Labor’s ‘spaghetti’ diagram

I wrote a piece on Knowledge Nation for this morning’s “Last Word”, an opinion spot on the back of the Herald’s front section. It’s reproduced below, and you’ll see that I used quotes from three Webdiary contributors.

Typical journalist – I first thought of the proprieties of this at home last night. My apologies to those concerned.

I’m very proud that we’ve created a space here in which readers feel safe to contribute, knowing that their work will be respected. I hope to quickly regain your trust in this regard. It looks like I might get a semi-regular Last Word spot, and am keen to bring readers’ voices in. I promise to obtain the prior permission of contributors before doing so.

First, the piece, then your latest ideas on knowledge nation.

Picture this: A nation smart enough to think, not snigger

Cynics leapt to mock the Knowledge Nation vision of Barry Jones and Kim Beazley. The rest of us should stop and think about it, says Margo Kingston.

Confession of a fruit loop: I love Barry Jones’s diagram. Vision ain’t a word, it’s a hard slog. Decisions here bounce onto consequences there, and top-drawer minds are required to visualise the goal and make it happen.

When was the last time a political party produced an unashamedly intellectual document which dared to use big words and invited debate and critique before decisions on priorities and how to pay for them were made?

Horrible, isn’t it? No wonder the media didn’t have a clue what to do with it, until THAT diagram gave them the excuse for cheap ridicule and a lecture for Kim Beazley on his shocking blunder in letting Australia’s leading public intellectual have a go at engaging the Australian people in a vision for a future.

As Herald online reader Tom Moore put it: “The contemporary political imagination is scared of the manifesto. A manifesto holds political parties to things. A manifesto demands that parliamentarians account for their conduct … A manifesto will get you into more trouble than it’s worth.

“My greatest fear is that its clarity of vision will take second place to the negative politics that goes with the territory of electioneering. Now is the time for Kim Beazley to reanimate public life in Australia by demonstrating that manifestos are still good for something.

“Its definition of ‘knowledge’ is surprisingly broad and expansive. The Knowledge Nation isn’t just a country committed to learning or research.

 

“The Knowledge Nation emerges in our own self-awareness of who we are culturally, as Australians, in our wonderful diversity. Our knowledge resources, in the face of the momentum of globalisation and neo-liberal forces, are the most valuable things we have as a nation.”

In my view, this manifesto seeks to tackle the underlying issue in the next Federal election – the role of government – which has become as commodified as every other institution crushed under a ideology which sees nothing of value in values on which it can’t put a short-term dollar value.

Herald reader Andrew Elder puts it this way. “When I think about science/education funding, I think of arguably the greatest scientific discovery in this country: Howard Florey’s contribution to the discovery of penicillin. At the risk of sounding like Barry Jones, Florey was a professor at the University of Adelaide who got a CSIRO grant to study mould growths in citrus fruit. His discoveries took him in a different direction, and the powers that were at that time trusted him and supported him to an end that could not have been foreseen.

“Can you imagine the outcry if that happened today? Radio talkback would blast him as a fraud against taxpayers and citrus growers; and where is the politician who wouldn’t take their line? Instead of being supported and trusted, the latter-day Florey would be roused out by a bunch of bureaucrats and probably sued.

“Then, as some foreign scientist was awarded and rewarded for his work, the latter-day Florey would feebly claim: ‘Hey, I did that.’ How would the Aussie media respond? Jeers (‘Yeah, right!’) or forehead-slapping (‘Another Aussie invention ripped off by the Yanks’).”

Knowledge Nation talks about the disappearing public intellectual, the need to reassert the value of the humanities and the need to rebuild great national institutions like the CSIRO, the National Library and the ABC. It talks to people like Elen Seymour, who says she’s freezing in Ottawa because her research scientist husband had to leave Australia and is desperate to come home and put on her bikini.

Elen wrote: “It didn’t seem outrageous to me to use ‘big words’ in a document that talks about education, the economy and revitalisation of the cultural and intellectual scene of Australia. Especially not when the document took pains to actually explain what these ideas are all about. If a crappy diagram was all the fault people could pick out of the document (and the lack of hard numbers) then maybe – just maybe – there is sufficient will amongst Australians to do the hard yakka to get back into line.”

Since pygmies in the media have chosen the path of anti-intellectualism, let’s hope they retire to snigger corner and let people who care have a read and a think and make a contribution to a fundamental debate.

There’s lots to critique in this experiment in intelligent democracy. But really, there’s nothing to laugh about. Thank you, Barry. You’ve done good.

ends

MEEJA WATCH

DEATH TO THE BEAN MONKIES!

By Jack Robertson

The Great Thing about the Human brain is that it is infinite. (Mine is, anyway, dunno about Paddy McGuinness.) There is no limit on how big or how far ahead we can think – except, of course, our own puny, miserable, watery, scared, self-doubting, provincial, hillbilly, luke-warm, battleship-grey, strait-jacketing, self-imposed limitations.

Inadequate thinkers always get scared when genuine ponderers like Barry Jones get on a superheated roll – especially inadequate Bean Monkies. Economists simply can’t handle anything that they are unable to squish instantly into the dull, numbing profit/loss columns of a fiscal spreadsheet. It makes them extremely uneasy.

They gaze upon other peoples big, bold ideas and soaring abstract explorations of the Humanly possible (as opposed to the economically inevitable), they reluctantly allow their minds to wander for a bit entirely unfettered by the plodding principles they learned in Accountancy 101, and in their middle-aged and faintly regretful mediocrity, they start to belatedly wonder whether there is more to life than the financial pages, after all.

Terrified by their own lack of imagination, they run away to take refuge in self-nobbling phrases like fiscal responsibility and economic rationalism .

Knowledge Nation, as Margo rightly observes in today’s hard copy Herald, has got em scared shitless. They are the Bean Monkies – they run our present government, they run our banks (dreary twerps like David Murray whose life is nothing but numbers), they even run our Universities, these days.

Their first and instinctive reaction to the Knowledge Nation document has been to wonder where the money will come from. Isn’t it funny how no-one responded in this way to that moment when Samaranch said the magic words: Siddennee? I can’t recall much number-crunching disapproval when we elected to bung troops into East Timor, either. Yet neither of these Oz adventures was ever going to make a profit, at least in dollar terms.

This latest chunk of Jonesian Jauntiness is a fantastic development for political life and the life of politics in Australia, because it will flush out the small-minded twerps at last.

The KN blueprint might just finally clear the air on the great globalisation debate in this country, too. For a long time in the Oz Meeja now, Bean Monkies like Imre Saluszinsky and Michael Duffy have been waging an unsubtle campaign to paint those who question elements of rampant economic fascism (often incorrectly called globalisation by the IMF and the WTO) as Hansonite fellow-travellers.

Whether it’s Tim Blair taking the piss out of our own dairy debate, or a first-rank Bean Monkey like Robert Gottliebson decrying economic bunkerism, there has been a concerted effort to portray people who get uneasy about developments like the Billiton/BHP take-over or the Woodside matter as somehow small-minded and backward-looking .

And yet the true provincial thinkers in this country are those who would have us lie back, part our thighs, and let the global economy dictate terms to us. They seek intellectual refuge in citing what is supposedly beyond our control because otherwise they might have to be creative instead of reactive, the essence of KN.

The Bean Monkies say things like ‘We can’t do this because…’ and ‘You are living with the fairies if you think that is possible’ because if they don’t, the unstoppable impulse of imagination might creep into their hollow cranial cavities and demand they start to really LIVE. So theirs is a world full of inevitable things that happen to them, not one where they can make brilliant things inevitable for others.

Knowledge Nation suggests that life can be otherwise, and so of course, there have been many who reject it instantly simply because they haven’t been told how we will pay for it, yet. Bound by the wallet, before they even allow themselves to think. These are the true 1950s suburbanites. These are the small grey accountants who are now running our lives, the true intellectual Hansonites – still living in a self-imposed cerebral desert, a world they have (wrongly) convinced themselves is a terra nullius of the imagination.

I listened to the first episode of The Continuing Crisis a few weeks ago, the new Radio National program hosted by Saluszinsky and Blair, and a single remark by the Herald s own economist Steve Burrell summed up the entire last two decades of small-minded mediocrity that has masqueraded as political leadership throughout the globalising world. They’d been vox-popping a few pensioners at supermarkets about the issue of Australian-made versus imported products, and one old biddy had suggested that she would only buy Oz-made stuff if it were cheaper than the imports. Steve Burrell’s summarising comment says all you need to know about the Bean Monkey view of the future. As an economist I find it encouraging, he noted, to see people behaving the way economic theories say they should.

Inspiring, isn’t it?

Knowledge Nation may be pie-in-the-sky, it may be economically vague, it may be a wish-list, it may be reaching out for the stars when we’ll probably all still die with our feet in the gutter, anyway. And the Bean Monkies may snicker and sneer and snarl, but I personally would much rather live in a world of infinite, endless possibility, than remain trapped within the mind-numbingly boring pages of a Treasury spreadsheet.

Robert Lawton

Your colleague Alan Ramsey has had enormous fun lampooning the Knowledge Nation report, in the usual “front bar test” manner (Herald, Wednesday). I’m happy with front bars, there should be more of them. But pouring scorn on this effort on the basis of one odd diagram has hoisted the front bar into a position it never sought.

On this test, if it looks funny or the bloke who spruiks it raves on about stuff you never heard about and don’t get, it’s dog meat and whoever let it loose is a clown, a dead loss and a

moron. Aussie Rules state readers will recognise a Sam Newman-style cruelty here. Such clown or clowns have simply given their opponents free kicks and endless opportunities for ridicule and shaming.

I think the “spaghetti and meatballs” response amusing, but essentially cheap and meretricious. Yes it’s a silly diagram. Yes a lot of the stuff isn’t costed. Yes there were probably too many people on the working party. Yes some of the ideas are silly for Australia (picking market sectors in 2001 is the same as picking Tricontinental, Rothwells or State Bank in the 80s). And yes, Beazley so often opens his mouth merely to change feet (“I’m staking myself on this” was a gimme for “skewering”).

But as you’ve said before, why does every even slightly left field thought in the public life of this country get slapped down and made mock?

There’s plenty of stuff in this document worth considering, as in every Jones production. It doesn’t have to be chewed through on one news cycle alone.

But perhaps Alan, the PM, (usually) Beazley, Crean et al could leave the front bar every now and then.

After all the drinkers are there to drink, smoke (while they can), flirt with the barmaid, play darts, back a sure thing, tell tall tales…it’s not a place for governing countries. The boys’d tell you that straight out, they don’t see themselves as the answer.

So why are they the judges?

Elen Seymour in Ottowa

Boy, were we all excited reading this here in Canada! Here! Messrs Beazley and Jones! We’re over here! It was a bit like reading about the promised land.An R&D culture and sunshine? Yes! Broadband? Yes! (My husband works in photonics). University funding? Yes! Tax Concessions – well I don’t want to crow too much but Yes! And look, its already working, Peter Doherty is coming home!

On a more serious note, I share some people’s concerns that this “manifesto” is going to be spoiled by political fighting and budgetary restraints; it probably is already mostly doomed by the $300 per cardigan giveaway by the incumbents (if you call right now with your vote we will throw in a free set of steak knives!).

Michelle Grattan puts it nicely by saying the government can’t come out with the knives too sharp against this manifesto but the government is working really hard to screw it up anyway.

I find it a bit galling of Howard to have described the report’s proposals as a wish list “that you might adopt if you had unlimited money and unlimited time”. Who’s damned fault is it anyway that we will have to pedal as fast as we will to catch up, that there is not the money for it? Not that the current government is totally to blame; Keating and Hawke also have to share some of that guilt but does Howard really think we will overlook his critical role in the downturn in education and R&D?

The feedback from experts and mug punters alike has so far has been most interesting and sometimes disappointing. The appallingly Australian rubbish about it being too intellectual and the weirdness about the political death capabilities of one diagram apparently drawn by an over-keen Barry Jones are just two cases in point.

It didn’t seem outrageous to me to use “big words” in a document that talks about education, the economy and revitalization of the cultural and intellectual scene of Australia. Especially not when the document took pains to actually explain what these ideas are all about.

And guys, its a diagram! Actually I find it kind of reassuring at one level because if a crappy diagram was all the fault people could pick out of the document (that and the lack of hard numbers) then maybe – just maybe – there is sufficient will amongst Australians to do the hard yakka to get back into line.

But to equate a bit of ridicule with the end of the whole banana, or even the death knell for electoral success of the Opposition, is ridiculous and insulting to the voting public. And if people do allow them to be distracted by a bloody diagram then perhaps the truism of “you get the politicians you deserve” contains more truth than one dares to hope.

David Palmer in Adelaide (in A Manifesto!) seems to have missed a key point. The whole point of broad banding everyone and digital this and digital that is all of that dematerialization, weightlessness stuff – the replacement of books with their heavy paper with digitized streams of information that can easily be accessed by anyone with the right toys.

One reason people are not using the internet for information is the limitations of the current system of copper wires which restricts the amount of “stuff” that you can get. Once you get fibre optic cable the capacity for transmission of information increases amazingly.

The other reason is of course content, something Knowledge Nation also sought to address (for example see Recommendation 19, Improving the position of arts, humanities and social science in Australia). But it is a bit Catch 22. No one is creating content because there is no demand, there is no demand because there is no content.

Hopefully once word gets out that there will be the capability, people will demand that this capability be utilized, and then we will have the kind of content that will see the local library becoming less relevant. Information will become weightless.

One final, critical reason for the lack of content is some pretty restrictive regulatory practices. Note the self-interest in the next statement but also its truth; there is no “real” reason why I or anyone else cannot watch live say pay per test coverage by whatever channel on my laptop of the Ashes series. India already does so, why doesn’t Australia?

On a different angle, I strongly agree with Knowledge Nation’s claim that a campaign to raise awareness of Australia as something other than a cool holiday destination is long overdue and critical. We need to get Australia just as much in the consciousness of the world as Ireland, Finland and Canada.

I have spoken of the role of taxes ad nauseum, but I concede tax concessions are of limited value if no one thinks of us whilst planning their global expansion. Except for California, they know where we are, “Hey look honey a free six pack of Australian scientists with every patent!”.

I have seen this lack of awareness of Australia as a modern economy first hand. I have been told in surprised tones that “the Sydney Olympics were really good, because it showed that Australia has big cities and is pretty modern.” Remember I work in a global organization with otherwise educated and intelligent people.

Time and time again I hear surprise that Australia is something other than a backward country full of kangaroos and Croc Dundee types. Ordinary people are barely aware that we are multicultural, that we have one of the highest rates of technology uptake in the world, that we live in big cities with big buildings and that we went metric in the 1960s.

They listen open-mouthed when my husband and I say nearly everyone has a mobile in Australia, how you can have one for as little as ten dollars a month with “free” voicemail, free caller id and how we only have one network, digital. My husband and I stood staring at the phone kiosk selling analogue mobile phones when we first arrived here.

What’s more, I am constantly surprised when I hear of things proudly announced as new here in Ottawa that I had long since taken for granted in Australia. The legislation of the province was available on the internet for the first time only a few months ago. I finished my law degree in 1997 in NSW I was heavily dependent on the internet for statutory references, accessed through public websites at no cost. The Australian Tax Office has a world class research facility on-line.

There IS a lot to do, and maybe John Howard is right and it’s all just one big fantasy, but Australia does has a good foundation upon which to build the Knowledge Nation. There are a lots of reasons to believe we can pull it off and leapfrog well into the front of the game.

The question is, do politicians have the guts to do what it takes, and does Australia have the guts to make them do it? I hope so, or it’s going to be a long winter here in Canada.

Susan Stock in Glebe, teacher-librarian

About ten years ago I visited Switzerland with my then partner, who was trained as a school teacher in Switzerland. His sister put on a party for his fellow students, all school teachers of some 15 years experience.

They told us that in Switzerland, teaching is the second hardest course to get into after leaving school, after medicine, and that they were on salaries of around $A150,000 per annum – higher than than engineers, dentists or economists. Unlike Australia, respect for school teachers in Swiss culture was extremely high.

Switzerland IS a knowledge nation, having few natural resources and relying on the calibre of their human resources. We should look at countries like Switzerland and Germany for ideas and models, not just the USA and UK.

David Davis in Switzerland

I feel hesitant to comment on Knowledge Nation report. I am sympathetic to the cause but am deeply skeptical. I don’t want to be overly critical of any document which promotes debate on these issues. Now I am not so sure what the big deal was. It seems to be a rehashing of all that we know anyway – written in an irritating partisan style. Not surprising really.

There are so many comments in the report referring to the decline of investment in “knowledge” since 1996, which so surprisingly (not) coincided with the election of the Howard government.

I don’t buy all of that. I think many of these problems have existed for decades. That being the case, it is probably better to get on with solving the multifaceted nature of the problem rather than bickering about whose fault it is.

I hope this report keeps “knowledge” – however it is defined – on the agenda.

I was irritated by the inane promise of free phone calls by 2010. Any person who is remotely excited about a promise like that, in this era, needs psychiatric therapy. I can see why the price of phone company shares remained unaltered. Who can be bothered with all this garbage or take it seriously?

The declining cost of telecommunications is inevitable. Then again, free phone calls by 2010 is slightly more believable than “no Australian child will live in poverty by 1990”. If the promise of free phone calls by 2002 was being made, THEN there could be cause for minor excitement. But 2010 – what are they thinking? They can only even guess the direction technology will take.

Remember, ten years ago, bugger all people had Internet access or had even heard of it. Only boffins knew of its existence. In a communications and technology revolution, a promise of free phone calls in eight years is ridiculous.

I also noted comments about high school retention. Shock, horror, high school retention went down in the prosperous Howard years. Did anyone consider that high school retention was greater during Keating’s reign of terror due to the “recession we had to have”? There wasn’t much point in leaving school in an era when youth unemployment rose to horrific levels. Statistics, damned lies and statistics.

The phone call promise and the drawings were the sideshow. The high school thing had the rigour of a high school economics student.

Beazley’s question – do we want to be a knowledge nation or a poor nation – really grabbed my attention. Australians are usually more reluctant than Americans to openly covet wealth. That’s fine. Aussies seem to covet lifestyle. That’s wonderful – but a good lifestyle and standard of living doesn’t just happen. This is a key moment and Australia can either take the dumb, poor path or the clever, knowledge path.

If Labor’s Knowledge Nation is a red flag being waved – then good. Either they or the Libs need to get busy and get serious.

Finally, don’t dismiss the expats. They know other models and I am sure many would return if things were different. I suspect the magnitude of the “brain drain” is under estimated. Check out the picture in today’s Herald of the Aussie Nobel Laureate, Professor Peter Doherty. He is surrounded by Australian scientists in Memphis. Professor Doherty is going back to Oz but how many others are there like those in the picture who will stay overseas? For how long can Australia afford to export knowledge and talent to enrich other countries? If such talent only comes back belatedly – it is a tragedy.

ends

David had two takes on the diagram.

Take one:

I just looked at that spaghetti and meatballs diagram and it’s not interesting. In my opinion there should be more of the spaghetti and less of the meatballs.

Take defence as an example. It earns a meatball (deservedly so) but it only has spaghetti leading to the Knowledge Nation meatball and the government meatball. What about R& D in Defence and collaboration with industry and education? I note there is no spaghetti linking such meatballs.

That’s why the diagram is indeed a joke. There’s no point in drawing a diagram unless in can

graphically represent something better than words. It’s not good enough to write a reasonably good report and then spoil it with stuff like this. I think most people already appreciate the linkages and the diagram is of no help.

Take two:

A few days ago I was looking at a Joan Miro painting I have looked at many times before and suddenly saw a whole pile of things I’d never noticed. Perhaps that’s the point of the Jones diagram – it’s more like a work of modern art. Perhaps its something to be pondered over rather than jumping to hasty conclusions.

I may have started with the wrong assumption. I assumed the diagram was supposed to simplify the Knowledge Nation concept. That’s why I was critical. Now I am wondering if its purpose is more to make us think rather than anything else.

Has Barry Jones explained this diagram anywhere? I’d like to see him do it on video.

Back when Web Diary was dealing with lesbians and IVF you asked for diagrams. I had a go at it and it ended up a disaster. It was a kind of spaghetti and meatballs things with strips of cheese representing the political process from left and right sides. I also made the mistake of trying to size the meatballs in relation to their impact on the issue. I even tried some colour coding. It all got too hard in the end.

What I’d really like to know is Barry Jones intentions. Is the diagram meant to clarify or to generate discussion? If the latter is the primary purpose – he has succeeded! I am still not convinced it clarifies the concept.

Again I come back to the defence meatball. Why is its spaghetti a TWO WAY arrow back to government? Another example of the arrow problem – manufacturing feeds into the Knowledge Nation meatball but agriculture only feeds from it. Is this really the view? I suppose if you assume that the CSIRO is the only “knowledge part” of agriculture, it makes sense. Why doesn’t “biotech” gets its own meatball rather than only being parts of others?

If you make your eyes “all blurry” the whole thing looks like a spiders web – with the government being the spider (note the long legs) and the “Knowledge Nation” being the tasty prey caught in the middle.

Or perhaps it is the solar system with the Knowledge Nation circle being the sun. If that was the case than the government would be Uranus (how fitting), TAFE would be Mars and Infrastructure an enlarged Pluto. Then again, the government looks more like Jupiter if you compare it to… mmm it all gets too hard as well. If its the solar system, I am grateful the government is not the sun at its centre. At least he got that part right.

By the way, I’m not sniggering – I’m having some fun while thinking about the issue. There’s no crime in that.

Finally, I have to come back to that wretched defence meatball. There is virtually nothing about that one I like. It beats the hell out of me why it should be as big as tourism or banking and insurance. The defence meatball is the wrong size, has the wrong arrows and is far too close to the centre.

I’ll end this period of webdiary introspection today with a summation of what I’ll report to Tom on improvements.

 

There is near unanimity that the diary should be snappy, the home for my comment and your short-take feedback, and that you also want longer, more analytical pieces and compilations of pieces on topics that run. That’s cool, but I want to retain flexibility and I do want the issues you want to take up to begin their life on the diary. When I shift debates off to the right, I’ll notify updates in the main diary.

 

The non-technical suggestions I like and will pursue are:

 

* to occasionally commission a considered piece on a topic, post it on a Friday and seek your responses. Suggestions on topics and writers welcome. The head of the religion deprtment at Radio National, Stephen Crittenden, has agreed to do a piece next week on rethinking the role of the States. He got interested in the issue in his role as organiser of the Centenary of Federation Deakin lectures, to run over ten days in Melbourne next month.

 

* to create a page listing contributors and their disclosures.

 

* to ask experts, insiders, whatever to comment on contributor’s pieces.

 

* to ask a question or make a statement asking for contributions limited to say 50 words – a short sharp taste of reader opinion.

 

* to have a contributor’s quote of the day box.

 

 

The technical suggestions I’ll see what we can do with are:

 

* Now that email numbers are getting bigger, I’m dead keen on cutting down the terribly time consuming, mechanical task of sub editing your emails in their various formats and transferring them to my work page. If there’s no big objections from you, it would be great to have a standard contribution form so everything can land on my computer in one format. This would also allow us to trial a rudimentary automatic archiving system, which would take me too much time to do manually.

 

* A hypertext function so that, among other things, if a contributor is responding you can quickly find the original item

 

* A discussion forum

 

* When the diary is too long, summarise longer pieces and hot link them to the full text, and use bookmarks and pop-up-boxes to aid navigation and keep the diary manageable.

 

To end the week, milk forces its way back with a charming contribution by Gina Desta (nom de plume till she finalises a new job), who experiences the pitfalls of solidarity and discovers a new factor in the cost-benefit equation – the aesthetics of dairy farming.

 

Polly Bush rejoins the drugs debate, and gives us the rundown on pollie-chicks Pauline and Natasha. Marc Pengryffyn, who’s been going for it this week, responds to Elen Seymour and Jack Robertson on foreign investment. Lastly, just because I like him, David Davis subscribes to my “charter”. I must warn you, David, more than one reader is wondering why you don’t disagree with me any more!

 

GINA DESTA

 

I just wanted to tell you that the dairy farmers can be their own worst enemy. The other week I spent my good STD money ringing a dairy farmers organisation up north to offer support and discuss my fears about buying agribusiness cows milk from cows fed on bits of animal and how big the market would be for grass-fed milk.

 

The receptionist was a dairy farmer (a woman), and I mentioned that I pay a fortune for Japanese soy milk, pointing out that people like me silly enough to pay over $3.00 a litre for the stuff would be happy to pay an immense premium for a guaranteed-quality, non gm-fed milk product. (I wanted to emphasise that the average consumer doesn’t know anything about milk production or that the vast majority of small dairy farms have virtually purely grass fed cows…and that this needs to be highlighted on the packaging).

 

I was roundly boxed on the ears over the phone for daring to buy soy milk!!! I was savagely abused and had to terminate the conversation – who needs enemies????

 

By the way, the main reason for my own passion about this deregulation issue is that I love driving through farmscapes and I’m acutely aware that farmers everywhere are subsidising my aesthetic pleasures to the max!

 

 

POLLY BUSH

 

Thanks for giving my last effort a run (in Natasha, Cheryl and Pauline). It was kind of satisfying to watch the small but interesting snowball effect. I need another venting.

 

Marc Pengryffyn’s point on drugs decriminalization and profiteering (in Not too wanky) made me remember a Bill Leak Cartoon, and the profiteering that goes on under prohibition. It had a thug type character reading a newspaper with a headline along the lines of PM Rejects Shooting Gallery. The response from the crime boss was see, the Government is doing something for small business. Beautiful.

 

I also liked Robert Lawton’s warnings about bandaid approaches through harm minimisation programs (in Cut and paste). People sometimes assume because I’m an ex-user that I would naturally support injecting rooms. It’s not that I’m against them, I just think its a case of priorities.

 

Firstly, help should be given to those who want help. Rehab needs to see some of that GST revenue that god knows must be piling up. The availability in both bed numbers and location has definite room for improvement.

 

For location purposes, I did my stint at the arse end of a public hospital (think Virgin Blue at Mascot). I was the youngest there by about thirty years, and the only female except for the staff. The other patients were recovering alcoholics. Needless to say there was that element of humility having my name sprawled on the whiteboard with the only OPIATE to be seen.

 

But apart from the lack of confidence building measures it helped me. I know through others it doesn’t work for everyone, but if someone actually gets to that point of putting their hand up and saying “I want to stop this”, we should give them every chance to do so, rather then responding with call back in a few weeks.

 

Some questions and problems arise with injecting rooms. They have to be done properly, that is, the smack needs to be supplied and clean. This brings up a whole can of worms with what is and isn’t prohibited.

 

The problem with users supplying their own heroin is simple: people won’t come, or they’ll meet their dealer out the front, and with the current laws the potential for the plod to prohibit is, well, there. I reckon if I had scored 500 metres away from an injecting room I would’ve been more likely to make a beeline for the nearest toilet/laneway/stairwell/car than take the sensible road to supervision.

 

Another problem with injecting rooms is the restrictions. By law, I think those that have attempted to get injecting rooms off the ground are restricting them to 18 plus, and registered addicts. So the 15 year old user is turned away, as is the ex-user/occasional dabbler, who is probably at a greater risk of overdosing due to a decline in tolerance. And what about the virgin veins out there that want a slice? Back to the kerb.

 

So now I’m at this point where I’m hearing the echoes of what I imagine Fiona Ferrari’s voice to sound like: less complaints and more solutions. At the moment Im struggling.

 

On a different note, I’m guessing CIO readers aren’t as familiar with Aussie Post as they are with your site. What grabbed my attention (apart from the subheadings Blind Girl Begs – Give me back my kangarooand Sharks banned from city pub) was the cover picture of Hanson and Stott Despoja with the headline Who’ll be our top poli-chick – SHOWDOWN OF THE SHEILAS.

 

The article was most enlightening, referring to the poli-chicks holding the fate of the Australian Government in their well-manicured hands. It went for the first name approach (which you’ve recognised) and brought everything back to appearances: Natasha and Pauline are strutting their stuff in front of the voters at opposite ends of the political catwalk.

 

My favourite par was “Like everybody else in Australia, except for John Howard and Peter Costello, neither woman is happy with the GST. But while Natasha wants to do a bit of trimming round the edges with a pair of nail scissors, Pauline favours a chainsaw and dynamite approach”.

 

Poor Stott the Spoiler or Spot Destroyer got the lil nail clippers, which wasn’t exactly consistent with the photo-spread the article contained. I don’t want to fall into the trap of describing what they were wearing, but shock horror, the piccies do seem a bit suss.

 

There’s a lovely snap of Hanson giving the camera a peace gesture (I suspect she may actually be giving the finger to someone behind her), with a smaller picture of mainly her legs hopping out of a chopper with the caption SURVIVOR: Leggy Pauline is ready to return to Parliament.

 

On the other page we have PARTY GIRL: Fun and Feisty Natasha Stott-Despoja with singer Frank Bennett, referring to the smaller photo of Spotty comparing tatts with Bennett lifting up his shirt to show his (put it away Frank). The large photo has Spotty showing us her tonsils – jaw wide open, rainbow boa round her neck in the spirit of mardi gras, waving to the crowd.

 

It’s not the most complimentary shot of the Senator to be seen, but hey, there seemed to be a shortage of favourable snaps of Senator Lees during the leadership challenge.

 

The article also had a table with Pauline vs Natasha (note, not the other way around), with some very basic details comparing policies. I’m curious about Spottys description Single, followed directly with Partner is Channel 9 reporter Hugh Rimminton (proof that the media does really love her?).

 

Spotty’s only health policy is “supports trials of medically prescribed heroin for addicts”. While Spotty will support things, Pauline will do things, despite the fact that at the next election she will never have the numbers to form government. According to Aussie Post, Pauline will dismantle ATSIC, cut funding and repeal native title legislation. Ahh, puhlease.

 

I’m hoping the Post will follow up their SHEILA SHOWDOWN article with FESTERING FELLAS next issue, showcasing big Kim’s cabbage cravings and lil Johnnie’s power walks at opposite ends of the political catwalk.

 

MARC PENGRYFFYN

 

I seem to do a lot of ‘I agree with you but I disagree with you’, and I’m about to do it again. To Elen Seymour: Yes, companies won’t set up in Australia if the tax regime is less profitable for them than another country that offers similar infrastructure. Yes, it borders on insanity for Australians to consider seriously discouraging foreign investment, or to stray down the isolationist path. We need investment or we don’t have industry.

 

However, the way things currently operate, nations that want investment are forced to compete for it by offering tax breaks, infrastructure, concessions, and, especially in the third world, lax labour and environmental regimes. The World Bank, IMF and WTO are perceived to reinforce this pattern. It’s a seller’s market, and the money knows it.

 

This is why people fear the multinationals so much, because it looks like they have more and more power over our lives than our governments do, and yet are accountable only to their shareholders. Sometimes, not even to them.

 

Our governments seem to respond to the problem by alternately sabre-rattling and kowtowing. To be fair, what other options do they have?

 

What role does the media play in all this? Jack Robertson said it all in yesterday’s Meeja Watch: “Finance is a Meeja Speciality which has become progressively characterised by self-generated, self-fulfilling, and self-perpetuating prophecies, all dressed up as critical objective analysis.”

 

The media is perceived to have been co-opted by financial cartels, either directly or indirectly. We see that politicians are exceedingly reluctant to challenge the media power of the corporate sector. The media seem to act as publicists for corporate power. At the very least they’re too often guilty of reducing the issues to black and white caricatures, and depending overly on corporate media-releases for their copy. Viva Media Watch!

 

Jack argues that this is all a sort of light-and-mirrors trick, and maybe it is. But, a self-fulfilling prophecy is, by definition, fulfilled. Corporate Money could capture the hegemony it pretends to have, just by convincing us they already have it. If the fourth-estate collaborates with them in this, what’s to stop them succeeding?

 

That’s not a rhetorical question; I would really, really like to know!

 

When people start to feel powerless they get panicky, and many will turn to anyone who appears to offer answers – hence Pauline Hanson. Just because Pauline Hanson is wrong about the solutions doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem. Nobody wants to live under a corporate dictatorship, but many people regard that as a real possibility. On a bad day, I’m one of them.

 

Perhaps nation states need to form some sort of cooperative organisation to help them deal with the power of big money. After all, the labour sector had to do it once. They called it ‘Unionism’.

 

The first thing such an organisation would have to do is address the economic disparity between nations. It might become less viable to allow richer nations to exploit poorer ones, for example, otherwise it would undermine solidarity. Some sort of sanctions would have to be applied to blackleg or scab nations. Maybe this would help to level the playing field. All irony intended.

 

As current ‘top nation’, I don’t imagine the US would go along with the idea, but their primacy isn’t beyond challenge. The EC and ASEAN are already showing healthy signs of working in this way, but they’re regional. I think we need something global.

 

Surely ,when faced with massive corporate power, or at least a media depiction of it, we’ve got to have more options than simply:

a) refuse to play, or

b) lie back and think of England?

 

Too often these are the only choices offered. I don’t think we’re too stupid to appreciate intelligent alternatives, but someone has to present them to us. Or allow us to develop our own.

 

DAVID DAVIS

 

In the corporate world “mission statements” can become trite and meaningless but I think your charter speaks to important issues.

 

In this day and age there is a great danger of falling into a well of cynicism where we ask “what is the point of anything?” This seems to be the flavour of Paul McLaren’s comments (in What’s the point?).

 

I think I know where he is coming from. The marketers tell me I am a part of “Generation X” and our reaction to anything is supposed to be “yeah, whatever”. I have to fight this. It is hard not to be cynical but if you extend it too far you really do start to wonder what is the point of anything and this is damaging to both the individual and society.

 

I am certainly not suggesting we should be naive but to lapse into a “what’s the point” downward spiral of cynicism is one of the most dangerous things I can think of. Down the bat, pack up and go home is this message. For what? Nothing? Endless, mindless whingeing from the sidelines?

 

You have to ENGAGE. You have to be INVOLVED. Why mutter something under your breath when you have the opportunity to SCREAM it from the roof tops?

 

I ask myself why I am so engaged in this forum. The better question is “why wouldn’t you” or “why aren’t you”??

 

At the risk of lapsing into “wankiness” I offer the words of Robert Kennedy. He suggests that there is more to life than GDP. There IS a point to intelligent debate. He had the following to say back in the dim, distant past of 1968 at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. I lived near this place in the 1990’s but feel his “ancient” words are relevant today, not just to America, but to us all. If you greet the following with cynicism and a “what’s the point attitude”… then you may as well go to McDonalds and order an extra large coffee (the ultimate expression of the bottom line and economic rationalism/efficiency). Personally – I’ll be taking something authentic elsewhere. A real coffee, offered by a real person on a real income. Anyway, here are RFK’s words:

 

Quality of Life

 

“Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … if we should judge America by that – counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

 

“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

 

Can anyone argue the above uttered in 1968 is less relevant in 2001???

 

Of course most Generation Xers were in nappies or born after the above was said. Oh, sure it is easy to be cynical about the words of a wealthy man from America a generation ago. Free yourself from aversion to “wankiness” and allow yourself to THINK.

 

I am cynical myself about many things and even wonder why I regularly contribute to this forum. In the end though, I see cynicism as a trap or a refuge for those who are tired of life.

 

I think there IS a point.

 

I subscribe to the charter.

First published April 26, 2001, in Webdiary entry “What’s the point?”

I believe:

* that widely read broadsheet newspapers are essential to the health and vibrancy of our democracy

* that they are yet to adapt to a multi-media future pressing on the present

* that there is a vacuum of original, genuine, passionate and accessible debate on the great political, economic and social issues of our time in the mainstream media, despite the desire of thinking Australians in all age groups to read and participate in such debates

* that newspapers have lost their connection with the readers they serve

* that the future lies in a collaboration between journalists and readers.

The mission of the Webdiary is:

* to experiment in the form and content of the Herald online

* to assist in the integration of the newspaper and smh.com.au

* to help meet the unmet demand of some Australians for conversations on our present and our future, and to spark original thought and genuine engagement with important issues which effect us all

* to link thinking Australians whoever they are and wherever they live.

* to insist that thinking Australians outside the political and economic establishment have the capacity to contribute to the national debate

* to provide an outlet for talented writers and thinkers not heard in mainstream media

Suggestions for the webdiary are pouring in. Email your suggestions or responses to the ideas to date by Monday, when I’ll wrap them up and give them to Tom.

 

Before your webdiary comments, a demand from Brian Lopez for the media to demand answers on pollies super and proof that you too can help from Alison de Jong. Marc Pengryffyn continues the drugs debate inspired by Polly Bush. In the Dairy update section, Mark Latham has bitten back at his critics and David Eastwood enters the debate.

 

By the way, Labor has finally committed itself to the Kyoto protocol even if the US stays out. It took a Greenpeace Newspoll showing public support for Kyoto to do it. Environment spokesman Nick Bolkus said in a statement today: “It is imperative that the Kyoto Protocol survives the attack of the United States. It is a critical first step in the global response to the threat of climate change…Australia’s ratification will be important for the protocol to come into force. Australia has a global responsibility to progress the protocol coming into force. With or without the US, the Kyoto Protocol is not dead and although Australia should use whatever influence it has to bring the US back into negotiations, we will not be beholden to the United States position.”

 

BRIAN LOPEZ

 

I have read your article on Politician’s Superannuation and can only say – you took the words right out of my mouth – and may I say probably out of numerous other normal working Australians. I think the great majority of us look in absolute amazement at what is offered to our Politicians both State and Federal. More senior political journalists should ask our political leaders the following questions.

 

1. Why can’t normal Australians expect the same returns, contributions and conditions that are given to Politicians and paid for by Australian taxpayers.

 

2. When can we expect Parliament to pass these laws to stop the preferential treatment handed out to Politicians.

 

3. If these laws can’t be passed – when will superannuation laws should be amended to allow ALL Australians the same conditions that are afforded the Politicians.

 

They should keep asking these questions until they get an iron-clad commitment. A combined effort by senior political journalists will be the only thing that will shame these people into making this highly unfair perk more fair for all.

 

ALISON DE JONG

 

I’m new to this kind of thing. Each Wednesday when I am driving to work I hear you on LNL with Phillip Adams (this week’s was on pollies super). I have just arrived home with 2 of my kids from Niagara Park community centre (central coast, NSW) where Michael Lee, Trish Moran and Kim Beazley were holding court. I tried the “pollies super” question on Kim, and after a lot of raving on about how he could have had more than $5m and that it was the short termers who really made a handsome sum, he said that yes, they’d have to look at it when they were in government.

 

The whole time this was going on I was surrounded by middle aged matrons nodding their heads adoringly at everything he said. He could have said he’d only have $10m and they would have still nodded sadly for him!!

 

I guess it’s my naivete, but I’m feeling a bit cheesed off. So there you go, a bit of “spleen venting”.

 

MARGO: Direct action. Fantastic.

 

MARC PENGRYFFYN

 

I’d like to echo Robert Lawton’s praise of Polly Bush’s contribution on the drug debate.(Webdiary yesterday, Polly’s piece is in Webdiary, April 10) and to praise his thoughtful piece highlighting the danger that harm minimization programs could serve to mask the underlying social problems that cause much, perhaps most, drug abuse.

 

That side of the equation is almost completely ignored, and few politicians would touch it with a barge pole.

 

There is a parallel danger, however, that a focus on addressing underlying social issues can mask the fact that far too many people are suffering and dying for no good reason. That is what harm minimization addresses, and I think that morally it must be our first concern. You can’t improve the circumstances of someone who’s lying dead in a doorway.

 

Polly Bush talked of the diverse reasons she got into heroin; I don’t think you can simply say that poor circumstances lead to addiction .Archaeology shows that the human race has been manufacturing recreational drugs for millennia, and observations of our simian relatives suggest that we’ve been using the things since before we left the trees.

 

The unutterable truth in the debate is that for a lot of people drugs are fun, and some of us are always going to get into trouble with them. I really think the line is between levels of use and abuse, and that’s never going to be a solid demarcation.

 

Yes, there is more abuse of drugs associated with poverty and dislocation- they’re an accessible if not ideal way of dealing with misery. But even rich and happy people can get addicted – remember cocaine? Rich people don’t do it in the streets, of course, and they go to private clinics for treatment.

 

The best analogy to ‘the drug problem’ is the illegal status of abortion in decades past, with the associated taboo on honest discussions of sex and access to contraception. There was the same failure to admit the inevitability of unsanctioned activities despite their risks, the same constraints on open dissemination of information, the same needless, horrific death toll.

 

In the case of abortion, harm minimization consisted of sex education in schools, free access to birth control even for the young (*especially* for the young!) and the decriminalization of abortion itself. It seems to have worked; very few women die in backyard abortions in Australia these days, and unwanted pregnancy is way down. This was part of a wider picture of feminism and the increasing equality of the sexes – an ongoing process of social change.

 

Likewise, the most sensible approach to recreational drugs is to admit that they are an inevitable fact of human society, provide resources to reduce the dangers (clean needles, safe injection venues, safe and inexpensive supply, open investigation and research), encourage free, frank and accurate exchange of information, and above all decriminalize the activity itself.

 

Mind you, the gambling industry should warn us what can happen if governments are allowed to profit from addictive activities. There is a world of difference between compassionate tolerance and profiteering.

 

Abortion and sex education were pushed along by the feminist movement; perhaps it’s time for the human-rights movement to argue for the rights of addicts and drug users to be treated as an abused minority who are being denied the measures that they need for the preservation of their lives, health and place in society. Or would this just isolate them even more?

 

At any rate, despite the vicious rearguard action of conservatives like Howard and Brian Watters, I think we are looking at a more enlightened future, perhaps a few years off yet, and I hope that changing attitudes to drug use will come alongside more rational, equitable and compassionate approaches to many of our society’s ills. Well, I can dream.

 

I know this is a deeply loathed perspective in many circles, and I’ll probably get called a radical libertarian or such, but let’s face it, prohibition has failed time and time again, and has created far more problems than it has ever solved. It’s driven by narrow social perceptions encouraged mostly by religious doctrinaires of various stripes.

 

Of course drugs can be dangerous, but so is sport. So is childbirth. Yes, we’ll have to make changes in slow, incremental steps to allow social attitudes to catch up, but until we start making those changes drugs will continue to be a big problem for all of us. And people will keep dying.

 

WEBDIARY IDEAS

 

 

LUKE MASON

 

I have to say I agree with Fiona Ferrari. When I first started reading your webdiary, I think on the day it started, the format was an editorial by yourself, with short, paragraph like comments from your readers as their mail started to trickle in.

 

However, that changed, rather dramatically, once you started pasting in long, long, -LONG- essays by what appear to be political and economic science students. This creeping intellectualism has destroyed the original purpose [as I see it, it is yours after all] of the site, to promote political discussion between as many varied voices as possible.

 

I can understand wanting to give your regulars a voice, and some of them definitely deserve one. However, perhaps an additional essays site would be more appropriate.

 

It used to take a coffee break to read the webdiary. Now it takes so much longer, it’s scary.

 

MURRAY CHRISTIAN in Perth

 

Long time reader, first time poster. I agree with Andrew Stapleton and Fiona Ferrari in part. Don’t mess with it too much.

 

I don’t go with Andrew on the view that the debates to be found on the net just devolve into point scoring. It’s more a case that some topics don’t have perfect solutions, communication isn’t perfect and passions often run high.

 

Also, whilst I agree with Fiona about avoiding things becoming too highfalutin, it’s pretty hard for it not to get down to brass tacks once in a while.

 

What Andrew had to say about “experts” in the dairy dereg section was interesting; that they have almost a duty of care, providing information/knowledge and trying to make sure it is understood. If we don’t get hung up on the language of being an “expert” and any hierarchical undertones, this idea sits quite happily, for me, with the spirit of Tim Dunlop’s argument for the layperson not being afraid of the issues and that being central to democracy.

 

I think the page is quite good at the above so far. Views, discussion, investigation and expertise all together.

 

I had run through in my mind, the various message boards and comment systems I’ve run into. But, more and more, I don’t think it matters too much what is done, so long as it doesn’t reduce you to an editor/moderator and occasional setter of the topic (as maintaining the diary seems to have done recently).

 

My suggestions: Keep the main page and have the regular contributors and anything else in a “diary”, like it is now, with a message board/thread forum (or whatever) as a kind of subsection. This is because I find the page readers/email corresponders often a breed apart from those folks inclined to become forum denizens (in general, not just because of the types of behaviour Andrew notes), so they need something. Plus it keeps the focus. Very important. A lot of demarcation on a new forum can stop it from getting going. So keep it simple and let it grow at first. If you do decide to give the regulars separate sections, precis them in the diary or somewhere. Keeps people clicking.

 

MURRAY HENMAN in London

 

I agree with Fiona Ferrari (Webdiary yesterday) re the big pieces. I still want to see them, but perhaps can we make a link to them or put them at the bottom, or separate the diary into 2 sections. Perhaps you could impose a limit on contribution length, although that does sound a bit fascist. The long pieces do tend to make one feel that a contribution is not worthy unless well thought out and extensively backed up.

 

The other thing I would really like is to see some sort of of distinction between you and the different contributors. Sometimes I have been confused as to who is speaking where. Perhaps using italics, different colours, line separators? (MARGO: Will do.)

 

PIERRE DU PARTE in Worrigee, NSW

 

* More opinions from you, with less reliance on quotes from Hansard or other publications.

 

* Stringent assessment of readers’ submissions, like the SMH Letters Page – it took ten years of letter writing before the buggers published me. (Oops, that means this has no chance.)

 

* A moderated discussion group.

 

* A “Keep the Bastards Honest” page – essentially a page that posts responses from our pollies to closed questions on policies, ideology etc. I figure that if a prominent web site was to do this many of our pollies would have no choice but to go on record in regard to specific issues. As an example: Mail a question to all pollies “What will YOU do to ensure that public education is adequately funded so its performance as a first class system is uncompromised?” Stereotyped and answers exceeding 100 words will be dismissed as “pulling the wool over our eyes”, with an appropriately disaffected “outing” of the offending pollie!

 

SEAN CODY in the UK

 

New, improved version 2 Webdiary, now with extra added interactivity

 

Sorry for the title – couldn’t resist the advertising approach.

 

I’ve been a long time reader of the web diary, and have come really close to contributing some things, but for various reasons haven’t as yet. I suppose, in a way, I have felt almost inadequate when faced with the intellectual prowess of some of your more regular contributors – although, it must be said, certain right-wing diatribes and opinionated drivel have spurred me to the point of pressing the “send” button, then rational thought has prevailed.

 

Anyway, I read with interest your request for ideas for a new format, and perhaps I may be so bold.

 

1. Perhaps a semi-chat or discussion forum might have a place. I think the best way to approach this would be to take a format similar to the Independent Newspaper’s site under the Argument section. Certain topics are presented for discussion, generally those that have been dealt with in Argument pieces by the various contributors, and readers are invited to have their say.

 

I’d shirk away from getting users to register – a lot of people are reluctant to wade into a service that demands addresses, employment details etc. Just a simple request for a name would be enough to do the trick, methinks.

 

Obviously, the question of whether or not it will be moderated will be raised, but I think people are of a reasonable enough nature not to need a watchdog (Hmmmm, am I really that naive???)

 

2. The advantage I see in a forum such as this is that it allows people to easily comment in an area that is not overtly academic. Of course, the larger pieces should still be there, but this stuff should perhaps be accessible via a link on the webdiary main page. So you therefore end up having an editorial-type section, and a shorter, more accessible discussion section – a bastardisation of Fiona Ferrari’s comments.

 

3. Election year – yes, but there will also be elections in other parts of the world at

various times. The UK, for example, where I’m currently living (ex-Sydney) is going to have what could be an interesting one later this year. What about getting a regular piece from people living in different countries about their perceptions of local election run-ups? And here’s a shamelessly-crawly-suck-up offer – I’d perhaps be keen to contribute, although you’d better give me an electronic slapping if my work is not up to scratch (of course you would) – there, I’ll do anything for my 15 minutes.

 

The point of this exercise? Perhaps to let the readers know how other societies react to/deal with election campaigns, as well as how the foreign pollies act.

 

MARGO: I’d love pieces from expats on elections where they’re living, and you’re on, Sean.

 

PETER GELLATLY

 

I do hope your boss realises just how jealously your respondents wish to guard the webdiary. By all means broaden the appeal. (But how will you be able to handle the mail volume? You’ll need dozens of assistants.)

 

However, SMH must ensure the webdiary does not deteriorate to the abysmal quality of most reader response forums. Frankly, I have found nothing matching webdiary – even the Christian Science Monitor and Atlantic magazine online forums are dreadful.

 

I take Fiona’s point about keeping a mix of long and short articles, and also Andrew’s about not becoming an online slanging site where neither side really listens to contrary views. I would add a preference for starting, or at least notifying, all new topics in your daily intro (ie as you do currently).

 

So many issues overlap (eg greenhouse/energy, environment/population, both of these with industrial development) that strict separation into “fields of interest” would be counterproductive.

 

A while ago you put out feelers about what people would be willing to pay for online. Well, one likely attribute of a pay site would surely be access to something not obtainable elsewhere. Those people who phoned the SMH to enquire about Tim’s dairy deregulation piece did so, I submit, because they wanted to read the considered views of a thoughtful citizen – imagine Tim’s 7000 word piece edited to 200 words for the letters page!

 

As for keeping the site fresh, I suggest you try the following. As a jog to memory, list all the federal ministries, departments and organisations. Then invite readers to comment if they feel a potentially hot topic is not yet on the media horizon. I expect all sorts of things might emerge.

 

The goal of this approach is to keep webdiary out front, rather than allowing it to become purely reactive. So please Boss, keep the reins loose, Margo’s doing just fine. Let’s see where she takes us.

 

MARGO: I like the idea of being out front.The best example was the debate over the defence bill, where the Coalition and Labor wanted to give the defence force the power to shoot to kill etc against civilians. The debate was triggered by two emails from readers wanting to know more. I do get occasional reader’s suggestions for topics, which I follow up when I can. I got one yesterday which I’ll write about on Monday.

 

TIM DUNLOP

 

I’m deeply sympathetic to “Fiona’s” comments about elitism. My PhD, ironically, is about exactly this question: how do you get intellectuals and citizens to interact as equals. To me, it’s one of the central questions of how we get the sort of society we want.

 

It’s exactly why I think it is worth contributing to forums like this, because I think it does contribute to breaking down those barriers.

 

So I thought the milk piece, though long and canvassing some tricky stuff, was nonetheless pretty accessible. It certainly wasn’t academic, and part of the reason it was as long as it was, was so that I could spell out quite clearly what was at stake with each point I was making. I wanted people to be able to follow the exact point I was making, without presuming they had the benefit of the knowledge I’d managed to dig up.

 

It was also written from a position of absolute ignorance, and everything I found out I found out by staying up late and reading documents. The whole point was that I WASN’T an expert but I found out some stuff anyway. It was meant to be encouraging of others to have a go at this sort of thing and it’s a bit disappointing to find it had the opposite effect.

 

But if people find that sort of thing intimidating, then people like me have to be aware of that. As I say, I’m deeply sympathetic to the question, having spent the past 3 years thinking about little else and defending the position against associates who think that it’s just pointless to get the two groups (citizens and experts) together.

 

Andrew Stapleton’s comments raise some interesting points too. Partly, it’s about the difficulty of having discussions like this online. It is really easy for people to get the wrong idea about people’s intentions. But the suggestion that I made no attempt to understand his position is, I have no doubt, sincere, but I don’t think it is fair. Let me defend myself if I can.

 

Sure I got a bit narky – that is, my tone wasn’t always saintly – but I was only put off with some of what he he was saying. There was nothing personal in it, though I know how easy it is to take things personally when you are addressed in public.

 

But there were a number of times when I expressly acknowledged points he was making, even if I didn’t then agree with them. I think this is a really important point about about having discussions as citizens in public forums and about rising above the sort of parliamentary question-time brawling that most of us thoroughly deplore. So this is my general policy when responding to people in forums like this: I always make it a point to respond by quoting what they actually said to precisely show, first, that it’s not personal, and second, that I have actually read quite closely what they’ve said. It also keeps ME accountable.

 

If it sounds a bit short or angry or whatever, then that’s just the way it is, I guess. What else am I meant to do? Say I agree with something that I find trivial or trite or simply wrong? The rude thing would be to have ignored the detail of what he said and write some generalised response.

 

The thing is, sometimes exchanges are going to be terse or strong when people disagree about important things and I don’t think we should be afraid of that. Which is not to say that it’s easy. I sometimes wonder if people are aware of the personal risk people like me feel we are taking when we enter into these discussions. My heart is in my mouth everytime I click that ‘send’ button, especially when I’m responding to someone like Mark Latham, a professional arguer. It’s just plain scary. I don’t know why some people think it is hard for them to stick their heads up but easy for others.

 

All that aside, on the issue of revamping the site, two things I’d keep in mind. One is that you want it to be a site of reader interaction, which is great. But the other, I think, is that you want it to provide content, in the form of reports, essays, articles etc. I think these two things need to be kept separate to some extent, simply because the format of an “endless” webpage is difficult to read and it adds to the feeling that people are ploughing through reams and reams of material. A webboard still seems like a good idea, but I don’t think you want to give all discussion over to that format, largely for the reasons that Andrew mentioned.

 

In terms of content, despite what Fiona said about shorter pieces, I think it’d be a real shame to give up the ability of the web to provide a space for more detailed comment and interaction.

 

I mean, isn’t part of the idea to get away from some of the superficiality of normal media coverage and get some muscle and bite into analysis/commentary etc?

 

Part of the reason for the milk piece was precisely because all the other general coverage was so tokenistic. And where else would that piece have got published? I think it contributed something to the debate, and to more general discussion, but you know as well as I do what would’ve happened if I’d sent to any newspaper or mag in the country: reject.

 

How else do we break out of the habits of stale, formulaic debate unless we’re willing to open up topics to this more detailed analysis? Where else can we do it except in spaces like yours?

 

I am aware Fiona wasn’t saying that we shouldn’t have these longer pieces, only that on some level people can find them intimidating etc. I apologise if my piece was like that.

 

It was the very fact that I was intimidated by the writings of Paul Kelly and other commentators that made me go out and look at the issue. It is surprising how UNintimidating they are once you have the information yourself. But you do actually have to go and do the work.

 

That’s why I think the website is such a promising venue for social/political discussion; exactly because it does give ordinary bods (even men doing PhDs) an opportunity to question things we wouldn’t normally have a chance to question.

 

Anyway, I’d also like to say that if I can help anyone with research material or getting a piece together, then I’d be happy to do it, within certain time restraints. I don’t really think I’m part of the elite, but having done a few years at uni you almost can’t help but pick up a few research and writing skills, so if they can be helpful to anyone, please let me know.

 

DAVID DAVIS

 

I agree very much with Fiona Ferrari’s views. I really hope Webdiary doesn’t take on too much of a “wanky” format. Of course some “wanky” is fine but if it means those with less time, resources, interest or intellect are deterred from contributing, that would be a great pity. I am hardly promoting a dumbing down – all I am saying is that it should not become an exclusive preserve of a certain type of individual.

 

I don’t think we should underestimate the psychological aspects either. Competition is often exceptionally healthy but it can also have the impact of excluding people we should love to hear from. I’ve often wondered about the psychological profile of the “regular contributor”. Is it the ideas, is it the writing, is it a form of competition? Is there a common driver? What motivates them? I would like to hear what makes the regulars, well, regular. I of course exclude myself from such analysis but am nevertheless interested in the others.

 

I think your involvement is CRITICAL. I dont like this idea of “limited administrative involvement” from you. I always like it when you chip in one liners in the midst of people’s pieces. One liners, not detailed rebuttals!!!!!! If there is less of you I am going to visit this site a lot less often!! I am not ONLY interested in the views of the “viewers” – I most definitely want to hear your perspective. I was initially attracted to this because it seemed we were getting something NEW….we were getting more of an insiders view – in a new and entertaining format.

 

I see your role as being far more important than one of some kind of back seat moderator in a free for all. Not to say I don’t like “free for all” but none of this would work without you being the glue holding it together. We need to see your ideas and opinions just as much, if not more, than before. Just because Dairy Dereg is flying solo – don’t expect everything to turn. I love what has happened with Dairy Dereg but this is not some panacea which will enable you to put your feet up.

 

I think the idea of separate areas for debates which are up to “flying solo” is an excellent one. Dairy dereg is a good example. I know I will go back and check it every now and then. A little structure is not a bad thing.

 

Having said that….. I hope it doesn’t become TOO structured and involve a lot of navigating on the readers part. That gets really old really quickly.

 

In summary I suppose I am saying:

 

1. A bit wanky, but not TOO wanky (a tricky balancing act to keep a good tone);

2. Lots of Margo content with chipped in comments as well;

3. Some structure but not TOO much structure for issues taking their own wings;

4. Promotion of diversity (ie contributor diversity); and

5 Promotion of diversity of style (ie from punchy, to detailed, to emotional, to cooly analytical)

 

It should be thought provoking AND entertaining. So far so good!

 

 

MARC PENGRYFFYN

 

I got a phone call from one of your colleagues yesterday who said he read in my email (Webdiary Tuesday) that I had been a student of Cheryl Kernot when she ran off to Queensland, and hinted that I might know something different to the “official ALP line”. I don’t, and told him so. Weird. I didn’t think to write down his name, unfortunately, and he didn’t mention who he works for- he woke me from a nap and I wasn’t at my best. I’d make a lousy journalist.

 

Anyway, to business.

 

I must admit that I am somewhat daunted by the longer and more erudite pieces at times, but always find it worthwhile to struggle through them. I think it’s a good idea to put the longer pieces in a side-gallery (or whatever the jargon is) and ditto for the longer running debates and the columnists, with the only danger being that they may all get ignored. Make sure you have lots of big friendly signage reminding us that they’re there. You could maybe make selections from the side-galleries to include in the front page letter stream.

 

Similarly, if you want to print ‘outside pieces’, like Peter Andren’s speech on Tuesday 17th April, or pieces from other journos, you might want to present them as hypertext links with a small summary.

 

I agree that the central letters page [front page?] should be retained as the primary focus. It’s what most people will read and is really the most important part of the project. I think perhaps you should have a word limit for the letters you put there, but I’d be generous and I wouldn’t be a nazi about it.

 

I agree with Fiona Ferrari that you should include yourself more in the debates – your interjections are invaluable! Apart from anything else, they help to stamp your personality on the Diary, and I think that’s no bad thing. Plus, I think it’d help solve the problem of ‘newsgroup bombasts’ that Andrew Stapleton mentions (a category of netnerd whose number I fear sometimes includes myself).

 

I like the format you usually adopt, where you start off with a few thoughts of your own, then introduce the day’s writers and topics before the letters themselves. As above, I like it when you inject yourself into the letters occasionally. A heading, and maybe a *brief* intro before each letter would be good as it would help when I’m trying find bits to re-read later.

 

If this project takes off (as we all should hope!) you’re going to find yourself selecting and editing more, of course, but I like your commitment to letting people’s voices be heard. The trade-off will be between inclusiveness and accessibility, but I think this technology is good at that kind of problem when well designed.

 

BRENDAN

 

 

I have an idea for the site that you can put to Tom. How about having a regular web-chat on the site, say once a week. You could advertise a topic and readers could interact with you online on that topic in a similar way to ICQ/AOL. I suggest that you have a mediator for the reader’s questions so that the chat has some structure and coherence. I am sure f2’s web-types are up to the challenge of creating an online application to handle this feature.

 

I agree with Fiona Ferrari’s comment about the length of some of the pieces that you have published. I personally scan over anything that is more than a web-page in length, and so prefer brief contributions. We younger types do not have the attention span of your generation.

 

FIONA FERRARI

 

My vision for the site would be more policy debates getting off the ground and then given a separate space like dairy.

 

I’d like to see these policy debates include solutions not just complaints. Eg drug policy, higher

education, research and development, refugee policy, health policy, and ideas for reforming the electoral system to make it more democratic.

 

Another idea is for readers to suggest topics they’d like you to write about. Of course most of the time you should choose your own topics but readers’ suggestions may come in useful for slow news days. For example my suggestions today would include:

 

* Australian defamation laws (if and how they stop newspapers writing certain political stories- as a journalist you’d know more about that than me- and how they should be reformed)

 

* A juicy piece on what really goes on in the Canberra Press Gallery and how your perspective has changed by not being located there (if it has)

 

* A detailed critique of what wrong with the internal functioning of the ALP-jobs for the boys, seniority over merit etc-explaining why its like that and suggesting how they could reform it

 

*Ideas to help the next Government get real people involved in policy development (eg local members’ internet sites like Latham has, more summits and conventions like the NSW Drug Summit and the Constitutional Convention, more deliberative referendums, and perhaps policy debates on-line at the policy development stage-so politicians and public servants could publicly engage in the policy issues).

 

MARGO: My problem in researching and writing investigative pieces is that I do this diary on my own – pulling it together, writing my bit, subediting it, and putting it online. So it’s a time thing. I’ll write about the press gallery on Monday.

 

ANDREA BARRETT

 

I think one way to “spice up” your page would be to add a regular “insider” commentary on the issues raised by your correspondents – that is, get random Fairfax journalists, TV commentators, pollies, industry figures etc to contribute their feedback or views on the readers’ points of view.

 

If this were to work, it would probably be wise to ensure that this is not used as an opportunity for political non-speak,or propaganda, but thoughtful response – u could do this by including a post-poll on readers’ evaluation of the contributor and a comments section.

 

On another issue altogether, there was a front-page photograph of Gary Toomey and John Sharp yesterday. There was also a short explanatory story by Mark Robinson on p6. Now, although I have found the whole Ansett saga fascinating, I did find myself reading Robinson’s story and going…”No..no..that’s not the story here”.

 

Does anyone else think it’s about time for a long critical, journalistic look at the lobbying industry, in particular the numerous influential figures who use privileged information and contacts for the benefit of companies in a way that would have been considered conflict of interest during their official career?

 

There seem to be a preponderance of ex-ministers (barely, in Sharp’s case), ex-department heads and other politically influential figures who are turning up in the employ, or “service”, of industries that are closely related to their areas of official duties. Am I alone in believing that this constitutes a form of conflict of interest?

 

Isn’t it time to consider close scrutiny and greater regulation of the post-careers of people who have access to the wheels of power? Isn’t it enough that pollies and public servants have probably the most generous superannuation policy in Australia? Shouldn’t there be a time limit (say 5 years) before one of these people can use their inside knowledge for the benefit of well-heeled businesses?

 

 

JORDAN SERENA

 

Overall, I agree with Fiona Ferrari, but wonder if I have been labelled as elitist or a PHD wanker? I hope not… I am neither!

 

Set up a word limit per contribution of 75 words on each topic for discussion, and then provide a forum for each separate topic to be discussed. People can refer to previous contributions by date in each topic, rather than cutting and pasting previous comments and then inserting their comments, and lastly, split the page into our comments and your repartee.

 

I agree with Fiona – beat us up a bit more, we love pain! See how that goes…

 

Nice to hear Elen Seymour’s inside story from Canada (Webdiary yesterday). Just a couple of things – I was comparing Australia extremely favourably when it comes to personal tax – on 35% less salary, I still take home more here than I did in Europe. Scandalous!

 

The other point is concerning Gen-Xers (I am one of them, by the way) – have we not learned that Greed is Not Good from our troubled past? There are sufficient historical examples – Rome’s collapse in the 5th was partly created by greed, the Catholic Church schism of the 16th century, the 1920’s creating the depression of the 30’s.

 

The Boomers had been working for a while before hedonism went to their heads – we have just gotten out of school, and we want it all now… Sad!

My online boss Tom Burton wants to revamp the webdiary and we’re in the market for ideas.

 

What got me thinking about this was a note from Fiona Ferrari (nom de plume). She wrote:

 

Margo, don’t let the megawork academic pieces take over the site. I wouldn’t like to see your page dominated by men doing Phds (‘the elites’) or it will start to look like an academic journal. Don’t get me wrong – I love their stuff, but I don’t want to see the page get too wanky with people trying to show how clever they are.

 

One of the best things about your page is the interactivity and conversations between contributors with different viewpoints and different experiences. Some readers won’t have time to read the long dense works. Others will lack the confidence to engage and contribute due to lack of education.

 

I would like this page to include more pieces from ordinary people – those who are not well-paid public servants and academics with insider access. And especially from people who feel marginalised – eg unemployed people, people on disability pensions, school students, poor farmers, refugees, prisoners, people who live in public housing in the western suburbs of Sydney etc. I want to see what these people say in addition to what our most brilliant, educated contributors have to say – and I’d like to see some genuine engagement between the two groups.

 

You’ve said you realized you were out of touch when the Hanson thing first happened and you wanted to get more in touch. Yes – this page is giving a voice to people who are not specialists or experts but who have ideas they want to test and that is wonderful. But do you really think you are getting more in touch with the views of socially disadvantaged, non-elite Australians?

 

Apart from the equity aspect, I like short pieces for other reasons. Sometimes a contributor can make a very profound, interesting observation in one sentence. Sometimes the long pieces do not facilitate the same level of interactivity.

 

I also really enjoy reading short exchanges between contributors where you toss in your thoughts, especially when you start arguing with them. It’s entertaining. (on that point, I think you used to do that more last year and I’d like to see you engaging with what people are writing like you used to).

“So my message is – keep the page full of diverse contributions and try to promote even more engagement between writers. Be intellectual but don’t let it get too wanky.

 

Tim Dunlop and Andrew Stapleton, the main protagonists in the dairy debate, also had some comments on the page.

 

Tim wrote:

 

As good as it is, this situation does show the limitations of your web-page. I seem to remember you writing early on of the possibility of the site getting its own web-board or discussion list? A feature like that would allow this sort of extended discussion to happen between your “readers” and free you from administrative involvement. You could then just enter discussions as you saw fit. I reckon it could add a useful dimension to your website experiment.

 

Andrew wrote: Here is the feed back on what I am looking for from the web diary. Firstly I read the page because I value your perspective … that wasn’t just a crawl. Regarding the mail you post on your page, there are many thousands of news groups and listservs on the net and these groups have permanent, long term residents who own and defend a bit of their territory.

 

These residents do continual battle with each other but the battle is more in the nature of a high school debate or religious argument than an exchange of views. Neither side will ever concede a point or allow their minds to changed because they aren’t listening to the other party, they are looking for vulnerabilities in the opposing argument to prove their superiority.

 

When I read Tim Dunlop and Cathy Bannister (responding to Andrew’s dairy piece) I felt the discussion had slipped into that newsgroup mode. I didn’t feel they had made an effort to understand my points, however badly presented, the points where interpreted as what they expect an extremely right wing person to say. People are free to interpret me however they like but when it appears on the SMH web site their interpretation has added credibility.

 

To me what would make this page outstanding is if you enforced an editorial standard throughout the work. You sent an email to me stating that you wanted to put my email on the page, along with that you could have said “please rewrite para. 2 an 6 they don’t make sense” or “I don’t understand that, make it clearer”. I’m not just talking about my work, I thought Tim’s original piece could have been done in 2 to 3 thousand words in a formal style (intro, body, conc and bib), been interesting and had far more impact.

I realize what I am asking for will demand more of your time and may well be impossible but as I said the net is primarily tera bites of unregulated opinion and insubstantial points of view. Applying some degree of rigor without censoring the ideas would set the web diary apart.

 

The webdiary is a beast driven by its readers, and I’m constantly surprised where you take it, from the debate on journalism triggered by Jack Robertson last year to this year’s dairy deregulation epic.

 

Both these issues, like the Greenhouse imbroglio and the One Nation phenomenon, will wax and wane but not go away. But I do need to keep the daily diary fresh, punchy, and topical, and I do take Fiona’s point that I don’t want to scare off people who feel intimidated by the longer, more densely argued pieces.

 

I feel that the dairy debate and the wider issues it raises, is of top quality, and I hope that by putting it all together, it will become a resource used more widely than the readers of the webpage. The idea of genuine engagement rather than exchanging rhetoric, as Andrew notes, is exciting and maybe even useful. But it could drag down the spontaneity of the daily diary if each entry is put on the daily page.

 

What we’re planning is to broaden the idea of separating off a good debate like we’ve done with dairy, to other issues, like Greenhouse and the state of the media. The debate would begin in the diary, then be transferred. (Responses to Mark Latham’s intervention on dairy are flowing in – see the dairy update.)

 

There is no need to be intimidated by the diary. I publish most of what I get, and what I don’t publish is mainly stuff that’s been said before or doesn’t make sense to me. Lately, because the volume of emails has got so large, I don’t run some because the diary would be too long! I”m also starting to put entries in when they fit the theme of the day’s diary, so I’m holding some till the time is right.

 

I do edit for repetition and grammar, but I don’t edit for style, because it’s vital that the individual voices are clearly heard. So I disagree with Andrew’s idea that I become involved in that side of things.

 

Another innovation will be to have separate entries for our regular columnists, Don Arthur on the politics of ideas and Jack Robertson on the media. This will be especially useful when the election site gets up – I’m hoping we can work out a way to do instant feedback to these columns, so they’re interactive during the election.

 

We’ll also have a separate entry for the marginal seats reports, with updates from the writers before and during the election. (Please, I need more!)

 

So it’s over to you – any suggestions?

 

Today, Robert Lawton respond’s to Polly Bush’s piece on drug use (Webdiary Tuesday, April 10). Jack Robertson’s Meeja Watch looks at Stuart Littlemore’s demolition job on the far-right’s anti-ABC mantra, andRichard Thompson and Paul Walker also weigh in. Then to politician’s super (Webdiary Tuesday) courtesy of Don Arthur, Steve Yates and Fiona Ferrari. Richard Pawsey and Elen Seymour dive in, and finallyDon Wigan comes out swinging.

 

 

ROBERT LAWTON in Adelaide

 

 

Good gritty contribution from Ms Bush.

 

It seems to me though that there is a huge gap in the power of government to change patterns of drug usage. Between injecting rooms and more money for rehab, and legalisation/regulation of the manufacture and supply of currently illegal drugs, what can be done except ranting.

 

This tone is shared by the PM’s latest efforts as well as Bob Hawke’s hamfisted “Drug Offensive” (which I always felt reinforced the attractiveness of drug use as an act of rebellion… offensive is what a lot of young people like to be!).

 

Polly puts her finger on the problem when she talks of boredom and thwarted emotional/sexual needs.

 

Last year Dr Nick Crofts, Director of the Centre for Harm Reduction at the Macfarlane Burnet Centre for Medical Research in Melbourne said that supervised injecting rooms, needle exchange programs, and heroin trials were potential Band-Aids, when the real danger came from the chaotic social setting in which users lived. (The Age, 19.2.00)

 

Speaking at an Australian Drug Foundation seminar, he said the priority should be to “readmit drug users to the human race” by tackling social, economic and political inequities. Although he supported them, harm reduction measures had the potential to distract attention from a “higher level” of drug policy.

 

“If safe injecting rooms were to work, and overdose deaths decline, and street scenes disappear, much of the visible part of the problem will go away and the pressure to consider fundamental reform of bad policy will be weakened.”

 

But how to execute such reform, when the ability to slow social dislocation is beyond the power any government on earth?

 

Prior to this Dr David Penington, long term advisor on Drug Policy to the Kennett administration, had written of “the sadness epidemic”, the root of what was seen by government as the problem of drug abuse.

 

Anomie is at the heart of alcohol abuse, and every other illegal drug. The flip of alienation is tribalism, and the demonisation of drug users by government maintains that tribalism and sustains the illegal drug market.

 

 

How can we legislate for contentment, for meaning to life? Isn’t this something we must all examine, outside the parliamentary doors?

 

MEEJA WATCH

 

Watching the watchers

 

By Jack Robertson

 

Canberra Inside Out reader Cathy Bannister (WD, April 6) rightly notes Stuart Littlemore’s neatish coup in reclaiming Monday nights as his own, and on his own terms (fifteen minutes of fame once a week in perhaps the trickiest Meeja gig to sustain without turning into a self-caricature). There is a real risk in watching the watchers to such an extent that we ll all disappear up our own self-referential clackers, but now that the dust over the ABCs Media Watch has settled, its worth at least one quick decko at the net result.

 

Monday’s April 9 program took to a few of Abes more vocal critics, and so turned into something of a de-facto offensive defence of the much-criticised National Broadcaster. (Gail Jarvis might even have felt a tad vindicated?) Importantly, though, this was simply an unintentional by-product of the main theme a close squiz at a few of the leading thinkers associated with Melbournes Institute of Public Affairs.

 

The specific Littlemore story was a recent IPA-sponsored chat-fest in Balmain on perceived bias in the ABC, but its principle function was to provide the framework for a classic Littlemore deconstruction of the think-tank itself, an influential one about which I previously knew little (my pig-ignorance, incidentally, not IPA subterfuge – they’ve been around for fifty years; their illuminating website is at www.ipa.org.au).

 

Quentin Dempster, the sole representative at the forum who might have begged to differ from what seemed to be a general consensus on the issue at hand (predictable enough – yes, ABC bias is indeed rife), got virtually no air time. Littlemore and his team were evidently after different fish, and set out to hoist the IPA-underwritten free-thinkers elegantly on their own petards.

 

Thus we learned that many of the high-profile public intellectuals featured – Warby, Duffy, Pearson, et al – had various direct (or indirect) associations with this influential think tank; that the IPA describes itself as being in favour of free society and free enterprise, but in a market-oriented and general (as opposed to a sectional) way; and that it seems largely underwritten by corporations and individuals with rather similar aims.

 

Media Watch also whipped through examples of other articles written by the aforementioned speakers. For a public forum that was supposed to be open, the range of views on offer seemed a tad on the thin side.

 

Well, so what, we might ask? Public intellectuals have a right to get together, via whatever formal grouping, they see fit. Top level execs are also entitled to nurture and sponsor thinking that promotes their own or their company’s interests, too. And you have to concede that most of those featured are reasonably intelligent, informed, articulate and, presumably, genuine enough in their expressed views.

 

However – and it’s a great big bastard of a however – until this program, I had no inkling of the real nature of the mob that sponsored the forum. And crucially, this particular get-together was one that spawned a surprising amount of ABC-bashing in the ensuing broadsheet columns (a lot of it centred on ex-ABC staffer Pru Gowards contributions).

 

A disproportionate amount of coverage, in fact, given the spectacularly piss-poor public turn-out. In short, it all amounted to a blatant intellectual sting operation, running roughly as follows: a Corporate think-tank with vested reasons for criticising the ABC put together a virtually-private public forum in which various independent thinkers (most with anti-ABC track records) got to bash the ABC some more, after which they all nipped off home to their PCs, to hack out a few thousand words about how this earth-shattering Public Event demonstrated the serious extent of the problem of bias at the ABC.

 

I’m not suggesting there’s anything particularly sinister or X-Files to this sort of malarkey – pathetic is the word that springs to mind – but the truth is, all those powerful public thinkers came out of the whole grubby con-job looking like complete dickheads, largely thanks to Littlemore’s cool and timely skewering. Its utterly hypocritical for anyone associated with the Corporate-backed IPA to criticise ABC employees for supposedly being infected with some sort of Big Brother institutional bias. What’s Rio Tinto, then – an intellectually benign anarcho-syndicalist collective? And especially now, with Very Big Picture economic questions philosophical, sweeping, fundamental in nature – fizzing away at the hot heart of contemporary political debate, no fair dinkum intellectual who aspires to the status of free and open-minded thinker can possibly afford to have anything to do with such a blatant vehicle for the promotion of established economic agendas.

 

 

So the important result of this Littlemore was that people like me are now at least clued up on the IPA, and, if we want, we can duly modify the way we receive opinions aired by thinkers associated with it. On balance, as Cathy B pointed out, it does indeed seem that the Pated One is now even better-placed than before to kick some serious media jacksy.

 

 

On the other hand, for me the best outcome of all the Media Watch double-clutching of the last six months is that Paul Barry, one of the toughest reporters in the country, is back fulltime at the hard news coal-face, which in my opinion has always been his rightful manor. Anyone with the cojones to take on the Kezzas, the Bondies and the Elliotts – snacking on tax-dodging barristers along the way – is, frankly, just a little bit wasted on media watch-dogging.

 

 

RICHARD THOMPSON

 

I watched Littlemore with great interest regarding the power of the IPA. I found his dissection fascinating and sinister in that a bunch of ultra right thinkers (?) can have such a strong hold on the media and sling so much filth at the ABC. I have noted over the years that people like this and politicians in particular in making criticisms like this tend to describe themselves precisely!

 

PAUL WALKER

 

I’m wondering why some sort of definitive answer can’t be provided as to why right-wing journalists including your ABC cobber Michael Duffy perversely keep recycling innuendo, slander and smear that they most know full-well to be malicious, harmful lies of the first order.

 

I watched closely your own reaction a month or so ago when you debated an issue involving a cynical manipulation by Andrew Bolt of Lowitja O’Donoghue with Duffy.You seemed understandably surprised at what he ended up saying, it seemed to me.

 

Now the whole filthy lot of them have piled on to the ABC again with their so -called “seminar”, effectively ridiculed on “Littlemore”. When IPA propagandists are letting fly their hysterical self-righteousness why don’t they also occasionally demand that the same fair-go is extended to other (real) victims of injustice in this country?

 

POLLIES’ SUPER

 

DON ARTHUR

 

I was rolling around laughing at your helpful advice to the PM. The super issue is just perfect. It raises all the right questions; about voters and what makes us bite (disturbing), about politicians who say that cheap beer is an ‘issue’ but MP’s super is a ‘distraction’ (hilarious) and about whether Margo Kingston longs for a shit-stirring populist politician who isn’t a bigot (maybe it’s you).

 

STEVE YATES

 

Your article of 17th April was interesting but I feel our politicians lack any imagination or courage to embrace such a selfless or radical move. Why change a system that one benefits so generously from? As an example of leadership it would certainly start to break down my walls of cynicism concerning our rather pedestrian political masters.

 

Maybe the fair Natasha could pick up the mantle and use it when dealing with the next Federal government. Oh well, one can but dream. Or am I being conned by another fairytale?

 

I shall still struggle on with my own superannuation juggling act of whether to put more in or pay off my mortgage or educate my kids. Maybe I should exercise my freedom of choice and become a politician.

 

FIONA FERRARI

 

You are on a winner with your super idea. But I’m a bit worried that you’re giving John Howard too much help – I’d hate to see him win the next election.

 

That old argument that politicians need more super to compensate for lack of job security is completely unsustainable and it infuriates me every time I hear it. We, the general public, have been living with job insecurity for at least the last 10 years and we cannot access our super. We can’t even get on the dole now without enduring long waiting periods.

 

This is not just about pandying to populism. Andren’s call to abolish the double standards is justifiable on grounds of fairness and equity. It is also justifiable on the grounds that politicians (who regularly make decisions which result in other people having less job security) should know what it’s like to face unemployment without a generous super cushion.

 

I want my political representatives to be feeling the full force of the winds of globalisation and economic rationalism when they are making these decisions, not to be thinking ‘it won’t happen to me, I’ll be safe with my super’.

 

I agree with you that Peter Andren has been very clever in framing his legislation around the ‘freedom of choice’ mantra so beloved of the Liberals. But even if Andren’s legislation somehow gets through, I don’t share your confidence that most politicians would choose the 8% scheme over the 69% scheme. There is safety in numbers and as long as most of them didn’t jump ship they would be safe. I can just see Peter Andren being the only one to choose to give away his entitlements.

 

I see the Andren bill not as the solution but as a catalyst for a total overhaul of politicians’ super scheme, so at a minimum their entitlements are brought into line with those of public servants and they can no longer access money before age 55.

 

Now it’s up to the media to give Andren’s proposal wide public exposure. I’d love to see the media push Howard and Beazley into a corner on this one. I don’t know what the Democrats’ and Greens’ policies are on this but my suggestion to them is to support Andren and to do it very publicly.

 

 

RICHARD PAWSEY in Melbourne

 

I agree with the analysis you reported on Late Night Live. Hanson is spot on. She may espouse unappealing policies, but her political antennae are unerring (You wonder what the big Parties get for all their expenditure on policy advice!).

 

Everyone I speak to in my middle Melbourne circles is out for revenge against the incumbent pollies – particularly those associated with the 4 major parties. They have presided over policy settings that have increased our job insecurity and made most of us increasingly anxious about income security in old age. While they lever us into deregulated markets they cloak their own entitlements with protectionism.

 

“Electoral volatility” is about all we have available to express our concerns about this inequity, and this is why I think Hanson is right in her understanding of “revenge” electoral behaviour.

 

ELEN SEYMOUR in Canada

 

I thought I would wade in with a couple of comments on Jordan Serena’s statement of Australia’s advantages (Webdiary Tuesday)

 

Jordan: In 2000, we are still one of the best, if not the best. Our dollar has collapsed, but if you don’t go overseas and buy Australian, the impacts are relatively small on a personal level. We have gotten greedier though – the first home for a family was always a starter property – two maybe three bedroom, no ensuite. Now, a four bedroom house is considered par for the course. One car was great to have, now two is a bare minimum. Getting a job was before the prerogative, now it is the job, the title, the career and the money, thanks. What ever happened to waiting a little bit?

 

I’m inclined to agree,but don’t blame us Gen-Xers for wanting it all NOW- we learned it from the Boomers during the excesses of the 80’s – remember?

 

Jordan: Our industry has become much more efficient. Pity we don’t have enough of it. Canada, a bigger country with 30 million people, has the distinct advantage of being next door to the USA, and as such attracts a lot of dollars that way. However, it is also one of the seven biggest world economies, and participates in the G7 forum. What can’t we aim for this sort of mark? Oh. I forgot – the unions and the wharves… But hang on! The UK still has powerful unions, as do most of the other EU countries, and they seem to do OK. Germany has the highest per capita labour costs in the EU for blue collar workers, yet by delivering quality, they still manage to sell their products.

 

It’s not the wharves or the unions! Probably never has been. I work in tax so I can tell you exactly why Canada and Ireland etc are booming economies – low corporate tax. Really, really low PLUS R&D concessions. Canada and Ireland are riding high on multinationals coming in and either performing R&D (Canada ) or centralised service provision (Ireland). This makes companies not only more likely to want to open shop, more likely to stay and more likely to do something in that country other than have a “shopfront” – which is almost all Australia gets. AND more likely to pay their fair share of tax! This is what can really be done to make Australia competitive again…but I pity the politician/party trying to sell that message to Australians – I remember the loud squeals of people when the current Federal government did lower the corporate rate by the teensiest tiniest amount. At the very least people should realise that higher corporate taxes does not always equal more corporate tax dollars paid!

Jordan: The GST – in terms of levels of taxation, Australia’s GST is low – my time in Germany was shared between 7% GST on food and 16% on everything else. The way in which the GST has been introduced is what is criminal about it – it has killed small business, and in no uncertain terms, is creating the recession no-one said we had to have, but we think we have anyway. The point is, though, the GST must be seen in the context of total taxation reform – yes, we have received a tax cut (watch this space for the next one in the Budget), but my level of overall taxation has still a long way to go before it can be compared to Sweden, Germany or other members of the EU.

 

Don’t know about Europe but the personal taxes in Canada are relatively high – the MRT is comparable to Australia but the GST and PST (provincial sales tax) in Ontario total 15%. But the real killer is that legal tax minimisation is not as straight forward as in Australia – the good old deductible if not personal or capital in nature – is non-existent to the ordinary employee in Canada making apparently comparable rates actually higher in real dollar terms. So don’t complain too hard – you have to look beyond just the numbers in the taxation rates tables!

Jordan: Health and health insurance – we aren’t doing too bad, but I am sure we will do much worse in coming years unless spending is increased to ensure proper funding and – heaven forbid – new hospitals and people to staff them. Health insurance is still cheap, when compared to the US or Europe, and Medicare is a system that has worked well. Perhaps we can increase contributions somewhat to better finance the hospitals/health sector, provided it is used ONLY for that purpose, on a sliding scale, with the rich paying more than the average Mum & Dad, plus 2.4 kids.

 

Beware the public system that seeks to minimise treatment costs by pushing cheaper treatment options and not telling or taking away longer term (read expensive) options! Don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s only the private sector that wants to do this!

 

Jordan: Lifestyle – best country in the world, and don’t believe any American, Canadian or South African that tells you differently…

 

Yep – and the best food – fresh, plenty of variety and cheap! Oh and if that labelling debate ever gets stirred up again, forget it. Companies in Oz have it easy compared to their Canadian counterparts – companies here have to have French and English on every food label (actually on anything read by the public). Imagine that Pauline! (Cheap but irresistible shot).

 

DON WIGAN

 

Since disclosures of interests are in order, I’ll declare mine. I am an ex-DEET CES network staffer, having gone out on a redundancy when the Howard Govt closed the CES in 1998. I live on a partial pension and partial dole.

 

As I am now aged 58, no employer wants to know me even though I’d rather still be working to help support two highschool children. I still go for plenty, but know enough about the labour market not to get too dispirited for too long when my applications are ignored.

 

Politically, I am essentially a Dunstan-type social democrat, which in the modern atmosphere makes me feel like the late Bill Weekes (who was the only academic I can remember to advocate industry protection at the height of the tariff abolition push a decade back).

 

I suppose everyone likes to feel that what they’ve done in their life hasn’t been a complete waste, and I’m no exception. My earlier career was with SA Tourism in Sydney throughout the Dunstan era. At the time I felt some real pride in what my state was doing. It even gave me minor celebrity status at parties. I was convinced then that governments could play a positive role in improving people’s lives.

 

It’s a view I still hold today, even if it’s tempered by the blinkered limits of bureaucracies and career politicians. By the mid-70s this view was under attack firstly from John Singleton’s Workers Party (a favourite memory of that era was of a smartly-dressed young business executive getting off the bus at North Sydney proudly displaying a large sticker on her briefcase saying, “TAXATION IS THEFT”. No doubt many barristers today still hold that view.) and later from the Milton Friedman apostles.

 

Neo-classical economics theory dominance was one of those unfortunate accidents of history, a bit like Lenin managing to get hold of the Russian revolution. A chain of events led to it

 

The oil price hike challenged stabilities previously taken for granted under Keynesian theories.

 

The leading government post-war economic advisers (Keynesians) were retiring and the next generation wanted to make a mark.

 

Trades unions in English-speaking countries had become arrogant and overplayed their positions, safe under protection policies. Thatcherism and its variants arose as a reaction to that.

 

Businesses, large and small, started to resent the cost of welfare state conditions and what seemed an excess of regulations. Reaganomics, even though it never really seemed to make much sense, was a reaction to that.

 

The principles of Friedmanism (trying to control the economy through the money supply rather than government intervention) thus had great appeal, especially amongst media tycoons (who hated paying tax more than most).

 

Price mechanism seemed better for allocating resources than regulations.

 

Reporters keen to keep their jobs or get promoted soon got and spread the message. So it gathered momentum.

 

It coincided with an urgent need to restructure the overprotected Australian and New Zealand economies in the wake of the Asian Tigers. The two dynamics got hopelessly intermingled.

 

My objections to it under whatever name – economic rationalism, Friedmanism, neo-classical economics, Thatcherism, Reaganomics – were both intellectual and ethical. It was based on a misreading of history: that the robber baron era of the late 19th century and its associated laissez-faire economics was a golden age in human progress.

 

True, America leaped ahead in this period, but it’s questionable how much laissez-faire economics and the robber barons had to do with it, apart from creaming off most of the new wealth. Science, agricultural science, engineering and inventions were where the real progress and wealth generation occurred. Britain and Australia made similar progress with more regulated and interventionist governments.

 

As it gathered momentum it took on a religious fervour, similar to Marxism half a century earlier. As with that, many assertions were generalised without much empirical evidence to back them, but heck, you had to have FAITH.

 

One, which perhaps because of my declared interest I always found offensive, was that governments nearly always got it wrong and on the rare occasions when they were right their timing was wrong. So governments were better off doing nothing and leaving it all to the market.

 

These types of views, perhaps not as openly asserted as they were in the late 80s and early 90s, still prevail in the federal bureaucracy, in what passes for thinking in the major political parties and in most of the economics and finance departments of higher education. Ultimately, however,

the contempt for public employees (a legacy of Thatcher) will backfire.

 

The best example of that effect was illustrated in the parting remarks of the much-maligned Meg Lees. As Margo pointed out, she and Andrew Murray won major concessions from the Liberals on food and basics, on removing some of the balance tilt to the wealthy, and in allocating money for greenhouse (for which the govt which had opposed it is now claiming credit).

 

Without these concessions Howard would certainly be facing the total wipeout that the Canadian Conservatives experienced. As it is, he is still on a hiding to nothing, as Meg has just experienced, but the parties will survive thanks to Lees and to Labor’s coy caution.

 

Lees mentioned that if Tax and Treasury hadn’t been so mean and penny-pinching in their interpretations and so slow and inflexible in their responses to genuine business concerns, the anger (which has come more from businesses – which had wanted such a tax – than from consumers) might not have been so great.

 

The relentless demoralising attitude by senior bureaucrats and politicians to public employees is largely responsible for these departments not being up to handling industry’s concerns.

 

Simply put, not enough public contact staff are employed because of the ideological obsession with reducing public service numbers. Compounding that problem has been the centralising of decision-making (as industrial democracy was abandoned), meaning that the few people unlucky enough to be out in the coalface can’t make any real decisions. I don’t know what happened in those depts but I’d bet quite a bit of money that Meg was right.

 

I expect that similar misadventures occurred with the GST implementation, except that they were on a much more massive scale. It seems cruel that Lees has copped some of the flak for that, while Labor has been quite happy to see the GST implemented, with no intention of removing it, while others get the blame. At least they can say they opposed it even if they are keeping it.

Now that we’re getting serious, our politics of ideas man Don Arthur has a confession. You’ll recall he’s a former official at the Commonwealth employment department who’s now doing a Phd full-time.

 

Don writes: “I was thinking over what you were saying on Late Night Live about Inside Out attracting people who are not part of peak groups. Here’s something people ought to know about me. I can afford to study full time because I’ve got a scholarship – it’s called an Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry). My industry partner is Anglicare (WA). I’m not exactly sure how the money thing works but Anglicare puts up some of the funds and is involved in setting the research topic. I have three supervisors, two from Edith Cowan and one from the industry partner.

 

“Before I saw the ad for the scholarship in the Oz I’d always thought these industry things meant mining companies, chemical manufacturers or bio-technology. I was very happy to learn otherwise. Sorry I didn’t say this earlier.”

 

Personally, I can’t see anything remiss in not disclosing this, unless you mentioned Anglicare in a piece, or were writing on religious charity or the like. But Don’s disclosure does raise the question of independence on this page.

 

I spoke to a Rotary lunch on Wednesday on the topic “Playing politics in post-egalitarian Australia” which made me think about what this page has turned out to be, and what’s the philosophy that’s come to underpin it.

 

1. After following Pauline Hanson around in 1998, I realised that I didn’t know much at all, had been lazy in accepting the truths of the experts without thinking about it,and was generally out of touch. I was also convinced that conversation across viewpoints was vital to national coherence and the search for a new consensus.

 

2. I had three main assets:

(1) I have access to information and an opportunity to scrutinise people of power because of my job and the paper I work for;

(2) I am independent. The only constraint I have is in speaking completely openly about the company I work for, although over the years I’ve come pretty close. That means I can be trusted – not to be objective, but to be honest.

(3) After going through the agony of using the “I” word in my Pauline Hanson book, I have thrown off the shackles of the myth of objectivity, which is really an excuse to hide the truth from readers, not expose it. It also falsely sets the journalist up as judge, not participant.

(4) Once you get over that one, you stop being defensive about criticism and realise that publication of criticism is a sign of confidence, and its censorship proof of insecurity. It also means that since everyone’s sitting at the same table, genuine engagement is natural.

 

As it’s turned out, the page has become an open ended-conversation with me as facilitator, as well as general rave merchant.

 

What’s the point of that? A big thing in its favour is that no-one believes anyone HAS the answers/the complete picture, anymore. We are in a transition of thinking, ideologically and philosophically, about our society and its values. To scream at and deride those who have different starting points castrates the debate, not enlivens it. It’s also depressing.

 

What I love about this page is that intelligent people from many starting points are interested in other thoughts. It’s exhilarating. It cleans out cobwebs and lifts feelings of disempowerment or hopelessness.

 

It’s also a pretty big challenge to the mainstream, in that it’s privileging ideas over who has them, and intellectual debate over rhetoric and conflict-thrill.

 

Going back to Don, I can’t check out every contributor and investigate hidden agendas. Basically this page is a trust exercise. I run most of what’s sent in, with my judgement being pretty simple – is it interesting, is it repeating previous contributions, is it accessible?

 

So it doesn’t matter who’s name is on it, in that sense, which is – apart from trying to free people from the constraints their work places put on their freedom of speech – why nom de plumes are cool with me.

 

But I do ask that if it would be reasonable to perceive a bias, or conflict of interest, in what you write, that you disclose this. Like the marginal seats reports – if you’re a party member, just say so. Also, if you’ve got expertise in an area you’re writing on, I’m sure readers would appreciate that information too.

 

Onward. Jack Robertson does Meeja Watch and John Crockett does over the SMH. Fiona Rothwell pines for a return to the politics of agitation. First-timer Paul Bannister, an expert on energy efficiency, weighs in on the Kyoto debate. Andrew Stapleton puts the case FOR dairy deregulation, and first timer Trevor Wallis picks up on the environmental objections to the policy mentioned in Tim Dunlop’s udder piece.

MEEJA WATCH

 

By George!

 

By Jack Robertson

 

Firstly, a word on the Meeja coverage of the Chinese/US diplomatic ‘crisis’ now underway, then some cheering life-signs from Aunt Abe.

 

Ask yourself this question – What is the worst thing that has happened during the whole kerfuffle over the Seppo reconnaissance plane that landed on Chinese soil after the mid-air collision?

 

Is it the ‘heightening’ of tension between the Americans and the Chinese? Is it the spectre of a new Cold War? Is it the implicit ‘challenge’ to new US President’s Bush’s authority? Is it the potential threat – by forcing world attention onto Human Rights issues – to the Chinese bid for the Games?

 

Watching most of the Meeja coverage to date – especially on the Box – you’d think that any and all of these ‘flow-on, Big Picture’ issues form the core of the story. The result, in my opinion, has been that the most important (and ongoing) nugget of news content has been overlooked, or at best not given the prominence it deserves.

 

That is this: as you read this, there is a Chinese pilot still missing. He’s probably dead already, but if he is not, he is bobbing about in a little blow-up boat somewhere in the middle of a freezing sea, scared out of his wits.

 

As a former military pilot myself, my first priority for ‘news’ is for ‘news’ about this poor bastard. Call me a naïve sentimentalist if you like, but surely focusing on the Human element of any story, no matter how ‘global’ its potential geo-political impact, is one crucial way the Meeja can help prevent incidents such as these being blown out of all proportion.

 

What is a diplomatic ‘crisis’, anyway, if not a Human misunderstanding multiplied by ten million babbling ‘experts’? The recent Colin Powell statement of ‘regret’ about this pilot’s fate is, in my opinion, a welcome move towards perspective. The Yanks are (admirably) concerned about their own blokes and blouses, but at least they are all accounted for.

 

And just imagine how CNN et al would be playing this if the roles were reversed. Remember the Meeja Frenzy over that fighter jock who went missing for a couple of days in Bosnia a few years back? Food for thought, anyway.

 

Now, to more Oz Election-relevant Meeja stuff: the entry of George Negus into the domestic political fray.

 

On Wednesday night (4 April), the 7.30 Report ran a segment in which the Crusty One (minus flak jacket) got ‘out and about’ in his home electorate of Cowper. The brief was ostensibly to cruise for grass-roots feedback on the GST, and that’s exactly what we got.

 

Negus – who was breezily open about his own link to the area – basically plonked a camera down, threw out a few curly ones, and let the people of Cowper talk about how the GST has had an impact on their working and personal lives.

 

There was a good cross-section of the Citizenry – farmers, small business people, an accountant, an artist, a publican, a group of oldies, and so on – and as a result we got pro-GST, anti-GST, and somewhere-in-the-middle GST comment.

 

The subsequent discussion also incorporated grass-root ideas on One Nation, on economic deregulation, and on the political process itself. Interestingly (and I thought most effectively), the program (apparently) did not elicit participation from the sitting member, Garry Nehl (although it did refer to him, and the fact that he is soon retiring), nor did it approach the ‘usual suspects’ (economic and political pundits, etc) for sideline comment. They didn’t even ask the editor of the local rag for an ‘overview’ of the electorate’s mood, a common tactic on such regional stories.

 

So rather than have the same old clichés trotted out, we got precisely what the segment promised: un-Machiavellian, grass-roots comment, perhaps of far greater value to the democratic process than any ‘professional talking head’ might have been. No doubt Garry Nehl, and/or his potential successors from all sides would have been araldited to their screens. (In fact, it turned out that one of George’s interviewees is a runner for Nehl’s slot himself so perhaps not all ‘grass-roots’ comment is as ‘un-Machiavellian’ as it appears!)

 

Recently, the 7.30 Report has been under implied strategic threat, both from Mr Shier’s touted reforms, and from media commentators who have suggested that Kerry O’Brien has lost his Mojo, that the program is turning into A Current Affair for chardonnay gluggers.

 

That the show is still prepared and able to crank out relevant, fertile, and – dare I say it, essentially good-hearted – political segments like this one, using proven journos of Negus’s calibre, suggests that there might still be some life in the Green Pen Brigade yet.

 

JOHN CROCKETT in Thirlmere

 

As much as I appreciate the publication of Tim Dunlop’s article in the Webdiary, I am disappointed with the SMH in its failure to address these issues in any sustained way on the opinion pages of the paper.

 

Adele Horin writes with passion and insight on the minutia of government policy as it affects our day to day lives but apart from the occasional article from professor Quiggan, neo-liberalism remains an ideology largely unexamined.

 

The SMH sees itself as the nation’s premier paper – a quality broadsheet – among the world’s best and yet there are times when the opinion pages in the SMH and the Daily Telegraph seem identical – Piers and Paddy, Paddy and Piers. As to why the SMH serves a daily dose of vitriol and bile from the rabid right remains a mystery.

 

To sum up Margo, I should not have to read an American publication such as the New Republic in order to gain an understanding of the political and social implications of policies initiated by the next step in the evolution of Conservatism – the compassionate conservative. ( for an analysis of Governor Bush’s income tax cuts on health and education budgets in Texas, look up The New Republic on the www.)

 

FIONA ROTHWELL in London

 

 

The UK general election has been postponed until 7 June. It seems that the advertising boffins however, have way too much time on their hands – the latest offering by the Labour Party shows William Hague and Michael Portillo on a Tory spaceship hovering menacingly over the City – the financial and business district of London. The advert is set to run for 5 long, really long minutes and is basically a rip-off of the Hollywood film, Independence Day.

 

It makes me wonder what standard of campaign we will see from Howard and Beazley et al? Will Kim portray John as the big bad business wrecker, hovering, spaceship-like over the Sydney CBD? Perhaps it will be the other way around?

 

Will either of them stand on their dais and dance to “Things can only get better” as Tony did here in 1997?

 

What are the bets that the standard ads of women in their kitchen, despairing over bills and blaming the [insert name of party here] will reign. Constant flogging of each party’s weaknesses, promises, promises.

 

Will we see John swaying to Aint No Mountain High Enough and Kim livin’ it large to ABBA’s The Winner Takes it All?

 

I want kissing of old people and babies, having a beer with the boys at the pub en route to yet another Party party, smiles, tears, laughter, reassurances. People in the streets, excitement about the future of the country, a return to the political campaigns of the sixties and seventies when it wasn’t so much about spin as agitation.

 

My mother has a photo taken in June 1974 of my brother and I wearing sloppy joes which said “Think again – Vote Liberal”. It was taken after a day spent campaigning for the return to power of the Liberal Party per Malcolm Fraser in the streets of Canberra. Mum and Dad had t-shirts which said “Turn on the Lights – Vote Liberal”.

 

My father tells the story that on the day of the dismissal of Gough, he took my brother and I down to (the Old) Parliament House and watched as Gough took his place on the steps and uttered those immortal words which, to this day, arouse such powerful feelings in Australians.

 

Probably the most successful (in terms of over throwing the incumbent) political campaign ever in the history of Australian politics was Gough’s 1972 “It’s Time” campaign which resulted in the first Labor government in 23 years. And he certainly picked up the ball and ran with it: ending conscription and withdrawing from Vietnam, implementing equal pay for women (and improving their entitlements generally), establishing Medibank, passing the Family Law Act and the list goes on and on. That great hulking love-it or hate-it Jackson Pollock in the National Gallery is all thanks to Gough and who cares that unemployment increased and that he spent more money than you could poke a stick at? I would too if I were PM.

 

It but it seems to me like there was this whole long period of the Libs running the show and then this force known as Gough flew in, wreaked havoc for a few years and then left again in extremely controversial circumstances, leaving his extremely controversial legacy all over the place. I wonder if that will ever happen again? (MARGO: Yep, if Howard loses.)

 

PAUL BANNISTER

 

I am writing to you regarding the recent hilarity over the US withdrawal from Kyoto. I’m an energy efficiency consultant. My job, every day, consists of advising people how they can cost effectively save money by saving energy. According to the doyens of economic rationalism, I don’t exist. Why?

 

Because if energy efficiency was economic, it would have been done already.

 

It is no surprise therefore to have the likes of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Economics and their interestingly stacked committees say that compliance with Kyoto will cost the country. This is part of a broader process that goes much further than the committee stacking that determines the outcomes of some reports.

 

I used to work in solar energy research. It was great fun, I had a big solar dish I could show people and it attracted lots of PR and photos. But to be honest, it didn’t do much to solve greenhouse emissions and any energy it generated was pretty darned expensive. I have done infinitely more to decrease greenhouse emissions since I started working on energy efficiency.

 

What’s more we are talking about doing things that are economic today. But let’s be honest about this, energy efficiency has utterly no PR appeal. “Company fixes boiler” really doesn’t cut it against a picture of some solar cells on a roof, does it? This is not just a media problem, it’s a general societal view, perhaps part of consumerism. Creating new things is good, fixing old things isn’t very exciting.

 

At the other end of the spectrum there is another issue that compounds the problem. The supply side of the industry is very well organised. It has a small number of large players, and it is remarkably easy to get them around the table. The demand side consists of millions of players, and while a few big users of electricity pull some power, there is no-one out there advocating on behalf of the vast majority of the demand side market.

 

Result? We get supply side solutions to everything. Greenpower. 2% renewables. Fixing up coal fired power stations.

 

But let’s also be a bit honest about this. Getting people to improve energy efficiency is hard work. I have been working at it for years, and the ratio of opportunities identified to measures implemented is deeply distressing. Why? because on the list of corporate priorities for most organisations, energy efficiency is very much an also-ran. And before we accuse industry of being lax, I would suggest that energy efficiency is pretty much an also-ran for most of the public as well.

 

While I would generally agree that the Don Burke campaign is a waste of money (something a lot more aggressive might have been worth the effort – after all, we reduce the road toll by showing simulated accidents, why be all cutsie about energy waste?), I would have to stand in defence of programs like Greenhouse Challenge against the comments made by Jim Green (Webdiary April 4, Australia: Green enough for Kyoto?)

 

It is an injustice to the hard work and thought that has gone into the structure of the program to accuse it of being just an exercise in corporate plaque hanging. That the level of achievement of targets is only 10% is a worry but it would be far more worthwhile to identify how much has been saved overall (even if it hasn’t met targets). It’s still a result. Obviously the program is not beyond criticism but to suggest it is disingenuous is lazy.

 

I would also like to raise the question as to what the alternative is. It would be too easy – and indeed pretty ignorant – to say it is to regulate for energy efficiency. Technology alone does not solve energy waste (indeed often it causes it). The key problems of energy efficiency lie in better system design and modified behaviour.

 

Neither of these is easy, neither of them can be patented easily, and they are practically impossible to regulate. Furthermore, most of the issues are so poorly understood by the technical community that they are best considered as borderline research.

 

So there is no easy solution, no nice simple commercial model for success. A combination of government handholding and education appear to be the only practical future for the short to medium term.

 

That said, I want to make a one thing clear. If the Australian public and industry all went out tomorrow and implemented all the energy efficiency measures within their control that would produce a better than 2 year payback (that’s like getting a 50% interest rate on your bank account) then Australia would breeze through the achievement of its Kyoto target. What’s more the GDP would rise, jobs would be created and the economy would be more internationally competitive.

 

What stands between us and this goal is a very complex problem of which industry short sightedness is only one facet, and political short sightedness is just a symptom.

 

ANDREW STAPLETON in Sydney

 

Economists and Rationalism.

 

Economics is only the study of the economy.

 

The Economy is a particular system of organization for the production, distribution and consumption of all the things people use to obtain a standard of living.

 

Economists try to understand what is happening in that system and what the effect of changes to the system will be.

 

Politicians make the decisions about changes to the system and redistribution of assets. One of the factors they take into account is advice from economists about the effects. If you think too much weight is being given to economic issues at the expense of other social concerns sack the politician not the economist.

 

An “economically rational” person assumes that the consumer is rational and is the person who knows best how to get the most benefit and enjoyment out of each dollar that they spend. To achieve this the cost to the consumer should be the cost of the economic resources used to produce the good.

 

If a government chooses to increase or reduce the price through taxes, regulations or subsidies they are influencing the choice of the consumer and reducing the overall benefit to the consumer as that consumer defines benefit.

 

Obviously for some things (like perhaps cigarettes, burning fossil fuel, battery hens, fox hunting, some extreme forms of pornography) the social benefit of restriction outweighs the cost to the consumer.

 

 

Dairy Deregulation

 

How far should income support – the transfer of wealth from one group to support another group’s lifestyle – extend?

 

Personally I am happy to support the income of someone who is looking for but unable to find employment, can’t work because of illness or a disability, belongs to a racial group that has been systematically discriminated against for generations, the sole parent of a young child, a refugee, etc. All of these groups are regularly vilified while the guy who is running a business that will never be viable without receiving far more support than any of the above individuals is held up as a hero. Please explain.

 

If someone makes a decision based on a certain set of circumstances and the government acts to change those circumstances then they have a right to expect compensation from the government. Put another way, if there is a net benefit to the Australian population by deregulating the dairy industry then it should be possible to distribute that benefit so that the farmers are at least no worse off and the general public is better off.

 

So why are Queensland and NSW dairy farmers against deregulation and the Victorians for it? The sector of the market that is price regulated is drinking milk which is about 18% of Australia’s milk production [2].

 

Queensland and NSW farmers are far more reliant on regulated drinking milk sales than the Victorians. In the former states drinking milk makes up more than 40% of sales in most regions and over 70% in a few while in Victoria drinking milk makes up less than 10% of sales [1].

 

Victoria has a lower production costs, at 18.8 cents/litre than the average cost of production for Queensland farmers at 24.3 c/L and NSW at 23.4 c/L in 1999-2000. The cost of production is an average and there will be farms for whom the cost is higher meaning they aren’t viable as dairy farms. That doesn’t mean the farm is of no use – what is marginal dairy country may be ideal for beef cattle.

 

So what are some advantages of deregulation? “Australia exports more than 50 per cent of its annual milk production, and more than 60 per cent of manufactured products are exported. While Australia accounts for less than two per cent of world milk production, it is an important exporter of dairy products. Indeed, Australia ranks third in terms of world dairy trade, accounting for 15 per cent of dairy product exports.” [2].

 

The value of Australian exports in 1999-2000 was 2,291 million Australian dollars [2]. If the Australian Government is not providing support for its dairy industry, access to foreign markets will be easier.

 

Why hasn’t the price of a litre of milk dropped? The big corporations may be ripping us off. Some other factors may include-

* It takes time for prices to reach a new equilibrium, for people to compare prices and change brands, forcing competition;

* The quantity of milk consumed doesn’t fluctuate much, which probably means consumers are not price sensitive when they actually reach for the product in the shop and so there is less market pressure to drop the price;

* The GST was introduced at the same time, further hampering price comparison in consumers minds;

* When consumers change from brand x to brand y because the competition is 2c/L cheaper they force down the price of brand x. But the different milk products are not perfect substitutes – I like Lite White as a balance between fat and flavor while my friend drinks Shape and my father would only consider full cream.

 

Although the farm gate price of drinking milk dropped, the price of manufactured milk increased, so cheese will be more expensive. If there is consumer resistance to an increase in the price of manufactured products producers will find it difficult to afford to drop milk prices.

 

Put another way, although the price of milk hasn’t dropped by much I still want it on my Rice Bubbles in the morning but if the price of cheese goes up I will substitute tomatoes on the sandwich instead and producers are squeezed.

 

Because Australia exports more than 50% of it’s milk production Australian’s are paying the world milk price. On 30 June 2000 the Australian dollar was worth US 0.5986 and EU 0.6282, it’s now worth US 0.4874 and EU 0.5436. Now the world price for milk has probably dropped as well because the ass has also fallen out of he N.Z. dollar and together we are 45% of world exports but it probably hasn’t dropped as much as the AUD.

 

From an Australian consumer’s point of view the world price of milk, and as a result the domestic price, has increased.

 

Other Issues with Tim Dunlop’s piece

 

Regulation of farm gate price is the wrong mechanism to use as protection for the environment. They will not stop large feed lots or the resulting environmental damage and suffering of animals. Well drafted and enforced laws about animal welfare and pollution are far more effective.

 

There are times when it is better for legislation to have clear definitions and times when it is better to delegate responsibility for defining a term. In the case of “public benefit” it is probably better not to define it. Can you imagine getting a definition of public good through the Upper House and if it did pass what would it look like?

 

The public good is defined as “three parts of A to 2 parts of B and a sprinkle of C”. Does this definition apply exclusively to this law or should the courts take it into account in other matters? So this legislation is then handed to someone to administer. “You will base all your decisions on this definition … we’re sorry A, B, and C are measured in different units and can’t be compared … we should have included D but we where in a hurry and the Democrat’s negotiator didn’t think of it … bad lick that three different parties are going to challenge your interpretation in court but in a few years it will get to the High Court and they will make a value judgment about what we actually meant”.

 

Isn’t it better to hand the job of defining public benefit to a group of people who understand the issues and are reasonable ie. will consider and weigh up different points of view? This may or may not be the ACCC. I don’t think “not defined in the legislation” equates to “we don’t know”.

 

 

1.The Australian Dairy Industry: Impact of an Open Market in Fluid Milk

Supply. www.affa.gov.au/corporate-docs/publications/cover-page/economics/dairy-industry.html

 

2. Australian Dairy Corporation www.dairycorp.com.au/statistics/index.htm

 

3. Reserve Bank of Australia www.rba.gov.au

 

TREVOR WALLIS

 

Loved your conversation with Phillip Adams on Tuesday night. The following is an article on the need to keep small farms.There was a report done for the Clinton Administration on a similar vein. It detailed how subsidies to farmers often ended up with the large farming concerns (typically monoculture farms) and that most innovation comes from the small farm sector. (See http://www.reeusda.gov/agsys/smallfarm/report.htm)

 

The piece firstmentioned is from the Foodfirst website (http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1999/w99v6n4.html) The blurb states:

 

“The Institute for Food and Development Policy better known as Food First – is a member-supported, nonprofit ‘peoples’ think tank and education-for-action center. Our work highlights root causes and value-based solutions to hunger and poverty around the world, with a commitment to establishing food as a fundamental human right. As a progressive think tank, Food First produces books, reports, articles, films, electronic media, and curricula, plus interviews, lectures, workshops and academic courses for the public, policy makers, activists, the media, students, educators and researchers. We participate in activist coalitions and furnish clearly written and carefully researched analyses, arguments and action plans for people who want to help change the world. Food First provides leadership to the struggle for reforming the global food system from the bottom up, offering an antidote to the myths and obfuscations that make change seem difficult to achieve. Food First was founded in 1975 by Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins, following the international success of the book, Diet For a Small Planet. The FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) is the action and campaigning partner of the Institute. Individual contributions provide half of our income, and volunteers and interns carry out a substantial part of our work. As a largely member-supported organization, Food First has independence, objectivity and commitment to the struggles of common people all over the world.”

 

On the Benefits of Small Farms

 

By Peter Rosset

Executive Director, Food First

 

For more than a century, pundits have confidently predicted the demise of the small farm, labeling it as backward, unproductive, and inefficient – an obstacle to be overcome in the pursuit of economic development. But this is wrong. Far from being stuck in the past, small-farm agriculture provides a productive, efficient, and ecological vision for the future.

 

If small farms are worth preserving, then now is the time to educate the worlds policy-makers about the genuine value of small farm agriculture.

 

Small Farm Productivity

 

How many times have we heard that large farms are more productive than small farms, and that we need to consolidate land holdings to take advantage of that greater productivity and efficiency? The actual data shows the opposite – small farms produce far more per acre or hectare than large farms.

 

One reason for the low levels of production on large farms is that they tend to be monocultures. The highest yield of a single crop is often obtained by planting it alone on a field. But while that may produce a lot of one crop, it generates nothing else of use to the farmer. In fact, the bare ground between crop rows invites weed infestation. The weeds then invest labor in weeding or money in herbicide.

 

Large farmers tend to plant monocultures because they are the simplest to manage with heavy machinery. Small farmers, especially in the Third World, are much more likely to plant crop mixtures — intercropping — where the empty space between the rows is occupied by other crops. They usually combine or rotate crops and livestock, with manure serving to replenish soil fertility.

 

Such integrated farming systems produce far more per unit area than do monocultures. Though the yield per unit area of one crop — corn, for example — may be lower on a small farm than on a large monoculture farm, the total production per unit area, often composed of more than a dozen crops and various animal products, can be far higher.

 

This holds true whether we are talking about an industrial country like the United States, or any country in the Third World…In the United States the smallest farms, those of 27 acres or less, have more than ten times greater dollar output per acre than larger farms. While in the U.S. this is largely because smaller farms tend to specialize in high value crops like vegetables and flowers, it also reflects relatively more attention devoted to the farm, and more diverse farming systems.

 

Small Farms in Economic Development

 

More bushels of grain is not the only goal of most farm production; farm resources must also generate wealth for the overall improvement of rural life – including better housing, education, health services, transportation, local business diversification, and more recreational and cultural opportunities.

 

Here in the United States, the question was asked more than a half-century ago: what does the growth of large-scale, industrial agriculture mean for rural towns and communities? Walter Goldschmidts classic 1940s study of Californias San Joaquin Valley, As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of Agribusiness, compared areas dominated by large corporate farms with those still characterized by smaller, family farms.

 

In farming communities dominated by large corporate farms, nearby towns died off. Mechanization meant fewer local people were employed, and absentee ownership meant farm families themselves were no longer to be found. In these corporate-farm towns, the income earned in agriculture was drained off into larger cities to support distant enterprises, while in towns surrounded by family farms, the income circulated among local business establishments, generating jobs and community prosperity. Where family farms predominated, there were more local businesses, paved streets and sidewalks, schools, parks, churches, clubs, and newspapers, better services, higher employment, and more civic participation. Recent studies confirm that Goldschmidts findings remain true.

 

If we turn toward the Third World we find similar local benefits to be derived from a small farm economy. The Landless Workers Movement (MST) is a grassroots organization in Brazil that helps landless laborers to organize occupations of idle land belonging to wealthy landlords. When the movement began in the mid-1980s, the mostly conservative mayors of rural towns were violently opposed to MST land occupations in surrounding areas. In recent times, their attitude has changed. Most of their towns are very depressed economically, and occupations can give local economies a much needed boost. Typical occupations consist of 1,000 to 3,000 families, who turn idle land into productive farms. They sell their produce in the marketplaces of the local towns and buy their supplies from local merchants.

 

Not surprisingly those towns with nearby MST settlements are better off economically than other similar towns, and many mayors now actually petition the MST to carry out occupations near their towns. Local and regional economic development benefits from a small farm economy, as do the life and prosperity of rural towns. Can we re-create a small farm economy in places where it has been lost, to improve the well-being of the poor?

 

Recreating a Small Farm Economy

 

Recent history shows that the re-distribution of land to landless and land-poor rural families can be a very effective way to improve rural well-being. We can examine the outcome of every land reform program carried out in the Third World since World War II, being careful to distinguish between genuine land reforms – when quality land was really distributed to the poor and the power of the rural oligarchy to distort and “capture” policies was broken — and “fake land reforms” — when the poor have been relegated to the poorest, most remote soils. In every case of genuine land reform, real, measurable poverty reduction and improvement in human welfare has invariably been the result.

 

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Cuba, and China are all good examples. In contrast, countries with reforms that gave only poor quality land to beneficiaries, and/or failed to alter the rural power structures that work against the poor, failed to make a major dent in rural poverty. Mexico and the Philippines are typical cases of the latter.

 

More recently IBASE, a research center in Brazil, studied the impact on government coffers of legalizing MST-style land occupations cum settlements versus the services used by equal numbers of people migrating to urban areas. When the landless poor occupy land and force the government to legalize their holdings, it implies costs: compensation of the former landowner, legal expenses, credit for the new farmers, and others. Nevertheless the total cost to the state to maintain the same number of people in an urban shanty town — including the services and infrastructure they use — exceeds in just one month, the yearly cost of legalizing land occupations.

 

Another way of looking at it is in terms of the cost of creating a new job. Estimates of the cost of creating a job in the commercial sector of Brazil range from two to twenty times more than the cost of establishing an unem-ployed head of household on farm land, through agrarian reform. Land reform beneficiaries in Brazil have an annual income equivalent to 3.7 minimum wages, while still landless laborers average only 0.7 of the minimum. Infant mortality among families of beneficiaries has dropped to only half of the national average.

 

This provides a powerful argument that using land reform to create a small farm economy is not only good for local economic development, but is also more effective social policy than allowing business-as-usual to keep driving the poor out of rural areas and into burgeoning cities.

 

National Economic Development and “Bubble-Up” Economics

 

A relatively equitable, small farmer-based rural economy provides the basis for strong national economic development. The post-war experiences of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan demonstrate how equitable land distribution fuels economic development. At the end of the war, circumstances including devastation and foreign occupation, conspired to create the conditions for “radical” land reforms in each country, breaking the eco-nomic stranglehold of the landholding class over rural economies. Combined with trade protection to keep farm prices high, and targeted investment in rural areas, small farmers rapidly achieved a high level of purchasing power, which guaranteed domestic markets for fledging industries.

 

The post-war economic “miracles” of these three countries were each fueled at the start by these internal markets centered in rural areas, long before the much heralded “export orientation” policies which much later on pushed those industries to compete in the global economy. This was real triumph for “bubble-up” economics, in which re-distribution of productive assets to the poorest strata of society created the economic basis for rapid development. It stands in stark contrast to the failure of “trickle down” economics to achieve much of anything in the same time period in areas of U.S. dominance, such as much of Latin America, and to the Asian financial crisis, which happened after many of the original policies had been discontinued.

 

Good Stewards of Natural Resources

 

The benefits of small farms extend into the ecological sphere. Where large, industrial-style farms impose a scorched-earth mentality on resource management – no trees, no wildlife, endless monocultures — small farmers can be very effective stewards of natural resources and the soil. To begin with, small farmers utilize a broad array of resources and have a vested interest in their sustainability. Their farming systems are diverse, incorporating and preserving significant functional biodiversity within the farm. By preserving biodiversity, open space, and trees, and by reducing land degradation, small farms provide valuable ecosystem services to the larger society.

 

In the United States, small farmers devote 17 percent of their area to woodlands, compared to only five percent on large farms, and keep nearly twice as much of their land in “soil improving uses,” including cover crops and green manures. In the Third World, peasant farmers show a tremendous ability to prevent and even reverse land degradation, including soil erosion.

 

Compared to the ecological wasteland of a modern export plantation, the small farm landscape contains a myriad array of biodiversity. The forested areas from which wild foods and leaf litter are extracted, the wood lot, the farm itself with intercropping, agroforestry, and large and small livestock, the fish pond, the backyard garden, allow for the preservation of hundreds if not thousands of wild and cultivated species. Simultaneously, the commitment of family members to maintaining soil fertility on the family farm means an active interest in long-term sustainability not found on large farms owned by absentee investors.

 

The Small Farm Path

 

To the productive, economic, and environmental benefits of small farm agriculture, we can add the continuance of cultural traditions and of the rural way of life. If we are truly concerned about rural peoples and ecosystems, then the preservation and promotion of small, family farm agriculture is a crucial step we must take.

After a week dominated by a major party retreat – rhetorical or real – from free market ideology, I’ve given today’s Inside Out to regular correspondent Tim Dunlop in Canberra. He’s subjected its certainties to a searching layman’s analysis, via the dairy deregulation debate. Heavy going, sure, but Wow! I asked Tim why he was interested in the topic, and he replied:

 

“I wasn’t really interested at all, but it is a rather symbolic topic in debates about the role of government, the notion of free markets, and the place of economy versus society in our lives. It started because I heard Mark Latham on Lateline, I read Paul Kelly and Imre Salusinzky, and they all sound so authoritative about what an unequivocal “good” dairy deregulation is (and neo-liberalism in general) that I decided to check it out for myself. Thanks to the internet an immense amount of material is available and I thought the claims of the various advocates just didn’t add up. So I decided to put what I’d found down on paper and see what I came up with.

 

“A couple of things make it attractive as an example. One is that it is about something that nearly everyone knows something about, that is, we all buy milk. The other is that it shows how ideology can simply overcome common-sense in that, even if deregulation worked exactly as they say it should, the net benefit to consumers is so bloody small that you have to wonder what the point is. I show in the article that even if it reduced the price of milk to ZERO, on average we would be only $3.20 a week better off. And this against the loss of 4000 dairy farms and $2 billion out of rural communities. Nutty in my book.

 

“So I knew nothing about it going in and had no previous interest in cows, farms or even milk before in my life. It just seemed like a good example of how the rhetoric doesn’t match the reality, which is why I tied it to a wider discussion of democracy and citizenship, which is something I do have an interest in. My thesis topic is on the relationship between intellectuals and citizens in Australia.”

 

MILK DEREGULATION IS GOOD FOR YOU: PULL THE UDDER ONE

 

By Tim Dunlop

 

This is an article about milk deregulation. But it is also about democracy, what we mean by it and how we can participate in it.

 

I write this as a citizen, not an economist. One of the big bluffs that experts use to minimise participation by we mere mortals of the general public is to maintain that only the properly trained are in a position to comment on such matters. I reject this, and suggest that not only is it possible for average citizens to get a grip on some of these specialist matters, but that we all should have a go at it more often. Sure, the experts will pick us up on the fine detail, but we shouldn’t mind that – anyone would be foolish to reject the correction of out and out errors. But in a democracy, no-one is an expert on what we should expect our democracy to look like. We all get a say in that. Or we should.

 

The American journalist Walter Lippmann thought that this lack of specialist knowledge was such a barrier for ordinary citizens he concluded that they should just leave the running of the country to experts, people specially trained to deal with the complexities of nation-management. He has plenty of tacit supporters throughout the world, including in Australia. On the surface of it, such a position has a certain common-sense appeal. I mean, running a country is a complex matter; it does involve the cultivation of specialist skills, of expertise, and it does need a professional class of technocrats to run things. But acknowledging this truism is not the same thing as saying we should just leave it to them to get on with it.

 

This, therefore raises the first issue that animates how we might understand our democracy: what is the relationship between ordinary citizens and the elites, the experts, the intellectuals who run the show? The second issue is this: how are we to understand the relationship between the economy and society?

 

My opinion is that in both cases we have got the balance wrong. Experts dominates citizens, and the economy dominates society. And on my reading, the topic of dairy deregulation provides some insights into the battle that exists between these competing forces. By looking closely at a real-life example we might be able to make some useful general comments about the nature of our democracy. So this discussion is in two parts: a detailed look at dairy deregulation followed by a more general discussion of what it all teaches us about our democracy.

 

Dairy deregulation is part of a general policy of deregulation that has been pursued by governments of both major persuasions for at least twenty years. On the 28 September 1999, the government announced that all support for the dairy industry would cease and they passed legislation to this end that took effect on the 30 June 2000.

 

Until then, the industry was supported by “two major sets of regulatory arrangements, the Domestic Market Support Scheme (DMS) for manufacturing milk, administered by the Commonwealth, and State regulatory arrangements for market milk”. Essentially, the industry made a distinction between market milk (drinking milk) and manufacturing milk (non-drinking) and each was supported by the state and federal governments respectively.

 

The detail of how the various subsidies worked is fairly complex, and we only really need to note two things: first, all subsidy was basically paid for by consumers and therefore represented a transfer of money from consumers to producers. Second, none of this subsidy exists any more. This was the whole idea – end subsidies and therefore lower the price to consumers. As you will see, things are never as simple as they seem.

 

There are two things to keep in mind. One is the argument of whether consumers should be charged a premium in order to fund a subsidy that keeps more farms in existence than would otherwise be the case if no subsidy existed. And don’t let anyone tell you this is merely an economic question. Certainly it can subsumed under the rhetoric of free markets, the need for competition and “level playing fields”, and the “rights” of consumers. But it is just as much a philosophical question and you don’t need a degree in anything in order to think about it and come up with a valid opinion. It is a question of what sort of society you want to live in.

 

The second question to ponder is whether the evidence justifies the economic claims made on behalf of deregulation.

 

Deregulation goes hand in hand with what is officially called Competition Policy, a coordinated effort by Federal and State governments of micro-economic reform. Full deregulation is consistent with the aims and intention of Competition Policy. It is also fair to say, and in fact the bill digest does say that, “National Competition Policy reviews of state regulatory arrangements undertaken as a result of the Competition Principles Agreement between the Commonwealth and the States have added impetus to the deregulation push”. It is important to understand this, as such an environment, as I argue below, adds to the feeling of so-called inevitability that surrounds dairy deregulation.

 

Before giving an outline of how it specifically applies to the milk industry, here’s bit of background on competition policy in general and one of the agencies closely associated with its implementation, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). One of the ACCC’s Commissioners described competition policy in these terms: “The aim of micro-economic reform (and of competition policy as part of it) is to improve the efficiency with which resources are used, thus contributing to improved living standards. Thus, it is about: increasing the output obtained from a given input (technical or production efficiency); improving the allocation of resources between different uses, such that resources go to those uses where consumers value them most (allocative efficiency); and improving the response to changing demand and supply conditions (referred to as dynamic efficiency).”

 

You can see that farmers might flinch a little from this description. Although there is reference to “improved living standards”, three things are apparent. First, it isn’t referring to the farmer’s standard of living, rather the consumers.

 

Second, “living standards” is rather narrowly presumed to be equivalent to the cost of goods, and therefore people are being considered merely as consumers, not as citizens with interests outside the purely economic. Thus, a reduction in the retail price of milk is presumed to be a greater good than subsidising the price so a number of farms can continue to exist (and ABARE estimates the number of dairy farms to go will be in the order of 3-5000).

 

Third, it is subordinated to the other three listed goals, which are given the typically jargonistic (and therefore deceptive) titles of technical efficiency, allocative efficiency and, the almost Orwellian dynamic efficiency. That is, although some lip-service is paid to “living standards”, what is being offered here is first and foremost an economic process, not a social one, a crucial difference. A reduction in the price of milk is more important than 3-5000 farms being “artificially” maintained by government subsidy. True or False?

 

In fact, the same Commissioner, in the same speech, acknowledges the difference and places the Commission firmly on the side of the economy, not society. She speaks of what is called the “public benefit” in the workings of the ACCC. Public benefit is one of those phrases that sounds not only self-explanatory but unequivocally positive. It is neither. It is a piece of newspeak that seeks to imply the notion of a common good while at the same time undermining the political settlement involved in attaining any notion of a public good. It is verbal Prosac.

 

The Commissioner notes not only that “[p]ublic benefit is not defined by the Act” but also, lest there be any doubt about it, that “The public benefit of the conduct is assessed within the context of the market.” Got that?

 

The Commissioner notes nine items she thinks constitute “public benefit”: fostering business efficiency; industry rationalisation; expansion or employment; promotion of industry cost savings; promotion of competition in industry; promotion of equitable dealings in the market; development of import replacements; growth in export markets; arrangements which facilitate the smooth transition to deregulation.

 

I certainly don’t want to disparage these as goals per se. But what does such a list tell us? It makes it absolutely clear that we (the “public” in “public benefit”) are being thought of merely as consumers and the “benefits” we are to (rather indirectly) receive, and the “benefits” that will be protected by the ACCC, are purely economic. The logic of this is that we the public will benefit because product x (milk, in this case) will be cheaper.

 

But what this Commissioner is making abundantly clear is not the “public” in any meaningful sense, but in fact industry, business, and that favourite abstraction, “the market”. To me it’s a pretty odd definition of “public benefit”.

 

In fact, the Commissioner is drawing on the government’s own understanding of “public benefit”. The National Competition Council (NCC) uses similar criteria, though they make some interesting additional comments. They suggest, for instance, that “National Competition Policy only requires that Governments identify and change their laws when the restrictions on competition are not justified by public interest.It explicitly recognises that there are circumstances where restrictions are justified.” They add that, therefore, “each law must be assessed against a number of criteria including specific public interest considerations; whether there are other ways of achieving the objectives of the laws without hindering businesses and, whether the benefits of the laws outweigh the costs.

 

These are interesting points because they indicate that deregulation is not necessary, though again it is all couched in market-subordinate language: note that line “without hindering business”. All this illustrates the most remarkable circular thinking or Catch-22 or doublethink. Consider: competition policy itself does not require deregulation if “restrictions (regulations) are justified.” What test do we apply to see if they’re justified? A public interest test. What’s the public interest? Well, as the ACCC Commissioner said, we’re not sure, but we do know that it is “assessed within the context of the market.” The NCC also says that it shouldn’t “hinder business”. So if the market reckons deregulation is necessary, then it fulfils its public benefit test!

 

Even if we accept this rather distorted definition, is there actually some “public benefit” in milk deregulation, and how might we quantify that benefit? Clearly, we do this by looking at the price of milk before and after deregulation. But this isn’t as straight forward as it sounds. I want to come back to this point because really this is the whole reason that its advocates promote Competition Policy in general and milk deregulation in particular.

 

The whole point of “technical”, “allocative” and “dynamic” efficiency; the whole logic of “business efficiency”, “industry rationalisation”, “expansion or employment”, “promotion of industry cost savings”, “promotion of competition in industry”, “promotion of equitable dealings in the market”, “development of import replacements”, “growth in export markets”, and “arrangements which facilitate the smooth transition to deregulation” is to give “us” the “public benefit” of cheaper milk. That’s their justification and we should assess it on its own terms. But before we do, and lest anyone is tempted to think that this is just my own personal vexatious reading, let’s take a look at a another source which has misgivings about this straightjacket definition of “public benefit”.

 

The report of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee on the Australian dairy industry (the official government inquiry into deregulation) expressed similar concerns about the role of competition policy and the definition of “public interest”. When the report was tabled in parliament, the chairman said: “The Committee has a number of specific concerns about the proposal to deregulate the industry, including the application of the public interest test in the State based legislation reviews under the terms of National Competition Policy…The Committee’s concerns in relation to the application of National Competition Policy principles, especially the interpretation of the net community benefit/public interest test and its application in the varying legislation reviews include: there has not been a thorough investigation of the national consequences of deregulation with State reviews being undertaken piecemeal; assessment of the public interest in the reviews has been less than comprehensive and appears to favour narrow sectional interests.”

 

I offer all this as prelude because it places in context the thinking of those in power who decide that stuff like milk deregulation is a good idea. I contend that they are not thinking about the real lives of real people, they are thinking and acting on behalf of a bloodless abstraction (largely of their own invention) called “the economy” or “the market”. It’s bit like the logic of Michael Corleone in The Godfather II, who in the name of protecting “the family” has various actual members of it, including his brother, killed.

 

The main point to make in this regard is the presumption that deregulation equates to public benefit. Each of the criteria that the Commissioner gives us above has this as its heart and soul. There is no room in their thinking that allows for an alternative approach. Of course, this is part of the power of the doctrinal system – assert and presume at every juncture that There Is No Alternative (TINA). When obvious failures of pure free markets are pointed out, go to Plan B which is Not Implemented Completely Enough (NICE). Or plan C, Give It Time (GIT). Plan D is also sometimes employed by apologists for the system – the insulting attack on anyone who dares question the genius of neo-liberalism.

 

A classic Plan D in regard to milk deregulation was thus executed by SMH columnist Imre Salusinszky: “The fall in prices that attended deregulation confirms that the udder-wringers have been too focused on milking the public, rather than their cows”. Apart from the gratuitous dismissal of the 3-5 thousand farms that will close thanks to deregulation as “udder-wringers”, the implication and justification of the process implied in his comment is, as always, the promise of cheaper product. Everything is permissible, in fact desirable and inevitable, as long as “the public” gets cheaper milk. As Paul Kelly, another deregulation tout puts it: “The benefits of deregulation are larger, more productive farms delivering a better Australian industry and cheaper milk for consumers.”

 

In fact, three arguments are usually put forward in support of dairy deregulation: “larger more productive farms”, as Kelly puts it; the “fact” that “the farmers wanted it”; and the promise of cheaper milk. Let’s deal with each in turn.

 

More Productive farms.

 

It is certainly true that dairy farms have been getting larger, that is, running more cows. And ostensibly this means they are more productive: that is, if there are more cows on the same amount of land, then it almost inevitably mean more milk is produced. Two things to note: this trend to larger farms was happening anyway and can hardly be claimed as a benefit arising simply from deregulation, though proponents would probably note it as one of the developments that made deregulation “inevitable”. But again, notice the false logic: farms are getting more efficient; deregulation makes things more efficient; therefore deregulation is inevitable.

 

The other is that what some define as more efficient farms others see as an environmental problem. Dr Jim Scott of the University of New England has led the case warning of the environmental impact of dairy deregulation. He says: “It is clear that, as milk prices to the farmers decline sharply with deregulation, milk production changes will be forced in the direction of large feedlots and the long-term negative consequences of this have not been taken into account.

 

“Compared to the current rain-fed pasture system which supports most dairy production of drinking milk, feedlots have huge numbers of cows, resulting in concentrations of manure and effluent that need to be disposed of rather than have cows re-cycle it back to pastures naturally as they graze. Harvesting and irrigating crops for large feedlots will use up energy as will transporting milk around the country from the main dairy state, Victoria, once most coastal dairy areas in NSW and Queensland have been shut down.”

 

The point he makes is that, for environmental reasons, there is a good case for a regulated industry. “If consumers want to continue to get a regular supply of high quality drinking milk, it makes very good sense to regulate supply and price so that seasonal fluctuations in production can be ironed out using such production controls and incentives. All consumers have a right to expect their food to be produced in an environmentally responsible and sustainable fashion.”

 

The farmers want it

 

Labor MP Mark Latham, about as gung-ho for competition policy as you get on either side of the parliament, said in an ABC interview in February: “I’m on the side of the dairy farmers. Ninety per cent of Victorian dairy farmers voted for deregulation. This was Australia’s first ever democratic deregulation. So how can anyone like Hanson or other people campaigning on these issues say that they want to reregulate the industry when it’s the industry itself, the great bulk of Australia’s dairy farmers are in Victoria and they decided that they wanted to go down in path?”

 

Did they? It’s actually almost impossible to judge. It certainly isn’t as clear cut as Mark Latham makes it seem. The first point to make about the vote Mark Latham mentions is that, as he said, it was amongst Victorian farmers only. The significance of this is that Victoria dominates the dairy industry in Australia, accounting for two-thirds of all production. As the chair of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee on the Australian dairy industry, Senator John Woodley, put it: “Deregulation is principally supported by the large Victorian co-operatives, Murray Goulburn and Bonlac, and the United Dairyfarmers of Victoria. However, because Victoria dominates dairy production in Australia, producing two thirds of the total milk produced in Australia, Victoria’s press for deregulation is of considerable weight.”

 

It is undisputed that Victorian farmers have led the push for deregulation. But even this is a little misleading, as the real push has come from the three big corporations who dominate the Victorian industry, Murray Golburn, Bonlac and United Dairyfarmers. So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that those who already dominate the industry want barriers that limit their ability to expand got rid of.

 

Nonetheless, a large majority (89%) of Victorian farmers did vote to deregulate. But as a number of people have pointed out, this seemed to be out of resignation rather than conviction. As the Dairy Industry Council (ADIC) has said. “We cannot stop the commercial push for deregulation. The best possible action is for all dairy farmers to send a very clear message to their state politicians. We need the restructure package to help manage the inevitable deregulation package.”

 

Let’s face it – the whole history of economic policy in this country for some time now has been of the sort of neo-liberal “reform” that favours less regulation and increased competition. The catch-cry has always been TINA – There Is No Alternative. Farmers therefore had good reason to suspect that deregulation was a preferred option. Add to this the fact that deregulation was being led by those who dominate the market, and it adds another layer of inevitability. I mean it’s not as if people were really being given an option in the form of a vote. There was no evidence that had they voted no that any effort would have been made to honour that vote. Competition policy was in place. Deregulation was the official way to go.

 

The other point is that the regulated market rested on a questionable reading of the Constitution which outlaws trade restrictions between states. Under regulation there was a sort of “gentleman’s agreement” to overlook this constitutional impediment. And although at least one farmer’s group produced a legal opinion suggesting that such regulation was in fact legal, no-one really wanted to go to the trouble and expense of testing it in court. Especially when most people would just shout “inevitable! inevitable!” whenever anyone mentioned deregulation. Thus, when Victoria decided to “go it alone” as market leader and ignore the gentleman’s agreement, another support for regulation collapsed. Certainly, this did add to the “inevitability”.

 

But there was another aspect to the vote. As part of the deregulation, a compensation package was being offered to farmers, a cash payment to help them through the change-over and out of the dairy business. However, the package was only available if farmers in all states accepted deregulation. It kind of adds a whole new dimension to the idea of Mark Latham’s “democratic deregulation”, don’t you think? To again quote committee chair, Senator Woodley: “They voted with a gun to their heads because they were told they’d get no compensation unless they voted yes.” So I think it is a reasonable reading of the “vote” for deregulation that it was more a case of farmers throwing their hands up in surrender than pumping the air in support.

 

Cheaper milk

 

Here we come to the deregulators’ trump card. This is the bottom line. Mark Latham: “In my electorate of Werriwa, young families drinking a lot of milk, they are many many dollars a week better off because of the lower prices for consumers.”

 

I’d like to know how he knows, because despite the fact that this is such a central plank of the argument in favour of deregulation, it is surprisingly hard to find evidence to support it. Besides, for any one family to be “many dollars a week better off”, they would have to be drinking an awful lot of milk, a point to which I’ll return.

 

But even an advocate like Paul Kelly acknowledges that the benefits “are coming…too slowly” and that “[t]he truth is that the consumers aren’t getting the benefits they should at retail outlets”. He quotes the ABARE figures which indicate that the average spot price of a 1-litre milk carton is ‘slightly lower’. It has evidence of 2-litre packages in supermarkets selling for about $2 each and 3-litre packages at about $2.90 which is ‘a significant reduction'” – not exactly a ringing endorsement.

 

Why is it so difficult to determine whether the price has dropped or not?

 

A number of factors cloud the issue. The first is that the $1.8 billion compensation package is being funded by a levy of 11cents per litre on the retail price and this has to stay in place for eight years. (In fact, about $1.25 billion of this goes to farmers, the rest arises because the Tax Office refused to make the package tax free.) Thus, the retail price reflects this enforced increase for the next eight years, whether the price goes up or down.

 

The second is simply the availability of reliable data. The Australian Dairy Corporation makes the following point: “The removal of state milk regulations from 1 July 2000 has had implications for the availability of dairy industry information. While the ADC is working with dairy companies and other organisations to continue data collections – comprehensive national data is not yet available for 2000/01.” Such a conclusion is supported by ABARE. This seems to be a polite way of saying that information has, under the guise of “free markets” and “public benefit”, moved from being a general, publicly accessible resource to being private property and therefore not for our eyes.

 

Another factor is the role of the large producers and the large retailers. For one thing is certain: the wholesale price of milk has dropped. In fact, collapsed is probably a better word. In the period 2000/1, ABARE estimates that the “farm gate” price of milk will drop by a low of 3.5% in Victoria to a high of 30% in Western Australia. The average reduction throughout the states will be, on these estimates, 17%. This means that the big retailers and the big producers (that is, six corporations) have received something of a windfall. And it is not clear that anyone can force them to pass on these savings to consumers, which, remember, is the whole idea of the process. Many have suggested that the real winners out of deregulation are therefore these six corporations, particularly the two biggest retailers, Coles and Woolworths. And certainly, by a simple process of elimination we can suggest that the 17% reduction in the farm gate price must have gone somewhere: the farmers sure haven’t got it. No sign of it on the supermarket shelves. Where could it be?

 

Another aspect is that these corporations are now in the enviable position of being able to negotiate from a position of absolute power. With only really three big retailers and three big producers, these giants get to deal on a one-to-one basis with the farmers. A family with 50 cows versus Woolworths. Even advocates of deregulation recognise this might be a tad unfair. The Australian Dairy Industry Council chairman, Patrick Rowley, although a advocate of deregulation, has said: “The structure of the Australian industry with three big supermarkets tendering for market milk and three major milk processors struggling to get home brand share is a recipe for a hell of a scramble for price to the detriment of the farm sector, and that is exactly what has happened.”

 

He wants to see some sort of collective bargaining put in place and is lobbying the ACCC to set it up. They apparently are sympathetic. And they now have support from a most unlikely source, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. Why is this an unlikely source? First, because it was their government who introduced deregulation and chose to ignore warnings that this sort of thing would happen. And second, because history would suggest that they have an ideological aversion to collective bargaining of any sort. I mean, I don’t see them encouraging it in wage negotiations. But I’ll come back to this change of heart.

 

A further point needs to be made about the role of the supermarkets and prices. Given that their margin has increased and that there is no longer a fixed retail price for milk, they have a deal of flexibility in setting the price in their outlets. Thus, they may choose one week to run it at a highly reduced rate as a loss-leader. But the next week they can put it up to whatever level they think the market will bear. This makes the whole concept of cheaper milk prices highly problematic, for what does it mean to say that prices have dropped when the price can fluctuate to such an extent? An argument based on the idea that the price will be lower presumes a standard price against which decreases can be gauged. In the absence of such a standard, the claim that prices are dropping becomes, logically, rather suspect.

 

We might also consider the fact that, as the Australian Dairy Corporation puts it: “The gradual deregulation of the market milk sector has seen a corresponding increase in competition between processors. This has resulted in the introduction of an expanding range of branded milks, which may have varying fat contents, or are fortified with extra vitamins and minerals. Other milks have been developed to address particular consumer needs, such as lactose-free, or extra frothing milk for cappuccinos”. Most of these “branded milks” are premium products. That is, they attract a premium price. In other words, competition may have simply led to the search for premium niche markets and therefore forced the price up.

 

There is one final point that is rarely spelt out when people discuss the advantages of deregulation in the form of cheaper milk. ABARE estimates that the cost of the subsidy to milk farmers was around $350 million a year. Thus by ending deregulation, these tax dollars will be available for other things. This is true. But don’t forget: the government has now put in place a $1.8 billion safety net for farmers and although I am certainly not knocking this (under the circumstances) we shouldn’t forget that this too is coming out of consumers’ pockets. If we divide $350 million into $1.8 billion we find that the structural adjustment package is equivalent to just over five years worth of industry subsidy; that is, it is as if the subsidy was there for another five years anyway. With one big difference: under the structural adjustment package there are 4,000 less farms.

 

So at this stage I would defy anyone to give a definitive answer on whether the price has gone down. I certainly can’t tell just by going to my local supermarket or service station. ABARE can’t tell, though, as I’ve indicated, they try and put the best gloss on it. So what then can we say about the price of milk? My guess is there may be some bargains for a while, the novelty will wear off, the price will stabilise, and gradually rise. That’s what happened with eggs, as I explain below.

 

Doesn’t this strike people as strange? I mean, if this is the bottom-line justification for a policy that the government’s own figures suggest will result in the closure of between 3-5,000 dairy farms; of farmers being at least $13,000 a year worse off even after the compensation payment (ABARE’s figures); and that will do collateral social and economic damage to families and rural communities (John Cartwright of the Australian Milk Producers Association, for instance, estimated that $2 billion would be taken out of rural communities) shouldn’t this so-called advantage (cheaper retail milk) be blindingly obvious and easy to see? Shouldn’t it be indisputable?

 

I know, I know. There is no alternative. Not implemented completely enough. Give it time.

 

Eggs

 

It might help to look at another deregulated industry where the promise of lower prices was also claimed as a central benefit: eggs. Here the evidence is in and it’s not too encouraging for those who equate deregulation with lower prices.

 

A News Weekly article of 20 May 2000, headed “How deregulation cracked the egg industry”, states: “Seven years after it was deregulated, the Victorian egg market is delivering low returns to farmers and high prices to consumers. It represents a redistribution of wealth upwards from producers and customers to retailers and shareholders. Deregulation of the Victorian egg industry in 1993 has led to increased supermarket egg prices to consumers and reduced returns to farmers. According to one large volume Victorian egg producer, Philip Szeppe, in 1993 farmers were being paid $1.32 for a dozen 55 gram eggs which then retailed in the supermarkets for $1.91. Australian Egg Industry Association figures show that, in February this year, farmers were being paid 78.5 a dozen for eggs that retailed for $3.31 a dozen on supermarket shelves in Victoria.”

 

The article continues: “One egg producer near Bendigo, Robert Harrison, recently featured in the media after the payment he received for the delivery of 30 dozen eggs was one 45 stamp from his egg buyer. He is a low volume producer now being forced out of the industry. Mr Harrison told the Weekly Times, “I don’t have much faith in deregulation, and I think the same sort of thing might happen in the dairy industry.”

 

I reckon he might be right.

 

So if you asked me to sum up dairy deregulation I would say something like this: the compensation was inadequate, though it is virtually impossible to imagine a really “adequate” package given the dislocation that everyone knew would occur; there are environmental concerns that were almost completely ignored; the way it was implemented was suspect, especially tying the vote for deregulation to the compensation package; the whole process is based on a flawed and possibly bogus understanding of the term “public interest”; and the one great benefit – cheaper milk – cannot be found with any confidence. This is why I would suggest that if someone says to you that dairy deregulation is a good thing, you would be within your rights to say, “pull the udder one”.

 

The postscript

 

There is a sequel to all this that has hit our screens only in the last couple of days. It seems the scriptwriters want to go off in an unexpected direction. Led by the Nationals, the Coalition has announced they will reconsider some aspects of competition policy, particularly in regard to the dairy industry, particularly in regard to how “public benefit” is defined (um, remember? it’s not defined). Let’s have a look at what they were saying then and what they are saying now.

 

It is interesting to note that, even amongst the advocates, there was always an air of resignation and a concomitant feeling that there was nothing the government could really do. The Minister for Agriculture, Warren Truss, was even willing to eschew responsibility for deregulation, saying in a press release: “The simple fact is, the Commonwealth Government did not deregulate the dairy industry. Deregulation occurred because of commercial pressures from the major dairying States and State Government responses.” This did not stop them from repeating the mantra of “lower prices” at every opportunity and against every objection.

 

The closer you look at what the advocates say, the more you wonder at their logic. Paul Kelly is probably as well-informed, reasonable and concerned a commentator on the topic as you are likely to find and yet his advocacy is difficult to fathom. His recent opinion piece on dairy deregulation repays a careful reading because it shows you the odd, almost cognitively dissonant logic you are up against if you want to oppose such reforms.

 

The first thing you notice is that you will be called a “Hansonite” or at the very least the presumption will be that all opposition comes from Pauline Hanson and her party. The name “Hanson” is used and evoked throughout Kelly’s article. He writes: “The dairy industry is a micro-study in the false economics but receptive politics of Hansonism.”

 

No it’s not, Paul. It’s a complex issue, which, as we’ve seen doesn’t lend itself to easy answers, let alone sweeping generalisations. Opposition to it is hardly just coming from Hanson. The Democrats have opposed deregulation at the Federal and State levels. Environmentalists opposed and oppose it. Many farmers opposed it, even as they recognised they were being swept along on the rhetoric of inevitability. The chair of the Senate committee that investigated deregulation was a Democrat. His pleas against the mentality of “inevitability” are articulate reminders of what is at stake here, namely, the ability of a country to be in charge of its own destiny.

 

But even you, Paul, have serious misgivings about how it has proceeded. But let’s not get off on the wrong foot: to oppose dairy deregulation doesn’t make you Pauline Hanson and it doesn’t make you a closet One Nation supporter.

 

Kelly makes a number of observations in his usual enumerating way: deregulation shows three things; there are three morals. The trouble is, at least for an advocate, none of them actually show any advantage in deregulation. They assert benefits, they theorise them, but they can’t actually point to them in the real world. Like everyone else Kelly tells us that deregulation was inevitable; he implies that it is desirable. But he can only offer in support the section I quoted earlier: “The benefits of deregulation are larger, more productive farms delivering a better Australian industry and cheaper milk for consumers.” But as we’ve seen, none of these stand up to scrutiny. What’s more, he knows it and admits it.

 

He writes: “Hanson’s economics are the latest instalment of the struggle between producer and consumer interests so dominant in Australia’s history. The difference now is that consumers, at last, are starting to win.”

 

As I’ve already suggested, although this is offered as a choice in economic terms, it is really a philosophical or political question. But Kelly, like others, reduces it to a quantum calculation and it is clear what answer he gets to his sum. That is, he is weighs the benefit of the absolute uncertainty of the cheaper retail price of milk against the virtually undisputed loss of around 4,000 dairy farms, $2 billion in associated wealth that will be lost to rural communities, and the non-economic disruption associated with these losses and decides it equals inevitable, desirable deregulation.

 

As a consumer, as a citizen you have to ask, surely, is it worth it? Is Kelly’s the right answer?

 

Kelly thinks it is despite noting that “the public’s gains from reform are hard to extract and spread thinly across the community, the losers are identifiable and angry [t]he industry shake-out is intense and traumatic” and that “[t]he truth is that the consumers aren’t getting the benefits they should at retail outlets”.

 

Finally, he accuses opponents of holding out false hope to people in their opposition to deregulation: “Hanson’s trouble is not just her phoney solutions, but the false hopes she engenders in people”. There might some truth in this if we define the hope that is being held out as merely re-regulation. Although Kelly is wrong in saying that Hanson is the only one proposing this (the Democrats had it as an option at one stage, as did at least one of the farming organisations, and environmentalists represented by Dr Scott of UNE still advocate it), he is probably right in implying that the moment has passed.

 

The industry won’t re-regulate. It doesn’t need to – those whom regulation supported, the smaller farmers, are going or already gone. But it takes a bit of cheek to accuse re-regulators of holding out false hope. What could be classified as a falser hope than the promise of cheaper milk for consumers under deregulation? Even if we got it – which doesn’t seem to be happening – would it be the boon that Kelly and others suppose?

 

Consider: Australian Dairy Corporation statistics show that the average per capita consumption of drinking milk in Australia has been steady for at least the last fifteen years at about 100 litres per annum. This means, on average, we each buy about two litres of milk a week. So even if the price dropped to zero, we would save about $3.20 a week each. So this is our average consumers absolute best case scenario.

 

No wonder that even the government is having second thoughts. Not that they are going to re-regulate, but they are re-visiting the compensation package. And their concern over what has happened in the dairy industry – no doubt heightened by recent state and by-election failures and the reality of a looming Federal poll – has caused them to revisit competition policy in general.

 

Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, has said, “I am very interested in [the idea of collective bargaining] … I don’t think the rules have allowed for a proper assessment of a community interest, let alone dairy farmers’ interests.” The Prime Minister said in Parliament: “If I find areas where the policy is not working to the public benefit or in the national interest, I will not be the least bit reluctant to pursue with the State governments changes, because that is the common sense thing to do.”

 

The question that this raises above all others is why has it taken until now for them to consider these matters? Nothing is known now that wasn’t known before the legislation was enacted. All the things they now consider problematic were the very things that they were warned about. In particular, the report of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee foreshadowed all these things. Committee chair Senator Woodley almost begged the government to give proper consideration to the concerns of the committee. In particular he urged them to consider the Bega Valley Social Impact Study, funded by the local community. It developed a detailed snapshot which demonstrated in a highly specific way the impact a fall in the farmgate price of milk of different degrees would have on the local community. “The Committee considers that this is a fundamental piece of work, demonstrating very clearly the potential impacts of deregulation on a community such as the Bega Valley,” he said.

 

It was all known. It went ahead anyway. It was inevitable. TINA. NICE. GIT.

“I always read your web diary with some degree of interest, but in today’s entry you’ve gone completely feral. You have allowed your personal dislike of Crean and Beazley to cloud the site. I always thought you were a bit rough on the Prime Miniature, but your anti-Labor text on today’s page was ridiculous.

 

“Crean’s announcement was “sickening” – how so? His announcement simply followed on from his previous calls for Howard to keep his promise on the price of petrol ie. that it wouldn’t rise as a result of the GST. Howard is the one who is at fault – he made a promise he could never keep, as he knew full well that:

(a) GST is always 1/11th of the price of anything;

(b) Petrol prices are always higher in the country than in the city; and

(c) Our constitution prevents federal taxes being levied at varying rates in different geographical areas.

 

“Howard got caught out, Crean made the running on the issue and now he is cleaning up. The rise because of GST was more than 1.5 cents per litre. Crean is going to give back the real amount of the windfall. It might be a bit pedantic, give Howard’s long-term freeze on petrol indexation, but that is his job. I don’t see how his conduct is “sickening”.

 

What’s your real beef? My beef is that Howard is an opportunistic little wretch who will freeze the indexation of excise on petrol but won’t do the same on beer. There are other ways of protecting the revenue, of course. How about taxing trusts as companies? As far as I know that is still ALP policy. And so it was for the Libs until the going got tough last month.

 

If your stated aim is to lift the standard of your web diary, you could take tomorrow rather than today as the first step. Today’s effort was woeful, and if you look back at it in a few weeks’ time as you are wont to do, you’ll probably agree.” KEN McALPINE

 

I’ve led with Ken’s critique because I’ve been feeling a bit queasy myself on whether I’m being too hard on Kim Beazley. I stand by the anti-Crean remark, though. To announce a revenue cut while refusing to announce any spending increases on the grounds that the budget parameters are unknown is pure hypocrisy. It’s also an admission that cheap populism is being elevated above what Labor claims are desperately needed investments in education, research and innovation. If Labor had serious guts, it would have opposed Howard’s disastrous decision to impose a permanent freeze on petrol excise indexation over and above his hand-back of the 1.5 cents a litre GST windfall. It’s one of those areas where your stomach sinks in the knowledge that good policy must, just must, give ground to short-term political advantage, or the neutralising of the other side’s short term advantage.

 

Personally, I don’t think the “must” is right. I believe that when the ramifications of that Howard decision were exposed – that is, the brakes it puts on credible, long term investment in the future prosperity of our country – opposition to the freeze would not be a negative.

 

When Howard and Beazley talk about “listening” to the people, I get scared. I think people want to be let into the “joke”, the truth that priorities must be set and hard choices made. They KNOW political parties can’t change the world, and are hostage to events beyond their control in many areas. They want to know what CAN be done, under what constraints. They no longer believe that choices in their interests are being made.

 

Now all this is certainly naive gibberish, and the proof is that politicians buy votes with hip pocket promises and always have, because it works. The big exception was John Hewson with Fightback, a vision statement if ever there was one. I disagreed with most of it, but its clarity and purpose was undeniable, and admirable. He lost. The second big exception was Howard in 1998 – where he won, somehow, promising the GST. The public, after decades of debate, were convinced something needed to be done about the tax system, and gave him the chance.

 

What worries me is that politicians keep promising they can deliver what the other can’t, don’t specify how, get trusted, let people down, and the cycle goes in in an ever tighter circle of cynicism, until politics becomes mere blood sport and its participants objects of distaste.

 

This is the hole I think Beazley is falling into. As I’ve said before, there is a collapse of consensus on the appropriate role of government. I’d like Kim Beazley to set out his re-envisioning of that role in detail. I’d like to read his manifesto to transform our investment in education, research and innovation. This is a time for big ideas. This is a time for strong, rigorous frameworks for priorities and action to be laid down for discussion and debate. I’m disappointed that Beazley didn’t write to the voters of Ryan outlining that framework.

 

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the media and political obsession was with “where’s the money coming from”. Now, the time has come for a focus on the big ideas to get us where we want to go. That focus then puts the money question where it belongs – here’s what we’ve got, what’s the best way to spend it, over time, to achieve our desired results. This focus broadens questions of individual gain or loss from a decision, and allows voters to truly judge whether short term pain is worth longer term gain, for themselves and/or their children.

 

The bottom line for me is that I hate the Government’s ideological imperatives, its narrow view of human nature, its corruption of democratic process, its petty intolerance and its revengeful paranoia. I want a refreshed, renewed, reinvigorated Labor to win the next election, but I see no evidence that it has thought through the lessons of its time in office, let alone imagined a new direction.

 

Granted I’m being tougher on Labor than the Libs. But I’ve SEEN what they offer, and its awful. I saw what Labor became in its decadent years, and that was awful too. I don’t think I’m the only voter who wants a breakthrough in the arid, dog-eat-dog, praise-yourself-for-good-news, blame-others-for-bad landscape of Australian politics. I don’t think I’m the only voter who wants some honesty and some risking taking in the national interest.

 

Now to DOMINIC RIORDAN in Warwickshire, who brings me down to earth with a less emotional take on the political trend.

 

I have been in the UK for 12 months and enjoy reading the Web Diary – a bit of a window on the mood of the electorate.

 

Your prediction on Ryan seems to have been pretty accurate. What’s interesting is whether it is time for the media bandwagon to tire of kicking Howard and turn, (as they did, briefly in 1996 on Howard until they realised no-one cared) and start pushing Beazley on policy.

 

All of this is very interesting for the media, which for its own sake would much prefer a close election and therefore habitually talks up the underdog. (MARGO: Can’t agree there. The media likes a winner – we’re a conservative lot really, and a bigger winner the better. analysis becomes much less risky. We do want regular changes of government though, for professional reasons of keeping it interesting.)

 

“I think it all comes down to sentiment. The sentiment for change has to be there at election time. It certainly seems to me from here that it is. And when it is there, just as in 1996, 1983 and 1975 (who can remember what Hawke and Fraser stood for?) we will elect a new government.

 

It seems rather a strange paradox is at work when the media carp on at how the ALP lacks policies. On the one hand virtually nobody believes in old labour ideology any more. Yet much of the criticism of Beazley seems to come down to a rather nostalgic view that, unlike his predecessors, he and the rest of the ALP do not believe in anything.

 

What they seem to me to believe in is what most western leftist parties believe in – social inclusion, equality of opportunity, environmental protection and good economic and administrative management. So it is with Blair, Clarke in NZ, Cretien in Canada and Jospin in France, to name a few.

 

From Blairite Britain, here is my punt on what Beazley is doing. First, the electorate is weary of change. So you don’t do what Hewson did, promise them something totally different, as this will allow Howard (as it did Keating) to exploit fears of change. Blair did the same, promising to the great frustration of old Labour not to depart from the Tories’ tax and spending commitments for his first two years in office.

 

Second, Beazley is rightly about being cautious on policy. The policy landscape is almost always determined by the sitting government. So the policy settings put forward by the opposition are usually fairly reactive. Ask yourself honestly when was an opposition actually elected on the basis of its policies? Where they matter is whether they set or build on the voters’ impressions of the opposition. So Beazley is building on the electorate’s prevailing view that he is more trustworthy on health, education and the environment, and throwing some pat solutions to the government’s big policy problems like GST and petrol.

 

Third, let sentiment run its course. Howard, having won in 1996 due to discontent about Keating’s ‘elites’, proceeded to accentuate the divisions his election manifested for his own cynical political ends. The social discontent that first poured out in 1996 has been constantly reinforced by the present government, with its meanness, its language of division and its general tolerance of intolerance. Howard is reaching the natural end to the cynical political journey on which he has taken us since he became PM.

 

What seemed to matter in 1975, 1983 and 1996, when we changed governments, was a sense that Australia was a divided nation. Howard’s greatest mistake has been to use this to buttress his political position, rather than show a bit of national leadership.

 

In Britain, for all of the things that just don’t seem to work (the trains, the flood defences, the food supply) the Government is held in reasonably high regard, and is seen as positive and inclusive. Sentiment is working for the government here. And if the ALP does even a half decent job of convincing the Australian electorate it is inclusive, that it will try to address some of the divisive issues that Howard has done nothing to fix, they will win handsomely.

 

—————————————————————–

 

 

Today, I’m wallowing in my success (or at least near success) in predicting Ryan. Please indulge me – apart from picking Beattie in Queensland before he called the poll this is my first right call in too many years reporting politics. I’m off to the outer Sydney seat of Hughes tomorrow for a marginal seat profile. Back Thursday.

 

JASON DOUST

 

Ryan does Florida. Debbie does Dallas. Mainstream politics does Australia. We all get screwed by economic fundamentalists. These people are the last hardline dogmatists, the untrue believers. Our politicians are good fighters, but does anyone want brawlers in power? Unlike our politician’s hollow words, your article is well thought out and reflects what so many of us are thinking. As for me, I’m voting Green.

 

 

CECILIA HANNON in Queensland.

 

I just want to say well done – if that’s appropriate – for such an accurate prediction on Ryan.

 

I started tuning into your thoughts on Ryan about 2-3 weeks ago and then when I saw you on LateLine 2 Fridays ago ( with Michael Duffy) I really started to take notice because at the same time I had my good mate Michael Lavarch (former Labor attorney-General, who lost the Brisbane seat of Dixon in 1996) chewing my ear off for weeks with gloom and doom about Ryan. Lavarchie is a professional pessimist.

 

Anyway, you and Lavarchie were spot on and I’ll only be listening to you two for the rest of the year! Bugger those polls!

 

 

MIKE BOWERS, Fairfax political photographer, in New York

 

Good prediction on Ryan mate, a bit of distance from the wolf pack in Canberra gives you better insight maybe? Margo, I have always believed that Australian voters in the leadup to an election will say one thing to a polster, and when comes the crunch at the ballot box I believe they feel vindicated in giving their preferred party a scare through the polls and vote the same way they always have.

 

When it comes down to it I feel a majority of them can’t bring themselves to change.It’s very Australian, being able to mouth off at an issue but doing little about it! I think this is why so often we get it totally wrong in the media. Remember 93???? Keating said he knew he’d win it, but you could see he was as surprised as us. Poor old Hewie.

 

 

DAVID DAVIS

 

Congratulations for being closer to the mark on Ryan than anyone else. Your reasons for going against the herd and the screaming polls made sense to me. If the herd and the polls had been right, Labor would now be sitting in Ryan with a substantial winning majority.

 

Clearly that is not the reality. The media gets it wrong again.

 

I had my doubts. My reasoning was partly like yours. I just couldn’t believe the required number of Liberals would turn to the extent the polls and the media were saying. In Web Diary today, you say that in the last two state elections and in Ryan, the media got it wrong. If I had the time and the resources, I would love to trawl through some history and show how quite a few times in the past few years this very same thing has happened.

 

There is the old cliche of the pollies, “the only poll which matters is the one on election day”. It may be a cliche but I now believe it.

 

The irritating thing is that after everyone gets it wrong, they merely brush it aside, failing to admit the error. It is brushed aside as “oh, yeah but everything changed in the last 48 hours”.

 

Oh really?? Is that how it works??

 

So on Wednesday, Newspoll predicts a Labor landslide in Ryan and by Saturday in the real poll it becomes a cliffhanger. How does this happen? Maybe the polls should be thought of as just a small tool in the overall analysis. I’d rather read Margo Kingston’s take on it!!

 

The polls and the headlines said in the week before the last federal election that Howard was destined for the political scrap heap. They said no one could win promising a new tax. It had not been done anywhere in the history of Western democracy. They clearly predicted a Beazley win.

 

Then when Howard got in with a reduced majority we were treated with the “it all changed in the past 48 hours of the campaign” line and the classic “oh but he held onto some key marginals and the swing wasn’t even”. Why wouldn’t they focus on the key marginals and why would the establishment assume an even swing over a MASSIVE and incredibly DIVERSE country?

 

This thing isn’t over yet. John Howard should not be underestimated.

 

The other key point is the “credible alternative”. Is there one? I think Kim has a lot of work to do and it will take more than joking around and a personal make over.

 

 

FIONA ROTHWELL in London on the view from there.

 

The drama for Australians over here will be keeping ourselves informed of the goings-on of John, Kim, Meg/Natasha and everyone else who dons a jumper for the event.

 

Without being able to tune in to the box each night and find out who said

what where and what was he/she wearing when he/she said it, we will be

relying on the web pages of the Australian news agencies to fill us in.

 

Australian politics doesn’t get much press space. Over the last month, Australia has featured only in stories where we are shown to be lesser mortals (losing the cricket, losing Don Bradman, losing the rugby). I did find an article on one reputable UK news agency web site at the time of the last Australian federal election which stated that the average turn-out rate is usually over 95%, which was “only exceeded by the mock-elections of countries under Communist rule”.

 

The article went on to say that Australia has compulsory voting and the penalty for failing to vote is AUD$50 (in UK currency, about 3 pence) but that Australians don’t complain about the fact that they have to vote even though doing so can be quite inconvenient. Odd thing to say I thought – suggesting perhaps that the UK wouldn’t dare impose upon its subjects to go

out of their way to vote for the country’s decision-maker.

 

I had never really turned my mind to the fact that Australia may be seen as some sort of communist society in making its citizens attend at voting booths and mark a few boxes.

 

Of the Australians I know over here, the majority are very well informed and consider it a ritual of sorts to log on to the SMH on a daily basis to get a fix of home. I have no doubt that they will cast an informed vote and debate will ensue over warmish (despite the cold weather) pints of beer in dingy pubs all over this fair city. Of the various comments I have been privy too, the problem posed was this: the regrettable thing about Howard being voted out of the top office is that ineffectual Beazley is the alternative. “What’s a good Labor voter supposed to do?” was the lament. What indeed.

Ryan is Australia’s Florida. I’ve dredged up what I wrote about that result (The Gorey Truth – democracy’s got no clothes, Webdiary November 15).

 

It has to be significant that the world’s richest nation, which has grasped most of its spoils, does not know which direction to take in policy terms, or, if you see the USA election as a personality contest, is unhappy with the men thrown up by the political establishment to embody American values.

 

This is a core lesson of the election – that the two political parties which run America have become so detached from the people that they are unable to present them with a choice that inspires them.

 

If you accept that USA public opinion is at a crossroads on huge questions which will shape our future – such as whether to implement the Kyoto agreement on global warming – how does this translate to Australia?

 

We have a totally different political system, where the leader is chosen by his colleagues, who are chosen by the people. But my instinct is that Australian voters are as equally polarised as their American counterparts.

 

We don’t like the package of policies resented by either party, and we do not have confidence in either leader to represent us.

 

To me, that means an escalation in the splintering of the vote from the majors to minor parties and independents.

 

It could also mean that one of the three major parties – ALP, Liberal, National – could do something dramatic before the next election to break the sterile deadlock in public opinion by choosing a new leader with the capacity to excite and inspire.

I suppose it’s another way of saying that Australians, like voters in so many “democratic” countries, want a third way.

 

So what’s happened in Ryan?

 

First, for the third straight election this year, voters have delivered the the political and media establishment a surprise. In Western Australia, the Libs were supposed to crawl over the line. A substantial Labor win ensures. In Queensland, Labor was supposed to fall over the line. It won in a landslide. Labor was supposed to win Ryan in a landslide. It’s too close to call. Why oh why does the media keep getting it wrong? When will we address our endemic disconnect from the people? And how can we do it?

 

I’m confident my prediction of a Liberal win will stand up. Why did I think that? Here’s the reasoning (Don’t kick me, I’m down mate, Webdiary March 9)

 

Eyes straight ahead, total focus on Ryan, John Howard is unashamedly doing everything possible to win it. He’s become a Keynsian overnight, just one element of his spectacular humiliations over the last month. In my view he’ll do it.

 

What’s the psychology of true-blue Liberal voters of the Mosman/Toorak of Brisbane at the moment – the professional types who did the unthinkable last month in the Queensland election and voted Labor for the first time?

 

They made their point last month in voting Labor. They said that rather than risk the disarray of the right, they’d find refuge in the relative stability of the left. It was a vote for self-interest, their own and the State’s.

 

Of course federal issues played a part, but in my view State issues were paramount.

 

We’re heading for a byelection where Liberal voters can hardly swing to Labor in protest at an arrogant, out-of-touch government. Howard didn’t do as Keating did after the Canberra by-election shock before the 1996 election wipeout and sneer at the nappy valley dwellers upset their house prices weren’t rising.

 

On the contrary, Howard succumbed to his core constituency’s demands and simplified the Business Activity Statement and postponed a tightening of the taxation of trusts. He then gave back 1.5 cents a litre of petrol tax and abolished automatic indexation of the excise completely, saying, quite simply, that he was wrong to say it couldn’t be done.

 

This week, when it was revealed that the economy contracted substantially in the December quarter, he said sorry again, and today doubled the $7,000 grant to first homebuyers if they built their home. It’s kickstart time, and all of a sudden, it’s the people’s surplus, not the governments’.

 

Now it’s Labor’s turn to smirk. They’ve got everything going for them except that when you have a good look, there’s no policy or vision to latch onto. Kim Beazley said today that “the economic managers have become the economic manglers, and basically what it is all related to is the election in Ryan – this is the most expensive by-election in Australian history”. By the way, he supports the homebuyers decision.

 

So what does a Liberal in Ryan do? Kick a man when he’s down and begging for mercy? If so, the wreckage of the Liberals, with Howard impotent and his only viable replacement, Peter Costello, equally tainted by the GST mess, would be complete.

 

Is that what a Liberal voter really wants? I don’t think so.

 

I think Howard is playing this the right way. He will win Ryan, and when he does, he will have drawn a line under the Government’s descent into chaos. That means this longest of election campaigns will take another turn.

There are more turns to come, but I just can’t believe voters in a Liberal seat like Ryan will not want to given their party a ghost of a chance at the federal election.”

 

The big swing back to the Liberals in the last day or so of the campaign (the Newspoll taken Wednesday and Thursday nights had Labor roaring through Ryan with a 16 percent swing) is partly due, as I said last week, to the collapse in the dollar. Voters are scared. They don’t want to wipe Howard and the Liberals out until they’re convinced Labor has some answers. Beazley would have been better off staying out of Ryan last week for one simple reason. He had absolutely nothing new to offer. Instead he smiled and smiled and smiled, joked about how the voters would be glad when the circus left down, and made the most of the negative positives that kept raining down on him. Dollar collapse, negative growth, share market collapse etc etc. Given that Ryan had taken on the significance of a real election, mot just a byelection, for both parties, Beazley needed to get out of town or march in and make a vision speech or flesh out the principles of a big-ticket policy like education or innovation.

 

To me, Ryan voters kept Howard in the game, not because he’s respected or trusted, but because the alternative is offering nothing to get excited or inspired about.

 

Howard produced his brand of leadership in the Ryan campaign. He threw his credibility into the mix, explicitly, with that letter late in the week. Beazley, as usual, played safe. Safe is not good enough. Without positive positives, he was, as usual, an ineffectual bloke with nothing to say.

 

 

I watched a debate on the 7-30 report late last week between Tony Abbott and Wayne Swan, on Ryan. It was horrible. It was empty. It parrotted lines worked out in advance. It was dead. It was sad. I watched the new Labor national secretary Greg Sword, the man who overthrew a man of ideas who’s proved way ahead of his times, Barry Jones, in a post election interview on Network Ten yesterday morning. He said nothing. He waffled. He denied Labor had any structural problems. It was sad. It was dead.

 

So the game is in stalemate. A couple of weeks ago, a senior political correspondent berated me for even contemplating a Liberal win in Ryan. The swing to Labor in the State seats comprising Ryan was 16 odd percent. Sure, there were strong State factors at work, but he insisted that because Ryan was a byelection, not an election, that swing should at least hold. It didn’t.

 

So Howard is not finished, nor is Beazley. Stalemate is where it should be. Neither side has given us reason to believe either can do it for us, or with us.

 

Today, Simon Crean announced that Labor would work out the exact amount of the windfall the government gained from its initial refusal to ensure that the price of petrol not rise because of the GST, and return it to taxpayers. Think about it. Howard has given back the 1.5 cents already, so Crean is talking about the value of the money kept till then, and perhaps money gained by indexing the excise in the rise early this year. But Howard has given back much much more. He’s frozen indexation forever, carving a terrible hole in the revenue Labor needs to rebuild education, research and health. Crean’s announcement is sickening.

 

You can just about bet your house both parties will go for populism from now on. I’m just waiting for Howard to let the social nasties out of his backpocket, just to make sure we get even sourer than we are now, with ourselves and our politicians. Gee it would be great if someone, anyone with power in politics surprised us.

 

OK, it’s easy to carp. What can we do? I’d like us to build a revolutionary election web site which is fresh, constructive,innovative and (relatively) uncontrolled. I said last week I want it to be the people’s site. Let’s do it. I”m still after your ideas. Here’s an open invitation to two regular contributors who’s work makes me think. To Don Arthur, please consider writing a regular column in the lead-up to, and during the election campaign. I thought I’d call it ‘The politics of ideas”, or “Ideas in Politics”. To David Davis, I’d love a regular expats view on our campaign, maybe to lead off a section on views from abroad. For pungent media analysis, where are you Jack Robertson? I’d love a member of all the groups that make us up – in Matthew Pearce’s analysis progressives, radicals and conservatives, or in Peter Parker’s terms, social liberals, social conservatives, economic liberals and economic conservatives (see Webdiary March 9 and earlier) – to regularly comment on the political advertising we’ll start drowning in from now on. I’d love people who work in health, education, research, the money markets etc to start debating policy and directions online. Robert Lawton’s idea last week of coming up with policies for the majors is great, if ambitious. I’m still looking for marginal seat reporters. I’d like to begin a gossip site, and get titbits on politics from where you live.

 

Today, we’ll begin with some hard-core spleen venting, then early reaction to the Ryan result, the view from Ryan on that Bob Tucker video and Cathy Bannister,in constructive mode, advising John Howard how to play the game from now on.

 

SPLEEN VENT

 

1. MD

 

I wish some politician would “come out” and say it – the Australian public is not a clever mob; in fact we are a unsophisticated, unsuspecting, witless lot. Australians swallow and regurgitate the press headlined without digesting.

 

The Beazley bloc KNOW that world petrol prices have nothing whatsoever to do with Howard government policy. The KNOW that the Australian economy is largely a hostage to the US and Japanese economies. They KNOW they can’t Roll Back the GST. They KNOW they have no answer for unemployment. Yet they spew their flaky hoodwinking platitudes like snake oil salesmen for cheap instant thrills.

 

Labor will win, they KNOW the public is dumbed down and easily seducable. We voters insist on our inalienable right to be bamboozled by dodgy policy. And here’s a bet. Beazley will not be able to do a thing about any of these issues, unless Roll Over means he will now roll-over in his sleep.

 

When Beazley puts his parliamentary pension and salary on the line, IF he EVER points out a policy, and links these with the success of those unmentionables, even I will vote for him.

 

2. JUSTIN KOEK

 

I’ve been wandering the streets lately thinking I’ve gone utterly crazy. I keep hearing this faint circus music wafting on the breeze, but the other day I realised what it was. It was the neurotic tunes of Carnivale Ryan, the most farcical show on Earth.

 

If our fearless political correspondents are to be believed, Ryan will signal the end. The end of the Libs if they lose, the end of Beazley’s leadership if the ALP lose, and we might throw in the end of civilisation for good measure. The significance of the result makes me think the Ryan electors might be a tad nervous, considering they’re being told the fate of the government, or the government-to-be, rests in the way they fill out their cards.

 

But let’s face it – we are at least six months away from a general federal election, and, in the event of a defeat in Ryan, you can rest assured Howard will drag his time in office out long enough to wipe the ugly stain from the electorate’s memory.

 

And, we’ll be honest – the electorate’s memory is poor. Take petrol excise, for example. It was reduced, the indexation gone, half a billion axed from the budget for one and a half cents a litre. And the excise issue has vanished. Now the burden is on oil companies to cut prices, on whose shoulders it rested all the time anyway.

 

What about BAS? Fixed. No more quicksand pits of red tape for small business. For weeks, griping about the GST was pretty much absent from the media.

 

It was great strategy by the government. Most proclaimed them backflips, but I thought it was smart. Remove the problems and the electorate will forget in time for the polls. So what, a bit of egg on the face at the beginning of the year. No one will remember come November.

 

But if everyone’s going to get angry about something, can’t we at least stay angry until the time when it actually counts? Who would have guessed the Beattie government would be returned to office during the electoral rorts affair, when it seemed his slimmest of margins would be swallowed whole by the opposition. What about Carr and the tolls? What about Menzies, given a second chance years down the track even after selling iron to Australia’s wartime enemies? What about Kennett, period?

 

I don’t want to see anger wasted by bad memories. If, once you’ve filtered the spin and come to the conclusion that you despise Howard and his government, or any government for that matter, don’t forget the minute you walk through the polling booth doors.

 

 

3. MARIUS BALOGH in Perth

 

God save the Queen, but nothing will save John Howard at the next federal election. The arrogant, heartless and stupid economic rationalism will destroy the Liberal Party at the next Federal election, and they will be lucky to end up with any seats at all.

 

The GST was the biggest confidence trick on the ignorant electorate at the last election, but sadly the Liberals believed in their own con on the GST. The GST is more destructive than most people realise even now. It stops a lot of individuals to go onto business and to set up new small businesses ventures, that in turn stops creating more employment. Also a lot of small businesses have closed their doors since the introduction of the GST.

 

But what the GST did is to wipe out the so called “Cash Economy” that had billions of dollars circulating untaxed adding to lots of economic activity. Now that’s all gone and is trapped by the new “tax system”. It might be ideologically rational to tax everything that moves but not very smart from an economics point of view.

 

4. RAEWYN GILCHRIST

 

As I really don’t think either Liberal or Labour have a clue on what is right for our wonderful country I would really like to see neither win but unfortunately that is not going to be the case. Whomever wins will still try to sell our great land down the gurgler. Have a great day

 

5. JEFF ARNOLD, an “Aussie Biker in USA”

 

From a globalization point of view, Australia must be just about the best bargain on Earth; not only are we putting up everything for sale, but the falling currency is like a constantly increasing discount. Now we even give access to Ministers for a paltry $7,500 – a far cry from the $US100,000 + it costs in the United States. Perhaps this should be the new measure of our economic worth. (Margo: The $7,500 refers to the price being asked by the Liberals for players in information technology to buy a seat at the Libs policy table, as exposed in the Herald last week.)

 

6. JAMES McALISTER

 

We here in the Mountains never get the opportunity to touch Kim Beazley’s hem, to seek shade neath his shadow. Next time you’re granted an audience with him, I’d be most appreciative if you could pose the following questions on behalf of an elector who’s never voted for the Coalition in his life, but is deeply troubled about giving the nod to Labor come the

next Federal election:

 

1) Why should I vote to install a millionaire in the Lodge? How could such a wealthy man understand the plight of those trying to make do with $10,000 a year unemployment benefits, less than one sixth of what you get via super, let alone your wage?

 

(Answer: I’m not a millionaire, dadedadadah.)

 

2) What is your Parliamentary superannuation worth?

 

(Answer: I don’t know, dadedadadah.)

 

3) The taxpayers’ contribution is now more that $1m,

isn’t it?

 

(Answer: I don’t know, dadedadadah.)

 

4) Well, try this simple arithmetic, Kim. How many years have you been in Parliament? Okay, now multiply that by $60,000. There you go, you’re in the money, son.

 

(Answer: I never bothered to calculate, dadedadadah.)

 

5) Don’t you think it’s a bit rich for you to become a millionaire on the public purse while preaching tightened purse strings for everyone else?

 

(Answer: It’s out of my hands, dadedadadah.)

 

6) Will you guarantee here and now that you’ll change Parliamentary super contributions to bring them into line with those paid by everyone else?

 

(Answer: We may have a look at it, dadedadadah.)

 

 

RYAN REACT

 

MIRCO DRACA: Congratulations, it appears that your March 9 prediction of a Liberal win in Ryan could eventuate against the odds described by last week’s opinion polls. I just re-read that column: clear line of argument, a complex structure and totally logical. Hey, could you pick my lotto numbers for me? And christ, that Howard guy can fight.

 

HENRY HU: Are Aussie serious about politics? Aussies choose losers as their leaders .

 

BARRY SUTERS: I tried to vote but could not find my informal party.

 

 

 

THE VIDEO PLAY

 

PAUL EWING

 

As a Ryan voter, I was out of town earlier this week and came home to 2 letters from John Howard, one from Kim Beazley, one from Jim Soorley (Brisbane’s Labor mayor) and one hand written from a neighbour who wanted to say how nice a man Bob Tucker was. On top of that there was the usual political fliers so it was a crowded mailbox. Last week Senator John Herron sent the same letter twice, Peter Beattie sent one, and so did Bob Tucker. Talk about overkill!

 

I did manage to get hold of a few copies of the Tucker video which were left in a common area of my place (there was one for everyone but I figured nobody would be that interested) and decided to focus group it with my work colleagues. Personally I couldn’t get past the background muzak and the nervous to camera delivery by Bob Tucker, but others thought it was a pretty impressive package so maybe I just wasn’t the target audience.

 

In five minutes (it seemed longer) he talked about raising children and being on P&Cs so that gave him insight into youth, how he would fix the Moggil road problem (I don’t live on it so I didn’t understand the problem), looking after small business, families and seniors. There were photos of his wedding (in black and white – which made me wonder does he pre-date colour??), a messy office (at least that was something I could relate to), and various shots of young children, all the while accompanied to this awful Kenny G-style backing track.

 

Whether it was worth the effort or not, at least it was novel. It would have worked better if he put it out three months ago to raise his profile and awareness. Back then we Ryan voters didn’t have our “voter-cynic vision” installed either. By putting it out this week, along with John Howard writing two letters to you in one day, it does look a tad desperate, (disorganised?) and insincere.

 

 

ADVICE FOR JOHN

 

CATHY BANNISTER

 

Howard asks, what should he do? (Webdiary last Thursday) Here are quite serious suggestions (and none of them rude).

 

For God’s sake John, stop panicking! Howard’s terror is what is driving down the dollar. The market is both manic depressive and neurotic, the slightest whiff of uncertainty makes it a-flutter. The whole construct is confidence trickery, after all.

 

He should play down Ryan. If he can, he should try to look confident, honest, and reassuring. This means, no more promises ’till after it’s over. If he can’t get it together, he shouldn’t say anything. (It might not make things better, but it sure as hell won’t hurt.)

 

Simplify the GST. The BAS is a nightmare because of the exclusions. Therefore, he should drop these and compensate low income earners directly with tax breaks and benefit increases. (No, I don’t know how he’d get it through the Senate.)

 

Point out that “rollback” probably means more exclusions, which means an even worse administrative nightmare. Labor never had any intention of removing the GST.

 

Explain that after any large reform, some period of adjustment is to be expected. Drag out other countries’ post-GST figures and prove that it always is worse immediately afterwards, and it always improves five years down the track. (It does, doesn’t it John?)

 

Just an idea, but while he is being populist how about offering some sort of golden handshake deal to farmers to get out of unprofitable, unsustainable farms? It would solve a lot of problems in the long term, despite being way expensive.

 

Howard’s rhetoric and policies contradict. He’s playing to the wrong end of town. He’s trying to get low end support while the policies, at least in the popular conception, are for the top bracket. This has lost the Liberal Party support across the board.

 

Finally, if he wants a market survey, he should hire a consultant. He shouldn’t just do it spur of the moment on talkback! Not a good look.

 

Why am I stating the obvious? Because I can’t stand to see someone so patently distressed, and I hate seeing an unfair fight! Make Labor sweat for it.

 

Now, where’s my $7.5K? Or does it work the other way around?

Our dollar falls below $US50 cents. The Indians end our winning streak in cricket. Our sharemarket crashes. Our confidence collapses. John Howard says to a talkback caller on radio, “I am desperately upset, can I tell you, I really am very unhappy about the high price of petrol … Can you tell me what I can do?”

 

And he asks Kim Beazley a question which would normally be rhetorical but in present circumstances probably isn’t. “What really matters is if the Labor party has an alternative to handling the economy at the present time. Can we please hear it?”

 

I suppose what Labor would do really does matter now, not what the government will do. After all, Howard all but conceded defeat in Ryan in his begging letter to voters. A Labor win would “encourage Mr Beazley in his belief that he can cruise into government without policies or without ever telling the Australian people where he stands on particular issues”. So, don’t protest against me, protest against him. But maybe voters don’t want to know what Beazley would do, they just want Howard out. Maybe they think neither side has the intellect, commitment, or inspiration to bring us together and drive us forward. Maybe that’s all of our faults and not just theirs.

 

Tyron Pitsis is getting most upset at our plight. “I am a young(ish) Australian and I am frightened about the future. Our environment is slowly dying, the dollar is now worth less than US50 cents and foreign debt is so high now that not even John Howard drives around in his “foreign debts bus” to tell us how much we owe (even though its mainly private sector debt). However it’s not those things in particular that bother me, it is our leaders’ reaction to them. I am alarmed: does no one care? Why are politicians so quiet about it? Why is no one angry? Have we just given up? But what’s our option, a protest vote? I’d just like you to tell our “leaders”, and I can only speak for myself, they have let us down! They have created a deep feeling of confusion, loss of trust, resentment and a general feeling of what I’ll call PAD (Political Affective Disorder – A general loss of psychological well being caused by our politician’s poor leadership and gross mismanagement).”

 

I’m starting to wonder whether Howard could survive a defeat in Ryan. If a personal plea for forgiveness to voters in a blue-ribbon seat your party has owned for 50 years doesn’t work, if you tell voters that if they vote Labor it’s a death sentence for his government, it’s hard to see where he could go from there.

 

I wonder if either Beazley or Howard could have avoided the stakes getting so high in Ryan. While Labor is confident of success, a Labor person I spoke to today is desperately worried about a surprise loss. It seems its goodbye Kim or goodbye John. Ryan has become more than a byelection, alright, its become a referendum on which leader should stay and which should go.

 

I predicted last week that Howard would win Ryan – and regretted it ever since – but here’s my latest self-serving rationale. The fall in the dollar to under $US50 cents is just the latest bit of bad news panicking the hell out of all of us. Ryan voters could take the tack that, with everything falling apart around them, keeping Howard in the game for now would at least be a vote for stability.

 

Say Howard loses. The Liberals have tried populist backflips and apologies, throwing away their edge on economic credibility as a result. I know I’ve written that Howard could still set some traps for Labor via tax cuts in the budget, but after that letter I reckon there’s only two cards left to play. On the prospect of a leadership change, it would be a brave party to try Costello, and a brave Costello to take on such a poisoned chalice.

 

The other play would be to call an election immediately and let Howard plough right into it. That would catch Labor off guard and concentrate voter’s minds on the choice, or lack of it. It might even hold up the Liberals vote a bit because of the sheer guts of the move. So that’s my crazed prediction if my crazed prediction that Howard will hold Ryan is wrong.

 

On the ground in Ryan Ann Roberts has no doubt the Liberals are gone, as do most of you in the Ryan poll (478 go Labor, 145 Liberal)

 

Ann writes:

 

Anticipation mounts in Ryan.

 

We’re not in the most exclusive of Ryan’s suburbs. Our area is pretty average. For what seems like decades tho’ it has seemed an unassailable blue-ribbon Liberal seat. Now there is hope.

 

This afternoon we have been phoned by 4 polling organisations. Someone is in a frenzy. Sadly we haven’t been sent one of Mr Tucker’s videos – one has to wonder how a Ryan resident could qualify for one of them. The Courier Mail, in reporting about the videos this morning ran a rather cruel wedding photo of the Tuckers with the bride shown in a strange headdress: not a vote catcher.

 

I ran into a hard working high school P & C worker this afternoon who said John Moore didn’t even acknowledge invitations to a local school over the years – perhaps arrogance will reap its reward. Mr Tucker seems to have run a campaign more suited to someone running for a local council. He keeps mentioning seat belts in buses.

 

Anyway Saturday night can’t come soon enough – we have to take our pleasures where we can in these hard times

 

Tim Dunlop in Canberra goes for Howard’s jugular:

 

“Did you see this letter in today’s SMH? Raises a good point, don’t you think? Howard had staked his political reputation on being a good economic manager, but was willing to flush it for the sake of another shot at being PM. But one thing he has stuck with absolutely is his opposition to an apology, or really, anything like a more sympathetic response to Aboriginal disadvantage. Good to know he still has some principles.

 

“It’s a shame the majority of electors in Ryan aren’t Aboriginal. John Howard would have said “sorry” last week, we’d have a new flag, and the treaty would be drafted this week, ready for signing on Friday. Ryan did vote “yes” in the republic referendum, however, so we can look forward to Howard’s conversion to the cause and a new vote in 2002. I can hardly wait.” Brendan Jones, Leichhardt, March 12.

 

Stephen Clarke nails Howard on tax, but wait for David Davis, my REAL favourite correspondent, who wrote our first profile on Ryan in good spirit but now accuses most of us of commie tendencies.

 

 

Stephen:

 

John Howard can’t have it both ways. He refers to his party’s natural inclination toward lower taxes. At the same time he crows about his GST as being a growth tax which will secure and build revenue for spending by the States. In fact, it has been argued that with the introduction of the GST this government is the highest taxing ever. It would be more accurate to say that the Liberal Party believe in low indirect taxes (income tax, company tax) and high direct taxes on consumption (GST). To put it another way: The Liberals have a natural inclination toward lower taxes for the rich and higher taxes for the poor.

 

 

David:

 

I see you have selected Don Arthur as your “favourite correspondent” (Webdiary Monday). Well that’s just lovely. In the end I shouldn’t be surprised though. Communists are probably always attracted to their own kind. Just as well people like you, Don Arthur and Phillip Adams weren’t at the wheel during the Cold War, otherwise I suspect by now we’d all be marching around in some kind of hideous goose step in the shadow of giant surreal posters of Gough Whitlam.

 

I thought anyway that in your scheme of things excellence should not be recognised (ie by calling one of them a favourite). Doesn’t that mean the individual is being given higher priority than the collective?

 

Anyway, I need to get to work. Enough of this breakfast babble.

 

Still, as I sit forlornly on the Number Six tram as it traverses the Rhine River in Basel this morning, I will soak up the melancholy atmosphere of this grey morning and wonder what might have been. If only I hadn’t been so strident about petrol, perhaps I could have had a shot at being Margo Kingston’s favourite correspondent.

 

If only. Woe is me.

 

PS: I am resigned to the reality of my ranking as a “lower to middle order” correspondent. Such is my lot, such is the card I have been dealt. I won’t blame anybody, I’ll just accept it.