The Stump

The world of politics, policy and public life

Abbott keeping mum on real parental views

February 9, 2010 – 11:48 am, by Eva Cox

Today’s SMH story about Tony Abbott’s parental leave plan is basically old news since Tony Abbott outlined his six month scheme of paid parental leave in his book Battlelines. Abbott suggested it was to be funded by a levy of 0.5 on payroll tax, rather than from general revenue, and presumably this is still his view, since he was critical of the government’s proposal.

I agree with Abbott’s views on some aspects of the current scheme, so maybe his proposals will be a useful goad to improve the present government plans.

Firstly, six months is what most people wanted for paid parental leave and Rudd’s 18 weeks plan was a compromise with future expectations, so perhaps the six extra weeks could be a vote winner for Abbott.

Secondly, Abbott will abolish the means test (Rudd’s plan only applies to primary carers who earn less than $150,000), which will please a few higher income parents and denies its workforce connection. Abbott also suggested in Battlelines that his version would pay replacement wages for those who earn more than the minimum wage, which would attract some higher income earners.

Thirdly, Abbott’s version might cover those 20% of new mothers who will not have a leave entitlement because they haven’t had at least 12 months with the one employer, and they may be pleased.

However, I remain sceptical about Abbott’s genuine commitment to women’ paid work roles, as even in Battlelines his ambivalence shows. Read More »

Comments (10) | Permalink

Rudd and rhetoric

February 9, 2010 – 9:41 am, by Charles Richardson

Very interesting post this morning by Peter Brent at Mumble. Under the heading “Rhetorically Challenged”, he says:

During the Howard government’s first term 1996-8, it attracted the label “rhetorically challenged” several times, usually from disappointed supporters. (Coined by Michael Duffy?) You could say the same about this lot. … Lindsay Tanner alone seems able to get an economic/political message across without dumbing it down.

It’s a good point, but I’m not sure “rhetoric” is quite the right word here. To me, calling the Howard government “rhetorically challenged” calls up echoes of the stuff that Paul Keating was able to come up with – soaring and inspiring one minute, witty and incisive the next – but that Howard and his team couldn’t.

But I think Brent’s point is different, and probably more important: it’s about actually explaining things, trying to improve the level of understanding in your audience. Keating did that too, with varying degrees of success. But most of the time the Howard government didn’t make the effort. They seemed to make a conscious decision to keep things at a simplistic level; economic policy in particular became a matter of slogans, not explanation.

It looks to me as if the Rudd government has kept the same approach. That would fit with Rudd’s innate conservatism, his determination to be Howard-lite. But I could be wrong; maybe they’re trying to explain things, but just (with occasional exceptions) hopelessly incompetent at it.

Comments (1) | Permalink

Turnbull takes aim at Abbott’s climate plan, and doesn’t miss

February 8, 2010 – 1:49 pm, by Bernard Keane

Former Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has demolished Tony Abbott’s climate action plan and backed the Government’s amended CPRS legislation in a long speech explaining his decision to cross the floor in support of the Government’s ETS bills.

Last week Tony Abbott launched a climate action plan that rejected any market-based emissions abatement mechanism in favour of $10b worth of handouts for businesses and farmers to reduce emissions.  Turnbull rose in the chamber early this afternoon to speak on the Government’s CPRS bills, reintroduced as promised last week.  Watched by colleagues Petro Georgiou, Russell Broadbent, Paul Fletcher and, interestingly, Joe Hockey, Turnbull tore apart the proposed plan as economically inefficient, environmentally ineffective and unable to meet the task of reducing Australia’s emissions by 5% by 2020.

After quickly discussing the need to address climate change, including that the 2000s had been the hottest decade ever after the 1990s and 1980s, Turnbull emphasised the similarity of the Government’s CPRS with the Howard Government’s intended CPRS, declaring that the bills were “as much the work of John Howard as it is of Kevin Rudd” and outlining why the Howard-era Shergold taskforce had rejected non-market approaches like regulation or subsidies to address climate change.

Without mentioning the new Coalition plan or Abbott by name, except with an indirect reference to “as we have seen in recent days”, Turnbull attacked a subsidies-based approach, warning it was “a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a vast scale… a slippery slope that can only result in higher taxes and less effective abatement.”  As a Liberal, Turnbull said, he supported a market based solution that allowed businesses and consumers to determine the most effective means of reducing emissions.  A price signal was critical in order to drive the large-scale transition of the Australian economy necessary for lower emissions.

“In the absence of a clear carbon price,” Turnbull said, “no new investment will be made or investment will be made in new carbon intensive infrastructure.”

Turnbull also took aim at soil carbon, which would under the Coalition scheme provide most of the reductions needed to ostensibly meet the 5% target.  As leader he had supported soil carbon, Turnbull said, and he believed it had great potential, but much work needed to be done before it could play a significant role.  Moreover, its benefits would be more easily obtained through an ETS, and he had negotiated amendments to the CPRS that would allow exactly that.  He quoted one biosequestration expert who said he supported soil carbon initiatives but was “horrified by the prospect of a fund from which public servants hand out money to grow trees.”

Turnbull also directly undermined the Coalition’s campaign to portray the CPRS as a tax, saying that the impact on prices would be less than the GST and that the CPRS was not intended to operate as a tax but return revenue to households and businesses.  He also attacked the argument that Australia should wait for the rest of the world to take action, noting that progress had been achieved at Copenhagen by getting developing countries to commit to emissions abatement and that the Howard Government had been much further away from global action when it committed to an ETS.  “How can we credibly expect China or India to take out call for global action seriously if we a wealthy developed nation are not prepared to act ourselves?” Turnbull asked.

The  CPRS, Turnbull concluded, was the “only policy on offer that will enable us to meet 5% emissions target” and move to higher cuts if a global agreement to do was reached.

Turnbull spoke for longer than the usual 20 minutes, and the Government readily allowed him extra time to continue.  The only downside for the Government was Turnbull effortlessly put the case for the CPRS far more eloquently and coherently than Kevin Rudd or any of his ministers has so far managed – a result that says more about the Government’s failings than Turnbull’s rhetorical gifts.

Comments (26) | Permalink

Pushing bad policy against the evidence

February 5, 2010 – 9:58 am, by Eva Cox

The nasty maternalistic state

Sole parents and the unemployed beware! Jenny Macklin is trying to take half your income away. From July in the NT, and 2011 for the rest of the country, she wants to implement the most drastic change to our social security system ever. And almost nobody knows about it. She is expecting support from the very conservative Opposition front bench to have the legislation passed quickly so she can impose these new measures as soon as possible despite almost universal opposition from a wide range of groups.

Read More »

Comments (39) | Permalink

Blogs (and commenters) in the crosshairs in SA?

February 2, 2010 – 10:36 am, by Andrew Bartlett
I just saw http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26665381-5006301,00.html this piece about a new law which has come into force in South Australia
the law “requires internet bloggers, and anyone making a comment on next month’s state election, to publish their real name and postcode when commenting on the poll. The law will affect anyone posting a comment on an election story on mainstream news websites. It reportedly also applies to social networking sites, and presumably also to personal blogs.
The report states that the law “also requires media organisations to keep a person’s real name and full address on file for six months, and they face fines of $5000 if they do not hand over this information to the Electoral Commissioner.”
This is the first I’d heard of this, although presumably it came up when the relevant legislation was passed last year. It is hard to believe a measure like this got through the Upper House, but apparently the Opposition Liberals also supported.
This sort of idea was considered at federal level by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters but was rejected as unworkable and not necessarily desirable in any case.
Draconian, dumb, futile and foolish are a few descriptions that spring to mind.  I’d also say it’s unworkable in terms of it’s stated purpose, but it could none the less snare innocent parties if a bloody minded government decided to enfore it to the letter.

I just saw this piece on The Advertiser’s site about a new law which has come into force in South Australia.  The law

“requires internet bloggers, and anyone making a comment on next month’s state election, to publish their real name and postcode when commenting on the poll.”

The law will affect anyone posting a comment on an election story on mainstream news websites.  It reportedly also applies to social networking sites, and presumably also to personal blogs.

The report states that the law “also requires media organisations to keep a person’s real name and full address on file for six months, and they face fines of $5000 if they do not hand over this information to the Electoral Commissioner.”

This is the first I’d heard of this, although presumably it came up when the relevant legislation was passed last year. It is hard to believe a measure like this got through the Upper House, but apparently the Opposition Liberals also supported it.

This sort of idea was considered at federal level by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters some years ago but was rejected as unworkable and not necessarily desirable in any case.

Draconian, dumb, futile and foolish are a few descriptions that spring to mind.  I’d also say it’s unworkable in terms of it’s stated purpose, but it could none the less snare innocent parties if a bloody minded government decided to enforce it to the letter.

Comments (18) | Permalink

The misleading averages of My School

February 1, 2010 – 3:38 pm, by Eva Cox

Doing a disservice to many schools and their efforts is probably the worst sin of both the My School website and the various media efforts to interpret the results.

The major sin is that there is little in the available in the figures that show what value the school adds to the mix of children that attend. There is not much merit in a school that takes in mainly bright children with considerable advantages and turn them out as still bright children with considerable advantage. There is considerable merit in a school that takes in children who have not had the advantages and substantially increases their life chances. This type of input is not measured, although education bureaucracies have value adding scores for their schools.

We also do not have a cost benefit score, which looks at how much is spent on children both by parents and public funding, so extra financial resources and facilities are not included. Some estimates can be made by looking at student staff ratios and non teaching staff supports which are not highlighted in the present reporting.

And there are other problems!

Read More »

Comments (7) | Permalink

Did Woollies buy Australia Day?

January 27, 2010 – 11:50 am, by Eva Cox

Who stole the Australia Day long weekend? Once upon a time, not very long ago, it was the ultimate take time out, end of summer holidays three days! The image of Australia Day was beaches and barbies maybe (but not with a national prescribed meat, sponsored by advertisers), symbolising shrugging off summer sloth! And it was taken lightly, with some mixture of pleasure and piss taking about the occasion. A radio broadcast last week of some past material included satiric games with language and concept of what being an Aussie was about. There were a few public functions, maybe some citizenship ceremonies but mostly it was a holiday long weekend.

Read More »

Comments (13) | Permalink

Elections matter – just ask the Tamils

January 26, 2010 – 10:56 pm, by Charles Richardson

Sri Lankans have been voting today in a “tense” presidential election. President Mahinda Rajapakse has another 22 months of his term to run, but – most unusually for presidential systems – he has the power to call an early election, and did so to cash in on his presumed popularity from the defeat of the Tamils last year to end Sri Lanka’s civil war.

Unfortunately for Rajapakse, he is being challenged by the one person who could claim equal credit for the military victory, General Sarath Fonseka. Both candidates are promising national reconciliation, and in both cases (but especially Rajapakse’s) that needs to be taken with a very large grain of salt. A close contest is expected.

In the last election, in November 2005, Rajapakse’s opponent was former prime minister Ranil Wickramasinghe, who had signed the 2002 ceasefire agreement with the Tamil Tigers and promised to continue the peace process if elected. Rajapakse, although he made conciliatory noises during the campaign, was the more bellicose candidate and his victory was seen (rightly, as it turned out) as a decision for renewed warfare.

But that victory was very close: 50.3% to 48.4%. The Tigers had promised not to obstruct the election, but turnout in Tamil areas was well below the national average; in Jaffna district, then largely under separatist control, it was a derisory 1.2%. (Adam Carr has the figures, plus a fine set of maps.) Those who did vote, however, strongly supported Wickramasinghe.

If the Tamil areas had voted in the same numbers as the rest of the country, there is no doubt that Wickramasinghe would have been elected president, with possibly dramatic consequences. There might have been no renewal of the war, no large-scale human rights abuses, and even no boatloads of refugees off the Australian coast.

Much of the time, elections don’t make much difference to anything. But sometimes they really matter.

Comments (1) | Permalink

Honour the flag – turn!

January 26, 2010 – 12:12 pm, by Shakira Hussein

Every school day of my Bjelke-Petersen era Queensland childhood, my classmates and I were lined up for a military-style parade – attention. Stand at Ease! Honour the flag – turn!

Every morning, we watched as the flag was raised and  swore to “always honour my Queen, my flag and my country”.

I don’t feel as though I am violating a sacred trust by breaking that oath now, because it was an oath taken under duress. And I’m not sure what not honouring the Queen and the flag would look like, anyway.

But I’ll give it my best shot.

And I’m in good company – Ray Martin and Ron Barrasi want to change our “colonial” flag, and although Barnaby Joyce says that he “loves” the current flag, I am fairly sure that he is “dishonouring” it too, at least by the standards of my primary school headmaster. The flag was not to touch the ground, as it was carried across the parade ground. According to that code, Barnaby’s smelly feet violate the flag every time he wears his favourite pair of thongs.

Honouring the Queen presumably means honouring the heirs to the throne as well. And I had an “emperor has not clothes” moment this week, reading all the descriptions of the “young, handsome prince” who has apparently won the hearts of all Australians and set back the republican cause. The emperor has no clothes! The heir to the throne has no hair! Well, some, but it seems to be disappearing fast!

Of course, physical appearance should not be a relevant factor when choosing a head of state, but given that the monarchy is being marketed on the basis of its younger generation’s glam factor, the prince’s fast-receding hairline would seem a noteworthy feature. But he is a prince, ergo handsome, apparently (not an equation that worked for his father, sadly).

Happy Vege-out for the public holiday…

Comments (4) | Permalink

Why is Kevin Rudd Australian of the Year?

January 24, 2010 – 3:57 pm, by Bernard Keane

Silly season reached a sort of climax this weekend, when The Australian announced Kevin Rudd was its Australian of the Year “because of the way he dealt with the global financial crisis.”

That was a bit odd, to put it mildly, to put it as understatedly and blandly as possible.  The national broadsheet spent 2009 attacking the Government’s handling of the GFC, attacking the need for stimulus packages, attacking the actual spending within the packages – to the extent of soliciting and running every half-baked rumour from a P&C in blue-ribbon Liberal electorates – and airing every possible line critical of the Government, from complaining the Budget forecasts were too optimistic to, not long afterward, suggesting growth was so strong it was time to cancel the remaining stimulus components.

In other circumstances, the announcement wouldn’t have been that surprising.  As The Oz pointed out as a sort of pre-emptive defence against calls of bias – who amongst us doesn’t harbour the suspicion that The Oz has sold its soul to the ALP – it has nominated Prime Ministers as Australians of the Year before, even nominating Gough Whitlam, in the halcyon days minutes before it all went wrong.

But given the tirade of anti-Government sermonising and coverage throughout last year, it looks just a tad suspicious.

For the conspiracy-minded, and I know there are one or two of you out there, one might wonder whether News Ltd feels the need to get on the right side of the Prime Minister, having managed to get itself thoroughly offside with him since the 2007 election.  Now, media organisation should get themselves offside with governments, but it should be for the right reasons not, in The Oz’s case, the Right reasons. The now definitely ex-Rudd mate Chris Mitchell and his stridently anti-Labor editorial tone is the primary problem there, although it was the News tabloids, not The Oz, which ran fictional front-page emails at the height of the Godwin Grech business, a confection that made Rudd, to use the beloved phrase, incandescent with rage.

Read More »

Comments (30) | Permalink