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Showing posts from June, 2010

Down a tried and true path

Julia Gillard earlier this week was straight onto the streets of Queanbeyan across the border from Canberra which Kevin Rudd had made his photo opportunity territory. And today it was into the studios of an FM radio station where Julia showed she can be as with it as Kevin in appealing to a youthful audience. Kyle and Jackie were the chosen ones as she subjected herself to an introductory song  Gettin’ Over You  by David Guetta featuring Fergie before admitting that the song was not really to her taste as she was really an 80s kind of dag. And as for the content of the in depth interview, well, we now know that red headed jokes will be allowed but that questioners can “expect to get a response when you do.”

No Christian but still the same view as Kevin

Our Prime Minister might have frankly told the people she is not a Christian but anyone hoping for a new courageousness on social matters is clearly going to be disappointed. There will be no federal Labor Party support for same s-x marriages while she is the boss. The policy will remain the same as under the Christian man she deposed when the Government refused to allow the Governor General to approve legislation on same s-x relationships passed by the ACT Territory parliament. “ We believe the marriage act is appropriate in its current form, that is recognising that marriage is between a man and a woman, but we have as a government taken steps to equalise treatment for gay couples,” Ms Gillard said this morning. Meanwhile in Iceland that country’s female Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir on Sunday, the day a new law took effect defining marriage as a union between two consenting adults regardless of s-x, married her long term partner, the writer Jonina Leosdottir, and became the

The infection of nonsense is spreading

The Seven Network last night, so I am told, has joined in the opinion poll nonsense with a report of a Morgan phone poll showing the Coalition in a winning position. Thank goodness I made that decision after the outing of that NSW Minister for visiting a gay club of some kind not to watch the Seven News. It saved me upsetting some guests with an undignified burst of laughter.

Putting trust in the indicator

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In these pre-election weeks I will put my faith in the  Crikey  election indicator rather than try and work out what the increasingly different messages from pollsters mean. What the wisdom of the market is telling us is that there has been a relatively minor increase in support for Labor.

A timely reminder

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It is not only polls that should be treated with a great deal of suspicion during pre-election madness. What politicians say should largely be ignored as well. There’s a wonderful example of the lies that voters get told in the United Kingdom at this very moment that should serve as a timely reminder to us all. During the recent UK campaign the Liberal-Democrats came out with a very effective poster: The Conservative then shadow and now actual Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne was quick to deny any such plan. “The plans we set out” he explained to voters, “involved around 80 per cent of the work coming from spending restraint and about 20 per cent from tax increases … The tax increases are already in place; the plans do not include an increase in VAT.” Last week Chancellor Osborne announced an increase in the VAT from 17.5% to 20%. Not really a surprise but made all the more outrageous by the fact that the Liberal Democrats now as a Coalition partner in the Government support

Good sense prevails

There was only one thing that would have been stupider than Kevin Rudd wanting to immediately get a job in the first Julia Gillard ministry and that would have been her giving him one. The absolute minimum of reshuffling was what was needed and what the new Prime Minister sensibly delivered. There is no doubt that there will be a minimum of delay before an election is called. Opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey might even have got it right this morning when he predicted the election would be called this weekend.

A little election date form guide.

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As a little guide here is the Crikey Election Date Indicator with probabilities for each date based on what the markets are currently indicating: The favoured date of 28 August is a little later than what would be chosen if the Hockey prediction about the election being called this weekend comes true.

Paul Krugman on “The Third Depression”.

It was reading the latest op-ed piece in The New York Times by the Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman,  The Third Depression , that has sent me back to delving into the kind of economic texts I have hardly glanced at for 50 years. I had, quite unthinkingly really, mentally discarded all that Keynesian stuff that still was taught when I went to university and accepted the new orthodoxies of fighting inflation first and foremost, pandering to the markets and balancing government budgets. Then this Professor Krugman bloke, who someone or other somewhere had thought worthy of a major gong and who wrote with an understandable simplicity about the most complex of subjects, came on my internet reading radar and I was right back to Economic History I with Lord Keynes at my side. My complacent acceptance that stern and punishing economic matters were good for us in the long run has taken a more worrying turn as I read comments like this on the Krugman  blog last week : We’ve suffered t

Something for frequent flyers

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Just a little news for frequent flyers to contemplate from  USA Today  overnight: Enjoy your dinner.

Paul Krugman on "The Third Depression"

It was reading the latest op-ed piece in The New York Times by the Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman, The Third Depression - NYTimes.com , that has sent me back to delving into the kind of economic texts I have hardly glanced at for 50 years. I had, quite unthinkingly really, mentally discarded all that Keynesian stuff that still was taught when I went to university and accepted the new orthodoxies of fighting inflation first and foremost, pandering to the markets and balancing government budgets. Then this Professor Krugman bloke, who someone or other somewhere had thought worthy of a major gong and who wrote with an understandable simplicity about the most complex of subjects, came on my internet reading radar and I was right back to Economic History I with Lord Keynes at my side. My complacent acceptance that stern and punishing economic matters were good for us in the long run has taken a more worrying turn as I read comments like this on the Krugman blog last week : We’

A bit stiff with the timing

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The Liberal Party were a bit stiff with the timing of their Federal Liberal Party Council meeting. The machine clearly had gone to a lot of trouble to make the weekend Canberra gathering a springboard for the coming election campaign. The advertising and PR men had spent many hours and undoubtedly many dollars in preparing material for their leader's "Our Action Contract". It all came to very little for the simple reason that the nation's new Prime Minister made red, not blue, the colour of the weekend. Julia Gillard was the Saturday and Sunday politician of the moment not Tony Abbott. Had Kevin Rudd still been the opponent then things would have been different because the "12 realistic, modest and prudent election commitments that are achievable and deliverable over the next three years" are a well thought out foundation for the Opposition's campaign. Most definitely they address, with their signed contract pledge, the concern some people might have

Naming the mystery spokesman

Kerry O'Brien nearly broke some news on Friday night. Not news of the normal kind that flows from one of his 7.30 Report interviews where one of his guests says something interesting. No. This time he nearly blurted out a real fair dinkum scoop where a journalist tells his national audience a secret. The scoop that almost was came when the old red headed one had finished with the commentary on the new red head and was interrogating Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. " Well, let's come to back to your credibility then if you're happy to test it," intoned Kerry in his most serious voice. "There's confusion about what you really told your party room on Tuesday. According to the official Liberal Party room briefer to journalists, a senior lawyer who one might expect to be pretty good with the facts on detail, you said, according to him, 'Victory is within our grasp. We are within reach of a famous victory.' " The mysterious official Liberal Party

Getting rid of negatives

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A relaxed and confident captain Gillard in the first of what no doubt will be many Sunday morning Prime Ministerial chats. Describing her promotion from vice captain to captain she set about doing her best to rid her team of the major negatives that Labor research clearly threw up before the sacking of Kevin Rudd. We are to have under Prime Minister Gillard a smaller population - or at least by saying she is not interested in a big Australia she wants us to think that under her administration population will be smaller.. Mark that up as a victory for Dick Smith and his sustainable Australia campaign.Mark it down as an example of the damage that can be done when a Prime Minister like Kevin Rudd gets a bit extravagant with his language on television and says things like  “I actually believe in a big Australia. I make no apology for that.  I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing.  I think it is good for us, it’s good for our national security long term, it’s good

Troubling signals from Greece

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Promising tough and painful economic action is the easy bit. Actually doing it is a good deal harder. The European Community and the International Monetary Fund might have demanded Greece act to reduce the budget deficit but there are clearly problems for Prime Minister George Papandreou in actually doing so. The Greek daily Kathimerini reporting on Saturday on reluctance of some in the governing coalition to change pension arrangements to lower payments and increase the retiring age No doubt the bomb explosion in the office of the Citizens' Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis which killed one of his aides this week is making some politicians wary of upsetting too many of the people. A decision by the opposition New Democracy Party to promise to end the agreement with the EU and the IMF and for Greece to again become "master of its own economic destiny" just adds another complication as Parliament approaches a vote on the pensions issue. Those lending Greece the m

Woman in sumo wrestler suit assaulted her ex-girlfriend in gay pub after she waved at man dressed as a Snickers bar

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Just another night out in Dublin really as reported in that city's Herald . Dublin District Court  heard how  Sandra Talbot (32)  lashed out at victim Adrienne Martin in a row that started over a novelty sumo wrestler's suit that Talbot was wearing. The row developed as the victim tried to wave at a man dressed as a Snickers bar.

Transitioning from home ownership

In the United States the rise in the number of people unable to meet housing loan repayments continues to grow. And what do that nation's bankers now call the painful process of foreclosure? In testimony prepared on 24 June for a congressional hearing Barbara Desoer, president of Bank of America’s home-loan and insurance unit said this: "Given the depth of the nation’s recessionary impacts on homeowners, a considerable number of customers will transition from homeownership over the next two years." Transition from homeownership!

God to save us?

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The gloomy view of Americans is that more than half of them think the next 40 years will see another world war and expect that there will be a major terrorist attack on the US with a nuclear weapon. The good news for 41% of Americans is that they believe Jesus Christ will return sometime during this period. This and other intriguing insights into how Americans see the future are provided in a survey published this week by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Does anyone care?

Apparently an Australian cricket team is playing England at something or other. There once was a time when people would have been interested. When John Howard finally gets to head the international cricket organisation he will be presiding over a very minor sport indeed.

I suppose she had to

Perhaps Julia Gillard would have been more circumspect if she had had time to read  The Economist  before chatting on the phone with US President Barack Obama. With a detailed  review  of the lack of progress in the nine year Afghan war, the weekly news and views magazine concludes "presidential decisiveness cannot conceal a deeper truth. America and its allies are losing in Afghanistan." Yet there was our new Prime Minister overnight  assuring  the president who decisively sacked the general in charge of the war effort that Australia's approach to the NATO-led coalition's campaign would be the same as it was under her predecessor, Kevin Rudd. A pity, really, that our leaders don't have some of that Dutch courage.

Most welcome a winner - one farewells a loser

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The winner was welcomed with a smiling page one photo in almost every Australian daily this morning.New Prime Minister Julia Gillard's home town Melbourne Herald Sun  did the double page one act with their girl on the four page wrap around and a farewell to her tearful predecessor inside. They're a cruel lot those people at the Hun!

Wayne's skillful evasion - rewarded for government failures

Behind the downfall of Kevin Rudd there were clearly some issues about his style and technique of governing - his presidential, almost dictatorial, dominance of decision making with the concentration of power in his Prime Ministerial office; a fascination with playing as a world leader on an international stage; an almost pedantic concern at home about the process that led to innumerable reports and enquiries. Yet there were as well matters of policy substance behind his decline from being Labor's election winning leader to the man his colleagues decided could not win again and therefore needed to be replaced. To me the one that stands out was the failure to convince Australians that the global financial crisis really was a crisis and that the actions the government took really were necessary. Labor thus suffered the downside of public concern about a growing budget deficit and the disapproval of waste and poor administration in stimulus projects without gaining the benefits of be

Political promises are cheap

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As Wayne Swan flies off to represent Australia at a meeting of the G20 group of countries being held in Ontario, Canada, it's an appropriate time for a reminder of how political promises are cheap when world leaders get together for such events. And it would be hard to illustrate it more clearly than in this page one offering on Thursday as Canada's national newspaper The Globe and Mail  previewed the meeting of the so-called G8 group taking place before the larger G20 event where Australia gets a guernsey.

Advice to Julia: make the most of the honeymoon

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If you see the chance, then take it. That’s the best advice I could give to Julia Gillard with my old election adviser’s hat on. When things are not going well for a government and an opportunity for victory arises there’s no point in waiting around. Politics is a game for the brave not the prevaricators as Kevin Rudd has now learned. He had his chance to be daring early this year before global warming went bad as an election issue but he squibbed it and then listened to those who advised him to forget his principles and scrap the whole idea of emissions trading. The new Prime Minister needs to learn from that weakness. Decide what you believe in and go for it. If Ms Gillard needs persuading that political honeymoons — and she will surely have one — should be taken advantage of then she just needs to glance at what happened to Gordon Brown in the United Kingdom. When he took over from a largely discredited Tony Blair that was such relief that British Labour again looked a potential wi

Steady as she goes

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A new leader and the market reacted only ever so slightly this morning with a marginal improvement in the probability of Labor retaining office when the election is finally held.

A final back-flip

Quite appropriate really that his term ended with yet another back-flip. Last night Kevin Rudd was challenging his party to defy factional bosses and remember that the public had elected him Prime Minister not those bosses. This morning at the Caucus meeting he meekly changed his mind and did not even stand. So much for a man who lost because he did not have the courage of his convictions.

Boys on men’s errands

Finally the colleagues revolted. They had had enough of being treated as mere pawns in the political game by boys that the Prime Minister sent out from his office on men’s errands. The final indignity was having the unelected chief of staff sounding out elected MPs on whether the Deputy Prime Minister was loyal or not. When you show that kind of disloyalty you are repaid with disloyalty.

Back to Cabinet government

A step back from the concentration of power in the PM’s office is a certain consequence of the leadership change. Julia Gillard might have been a member of the Rudd gang of four but she has enough brains not to create an equivalent kitchen cabinet of her own. Nor will she allow her staff to project themselves as being more important in the scheme of things than those that elevated her to the leadership position. Proper Cabinet meetings where ministers have the opportunity of putting a point of view before decisions are made will surely avoid some of the mistakes that ended up destroying Kevin Rudd.

Credit where it’s due

I admit I was a bit dismissive when I read Dennis Shanahan in  The Weekend Australian  still going on about the prospect of a leadership challenge before Parliament rose for the winter recess. I was even more so when Monday’s Newspoll put Labor still in the lead but the veteran was right. Which I knew from the moment the talkers on Sky News last night told me that Laurie Oakes had come back from holidays to cover the goings on in Parliament House.

Heroin and cocaine decline while synthetics rise

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The  World Drug Report 2010 , issued overnight by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), shows that drug use is shifting towards new drugs and new markets. Drug cultivation is declining in Afghanistan (for opium) and the Andean countries (coca), and drug use has stabilized in the developed world. However, there are signs of an increase in drug use in developing countries, and growing abuse of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) and prescription drugs around the world. The global number of people using amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) - estimated at around 30-40 million - is soon likely to exceed the number of opiate and cocaine users combined. There is also evidence of increasing abuse of prescription drugs. The ATS market is harder to track because of short trafficking routes (manufacturing usually takes place close to main consumer markets), and the fact that many of the raw materials are both legal and readily available. Manufacturers are quick to market new products

Letting us know some truth

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If you listened to Australia's political leaders yesterday expressing the nation's sorrow at the death of more Australian soldiers you would have thought that those deaths were but an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of actions that have to be taken to contain international terrorism. Read The Runaway General | Rolling Stone Politics and you will realise just what nonsense Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott spoke during their House of Representative eulogies. The comments of the US commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal have received plenty of coverage elsewhere this morning as the world waits to see if supposed insubordination leads to his dismissal by President Barack Obama. Suffice it for me to say that the Rolling Stone piece provides a rare insight into the disagreements and confusion that lie behind the pretense of there being a unanimity of purpose in the allied efforts in Afghanistan. General McChrystal and the handpicked "collection of killers, spies, geniu

Strange goings on in Queensland

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That strange hybrid known as the Queensland Liberal National Party clearly still has its problems in trying to present a unified opposition to the Labor Party. There are breakaways and new parties and now the former federal Liberal Minister Mal Brough is hinting that he may run again for the House of Representatives but not under the banner of the LNP whose formation in 2008 he opposed. The speculation about the Brough political future will be enhanced by a story in this morning's Sunshine Coast Daily  where he is quoted making a stinging attack on former colleague Peter Slipper, describing him as someone for whom he has no respect, and calling for Fairfax MP Alex Somlyay to retire. 

Rudd's secret polling on his leadership

An extraordinary story in this morning's Herald: a Prime Minister so friendless in his own party that he sends a staffer to check that he still has the numbers to stay leader. Rudd's secret polling on his leadership : "The Herald has learnt from a number of MPs that the Prime Minister's most trusted lieutenant, his chief of staff, Alister Jordan, has been talking privately to almost half the caucus to gauge whether Mr Rudd has the support of his party. Mr Jordan's soundings, conducted in the past month with Mr Rudd's knowledge, reveal three key aspects of the Prime Minister's position. First, he is deeply concerned about the security of his grip on the prime ministership. Second, he does not necessarily fully trust the public assurances of his deputy, Julia Gillard, that she is not interested in the leadership. And third, he does still enjoy solid support in the caucus."

UK Budget 2010: VAT to rise to 20% and the risk of a double dip recession

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Budget 2010: VAT to rise to 20% as Osborne seeks to balance books by 2015   "• VAT to rise by 2.5 percentage points • Public sector pay frozen for two years • Child benefit frozen for three years • Income tax personal allowance to rise by pounds 1,000 • State pension relinked to earnings from April" The UK Government is taking the punt that growth will continue despite savage cuts to government spending and an increase in the value added tax from 17.5% to 20%. The Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons last night that his "tough but fair" emergency budget would deal decisively with Britain's record £149bn deficit. The Guardian gives this summary of the budget proposals: • Growth is forecast to be 1.2% this year taking into account today's budget measures. It is forecast to be 2.3% next year, 2.8% in 2012, 2.9% in 2013 and 2.7% in both 2014 and 2015. • Debt will be falling and structural current deficit should be balanced by 2014.

Abbott denies 'famous victory' comments

It's a normal enough problem for politicians. They just love to be seen as winners. And then those dreaded political advisers remind them that the best place to be positioned at the start of an election campaign is as the underdog. Hence this story on the ABC news tonight: Abbott denies 'famous victory' comments - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) : "A senior coalition figure said Mr Abbott told his partyroom today that a 'famous victory' was within reach. But Mr Abbott has sought to clarify those victory comments. 'That's not what I said,' he said. 'What I said was the next election is certainly winnable, but there's an enormous long way to go. 'It's very, very difficult to beat a first-term government - it hasn't happened for almost 80 years.'"

Not wanting to appear disloyal to the troops

Another three Australian soldiers dead in an Afghanistan war that the majority of Australians don’t think is worth fighting. And still no dissenting voices within the two major political parties. You particularly have to wonder where all the peaceniks within the Labor Party have gone to. No one it seems wants to appear disloyal to the troops putting their lives at risk so all the political talk outside of the Greens is about saying the course for the great cause of combating terrorism. Politicians like Bob Brown who are prepared to say we should not be there at all are in short supply and will be until one of our leaders has the courage to tell our military that we were wrong to send them in the first place and more wrong to keep them there so long.

Right sentiment, wrong people

With an election to be fought in presidential style by two major party leaders who are failing to inspire the nation, the time is certainly right for a third party plumped around the centre on the major issues to gain some support. So the Queensland pair of former State Labor MP Peter Pyke and Graham Higgins, a former-media advisor to a Liberal Federal Minister, have got something going for them in founding their new Republican Democrats Party. What they lack, however, is that extra something necessary to crash through in the way Don Chipp was able to do when he set up the Australian Democrats. What a pity it is for those who would like to see a non-leftie alternative to Liberal and Labor that Malcolm Turnbull is not available!

Bringing back the tick

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The accusation that the Federal Opposition is a policy free zone is not something that can be levelled at National Party Leader and prospective Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss. The staff of this campaigning dynamo  have confirmed  that a big change is afoot if and when the Coalition replaces Labor. Out will go this pride and joy of the equally dynamic Labor Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Anthony Albanese: And back on road and rail projects around the country will come the Coalition’s very own creation that was replaced by the spoil-sport Albanese last year: