alex white's blog
You Tube Special: Fainting Goats
In which I break my blogging drought to post an amusing You Tube clip.
Glen Milne: Rubbish Journalist
Glen Milne writes in the Sunday Telegraph:
Within Opposition ranks it has firmed the opinion that Rudd is intent on going to an election at the end of next year.
The evidence, apart from Gartrell’s enthusiasm for getting on with the job, is compelling. First, there’s history: every initially victorious Prime Minister in the modern era from Hawke (subsequent election 1984) and Howard (1998) sought to cement their incumbency by going to the polls within two years.
Second, economic uncertainty. Given the external pressures of the rolling subprime crisis, who knows what will happen electorally or economically? For Gartrell and Rudd, and Labor generally, the message has to be, while you’re ahead, go now.
Third, there’s WorkChoices. The obvious potency of this issue at the last election says go early while the electorate’s hurt and resentment towards the Coalition is still red raw.
Fourth: Opposition leadership. The dynamics of the Liberals’ internal leadership tensions are likely to be at their fruit-bearing peak at the end of 2009.
To get to the bottom of all this, I could call Julie Collins and ask what Tim Gartrell said last Monday. But I haven’t bothered.
Amazing - Glen Milne could have inquired with Labor about the committee meeting - you know, to get his facts straight, or at least do that “getting both sides of the story” thing that journalists are supposed to do. But he didn’t bother.
He also wrote in a separate article:
THE powerful Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) is poised to flex its industrial muscle after a successful meeting with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at The Lodge in Canberra on Australia Day.
A leaked union strategy document marked “confidential” reveals the MUA believes it has “strong support” from Mr Rudd and plans to push for new industrial relations arrangements that will drive up inflation.
The union wants a return to “pattern bargaining”, a technique to negotiate increased wages and conditions. However, opponents of pattern bargaining say it would also increase inflation and interest rates.
Amazing. Glen passed off as fact that the MUA’s industrial relations arrangements will drive up inflation, but we find out in the next paragraph that opponents of the MUA’s industrial policies are the ones that believe that. What happened to the neutral point of view that journalists were supposed to have?
Oh… that’s right. We’re talking about Glen Milne.
Post mortem deception
Brian Loughnane, in his National Press Club address the other day said:
Labor has been given a clear mandate by the Australian people based on specific promises and this will be the basis on which they will be judged at the next election.
Labor has set high expectations, and voters will expect the new Government to live up to them. They made very specific promises to prevent grocery prices going up, to prevent petrol prices going up and to prevent interest rates from going up. Our research shows the Australian people are watching carefully to see whether Labor’s promises are just more spin or whether they can deliver. The Coalition intends to hold Labor to the standards it set itself. Mr Rudd declared the buck stops with him – it will not be good enough or acceptable to the Australian people for Labor to try and blame the previous Government when times get tough. The Australian people have given Labor a go based on very specific promises and they expect them to be delivered. (Emphasis added)
Incredible really. The Libs are trying to say that the ALP made the same mistake this election as the Libs did in 2004.
My tip
My tip for the Liberal leadership is that Brendan Nelson will overtake all challengers.
In other news:
Mr Evans said the source had told him former prime minister John Howard had “desperately” wanted to leave politics four months ago.
“He was coaxed to stay on board, while the feeling for the past few months has been that Costello had alienated himself from the core constituency of Liberal voters,” Mr Evans said.
He said the source told him Mr Costello had been found to have been particularly unpopular with with older voters – those in the 35-60 age group.
Update:
Recriminations begin:
Senator Macdonald says he respects Mr Howard but he should have gone a year ago.
“It’s a tragic way for such an able, committed man and someone who’s been so good for Australia to leave,” he said.
“I think it would have been different had Peter Costello been leading the party for 12 months.”
He says the cabinet ministers should have that ensured Mr Howard went earlier.
“I’m very confident the Coalition would have won had Peter Costello been leading the party,” he said.
“I’m a little disappointed with some of our senior colleagues who didn’t have these discussions earlier in the piece.
Unleashed delusion
The ABC has given the soap-box to the lunatic fringe of the Liberal Party, with Julian Barendse’s foray into voodoo election commentary.
Two marginal seats in which the ALP appears to be facing a particularly tough battle are the seats of Deakin in Victoria, and Boothby in South Australia. Both these seats are held by members of the Liberal class of ‘96 and (according to the betting markets) are holding up well in their respective fights for re-election.
The pendulum puts Bennelong as the final seat needed for Labor to win. The two seats noted by Barendse as “encouraging” in so far as the seat by seat odds go, are both past the 4.1% swing needed by Labor to win (Deakin at 5.0% and Boothby at 5.4%).
Even if Labor didn’t win Deakin and Boothby (but was in the range of 5% or so), it could still pick up McMillan and Corangamite.
I’m sure I also don’t need to remind Barendse that the amounts being bet on the seat by seats markets is almost negligible. It’ll be much closer to 24 Nov before real money is bet on individuals seats to make the odds relevant.
As Unleashed commenter William says:
“Unleashed” has promised us satire as well as commentary. I can only presume that this is satire…
Second Class Workers
Billionaire Harvey Normam chief wants to create a second class of worker - comprised of foreigners - with lower pay and fewer rights than domestic workers.
BILLIONAIRE retailer Gerry Harvey says Australia needs a two-tier wage system to allow employers to pay foreign guest workers less than locals.
The Harvey Norman boss said Australia’s prosperity was creating a labour shortage and endangering the nation’s competitiveness.
He said a growing number of Australian manufacturers were moving overseas, where cheap labour was plentiful.
He called on the Federal Government to allow foreign workers on fixed visas to form a second tier to the labour market.
“Australia doesn’t have cheap labour. Many overseas workers would be prepared to move here for a much better life and half the money Australians earn,” he said.
“When you get unemployment down to four per cent, to three per cent, to two per cent, business can’t get the labour.
“I’ve got horse studs and it’s difficult to get staff.
“Workers would rather work in the mines where they get paid twice as much.
“Fruit- picking companies are relying on backpackers.”
I’m sure we all feel sorry for Gerry and his understaffed horse-studs.
Liberals' Tax Policy Puts Pressure on Interest Rates
The Liberal Party has started their reelection campaign with an astounding example of voodoo economics - a big ticket tax cut.
While this is good politics, it is bad policy and bad economics.
Senior economist with HSBC, John Edwards, says the tax cuts would put upward pressure on inflation.
“It certainly means interest rates would be higher than they would otherwise be,” he said.
“I cannot imagine were it not for an election the Treasurer would be contemplating these tax cuts of this order.
"Nightmare with no end"
A top retired US general has labeled the “surge” strategy in Iraq a “nightmare with no end”.
In the bluntest assessment of Iraq by a former senior Pentagon official yet, retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez also lambasted US political leaders as “incompetent”, “corrupted”, “derelict in the performance of their duty” and suggested they would have been court martialled had they been members of the US military.
Wonder what Sanchez’s background is…
Some economic fallacies
Recently we have seen the Textor-Crosby machine kick into overdrive. Howard is making the absurd argument that State borrowing levels are causing “upward pressure” on interest rates.
You can read some commentary at LP. I also commented in an earlier post that the entire proposition is delusional.
In the interests of informing people about some common economic fallacies, I have tracked down a link to William Vickrey’s “Fifteen Fatal Fallacies Of Financial Fundamentalism”, which I think is mostly intelligible for the layperson.
Fallacy 1:
Deficits are considered to represent sinful profligate spending at the expense of future generations who will be left with a smaller endowment of invested capital.
Current reality is almost the exact opposite. Deficits add to the net disposable income of individuals, to the extent that government disbursements that constitute income to recipients exceed that abstracted from disposable income in taxes, fees, and other charges. This added purchasing power, when spent, provides markets for private production, inducing producers to invest in additional plant capacity, which will form part of the real heritage left to the future. This is in addition to whatever public investment takes place in infrastructure, education, research, and the like. Larger deficits, sufficient to recycle savings out of a growing gross domestic product (GDP) in excess of what can be recycled by profit-seeking private investment, are not an economic sin but an economic necessity. Deficits in excess of a gap growing as a result of the maximum feasible growth in real output might indeed cause problems, but we are nowhere near that level.