more comforting if the various members of that team didn't stab each other in the back on regular basis).
I hope to do a couple more posts on what emerged from the debate, but it is hard to avoid the overall impression that the only thing that Howard was prepared to offer in terms of the future of Australia are more tax cuts (which are likely to increase inflationary pressures and most of which are, unfortunately, supported by Rudd), a rabid fear of unions and a lot of boasting of past achievements (not all of which can be attributed to good governance). There's going to be a lot of disappointment in the Liberal party circles tonight.
October 21st, 2007
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Howard government, Rudd and Labor, Australian election |
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It is almost amusing that every time an election rolls about, the government promises substantial tax cuts. I wonder whether, if elections were held every year, we'd pay no tax at all. Wouldn't that be an attractive prospect? Perhaps not. If Oliver Wendell Holmes was right to say that taxes are what we pay for a civilized society, then the pre-election tax cut bribes may not be such a positive thing.
Attractive though the idea of having more cash in your pocket is, tax cuts come at a price. The 2007-2008 budget foreshadowed a $10 billion surplus. The government is now promising $34 billion in tax cuts. Assuming that the government doesn't intend to push the budget into a $24 billion deficit, where will the money for tax cuts come from? Sure, the government may save a few billion by wasting less money on advertising itself, but that will hardly cover the outstanding amount. In order to give the tax cuts and balance the budget the government will have to make cuts to services - health, education, aged care, child care, welfare. The enrichment of the individual (and more specifically, the wealthy individual who pays more tax) comes at the expense of impoverishment of society. The Howard government is once again showing its inability to think of the forest rather than the trees. It is concerned only with rewarding, or rather bribing, the individuals within society, without caring about how these individuals will be harmed through impoverishment of society as a whole. A few extra bucks in your pocket is great, until you can't afford to pay for basic health or dental care, until your kids can't afford tertiary education or your elderly parents can't get a half-decent standard of living on welfare. When your "social wage" declines more than the benefit you got from tax cuts, you lose out.
Milton Friedman (a neo-liberal economist and definitely not my favourite theorist!) says that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Similarly, there is no such thing as a free tax cut. We pay for the tax cuts that impoverish society and degrade essential services. We pay when our government is more concerned with electoral advantage than with the services it is supposed to be providing to the electorate. We pay when we fail to consider the future because we just want a few more bucks in our pocket in the present.
October 17th, 2007
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Howard government, Australian election, Tax |
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I must confess that, the less cynical part of me supports Howard's plan to make it compulsory for year 9 and 10 students to study at least 150 hours of Australian history. It is a bit disturbing to see the perception among school children that, simply because history does not appear relevant to a particular career paths, it is a waste of time. It is important to know our past in order to put our present and future in context, to learn about where we come from so as to know where we may be going. It may be cliched to say "those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it", but those who don't know or care about the past can hardly be relied upon to build a future.
In fact I think that both history and civics/politics should be compulsory throughout secondary school. Not because it is important for getting a particular job, but because it is important for functioning as a citizen within our society. So why does the more cynical part of me have a problem with Howard's plan?
Perhaps it is the fact that, once again, he is using compulsion, (ab)using the fiscal strength of the Commonwealth to force the State governments to do it his way. Tying school funding to getting his own way with the school curricula appears to be yet another example of Howard's "attack the states" election strategy. However, there is a more fundamental problem. Throughout his rule, Howard has been persistently manipulating and changing the public discourse and mindset in ways that are disturbing, to say the least, making his view of the world the only "legitimate" view. He has done it subtly, persistently and very successfully. Those who object to dehumanisation of refugees are bleeding heart liberals who want to see Australia overrun, those who remember that our history includes massacring indigenous people, stealing children from their families and taking indigenous land are black armband historians, those who speak against Howard's policies are the lunatic fringe.
In light of this, it is difficult to believe that Howard would not impose his prejudices on the history curriculum that he wants to control. Ensuring that children across Australia learn history the way he wants them to learn it and ultimately perceive the world the way he wants them to perceive it. Howard is the consummate politician - whatever he does, he must derive a benefit from. If the only benefit he's after is to pursue his war on states electoral strategy, so be it. But if the benefit is to control what children learn about our past and consequently the way that they perceive the future, then it is yet another reason why this government should go.
October 13th, 2007
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Howard government, Education, States |
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Every time I think that this government cannot sink any lower I'm in for an unpleasant surprise. Kevin Andrews' comments about African refugees are as low as they come, but as the election looms closer and no credible excuse for the extremes of wedge politics is found, the government is sure to come up with more and more extreme attempts to re-create its Tampa "success".
Andrews claims that the government reduced the African humanitarian migrants intake because they have "additional challenges" integrating. It's a real problem you see. No matter what we do those bloody African refugees still have black skin, dark eyes, lack blond hair, some of them speak with an accent and many can't even name the birthday and star sign of Sir Donald Bradman. That's just not good enough, that's un-Australian. Whatever we do, we can't make them exactly like us, goddamn it!
But sarcasm aside, Andrews' argument for cutting African intake is that:
"We know that they have on average low levels of education, lower levels of education than almost any other group of refugees that have come to Australia. We know that many of them, if not most of them, have spent up to a decade in refugee camps and they've spent much of their lives in very much a war-torn, conflicted situation."
Perhaps little Kev was away sick when they taught the meaning of "humanitarian" at school, because what he is saying is that precisely the factors that call for humanitarian intervention are the factors that are used to reduce humanitarian intake. The fact that African refugees are more disadvantaged than others has become the reason for doing less to redress that disadvantage.
This perverse reasoning turns the rationale for humanitarian programs on its head, it takes the humanity out of humanitarian migration. Rather than focusing on human welfare, as humanitarian ideals demand, Andrews' approach suggests we should take the "easier" refugees, the ones who are more like "us". Forget about those most at need. Don't you see the attractiveness of that argument? They are black, aren't they? They are foreign, they are strange, they are refugees. If you don't think of them as humans you don't have to worry about humanitarianism!
October 4th, 2007
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Human rights, Howard government, Refugees and asylum-seekers |
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I've previously written a few posts about the citizenship test and was just about to let the topic rest, until I read a wonderful opinion piece by Alice Pung, in the Age yesterday and felt that I had to comment. As a declaration of bias - Alice is a friend of mine, but the motivation for this comment is not our friendship but a shared experience of growing up in migrant families and communities.
When I looked at the citizenship test questions, I found them laughably easy. But that is because I have had the advantage of the best education, both at school and at university, during which I had the support of my family - my parents and my grandparents. Like Alice's parents they worked long hours and long weeks to make sure that their children could obtain the best education and the best prospects possible. The same applies to most migrant families I know. As the children of these migrant families we benefited from their support. We are now lawyers, doctors, accountants, vets, teachers, you name it. We all know what the floral emblem of Australia is, we have all heard of Donald Bradman and most of us can name the first PM of Australia. Does that make us good citizens? Or are we good citizens because we do something productive with the opportunities we were given?
I suspect that one of my parents would not pass the citizenship test. My elderly grandparents certainly would not. Quite a few migrant families that I know would have at least one member who would have struggled with the test. Does that mean they are unworthy of citizenship? If my grandparents spend most of their time helping their children and grandchildren succeed, are they un-Australian simply because they may not be aware that, at 80 something years of age, one of their supposed duties as a citizen is to take up arms and fight enemies of Australia? Are my parents bad citizens if they can't recall the date of Australia Day holiday because in their jobs they never got the day off? Are they unworthy to be Australians because instead of attending 400 hours of English classes they worked full time to make sure their family didn't have to rely on the dole? If they stayed on the dole no doubt they'd be labeled as a burden to Australian society, but because they chose to work or run their own businesses, rather than learn about the golden wattle, the government says they are not citizen material.
Is this what citizenship is about - memorising a few random facts about Australia? Is a handful of trivia more important than real achievements, real struggles and real victories? Is it more important than making a substantive improvement to Australia, not just through their own work, but by giving it and supporting the next generations who excel in their fields of endeavour?
Alice's article struck a chord because, in the same way that the citizenship test devalues the achievements and contributions of her family to Australia, it devalues the achievements of my own family and countless other families I know. It says to them that what they have done, what they have sacrificed and what they will do for this country is less important than playing a game of 20 questions, that living in the spirit of Australian life is less important than being able to recite the first line of the national anthem. It penalises those who chose to live as good citizens, rather than study about becoming good citizens.
The citizenship test is a pointless and misguided policy. It is a bad policy. And bad policies don't make good citizens.
October 1st, 2007
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Howard government, Migrants and citizenship |
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Mr Howard is once again going on about how States are bad hospital managers and how, because the Commonwealth contributes about half the funding to state hospitals, it would like to have more input into their operations. I won't argue with the contention that State governments are not always great managers of hospitals. Hospitals need money and some governments (State and Commonwealth) prefer to use their funds for more important things than public health - such as corporate tax breaks, increasing their budget surpluses, building casinos or advertising themselves. In that regard, State governments are unlikely to be any better or any worse than the Commonwealth government.
One can wonder why the Howard government, which is responsible for undermining medicare, demolishing the Commonwealth dental program and doing precious little to advance public health during its time in government is suddenly showing such an interest in our state hospitals. Could it have something to do with the advice given by the Liberal party pollsters that Howard's best chance to cling to power is to attack the States? Perhaps he hopes that by pointing the finger at the States we'll forget the damage his government caused to public health or that, thanks to his government, most of us now have no choice but to purchase ludicrously expensive private health insurance, which increases the prices and decreases the benefits every year. (Anyone who wants to see the "advantages" of such privatised system of health, should take a look at US health expenditure, which is by far the highest in the OECD, but the level of health in that country is below the OECD average).
It is not clear why Howard thinks that his government would be well placed to contribute to management of hospitals in any event. In the article cited, he as good as admits to knowing only about NSW hospitals - because that is the State where he resides. That was the whole point of having States in the first place - the government closest to the governed should have the most responsibility for management of smaller units (eg individual hospitals). The further the government, the less able it is to manage the smaller units, but it may be better placed to manage larger units (eg. medicare). This may not always work in practice, some State governments can be dreadful hospital managers, while others may be quite good. But that is the theory on which the Australian system of government was built.
Howard complains about States having control of hospitals when the Commonwealth contributes almost 50% of the money for hospitals (incidentally, doesn't it mean that it has half the responsibility for under-funding of hospitals?), but he is forgetting two very important things. The first is that it is not the government's money. It is our money, the taxpayer's money. We want it used for our benefit and most of us don't much care who uses it, so long as it is to benefit us. Unless Mr Howard can prove that he can do a better job using our money for our good (and bombarding us with ads doesn't qualify), he can spare us his whining. The second very important thing is the Australian Constitution. The States run the hospitals because there is no constitutional Commonwealth power for this activity. And yes, it is true that specific purpose grants allow the Commonwealth government to bring to its aid the oldest law of all - "he who has the gold makes the rules", but the bottom line is, if Mr Howard doesn't like how the powers are distributed between State and Commonwealth, he should hold a referendum so we, the Australian people, have a say about his attempts to undermine our constitutional system.
Better yet, perhaps he can focus on performing his job properly. With five interest rate rises since 2004, food prices skyrocketing and housing affordability at its lowest level ever, there ought to be plenty to do. He could even try doing something about the fact that almost half of all Australians now can't afford necessary dental care.
September 30th, 2007
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Howard government, Health and Welfare, States |
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We've been hearing a lot about numbers recently. There are the poll numbers. They bring to mind Mark Twain's famous opinion about lies and statistics. One week Howard is down, the next week he's up, one day its doom and gloom for the Libs, the next they are catching up as the numbers inexplicably rearrange themselves. OK, the polling industry has got to make its money, but lets not pretend that the voters change their minds as often as their underwear.
Then more recently, there was Costello attacking Rudd for making an error regarding the amount at which the top tax rate kicked in (the gaffe may have been embarrassing, but forgetting a number is no more a sign of lack of economic credentials, than Howard forgetting the name of his own candidates is a sign of dementia.)
The Howard government must like numbers (so long as they don't predict an election loss). Numbers are convenient - they can be twisted to suit one's purpose. They can say that 50% of the voters approve of something, while forgetting to mention that the other 50% are vehemently opposed. They can say that only 4% are unemployed, while forgetting to inform us that you only need to work one hour a fortnight to be considered "employed". Numbers are dehumanising - they can reduce the person, his hopes, triumphs and sufferings to a set of digits. They can tell you how many children die of hunger in the third world, without conveying any sense of life extinguished. They can feed you the information numerically, so you don't have to process it emotionally.
But if we are talking about numbers, and if Mr Costello is so keen that we should remember numbers, lets remember these:
And finally - 11.5 years - the amount of time it took to accomplish it all
I wonder whether Howard or Costello would recall any of these numbers if quizzed on them? If anyone wishes to add some more memorable figures - please don't hesitate to comment.
September 23rd, 2007
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Australian politics, Howard government |
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