Over the past few years of blogging here and at my personal blogsite, I have learnt that blogging is fun, but it is also hard work. Like many bloggers, I get a rush of enthusiasm from time to time and then other commitments takeover and there just isn’t the time to make a contribution to the daily debates – as much as I might like to.

It’s tempting to believe in the power of technology, but the challenge to produce good content regularly over a long period of time will always be daunting.

Australia’s opinionsphere has expanded rapidly in recent years, with the traditional media leaping on-board.

Nevertheless, Crikey’s platform is still unique, or uncommon, in the sense that it allows individuals, including outsiders not just in-house journos, to maintain their own blogs and publish directly.

And that’s a lot closer to the spirit of blogging that I imbibed when I went to Bloggercon at Stanford way back in 2004.

I hope the Crikey blog experiment goes from strength to strength.

Thanks to the Crikey team and to everyone who read my stuff.

If you want to follow the progress of a humble post-career PhD student, I will keep blogging at my typepad blog when time permits and the mood strikes.

Perhaps, its because all the contenders in today’s contest are catholics that the Libs are now embroiled in the type of destructive in-fighting that bedevilled Labor for so long (there could be a thesis in there somewhere).

Anyway, the real question is which of the contenders will be best for the ALP and why? Who should we be cheering for?

Tony Abbott: Popular with many people for his ‘engaging’ and ‘blokey’ personality, he stumbled badly during the last election campaign when he was comprehensively out-played by Nicola Roxon, one of Labor’s weaker performers. This famous incident has caused many on his own side to question his political judgement and capacity to remain disciplined during an arduous election campaign. He is also politically ill-considered in his highly-ideological, and dogmatic, anti-abortion stance. His views and personal style have convinced many people that he does not like women. An Abbott elevation would be warmly greeted by Cardinal Pell. In fact, Abbott’s political and social views seem to owe more to medieval catholicism than they do to J S Mill. Nevertheless, there is no evidence for the popular claim that he intends to introduce recusary laws. Nor is it known whether he supports Cardinal Pell’s embrace of ‘intelligent design’, though such a stance would be consistent with his approach to climate science. Sources suggest that Abbott’s denunciation of Vatican 2 are as lucid as they are amusing to the lay person. Abbott’s main passion in life outside politics seems to be the rigors of long-distance cycling and swimming (he looks better in lycra than budgie smugglers) whether this owes anything to religious penitence is unclear. Overall, Abbott would be an entertaining choice for leader and, joyously, would pose no threat to the Rudd Government. A definite favourite with ALP voters.

Kevin Andrews: He hasn’t declared in a definite sense, and an Andrews victory is probably too much for us to hope for. This guy has no media skills whatsoever and was a third rate Minister. Deeply conservative in a religious sense (long association with the fabled Lyons Forum) he would alienate many women and lots of people intent on enjoying life. He was the architect of the unpopular WorkChoices policy and presided over the highly embarrassing Haneef affair. A rank outsider but we can always dream.

Joe Hockey. Hockey is the most affable of the candidates. Though his reported support for a conscience vote on the ETS in the Senate suggests that he is less agreeable then the Minchin / Abetz cabal might have hoped. He lives the solid, wealthy, middle class lifestyle much admired by Liberal voters especially in Sydney. He once owned, may still do, a smallish farm on Queensland’s Atherton Tablelands where he could get away from the rigors of ministerial life. Hockey is better known for his Sunrise performances, including a stint on the Kokoda Track, with Kevin Rudd and Mel and Kochie. Undoubtedly, his comfort with television is a major strength of his candidacy. Nevertheless, Hockey’s ministerial career hasleft much to be desired in terms of substance.His views are progressive (in the Liberal Party context) and for this reason, he can best be summed up as a more affable (that’s the word) version of Malcolm Turnbull. Hockey will have to up his work rate considerably if he is to match Rudd and Gillard. He will also have to sharpen up intellectually where he is yet to show much that would encourage his colleagues or worry the ALP.

Malcolm Turnbull. Undoubtedly, the best candidate in terms of policy substance, political strategy, work rate and media performance. Nevertheless, he was badly weakened by his mishandling of the Godwin Grech / utegate affair –  a truly stunning stuff-up – earlier this year which highlighted his lack of political and parliamentary experience. Turnbull has also been unable to take the flat-earthers with him on the ETS journey, nor hide his contempt for them. Turnbull is finding out that dumb people hate having their stupidity acknowledged – nothing is so vicious as the revenge of stupid people who have been exposed. Although Turnbull is the only Liberal contender that looks plausibly prime ministerial he has been damaged by his willingness for a fight. He would be a tough opponent, and the Rudd Government has put in a lot of spade work trying to destroy his career before it gets any real momentum. Strangely, a win here might give a significant boost to his poll ratings. Happily for the ALP, it is unlikely that the Liberals will stick with him today.

The formation of the Country Party in 1922 introduced a clear rural interest, and took votes from the ALP and bolstered the conservative position outside the capital cities.

For most of the twentieth century, the conservative side has also been bolstered by the three major splits in the ALP over sectarianism and ideology, spread across WW1, the Depression and the 1950s.

Nevertheless, the clear division in Australian politics has been Labor versus anti (or non) Labor for much of the last century.

But now that the ALP has moved to the centre, adopted economic rationalism (for the most part), emphasises equality of opportunity (rather than outcomes) and downplayed its links with (and the influence of) its union base does a labor / anti-labor split make any sense anymore.

The sectarianism that underlined this division has also dissolved, so much so that the Liberal leadership is overwhelmingly catholic – Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey, Tony Abbott and Kevin Andrews among others – a situation that was unthinkable a few decades ago when the Liberals were the party of protestantism.

The class divide has also fallen away, Liberal MPs are now less likely than ever to be the product of elite private schools while Labor MPs are overwhelmingly the beneficiaries of university education.

This week we have seen the Liberal Party ‘base’ rage against the idea of a Liberal leader supporting a Labor policy, this tapped into a deeper rage against the disappearing rationale for the continued existence of the old Liberal Party of middle-class, socially-conservative, private school, protestants.

Just as much of the Coalition partner’s base raged against the efforts to move the Country Party towards a National Party, and rushed off to follow Pauline Hanson.

Yet, disastrously for the Liberal Party, this base, whipped to a frenzy by the likes of Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt, are only a small sliver of the voting support the Liberals need to be a serious challenge, astoday’s Newspoll confirms.

What this week’s exercise has shown is that the Liberal Party has lost its way. Its right wing has become more right wing and more reactionary than genuinely conservative. They are Bushite republicans with a dose of Hansonism thrown in. The left of the party has become more politically, culturally and intellectually sophisticated just as the Minchin, Abetz and Abbott forces have been dragging the party in the opposite direction.

Right-wing cheerleader columnists like Miranda Devine do the their best to paper over the backwardness of the Minchin forces, even trying to boost fruit bats like Cory Bernardi:

Bernardi has emerged as the most promising rising star in politics for years. He is a clear thinker, articulate, with conviction and courage.

This is her example of his clear thinking:

“We are a party of smaller government, lower taxation, supporting families and free enterprise. The ETS compromises all these core principles … We are not moving to the right. [We're] trying to support core Liberal principles.

This is nonsensical stuff. For a start, the second sentence doesn’t follow from the first. What’s more they are principles the Rudd government would happily sign up too. He is not making any sort of meaningful distinction at all.

In addition, they are not actually principles at all. No-one wants government to be any bigger, and taxation any higher, than it has to be. The question, in this instance, is whether you think the government should take action on climate change? And, if so how should it do it. The alternative to the ETS, one I have some sympathy with, is a straight out carbon tax and government subsidies program. Bernardi has no ‘smaller government, lower taxation’ option because there isn’t one.

When Bernardi talks about families he is going against Liberal principles because he sees this as his opportunity, like many of the Liberal right do, to interfere in our lives in the name of ‘family life’. Liberalism should be about more freedom not less.

Far from being the intellectual star Devine would like you like to think he is, Bernardi is a knuckle dragger. Devine is also keen to portray Abbott as an ‘intellectual’, surely that tag would imply some capacity to hold a position for more than a few months, but Tony unfortunately only holds strong positions when it comes to controlling women’s lives and bodies. Otherwise his opinions seem to move with the prevailing winds.

The Liberal Party is tearing itself apart, many of the participants, and their activist cheer leaders like Bolt, Jones and Devine, are divorced from political reality – exactly what happens when parties self-destruct.

All this is great news for the non-conservative parties. At any climate change double dissolution, or normal election, the ALP and Greens vote will go up, as might the National vote, we will see a plethora of conservative independents and the Liberal Party will slump badly, especially in the major cities.

It would set the platform for a long-term ALP government, how long will depend on how long it takes the conservatives to find a rationale beyond the hollow platitudes of the Cory Bernardis of this world.

So much for excellence.

The report recommends that additional government funding go to community sport (eg our many footy codes) rather than elite Olympic sports programs.

Of course, ‘framing’ comes into play here. The report want s you to believe that archery is an ‘elite’ sport while AFL and rugby league are really just community sports after all.

The report is also premised on a flawed, or exaggerated, notion that there is an opposition between community and elite sports programs.

But it is lucky that it has stirred up a hornet’s nest with its blunt rejection of the Australian Olympic movement’s claims for extra funding.

Without this controversy, the report contains nothing of interest. It is page after page of banalities and findings of the ‘no shit sherlock’ variety. Again and again, the tough issues are ducked.

Take finding 47:

Sports at all levels derive significant revenues from fast food and alcohol advertising.

Limitations on sponsorship of sport will significantly affect the industry.

No kidding, and the recommended response? None.

But there are lots of the usual lame ideas like a government program to encourage old people to volunteer to help sporting organisations. The sort of policy bumpf much loved by 20/20 conferences and the like. Butcher’s paper strategies.

Unsurprisingly, the report makes much of the health, educational, social capital etc benefits of community sport, yet there is no one on the committee with real and substantial expertise in any of these areas.

The composition of the committee is questionable, while four of the five committee members have links to the major football codes, only one has links to a major Olympic sport (hockey).

That’s not independent, that’s stacked.

Still, reading the report you get the sense that it is really just a way to help the hapless Kate Ellis reject the insistent John Coates.

Certainly, Coates got the message.

The battle will be fierce and the second-rate nature of this report (unbalanced committee, flawed arguments, little factual substantiation, unimaginative policy contribution) will not help the Government.

On Wednesday last week, during ceremonies to mark the nation’s apology, Bonney Djuric gave Prime Minister Rudd a letter seeking his support for a living memorial to the Forgotten Australians and the Stolen Generations in Sydney’s western suburbs, on a site called the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct which has long been associated with both indigenous and non-indigenous women and children committed to institutional care.

Bonney Djuric, and other ‘Parramatta Girls’, believe a living memorial could become a symbol of shared learning, giving voice to the voiceless and offer an economically-viable, culturally-rich environment for future Australians which would be of international standing.

And it would help the healing process for a lot of people.

Something like 500,000 Australians experienced care in an institution or some other form of out-of-home care during the last century. Many of these people have lived for decades with a legacy of depression, low self-esteem, phobias and nightmares which has in turn often led to alcoholism, drug addiction and prostitution. A large proportion of our prison population are drawn from the ranks of the ‘Forgotten Australians’.

In 2004, the Commonwealth Senate Community Affairs References Committee reported on the abuse of children in institutional care (Forgotten Australians: A report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children).

The Committee received submissions from hundreds of survivors. These detailed accounts of physical abuse and neglect, emotional abuse and neglect, sexual abuse, broad dehumanisation and cruelty by people charged with their care.

The Committee members and staff involved in the inquiry found that, ‘The scale and magnitude of the events described in evidence was overwhelming’. Indeed, two Senators broke down when speaking at the release of the report.

It is important not to condemn everyone who worked in these institutions, but it is equally as important to reveal the truth and condemn those who were responsible for perpetrating these acts, and those responsible for enabling the perpetrators to do so.

Parramatta Girls Home (PGH) operated from 1887 until 1986. During the course of that century, it was the destination for thousands of girls aged between 11 and 18 who were considered ‘at risk’.

The institution’s population represented girls from all social, ethnic and economic backgrounds including significant numbers of the Stolen Generations and many who had experienced a succession of institutions and foster care placements throughout their childhood.

PGH gained some public attention last year when it was the subject of a Belvoir Street production, Parramatta Girls starring Leah Purcell.

Bonney Djuric, who spent eight months in PGH in 1970, was an adviser on the play’s production. Written by Alana Valentine, the play pays tribute to the courage, hardship and inequality that the Parramatta girls experienced.

Australia’s convict legacy helped to shape its welfare system. In particular, those decades of transportation shaped ideas and beliefs about females who could be charged and committed to institutions for being ‘Exposed to Moral Danger’; a charge which did not apply to males. Less than two per cent of the inmates at Parramatta had been charged with a criminal offence.

The convict heritage was also pervasive in operating procedures and practices. The routines, procedures and institutional language which continued unchanged throughout the years at PGH had their origins in Parramatta’s convict beginnings.

The institution was not only associated with Australia’s colonial past in its underpinning ideas and operating procedures, but also in its physical location next to the former convict asylum known as the Parramatta Female Factory which was once the destination of all unassigned female convicts to the colony of New South Wales.

Arguably, the Parramatta site is as important in Australian history as Port Arthur and the Hyde Park Barracks. It was first explored by Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788 and shortly afterwards established as a gaol town and farm, with the first Female Factory operating by 1804 and later replaced with a grander building commissioned by Governor Macquarie and designed by Francis Greenway in 1821.

Speaking of the Forgotten Australians, the Senate Committee found that there had been wide-scale unsafe, improper and unlawful care of children, a failure of duty of care and serious and repeated breaches of statutory obligations.

The Committee recommended that the governments, churches and care providers should express sorrow and apologise for the physical, psychological and social harm caused by their neglect and worse.

Today, nearly 40 years after her own stay at Parramatta, Bonney says: ‘It is an eerie place. It could be beautiful with its old buildings and river views, but there is sense there of ghosts wanting to speak out, a sense of unspoken pain and of suffering, and the need for understanding and change.’

Bonney Djuric, and her fellow members of Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Association, want to save the area from further deterioration, while stimulating debate and raising the level of public and government awareness of the need to recognise, promote and value women’s contributions and heritage.

They propose the implementation of a dual purpose redevelopment of the site as a National Women’s Heritage Centre and the National Centre for Forgotten Australians.

They want to promote an interactive approach to historical and cultural preservation and they seek to create accessible public spaces that provide opportunities for participation in the arts whilst maintaining the historical integrity of the area.

They want the site to be a living memorial. A recognition of the wrongs of the past, but also an expression of hope for a better future for our nation and for the children who deserve better from a society as rich and sophisticated as Australia is today.

In her letter to Prime Minister Rudd, Bonney wrote that the memorial her group envisages has ‘the potential to become a world-class, leading-edge demonstration of what happens when people work together, combining art, history, technology and tourism into a site of economic opportunity, national significance and international recognition.’

Let’s hope that last week’s momentous events are not allowed to pass us behind, dimmed by the onrush of events and concerns. The events in Canberra should make us all feel a little more proud of being Australian and Bonney’s living memorial at Parramatta would be another fitting way to mark this remarkable time of forgiveness and reconciliation.

The author, a communications strategy consultant, has been advising Bonney Djuric.

The Australian’s Michael Stutchbury says this will require ‘tough-love’ policies.

Usually, this is code for giving carrots to the rich and sticks to the poor. Tough for the bottom of society, great for the top,

In economics, inequality rocks. Right?

Well, actually no.

Inequality peaked in the US just before the great depression, and it only returned to those levels just before the GFC (see Palma, Cambridge Journal of Economics).

That’s not news. Keynes pointed out that inequality made the economy more unstable.

In the period before the GFC, growing inequality encouraged people to go into debt to ‘keep up’, contributing to excessive consumer debt and a housing bubble.

This week nobel laureate and NYT columnist Paul Krugman has pointed out that the economy grew faster, and media family incomes much faster, before modern finance, and the whole neoliberal experiment, when incomes were less unequal:

Take the United States, which wasn’t damaged in the war. Take per capita real GDP. Give hostages by taking data from 1950 to 1980, which means including the 1980 recession, but stopping at 2007, so that the current slump isn’t included. Then here’s what you get:

Growth in per capita real GDP from 1950 to 1980: 2.2 percent per year

Growth in per capita real GDP from 1980 to 2007: 2.0 percent per year

Oh, and if we look at real median family income instead, we get:

Growth from 1950 to 1980: 2.3 percent per year

Growth from 1980 to 2007: 0.7 percent per year

Sorry: there’s no measure I can think of by which the U.S. economy has done better since 1980 than it did over an equivalent time span before 1980. It may be something you’ve heard, it may be something you’d like to believe, but it just didn’t happen.

We also know that more equality is better for everyone in society, with the possible exception of the super-rich, because of a recent book that brought together all the evidence, “The Spirit Level: why more equal societies always do better”. A key argument is that:

While it is often assumed that social problems bear little relationship to average incomes, the evidence suggests that income differentials within populations matter a great deal, and this is as true of American states as it is of countries around the world.

In the most unequal countries and states, there is more gender inequality, too, and these places are less generous. A higher proportion of people suffer from mental illness, and more use drugs.

Less egalitarian countries have six times as much obesity. Educational attainment is poorer, with higher dropout rates, shorter periods of paid maternity leave and less early childhood education. Teenage birth rates are higher, and it is young men from disadvantaged neighbourhoods who are most likely to be the victims and perpetrators of violence.

In more unequal countries, children experience more bullying, fights and conflict, and rates of imprisonment are five times higher. Although it is possible that heath and social problems cause bigger income differentials, inequalities are the common denominator.

The same is true for economic growth. If we want growth we have to ensure that the benefits (and the tough-love stuff) are seen to be borne more equally than in recent decades.

Unfortunately, few Australian policy makers and commentators seem willing to recognise the need for more, not less, equality.

]]> http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2009/11/10/more-not-less-equality-needed-for-economic-growth/feed/ 5 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2009/11/09/can-rudd-save-his-ets-or-will-it-destroy-him/ http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2009/11/09/can-rudd-save-his-ets-or-will-it-destroy-him/#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:31:50 +0000 Trevor Cook http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/?p=6132 Rudd is a control freak.

His government is run along command and control lines (read Cameron Stewart’s interesting piece in last Saturday’s Australian magazine).

His media strategy is a campaign strategy.

Win the day, stay in front.  Make your opponent the issue. Control the message. Make no mistakes.

This is the goldfish in a bowl approach. Every day is new day, every week is anew week.

It works for politics, it’s hopeless for government.

Government is about implementation, not just rhetoric and across-the-despatch box abuse.

The ETS (emissions trading scheme) is the focal point of Rudd’s first term as prime minister.

It’s the self-designated ‘big test’ for the Rudd Government.

It’s a sleeper, potentially much bigger than the current fuss over asylum seekers.

It is, according to government rhetoric, the biggest single economic reform ever.

Bigger than the GST.

Very few people know how it will work and if it will achieve anything.

It sounds like something straight out of the Enron playbook.

A new round of financial trickery much like the stuff that just brought the world economy close to the precipice.

Environmentalists think it is a cop out. Too many compromises with too many big polluters.

The right, Alan Jones and the rest, are screaming about ‘world government’ and ‘loss of sovereignty’.

Increasing numbers of voters are buying the Opposition line that it is just a tax and part of Rudd’s global ambitions.

Cynics are asking if Macquarie Bank (and all the other CBD law and advisory firm spivs)  think it’s a great idea why shouldn’t we be suspicious.

In the face of all this Rudd has left a vacuum.

A vacuum he tried to fill last week with 14 pointless media interviews and a bizarre rant at the Lowy Institute.

The rant has only served to convince his opponents that they are getting under his skin, and that he is according to Jones: ‘rattled’.

What is needed is a real education program, some hard facts that might help win the debate and reassure the voters.

The Rudd Government seems strangely unwilling to do the hard work of a retail communications campaign.

Two years down the track and its media and broader political strategies seem stuck in the realms of the 33 day campaign when only the the headline matters.

Time is slipping away, if Rudd et al don’t win the implementation debate this whole thing is going to blow.

And what happens if Rudd gets his ETS through the Senate and the Copenhagen conference fails to make any progress?

Doesn’t bear thinking about. But I hope Rudd’s minders have a plan B.

Click, tweet, e-mail, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the jargon of the digital age describes how we now read, reflecting the way that the very act of reading, and the nature of literacy itself, is changing.

The information we consume online comes ever faster, punchier and more fleetingly. Our attention rests only briefly on the internet page before moving incontinently on to the next electronic canapé.

Addicted to the BlackBerry, hectored and heckled by the next blog alert, web link or text message, we are in state of Continual Partial Attention, too bombarded by snippets and gobbets of information to focus on anything for very long. Microsoft researchers have found that someone distracted by an e-mail message alert takes an average of 24 minutes to return to the same level of concentration.

The internet has evolved a new species of magpie reader, gathering bright little buttons of knowledge, before hopping on to the next shiny thing.

I love that last line about magpie readers.

I can see the problem, but I think it’s about discipline. Avoid multi-tasking.

If you’re going to read books (and you should) or even long articles; you need to switch off the devices and focus.

Don’t worry, twitter will still be there – or something even crazier will have replaced it.

Journalists often over-estimate how much they know, and exaggerate their own importance.

But they’re not alone in having those shortcomings.

Where you sit is where you stand.

And people in different sectors of our complex democracy are quick to identify and lampoon the failings of everyone else.

Journalists ridicule academics for being long-winded (and dull), academics ridicule the superficialities of journalistic analysis.

Public servants sometimes think everyone in business is a spiv of one sort or another, while in the private sector bureaucrats are seen as rule-loving tossers.

These warring groups are not always wide of the mark in their depictions of each other.

More recently, we have had another cleavage thrust upon us: bloggers versus journalists.

I was cheered by Stilgherrian’s first few paragraphs in his paper to the media 140 conference. And this sentence, in particular:

This is why I think the whole bloggers versus journalists debate was and still is so incredibly stupid.

But what follows, unfortunately, is a jaunty run through the whole ‘social media good, journalism bad’ story that has long since become a cliche.

A few more pars into this tour through the well-worn world of blogger resentment, we get this stunner of a summation:

Up the other end we’ve got big institutions like the Church, Science and The Media constructing narratives they call, respectively, Belief, Knowledge and News. All of them, when threatened, refer to their narratives as “The Truth”.

Oh dear.

Now I know Stig is trying to be entertaining and provocative so a certain amount of latitude is warranted.

But this sort of glibness doesn’t do anyone any good.

On the other hand, reading further I realised that this ‘critique of western civilisation in a nutshell’ really is the key to understanding the perspective of Stig and countless other social media romantics.

Folks, there is not such thing as truth. That was all a pre-digital idea. Now utterly redundant.

Once you get over silly obsessions like trying to work out what the truth is then you are free in Stig’s grand vision for our future to convey gossip along ant-like trails.

I’m not making this up.

At the end, in his paper’s coup de grace against the pretensions of journalists, Stig draws on a recent weather event to portray the redundancy of journalism:

Like ants mapping out food trails, people did this by passing signals to each other — interesting photos and factoids and emotional responses — without central control. And because they knew the people they passed them to, these messages had plenty of personal resonance.

When the industrial media factories creaked into action, maybe only minutes or an hour later, what were they adding to that process? Were they just packaging that collective narrative for the folks who aren’t yet connected to the live global hive mind?

Well there you go. No need for investigation, fact-checking, objective standards of accuracy, background, context. Not to mention a trained editorial hand to bring you the best writing and pictures.

I think we need more journalists.

I think more bloggers (and god forbid twitterers) should be embracing the skills of journalism.

I vote for excellence.

And truth.

I don’t want the ‘global mind hive’.

It sounds ugly and dystopian to me.