Arguably the Australian Senate is among the most powerful upper houses of parliaments in the world. Quite unlike the British House of Lords or the Canadian Senate, it has a wider set of powers including the ability to reject budgetary bills.
The original intent of the Senate in Australia was to keep the smaller states (which at the time of Federation were Tasmania, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia) from being bullied by the two more powerful and more populous states, who had more members in the House of Representatives. In fact at the time of federation, New South Wales had as many seats (26) as the four smaller states combined (also 26).
The Senate provides equal representation for the states but not with respect to population. One New South Wales senator represents 606,000 people whilst one Tasmanian senator represents just 42,000 people. In fact, the entire of Tasmania's population would be served by less than a single member had they been from New South Wales.
In consequence, it is often the smaller states like Tasmania and South Australia from where the balance of power in the Senate rests. Smaller states are also more likely to send independents and minor party members to the Senate because the number of votes is far less. Most likely because of this, former Prime Minister once said in 'forbidding' the then Treasurer John Dawkins to attend a Senate Committee:
"I would forbid him going to the Senate, to account to this unrepresentative swill over there..."
With all of this by way of background, the question I've been proposed is:
How much money if any, would be saved if the Senate was done away with?
This question was asked of the Irish Parliament and was one of the election promises of the Fine Gael party if elected to government was to put that very question to a referendum:
http://breakingnews.ie/archives/2009/1017/ireland/eymhaugbcwid/#ixzz0UK8fdl8g
Enda Kenny said tonight that in Government Fine Gael was committed to reducing the number of TDs in the Dáil by more than 20, and abolishing the Seanad completely.
...
Speaking at his party's presidential dinner in Dublin, Mr Kenny told around 1,300 guests that the abolition of the Seanad and the reduction of over 20 TDs would save an estimated €150m over the term of a Dáil.
- breakingnews.ie, 17th Oct 2009
That referendum came and went, this weekend just passed (5th Oct). The election results though have meant that the Irish Seanad remains with with 48.3% voting in favour of abolition, with 51.7% against.
Of that decision, which is the will of the people, the Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) said that:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/1007/478811-seanad-referendum-reaction/
"People love to have shouting matches. We know now that like the All-Ireland Final, it is not going to be replayed so we have to deal with the question of how you make a Seanad effective."
- Enda Kenny, via RTE, 8th Oct 2013
Unlike the Australian Senate, The Irish Seanad is not elected by the people. Some are appointed by the Taoiseach, some are appointed by universities and still more are elected by City and County Councillors, members of the new Dáil (lower house) and members of the outgoing Seanad (upper house). That means that perhaps there is impetus to remove the upper house in Ireland but maybe not in Australia; almost certainly not from states like Tasmania and South Australia which would still feel bullied by the more powerful states.
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Department_of_the_Senate/Portfolio_Budget_Statements/~/media/56BC0463F7EC4717B908BBED1B20D14B.ashx
According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, the Australian Senate costs $21,906,000 per year. Arguably that's not really a lot to be paying when it comes to the costs of the administration of a nation. If cost be the only argument to abolish the Senate, then that might be strong enough? I don't know. Maybe this could be a case where all the 1%s add together for real savings? The old proverb "take car of the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" might be instructive here but I demand numbers before I cast judgement.
Within Australia, Queensland actually did do away with its upper house, the Legislative Council met for the last time on 27th October 1921. The difference between the Queensland Legislative Council and the Australian Senate was that the Legislative Council was made up of unelected members of Queensland's rich and powerful rather than being elected like the Federal Senate.
Being that the abolition of the Queensland Legislative Council occured in the financial year 1921-22, its very difficult to find budget comparisons to find out if any money was saved. Certainly in the years of the Bjelke-Petersen governments from 1968-1987, questions were being asked if an upper house might have been a safeguard against the excesses that a unicameral parliament created.
The story behind Queensland abolishing its upper house makes for fascinating reading. Thankfully, the Parliament of Queensland provides a nice overview:
https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/explore/education/factsheets/papers/paper01_abolitionOfTheUpperHouse.pdf
Likewise, New Zealand like Queensland abolished its Legislative Council on 31st Dec 1950. Also like Queensland the members of the Legislative Council who had been appointed to oversee its destruction from within were colourfully known as the 'suicide squad'.
However unlike Queensland, New Zealand in abolishing its upper house, moved those member into the lower house. New Zealand's House of Representatives has both members elected on an electorate basis and on a list basis like some other parliaments in the world.
Again, finding budgetary figures for the New Zealand parliament from more than 60 years ago is proving difficult. Trying to find a "Book of The Year" for Australia starts to become a hard task for anything before about 1975 in libraries; for New Zealand and on this side of the Tasman Sea, might yet prove to be impossible.
There would be a colossal hurdle to climb over to get the Senate to agree to abolish itself. Unlike Queensland or New Zealand where the house itself could be stacked which members to form a suicide squad, or even Ireland which for the purpose of the referendum asked everyone in the nation, to pass a referendum in Australia requires a majority of voters AND a majority of states. Smaller states are probably not likely to want to agree to lessen their representation in parliament and Australians are very distrustful when it comes to referenda generally - of 44 which have been put forwatd, only 8 have been successful and there have even been 5 instances where an overall national "Yes" vote has been carried and yet still failed to win a majority of states.
Do I think that Australians would actually carry a vote to abolish the Senate? It seems unlikely.
Deep down I think that Australians fear what would happen if a party from either side of the political divide had control of both houses of parliament. The last time that a major party had control of both houses of Parliament, John Howard brought in WorkChoices pretty well much as a rubber stamp process. Ultimately and in spite of the utter deadlock which the United States currently finds itself in with a bicameral parliament, I suspect that the time spent in reviewing legislation is probably very expensive but maybe that expense is entirely worth it.
Australians will spend roughly $95m on potato chips in 2013/14, if the Australian Senate only costs $22m (less than a quarter) for the same period, is that cost of administration worth it? I suspect so.
How much money if any, would be saved if the Senate was done away with? Probably about $22m-$25m a year. Is it likely? No.
October 10, 2013
October 06, 2013
Horse 1549 - Parties, Factionalism and The Head Of State
I've now written about retaining the Monarchy in Horse 511, Horse 1179 and Horse 1500, and on all three occasions I arrived at a different facet as to why the current system should be retained. The events of this month though have provided me with yet another one by way of example and that is the question of what can go horribly wrong.
If we look to the country that likes to style itself as the world's greatest democracy, we find that like most single-member constituent parliamentary systems it tends to follow Duverger's law and provide the voter with only two real choices (see Les Partis Politiques - 1951) if in fact they actually are choices. The problem with this is that often the spirit of factionalism is so strong that it stands in the way of government being done at all.
So firmly entrenched are both sides in the United States that neither of them bothered to think up a way out of the predicament and the whole government having crashed through the hedge of government shutdown is now hurtling at a great rate of speed towards defaulting on government debt. Although nobody's sure of where this cart is headed, they do know that if it crashes, the results will not be pretty.
-even Meggs and Benny have more idea of where they're headed
The obvious question then, is why would I choose to defend an institution which as the writers of the Declaration of Independence of the nation which is now hurtling towards debt default, framed as "a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny"?
The United States in the course of electing a President has since 1796, elected a person to that position who was a member of a political party. The sole exception was George Washington, of whom it must be said was neither particularly enamoured with the game of politics; nor really an active participant.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp
Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
- George Washington, originally published 19 Sep 1796
Also:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=j9NKAAAAYAAJ&dq=John+Adams+works&pg=PA511&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
- John Adams, Letter to Jonathan Jackson, 2 Oct 1780
The problem with even having an elected head of state apart from the fact that then creates a mandate for them to actually wield their power, is that the mechanism by which anyone gets elected to public office must invariably require at least a degree of political organisation to install them.
If you have a party who controls both house but a "President" for want of a better word who doesn't like the legislation which they are then asked to sign into law, under what conditions would they be allowed to wield their right to veto?
Of course the other side of the coin can just as easily be argued. A monarchy which almost by definition is likely to be traditionally conservative in nature because they're unlikely to want to vote to disband or remove their own power, although formally and perhaps politically unbiased, still wields a right of veto. Again, if they are asked to sign into law legislation which they do not like or approve of, under what conditions should they be allowed to wield their right to veto? Again the truth is quite murky.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-royals-veto-bills
The extent of the Queen and Prince Charles's secretive power of veto over new laws has been exposed after Downing Street lost its battle to keep information about its application secret.
Whitehall papers prepared by Cabinet Office lawyers show that overall at least 39 bills have been subject to the most senior royals' little-known power to consent to or block new laws. They also reveal the power has been used to torpedo proposed legislation relating to decisions about the country going to war.
- The Guardian, 15 Jan 2013
The Queen in the UK Parliament it seems has at least a crystallised reason in some cases to use the power of veto but would an Australian President be logically even be able to do the same thing? And if the executive of the nation is removed from the elected members of the House of Representatives like it is currently, and becomes under the direct appointment of President like the United States, then wouldn't the problems currently facing that nation merely be imported here?
The current President of Ireland, Michael Higgins was at one stage the President of the Labour Party or Ireland. Likewise the current Bundespräsident, Joachim Gauck who was appointed by parliament and not the people, still had to gain the consensus of a rainbow coalition of parties which included the CDU, the CSU, the FDP, the SPD and the Greens.
What I ask is that if either by direct election of the people as in Ireland or by appointment by a majority of parliament, to what degree is the position of the final say of legislation politicised by the operation of political parties, even if they stand as a non-partisan candidate?
What we've seen in the United States over the last week is an outworking of party politics at its worst. Both sides of the Congress really really despise each other for no good reason other than playing political games.
Currently the US Government has in the House of Representatives:
232 Republican members & 200 Democrat members.
Currently the US Government has in the Senate:
52 Democrat members & 46 Republican members.
Think about this - there is a Democrat president who if he wants legislation to pass, must get if past a hostile lower house before a friendly upper house before he can sign it into law. Assuming that Mitt Romney had won the 2012 election, he would have faced a friendly lower house but an hostile upper house before he could sign a bill into law.
Unlike Australia, there is no mechanism to dissolve the US Congress even if, which on this case it has most certainly proven, to be utterly unworkable. Washington's warning of alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, is now living fact; being played out and with a national debt more than 223,333 times bigger than the debt which the Union assumed when Washington became President.
I'm not entirely sure that the election of the head of state in Australia would necessarily improve the workability of the parliament. If there was a President who was of a different political colour to the government, I'm reasonably sure that the rules would first require them to formally suspend or resign any membership that they had with all political parties before their appointment; so on that front it's probably fine. On the other hand, would an elected president even feel morally able if the need arose to do what Sir John Kerr did in 1975? I'm pretty sure that that decision was correct but probably wouldn't have been even been able to have been made if he had been elected by the people or by a mechanism similar to the President of Germany.
What I do know is that the politicisation of the position of the President of the United States, has in its way contributed to the complete and utter failure of the US Government to do its job; that is govern. It was warned about more than 200 years ago and human nature being what it is, will ensure that this problem will happen again.
The United States in the course of electing a President has since 1796, elected a person to that position who was a member of a political party. The sole exception was George Washington, of whom it must be said was neither particularly enamoured with the game of politics; nor really an active participant.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp
Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
- George Washington, originally published 19 Sep 1796
Also:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=j9NKAAAAYAAJ&dq=John+Adams+works&pg=PA511&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
- John Adams, Letter to Jonathan Jackson, 2 Oct 1780
I just think that the concept of factionalism (which is formalised and even strengthened with the codification of political parties) is just a natural consequence of human nature. Paul even wrote about the problem of factionalism to the Corinthian church in the year 54; Suetonius speaks constantly of factionalism in "The Twelve Caesars" which was written in 121, so it's not like it's a terribly new idea.
The most obvious solution then to the final say in the operations of a bicameral legislature, is to have someone in that position who is both apolitical and has the power to dissolve the legislature if it should prove unworkable.
Currently in Australia, the Governor-General fulfills both of those functions and has exercised them on occasion from both the advice of the sitting Prime Minister and in the case of the crisis in 1975, acted with suggestion from the Opposition leader.The problem with even having an elected head of state apart from the fact that then creates a mandate for them to actually wield their power, is that the mechanism by which anyone gets elected to public office must invariably require at least a degree of political organisation to install them.
If you have a party who controls both house but a "President" for want of a better word who doesn't like the legislation which they are then asked to sign into law, under what conditions would they be allowed to wield their right to veto?
Of course the other side of the coin can just as easily be argued. A monarchy which almost by definition is likely to be traditionally conservative in nature because they're unlikely to want to vote to disband or remove their own power, although formally and perhaps politically unbiased, still wields a right of veto. Again, if they are asked to sign into law legislation which they do not like or approve of, under what conditions should they be allowed to wield their right to veto? Again the truth is quite murky.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-royals-veto-bills
The extent of the Queen and Prince Charles's secretive power of veto over new laws has been exposed after Downing Street lost its battle to keep information about its application secret.
Whitehall papers prepared by Cabinet Office lawyers show that overall at least 39 bills have been subject to the most senior royals' little-known power to consent to or block new laws. They also reveal the power has been used to torpedo proposed legislation relating to decisions about the country going to war.
- The Guardian, 15 Jan 2013
The Queen in the UK Parliament it seems has at least a crystallised reason in some cases to use the power of veto but would an Australian President be logically even be able to do the same thing? And if the executive of the nation is removed from the elected members of the House of Representatives like it is currently, and becomes under the direct appointment of President like the United States, then wouldn't the problems currently facing that nation merely be imported here?
The current President of Ireland, Michael Higgins was at one stage the President of the Labour Party or Ireland. Likewise the current Bundespräsident, Joachim Gauck who was appointed by parliament and not the people, still had to gain the consensus of a rainbow coalition of parties which included the CDU, the CSU, the FDP, the SPD and the Greens.
What I ask is that if either by direct election of the people as in Ireland or by appointment by a majority of parliament, to what degree is the position of the final say of legislation politicised by the operation of political parties, even if they stand as a non-partisan candidate?
What we've seen in the United States over the last week is an outworking of party politics at its worst. Both sides of the Congress really really despise each other for no good reason other than playing political games.
Currently the US Government has in the House of Representatives:
232 Republican members & 200 Democrat members.
Currently the US Government has in the Senate:
52 Democrat members & 46 Republican members.
Think about this - there is a Democrat president who if he wants legislation to pass, must get if past a hostile lower house before a friendly upper house before he can sign it into law. Assuming that Mitt Romney had won the 2012 election, he would have faced a friendly lower house but an hostile upper house before he could sign a bill into law.
Unlike Australia, there is no mechanism to dissolve the US Congress even if, which on this case it has most certainly proven, to be utterly unworkable. Washington's warning of alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, is now living fact; being played out and with a national debt more than 223,333 times bigger than the debt which the Union assumed when Washington became President.
I'm not entirely sure that the election of the head of state in Australia would necessarily improve the workability of the parliament. If there was a President who was of a different political colour to the government, I'm reasonably sure that the rules would first require them to formally suspend or resign any membership that they had with all political parties before their appointment; so on that front it's probably fine. On the other hand, would an elected president even feel morally able if the need arose to do what Sir John Kerr did in 1975? I'm pretty sure that that decision was correct but probably wouldn't have been even been able to have been made if he had been elected by the people or by a mechanism similar to the President of Germany.
What I do know is that the politicisation of the position of the President of the United States, has in its way contributed to the complete and utter failure of the US Government to do its job; that is govern. It was warned about more than 200 years ago and human nature being what it is, will ensure that this problem will happen again.
October 03, 2013
Horse 1548 - Party Like It's 1994
http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2013/09/02/tony-abbott-address-national-press-club-election-2013
Well within three years, a tax White Paper will have canvassed how we can have lower, simpler, fairer taxes for higher economic growth and better and more sustained services.
A federalism White Paper will have canvassed how overlap and duplication between different levels of government can be reduced so that it will be much clearer who is in charge of what and who is responsible when things are wrong.
Recommendations from these reviews that the government takes to the 2016 election will form a part of any incoming Coalition government’s second term agenda.
- Tony Abbott, to the National Press Club, 2nd Sep 2013
Let's cut to the chase here be just be upfront about what that Coalition government’s second term agenda is going to be. It's been less than a month since the Federal Election and parliament has not even sat yet but several key steps are already in place. Some of those steps as we have seen even just today, have been a turning of the clocks and calendars back to 1994.
To peek into the future of 2016 from 2013 is almost a parallel of peeking into the future of 1997 from 1994; the strange thing is that many of the characters are the same.
Malcolm Turnbull
Mr Turnbull in 1994 was as now, highly intelligent and very very astute in the world of business. He had already run a successful investment banking firm with former Premier of NSW, Neville Wran and the son of a former Prime Minister and ex-CEO of the State Bank of New South Wales, Nicholas Whitlam.
Malcolm was in 1994 also very forward looking. Following Eternal September when America Online (Aol) opened its services up to the general public, Malcolm saw that this was a brilliant opportunity to jump in on the ground floor of what would become a massive industry. From his purchase of a $500,000 holding in OzEmail, he would see that grow a staggering one-hundred-and-fourteen-fold when he finally sold his stake for $57 million in 1999 to WorldCom. OzEmail would be the very first Australian stock to be listed on the NASDAQ, which means to suggest that in 1994 Mr Turnbull was either incredibly forward looking or knew a good investment deal when the opportunity presented itself.
Ziggy Switkowski
Ziggy or to be more polite Zygmunt, is very skilled at watching things decay. He has a PhD in nuclear physics no less and much much later became head of ANSTO.
In 1994 though, Ziggy was head of a formerly owned government-entity which had changed its name from AUSSAT to Optus. In September of 1994, the telecommunications market in Australia was deregulated and Optus joined Telstra.
Although it was Frank Blount who was head of Telstra in 1997 when the company was floated, Ziggy replaced him in 1999 and was then given the job of basically degrading the company so that it could be split up and sold more effectively through the T2 and T3 tranches. Ziggy appointed former Optus executive Ted Pretty to the Convergent Business Group and another Optus executive, Dick Simpson to the head of Mobile and Wireless Communications.
Basically after having stripped the company, letting the maintenance and replacement schedules fall to the rate to the point when in the year he was replaced by Sol Trujillo, Telstra received a record 14.3 million fault calls, Ziggy lept with a golden parachute into a director's position at the banking and insurance group Suncorp.
Tony Abbott
The current Member for Warringah was first elected to this safe seat after working as a press secretary to Dr John Hewson and the sudden resignation of Michael MacKellar. He was appointed to the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs under Senator Amanda Vanstone before finally being promoted to the position of Minister for that same department in 1998.
Abbott was perhaps being groomed for stardom by the PM John Howard when he was later appointed to the position of Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service in 2001. Indeed in Howard's autobiography "Lazarus Rising: A Personal and Political Autobiography" he writes that it was on his recommendation that Hewson appoint Abbott as his press secretary. John Howard, the master of one of the longest political comebacks in Australian political history (having been treasurer from 1977-83 before finally becoming PM in 1996, 13 years later), must have instilled in Tony a sense of the long game of politics and patience.
So fast forward to 2013. Tony Abbott is now the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull is now the Minister for Communications and only just today, Ziggy Switkowski has been given the top spot at NBN Co. What does 2016 look like?
If 1994 was anything to go by, Abbott will be looking to privatise something... anything. Most of the assets that the government once owned were flogged off years ago. The silverware cabinet is decidedly bare. Really all that's left that's worth selling are Medibank Private, the ABC and SBS and NBN Co.
It's curious that Ziggy Switkowski who was charged with gutting Telstra should be appointed the head of NBN Co. It's also curious that within a week, five of the seven members of the NBN Co board tendered their resignations to Mr Turnbull. Is this a case of rats jumping before the ship has even been scuttled? I think so.
Just be very very afraid when the word "mandate" gets bandied about.
Well within three years, a tax White Paper will have canvassed how we can have lower, simpler, fairer taxes for higher economic growth and better and more sustained services.
A federalism White Paper will have canvassed how overlap and duplication between different levels of government can be reduced so that it will be much clearer who is in charge of what and who is responsible when things are wrong.
Recommendations from these reviews that the government takes to the 2016 election will form a part of any incoming Coalition government’s second term agenda.
- Tony Abbott, to the National Press Club, 2nd Sep 2013
Let's cut to the chase here be just be upfront about what that Coalition government’s second term agenda is going to be. It's been less than a month since the Federal Election and parliament has not even sat yet but several key steps are already in place. Some of those steps as we have seen even just today, have been a turning of the clocks and calendars back to 1994.
To peek into the future of 2016 from 2013 is almost a parallel of peeking into the future of 1997 from 1994; the strange thing is that many of the characters are the same.
Malcolm Turnbull
Mr Turnbull in 1994 was as now, highly intelligent and very very astute in the world of business. He had already run a successful investment banking firm with former Premier of NSW, Neville Wran and the son of a former Prime Minister and ex-CEO of the State Bank of New South Wales, Nicholas Whitlam.
Malcolm was in 1994 also very forward looking. Following Eternal September when America Online (Aol) opened its services up to the general public, Malcolm saw that this was a brilliant opportunity to jump in on the ground floor of what would become a massive industry. From his purchase of a $500,000 holding in OzEmail, he would see that grow a staggering one-hundred-and-fourteen-fold when he finally sold his stake for $57 million in 1999 to WorldCom. OzEmail would be the very first Australian stock to be listed on the NASDAQ, which means to suggest that in 1994 Mr Turnbull was either incredibly forward looking or knew a good investment deal when the opportunity presented itself.
Ziggy Switkowski
Ziggy or to be more polite Zygmunt, is very skilled at watching things decay. He has a PhD in nuclear physics no less and much much later became head of ANSTO.
In 1994 though, Ziggy was head of a formerly owned government-entity which had changed its name from AUSSAT to Optus. In September of 1994, the telecommunications market in Australia was deregulated and Optus joined Telstra.
Although it was Frank Blount who was head of Telstra in 1997 when the company was floated, Ziggy replaced him in 1999 and was then given the job of basically degrading the company so that it could be split up and sold more effectively through the T2 and T3 tranches. Ziggy appointed former Optus executive Ted Pretty to the Convergent Business Group and another Optus executive, Dick Simpson to the head of Mobile and Wireless Communications.
Basically after having stripped the company, letting the maintenance and replacement schedules fall to the rate to the point when in the year he was replaced by Sol Trujillo, Telstra received a record 14.3 million fault calls, Ziggy lept with a golden parachute into a director's position at the banking and insurance group Suncorp.
Tony Abbott
The current Member for Warringah was first elected to this safe seat after working as a press secretary to Dr John Hewson and the sudden resignation of Michael MacKellar. He was appointed to the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs under Senator Amanda Vanstone before finally being promoted to the position of Minister for that same department in 1998.
Abbott was perhaps being groomed for stardom by the PM John Howard when he was later appointed to the position of Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service in 2001. Indeed in Howard's autobiography "Lazarus Rising: A Personal and Political Autobiography" he writes that it was on his recommendation that Hewson appoint Abbott as his press secretary. John Howard, the master of one of the longest political comebacks in Australian political history (having been treasurer from 1977-83 before finally becoming PM in 1996, 13 years later), must have instilled in Tony a sense of the long game of politics and patience.
So fast forward to 2013. Tony Abbott is now the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull is now the Minister for Communications and only just today, Ziggy Switkowski has been given the top spot at NBN Co. What does 2016 look like?
If 1994 was anything to go by, Abbott will be looking to privatise something... anything. Most of the assets that the government once owned were flogged off years ago. The silverware cabinet is decidedly bare. Really all that's left that's worth selling are Medibank Private, the ABC and SBS and NBN Co.
It's curious that Ziggy Switkowski who was charged with gutting Telstra should be appointed the head of NBN Co. It's also curious that within a week, five of the seven members of the NBN Co board tendered their resignations to Mr Turnbull. Is this a case of rats jumping before the ship has even been scuttled? I think so.
Just be very very afraid when the word "mandate" gets bandied about.
October 01, 2013
Horse 1547 - The Government Shutdown Wouldn't Have Happened In Australia
The 113th Congress has finally gone one step beyond the 112th Congress in terms of sheer pigheadedness and idiocy, gone several steps beyond the 80th Congress which President Truman cited as the "Do Nothing Congress" and has for the 18th time in American history, shut down the government.
Following a lengthy conversation that I had on Twitter, just like I asserted in Horse 1546 that Breaking Bad Wouldn't Have Happened In Australia, I now go on to suggest that a total government shutdown like what has just happened in the United States also would not have happened in Australia.
The reason for this is that the Australian Government simply doesn't work that way.
In the United States, the Executive Branch of Government and the Legislative Branch are entirely separate and distinct. This leaves the result that the Executive Branch, which is nominally vested in the person of the President, officially can not act without the consent of the Legislative Branch; that is the Congress.
In the case of matters of Supply, that is the amount of money available that the Government can spend, The Office of Management And Budget must obtain approval and consent from the Congress before monies are appropriated to it.
In Australia where the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch co-exist together, the vehicle by which the Department of Treasury obtains funds to accomplish its ends is via Appropriation Bills and other Money Bills put before the parliament and drawn on the basis of Section 83 of the constitution that:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s83.html
No money shall be drawn from the Treasury of the Commonwealth except under appropriation made by law.
There is a point of note here. Even if any given money bill fails to pass the parliament which technically results in a loss of supply, the existing pieces of legislation are still in effect and since many items contained within any given Appropriation Bills are standing items which carry over from one year to the next, they will still continue to have effect until a subsequent bill has passed.
Even if a government fails to pass a budget, then that becomes a "loss of supply" and would trigger a double dissolution and an election under s.57 of the Constitution:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s57.html
and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor‑General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously
The words "fails to pass" have in the past been taken to mean dithering on the part of the Senate, that is failure to pass legislation through deliberate inaction rather than direct rejection. This was further stated by the then Solicitor-General, KH Bailey in relation to the Commonwealth Bank Bill 1950 [No. 2] which failed to pass the Senate and which triggered the 19 March 1951 Double Dissolution. Following the election The Commonwealth Bank Bill was presented to Parliament again and passed both houses.
http://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/house_of_representatives/powers_practice_and_procedure/~/link.aspx?_id=5CF9F6E3E5B541B8A788DEFB03E57DD9&_z=z
The addition of the words “fail to pass” is intended to bring the section into operation if the Senate, not approving a bill, adopts procedures designed to avert the taking of either of these definitive decisions on it. The expression “fails to pass” is clearly not the same as the neutral expression “does not pass”, which would perhaps imply mere lapse of time. “Failure to pass” seems to me to involve a suggestion of some breach of duty, some degree of fault, and to import, as a minimum, that the Senate avoids a decision on the bill.
- Sir Kenneth Hamilton Bailey, Solicitor-General, 1951
Even at the height of the Constitutional Crisis of 1975 when the Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed Whitlam's government and dissolved parliament, it still only dissolved parliament, there was no shutdown of government services and wouldn't have been because at bare minimum the Appropriation Act (No. 1) 1974-1975 was still in operation until a subsequent act replaced it.
Even the Department of Finance on its website points out that:
http://www.finance.gov.au/budget/budget-process/annual-appropriation-rules.html
3. Departmental operating appropriations do not lapse at the end of each financial year. They remain available to be spent in the next and later financial years.
This means that unlike the United States, even if the Australian parliament were to be dissolved following a loss of supply, things like Pensions, Transfer Payments, Government Salaries etc. would continue to be paid, whether or not Parliament happens to be extant or dissolved.
I think that this highlights something a little strange about the United States' Republican form of government. The so-called system of "checks and balances" result in a greater degree of gridlock than is necessary; although we do see a great deal of bile and hubris on the floor of both our houses of parliament, not once has it nor can it result in a complete and utter shutdown of the public service as it has done to many parts of the US government.
At the time of the 1975 Constitutional Crisis, even if a stop had been put on all Reserve Bank cheques, the then the Attorney-General, Kep Enderby, had already gone to Sir John Kerr to see if a system of redeemable vouchers could be raised to be redeemed from the banks one the crisis was averted.
I received an email late this afternoon from a friend of mine who works inside the RBA (and no I'm not about to give his name away in case this is a sensitive disclosure) and he was of the opinion that the RBA would "continue to make payments and direct debits into peoples bank accounts in accordance with the existing arrangements from the previous budget no matter how long it went on for"
So in all honesty, we in Australia would never have to worry about this:
- A loss of supply on the floor on the house would trigger an election and a new budget bill once the new parliament was formed.
- A failure to pass an appropriation bill would eventually see a double dissolution as per either 1951 or 1975 and a new budget bill once the new parliament was formed.
- Crucially, the RBA would continue to make payments to people's bank accounts in accordance with the previous budget act.
Simples.
Following a lengthy conversation that I had on Twitter, just like I asserted in Horse 1546 that Breaking Bad Wouldn't Have Happened In Australia, I now go on to suggest that a total government shutdown like what has just happened in the United States also would not have happened in Australia.
The reason for this is that the Australian Government simply doesn't work that way.
In the United States, the Executive Branch of Government and the Legislative Branch are entirely separate and distinct. This leaves the result that the Executive Branch, which is nominally vested in the person of the President, officially can not act without the consent of the Legislative Branch; that is the Congress.
In the case of matters of Supply, that is the amount of money available that the Government can spend, The Office of Management And Budget must obtain approval and consent from the Congress before monies are appropriated to it.
In Australia where the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch co-exist together, the vehicle by which the Department of Treasury obtains funds to accomplish its ends is via Appropriation Bills and other Money Bills put before the parliament and drawn on the basis of Section 83 of the constitution that:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s83.html
No money shall be drawn from the Treasury of the Commonwealth except under appropriation made by law.
There is a point of note here. Even if any given money bill fails to pass the parliament which technically results in a loss of supply, the existing pieces of legislation are still in effect and since many items contained within any given Appropriation Bills are standing items which carry over from one year to the next, they will still continue to have effect until a subsequent bill has passed.
Even if a government fails to pass a budget, then that becomes a "loss of supply" and would trigger a double dissolution and an election under s.57 of the Constitution:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s57.html
and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor‑General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously
The words "fails to pass" have in the past been taken to mean dithering on the part of the Senate, that is failure to pass legislation through deliberate inaction rather than direct rejection. This was further stated by the then Solicitor-General, KH Bailey in relation to the Commonwealth Bank Bill 1950 [No. 2] which failed to pass the Senate and which triggered the 19 March 1951 Double Dissolution. Following the election The Commonwealth Bank Bill was presented to Parliament again and passed both houses.
http://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/house_of_representatives/powers_practice_and_procedure/~/link.aspx?_id=5CF9F6E3E5B541B8A788DEFB03E57DD9&_z=z
The addition of the words “fail to pass” is intended to bring the section into operation if the Senate, not approving a bill, adopts procedures designed to avert the taking of either of these definitive decisions on it. The expression “fails to pass” is clearly not the same as the neutral expression “does not pass”, which would perhaps imply mere lapse of time. “Failure to pass” seems to me to involve a suggestion of some breach of duty, some degree of fault, and to import, as a minimum, that the Senate avoids a decision on the bill.
- Sir Kenneth Hamilton Bailey, Solicitor-General, 1951
Even at the height of the Constitutional Crisis of 1975 when the Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed Whitlam's government and dissolved parliament, it still only dissolved parliament, there was no shutdown of government services and wouldn't have been because at bare minimum the Appropriation Act (No. 1) 1974-1975 was still in operation until a subsequent act replaced it.
Even the Department of Finance on its website points out that:
http://www.finance.gov.au/budget/budget-process/annual-appropriation-rules.html
3. Departmental operating appropriations do not lapse at the end of each financial year. They remain available to be spent in the next and later financial years.
This means that unlike the United States, even if the Australian parliament were to be dissolved following a loss of supply, things like Pensions, Transfer Payments, Government Salaries etc. would continue to be paid, whether or not Parliament happens to be extant or dissolved.
I think that this highlights something a little strange about the United States' Republican form of government. The so-called system of "checks and balances" result in a greater degree of gridlock than is necessary; although we do see a great deal of bile and hubris on the floor of both our houses of parliament, not once has it nor can it result in a complete and utter shutdown of the public service as it has done to many parts of the US government.
At the time of the 1975 Constitutional Crisis, even if a stop had been put on all Reserve Bank cheques, the then the Attorney-General, Kep Enderby, had already gone to Sir John Kerr to see if a system of redeemable vouchers could be raised to be redeemed from the banks one the crisis was averted.
I received an email late this afternoon from a friend of mine who works inside the RBA (and no I'm not about to give his name away in case this is a sensitive disclosure) and he was of the opinion that the RBA would "continue to make payments and direct debits into peoples bank accounts in accordance with the existing arrangements from the previous budget no matter how long it went on for"
So in all honesty, we in Australia would never have to worry about this:
- A loss of supply on the floor on the house would trigger an election and a new budget bill once the new parliament was formed.
- A failure to pass an appropriation bill would eventually see a double dissolution as per either 1951 or 1975 and a new budget bill once the new parliament was formed.
- Crucially, the RBA would continue to make payments to people's bank accounts in accordance with the previous budget act.
Simples.
Horse 1546 - Breaking Bad Wouldn't Have Happened In Australia
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad
Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White, a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer at the beginning of the series. He turns to a life of crime, producing and selling methamphetamine, in order to secure his family's financial future before he dies.
I've not seen Breaking Bad and I'm not particularly sure that I'm going to but I've pretty well much come to the conclusion that the issues surrounding this TV series simply would not happen in Australia for two main reasons:
Firstly, I assume Mr White is forced to go into a life of crime because of the crippling costs of treatment of his inoperable lung cancer. I did a quick look to find out how much health care premiums would cost me had I been living in the United States and came to the glorious figure of A$8,553 through Kaiser Permanente as opposed to just A$2281 from NIB here in Australia. Never mind the fact that it's perfectly possible to survive quite happily without private health insurance in Australia because of the universal single payer public health care system of Medicare.
Even if you take the most conservative estimates, roughly 1.7 million people per year file for bankruptcy because of default on accumulated medical bills. Roughly 25 million people in the United State will not even fill basic things like prescriptions because the price is too high. I can of course fully understand the underlying premise here.
Had Mr White been living in Australia, his inoperable lung cancer would have been seen to by the public hospital system. Not only would this have been cheaper than in the United States but a lot of end user expenses would have been free of charge to him and picked up via the universal payer, Medicare.
Secondly, if Mr White had been prescribed some sort of management drugs or other course of action, then they would have been cheaper per unit and if he'd reached the PBS safety net threshold of $1390.60 then every single drug or treatment would have cost $5.90 thereafter. The price of prescription medicines and treatment required for him to manage and live with his inoperable lung cancer would have been far cheaper. Further to this, he more than likely would also be seeing his GP on a semi-regular basis which would have further been an advantage to his conditions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad
Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White, a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer at the beginning of the series. He turns to a life of crime, producing and selling methamphetamine, in order to secure his family's financial future before he dies.
I've not seen Breaking Bad and I'm not particularly sure that I'm going to but I've pretty well much come to the conclusion that the issues surrounding this TV series simply would not happen in Australia for two main reasons:
Firstly, I assume Mr White is forced to go into a life of crime because of the crippling costs of treatment of his inoperable lung cancer. I did a quick look to find out how much health care premiums would cost me had I been living in the United States and came to the glorious figure of A$8,553 through Kaiser Permanente as opposed to just A$2281 from NIB here in Australia. Never mind the fact that it's perfectly possible to survive quite happily without private health insurance in Australia because of the universal single payer public health care system of Medicare.
Even if you take the most conservative estimates, roughly 1.7 million people per year file for bankruptcy because of default on accumulated medical bills. Roughly 25 million people in the United State will not even fill basic things like prescriptions because the price is too high. I can of course fully understand the underlying premise here.
Had Mr White been living in Australia, his inoperable lung cancer would have been seen to by the public hospital system. Not only would this have been cheaper than in the United States but a lot of end user expenses would have been free of charge to him and picked up via the universal payer, Medicare.
Secondly, if Mr White had been prescribed some sort of management drugs or other course of action, then they would have been cheaper per unit and if he'd reached the PBS safety net threshold of $1390.60 then every single drug or treatment would have cost $5.90 thereafter. The price of prescription medicines and treatment required for him to manage and live with his inoperable lung cancer would have been far cheaper. Further to this, he more than likely would also be seeing his GP on a semi-regular basis which would have further been an advantage to his conditions.
Basically, it would have been incredibly difficult for Walter White to even enter the economic circumstances which lead him to consider his life of crime in Australia unless he was really determined to do so.
It's a sad indictment on America's health care system that this is used as the premise for a high rating television show and I think bordering on treasonous that its currently one of the underlying reasons why the US Congress is threatening a shutdown of non-essential government services as I write this.
I think that Breaking Bad simply would not have happened in Australia and I seriously hope that the conditions which would cause it to, also never happen.
September 27, 2013
Horse 1545 - The Senate: Men In Car-Parks
Once upon a time in the days before YouTube, before Twitbook, before FaceSpace, before internet banking and before digital radio and television (shock & horror, it seems so ancient), when I was working in the cheque acceptance department of a bank, I saw something truly phenomenal which few others know about.
At the end of the day (declared to be 04:30pm) we would switch off the big cheque reading machines and collect several tubs of cheques which had been sorted into bank and branch numbers. These tubs would be placed into black suitcases and the suitcases into the back of a stationwagon to be taken to the next place.
At 04:45pm every day; almost to the minute, in perfect synchronicity, about forty stationwagons would arrive in the underground car park of the GPO, where suitcases containing the tubs of sorted cheques would be swapped so that the cheques could be returned to the originating branches to be checked and cleared.
Although this is an interesting tale, it serves as an allegory for what happens with preference flows in the above the line vote for the Australian Senate. What happens when a person chooses to be lazy on their Senate ballot paper, which shockingly is between 85% and 95% of all people, they surrender control to their flow of preferences to the backroom operators of that party; the unknown traders of suitcases from and to the back of stationwagons if you will.
As former Greens leader Bob Brown said: "Any party that does not join the behind-closed-doors trade in preferences is a mug."
I personally have no problem with the fact that a member of the Liberal Democratic Party or the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party from NSW has been elected to the Senate if they legitimately worked through the rules and were able to horse trade suitcases to obtain preference flows. Politics is a sport and like any other sport, people should have the freedom to play under the rules in so far as much as they allow.
The problem is that the rules themselves are probably quite quite wrong. By definition and from its roots, the word democracy coming from "demos" the people and "kratos" rule, a democracy should be "rule by the people" and not rule by otherwise hidden forces hiding out in metaphorical car parks.
Yet even a seemingly good idea of removing the power of the ballot box away from metaphorical suitcase traders in car parks back to the voters is fraught with problems:
http://www.watoday.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/tony-abbott-fires-a-warning-shot-at-micro-parties-in-the-senate-20130909-2tf5b.html
Tony Abbott has issued a warning to the disparate group of senators likely to hold the balance of power that they should not try to stymie the Coalition's agenda.
The prime minister-elect also said he supported change to tackle the Senate voting process after micro party candidates in WA, Victoria and NSW look likely to be elected under complex preference deals.
Mr Abbott said his job was to be ''respectful and courteous'' to all members of Parliament, including minor party MPs.
''But in the end I think they all need to respect the government of our nation has a mandate and the Parliament should work with the government of the day to implement its mandate,''
- WA Today, 9th Sep 2013
It seems obvious to me that any proposed changes to reform the voting process which originate from either of the major parties are probably likely to benefit those same major parties. Limits to the numbers of candidates who can appear on ballot papers or even imposing minimums on the number of pre-poll supporters based on party membership or some other mechanism, even raising the required fee to stand as a candidate, must by design benefit the existing party machines.
If I was Grand Poobah and Lord High Everything Else, I wouldn't look at increasing the barriers of entry to candidacy but look at seriously removing the ability of people to negotiate preferences.
Currently an above the line Senate vote involves placing a 1 in one box. I'd suggest that all the boxes above the line be numbered and the preferences which flowed as a result of the order of party lists would follow.
I think that would more than likely remove the race for back office deals and minor parties in particular would have to campaign harder to engage with voters rather than merely engineering votes through preference deals.
Second to that, I would impose a limit to the number of candidates that any given party might put forward for candidacy. If there were 6 Senate seats up for grabs as there usually are in a Senate election, then every party would be limited to only 6 candidates.
This itself does open up the possibility that a major party might start setting up "shadow" parties just so that they could field more than six candidates on the ticket but what's to say that that hasn't already been done in the past? How does the poor voter on election day know that the Stop Preference Mining Party isn't just another shell for the Pioneer Australia Party?
Thirdly, I'd make below the line voting more attractive by decreasing the number of required boxes to be filled in below the line. I don't honestly think that in a race for only 6 seats that they could possibly ever get down to number 30 could they?
Having voters number 30 boxes instead of 110 (which we saw at this election) would encourage more below the line voting. Below the line voting completely negates and destroys any ticket system which a political party sets up. As much fun as it was to write 110 next to that prize eejit at the election, I know that I was very much in the minority as heaps of people were in and out of the polling place long before I'd managed to number that very last box.
Really I don't want to see the plurality of voices disappear from the parliament. I think of the tragedy of the American Congress which only ever sees a very few number of independents but the house of fun across the Tasman which is the House of Representatives of New Zealand; currently housing nine different political parties. Although the Beehive stands next door, the flower of government which has arisen in New Zealand puts our own great steaming mound on the hill to shame.
I like different voices in the parliament and I'd prefer it if those voices actually came from the people instead of metaphorical men in car parks, in blue and red ties and badly cut green suits.
At the end of the day (declared to be 04:30pm) we would switch off the big cheque reading machines and collect several tubs of cheques which had been sorted into bank and branch numbers. These tubs would be placed into black suitcases and the suitcases into the back of a stationwagon to be taken to the next place.
At 04:45pm every day; almost to the minute, in perfect synchronicity, about forty stationwagons would arrive in the underground car park of the GPO, where suitcases containing the tubs of sorted cheques would be swapped so that the cheques could be returned to the originating branches to be checked and cleared.
Although this is an interesting tale, it serves as an allegory for what happens with preference flows in the above the line vote for the Australian Senate. What happens when a person chooses to be lazy on their Senate ballot paper, which shockingly is between 85% and 95% of all people, they surrender control to their flow of preferences to the backroom operators of that party; the unknown traders of suitcases from and to the back of stationwagons if you will.
As former Greens leader Bob Brown said: "Any party that does not join the behind-closed-doors trade in preferences is a mug."
I personally have no problem with the fact that a member of the Liberal Democratic Party or the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party from NSW has been elected to the Senate if they legitimately worked through the rules and were able to horse trade suitcases to obtain preference flows. Politics is a sport and like any other sport, people should have the freedom to play under the rules in so far as much as they allow.
The problem is that the rules themselves are probably quite quite wrong. By definition and from its roots, the word democracy coming from "demos" the people and "kratos" rule, a democracy should be "rule by the people" and not rule by otherwise hidden forces hiding out in metaphorical car parks.
Yet even a seemingly good idea of removing the power of the ballot box away from metaphorical suitcase traders in car parks back to the voters is fraught with problems:
http://www.watoday.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/tony-abbott-fires-a-warning-shot-at-micro-parties-in-the-senate-20130909-2tf5b.html
Tony Abbott has issued a warning to the disparate group of senators likely to hold the balance of power that they should not try to stymie the Coalition's agenda.
The prime minister-elect also said he supported change to tackle the Senate voting process after micro party candidates in WA, Victoria and NSW look likely to be elected under complex preference deals.
Mr Abbott said his job was to be ''respectful and courteous'' to all members of Parliament, including minor party MPs.
''But in the end I think they all need to respect the government of our nation has a mandate and the Parliament should work with the government of the day to implement its mandate,''
- WA Today, 9th Sep 2013
It seems obvious to me that any proposed changes to reform the voting process which originate from either of the major parties are probably likely to benefit those same major parties. Limits to the numbers of candidates who can appear on ballot papers or even imposing minimums on the number of pre-poll supporters based on party membership or some other mechanism, even raising the required fee to stand as a candidate, must by design benefit the existing party machines.
If I was Grand Poobah and Lord High Everything Else, I wouldn't look at increasing the barriers of entry to candidacy but look at seriously removing the ability of people to negotiate preferences.
Currently an above the line Senate vote involves placing a 1 in one box. I'd suggest that all the boxes above the line be numbered and the preferences which flowed as a result of the order of party lists would follow.
I think that would more than likely remove the race for back office deals and minor parties in particular would have to campaign harder to engage with voters rather than merely engineering votes through preference deals.
Second to that, I would impose a limit to the number of candidates that any given party might put forward for candidacy. If there were 6 Senate seats up for grabs as there usually are in a Senate election, then every party would be limited to only 6 candidates.
This itself does open up the possibility that a major party might start setting up "shadow" parties just so that they could field more than six candidates on the ticket but what's to say that that hasn't already been done in the past? How does the poor voter on election day know that the Stop Preference Mining Party isn't just another shell for the Pioneer Australia Party?
Thirdly, I'd make below the line voting more attractive by decreasing the number of required boxes to be filled in below the line. I don't honestly think that in a race for only 6 seats that they could possibly ever get down to number 30 could they?
Having voters number 30 boxes instead of 110 (which we saw at this election) would encourage more below the line voting. Below the line voting completely negates and destroys any ticket system which a political party sets up. As much fun as it was to write 110 next to that prize eejit at the election, I know that I was very much in the minority as heaps of people were in and out of the polling place long before I'd managed to number that very last box.
Really I don't want to see the plurality of voices disappear from the parliament. I think of the tragedy of the American Congress which only ever sees a very few number of independents but the house of fun across the Tasman which is the House of Representatives of New Zealand; currently housing nine different political parties. Although the Beehive stands next door, the flower of government which has arisen in New Zealand puts our own great steaming mound on the hill to shame.
I like different voices in the parliament and I'd prefer it if those voices actually came from the people instead of metaphorical men in car parks, in blue and red ties and badly cut green suits.
September 25, 2013
Horse 1544a - Ezekiel Bulver (Additional)
The previous post was a fabrication; a fib; a lie. There is of course no Ezekiel Bulver and I'm not sure I would wish to have met him either. He is an invention of CS from an essay published in 1944. A further explanation follows.
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver.
- CS Lewis, "Bulverism" from pp.16-20— Undeceptions No. 2 (June 1944)
Full text can be found here: Link - God In The Dock
Mr Lewis never wrote the biography of the imaginary inventor of the eponymous Bulverism. So why did I? Because there is an advert on a lamppost near where I work for a Bowdlerised production of Hamlet and I'd mistaken the two. Thomas Bowdler was a real person though.
Scheduled at 10pm AEST.
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver.
- CS Lewis, "Bulverism" from pp.16-20— Undeceptions No. 2 (June 1944)
Full text can be found here: Link - God In The Dock
Mr Lewis never wrote the biography of the imaginary inventor of the eponymous Bulverism. So why did I? Because there is an advert on a lamppost near where I work for a Bowdlerised production of Hamlet and I'd mistaken the two. Thomas Bowdler was a real person though.
Scheduled at 10pm AEST.
Horse 1544 - The Legacy of Ezekiel Bulver
Ezekiel Bulver: 25th Sep 1893 - 25th Sep 1973
Ezekiel Bulver was a British Conservative MP who was born in Royal Tunbridge Wells in 1893 and represented that same constituency.
Having been a gunner and then a field officer in the First World War; serving in some of the fiercest fighting at Ypres and the Battle for Poelcapelle, he won a Distinguished Service Order for "gallant and distinguished services in the combined X Corps attack on Keerselaarhoek" but it was his return to England and to the House Of Commons where he achieved notoriety.
Firstly as a vigorous supporter of Stanley Baldwin's first premiership he found himself resigned to the opposition backbenches when Baldwin's Government suffered the loss of a vote of confidence.
After Ramsay MacDonald formed a minority government in January of 1924, Bulver really came into his own. He was vocal over many many issues and partly because of the nature of the hung parliament, was certainly a factor in many pieces of radical legislation failing to be passed on the floor of the house.
It was Bulver's style which made him famous and his doggedness with which he refused to let go of an opponent. In fact, it is one of Bulver's speeches for which he truly left his mark on twentieth century politics and even into twenty-first century politics.
Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.
- EK Bulver, to the House of Commons, 19 Aug 1924
Bulver was one of the key advisers who led to the Second Baldwin Government's refusal to negotiate with the Trades Union Congress in April of 1926 which led to the General Strike of May that year. After the general strike many workers felt that they had achieved nothing and were forced to accept longer hours and lower wages.
So critical of "The Nine Days Wonder" was Bulver, that in the House of Commons of May 4 he spoke for 49 minutes in what has now come to be called the "road to anarchy and ruin” speech.
I especially thought of Ezekiel Bulver on this the 120th Anniversary of his birth and the 40th anniversary of his death when this week, our own government under incoming Prime Minister Tony Abbott has shut down the Climate Commission and as part of Operation Sovereign Borders has chosen to withhold information about when and how many refugee asylum seeking boats have been turned around.
Abbott did a very good job during the campaign of telling us why he thought that the Labor Government was wrong and didn't really bother to try any prove why; now faced with the task of government, they're simply hiding and destroying political dialogue.
Ezekiel Bulver would have been proud.
Ezekiel Bulver was a British Conservative MP who was born in Royal Tunbridge Wells in 1893 and represented that same constituency.
Having been a gunner and then a field officer in the First World War; serving in some of the fiercest fighting at Ypres and the Battle for Poelcapelle, he won a Distinguished Service Order for "gallant and distinguished services in the combined X Corps attack on Keerselaarhoek" but it was his return to England and to the House Of Commons where he achieved notoriety.
Firstly as a vigorous supporter of Stanley Baldwin's first premiership he found himself resigned to the opposition backbenches when Baldwin's Government suffered the loss of a vote of confidence.
After Ramsay MacDonald formed a minority government in January of 1924, Bulver really came into his own. He was vocal over many many issues and partly because of the nature of the hung parliament, was certainly a factor in many pieces of radical legislation failing to be passed on the floor of the house.
It was Bulver's style which made him famous and his doggedness with which he refused to let go of an opponent. In fact, it is one of Bulver's speeches for which he truly left his mark on twentieth century politics and even into twenty-first century politics.
Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.
- EK Bulver, to the House of Commons, 19 Aug 1924
Bulver was one of the key advisers who led to the Second Baldwin Government's refusal to negotiate with the Trades Union Congress in April of 1926 which led to the General Strike of May that year. After the general strike many workers felt that they had achieved nothing and were forced to accept longer hours and lower wages.
So critical of "The Nine Days Wonder" was Bulver, that in the House of Commons of May 4 he spoke for 49 minutes in what has now come to be called the "road to anarchy and ruin” speech.
I especially thought of Ezekiel Bulver on this the 120th Anniversary of his birth and the 40th anniversary of his death when this week, our own government under incoming Prime Minister Tony Abbott has shut down the Climate Commission and as part of Operation Sovereign Borders has chosen to withhold information about when and how many refugee asylum seeking boats have been turned around.
Abbott did a very good job during the campaign of telling us why he thought that the Labor Government was wrong and didn't really bother to try any prove why; now faced with the task of government, they're simply hiding and destroying political dialogue.
Ezekiel Bulver would have been proud.
September 20, 2013
Horse 1543 - A Fallacy Continues to Show Itself (The Second Amendment to the US Constitution)
I'm afraid that there's something that I really just don't understand. I can see something so incredibly obvious; yet an entire nation it seems is prepared to ignore it; even argue vociferously against it.
I am of course talking about the incident at the Washington Navy Yard in which Aaron Alexis, who was working as a military contractor, went on a shooting rampage; killing thirteen and wounding a further eight.
Let me clarify this. Aaron Alexis, the gunman, not only completely legally purchased the weapons with which he destroyed people but was actively empowered by a constitutional right to do so.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution says that:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Yet somehow this (especially with coercion and "lobbying" from the The National Rifle Association of America) has morphed into a dogmatic barking of merely the last clause; namely "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" despite and in spite of the consequences.
Earlier this year we saw even more tragically those consequences when at Sandy Hook Elementary School, twenty-six people were destroyed; including twenty children. Yet what was the NRA's response to this? Rather what was the response of the CEO of the NRA?
"the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"
- Wayne LaPierre, CEO The National Rifle Association of America, 21 Dec 2012
Let's think this through shall we?
So, a bloke walks onto a naval base and kills 12 people, but arming teachers at Sandy Hook would have stopped a school massacre? If only, if only someone at defence establishments had more guns...?
As far as I'm concerned, I'm pretty well much convinced that the above statement has been pretty well much proven to be a fallacy and that there actually are no "good guys" with guns; or if there are, where are they?
Come on America... Something's clearly wrong... except...
Yet as far as the NRA is concerned, something is obviously very right with America or else pressure would be brought to bear to change the culture. The killing of 20 school children did nothing and the killing of 13 military personnel also will do nothing to change the culture, much less the idiocy of the Second Amendment and the results therein.
The American people have decided long ago that the deaths of 10,000 people a year and the residual medical costs of gun violence are an acceptable price to pay for "freedom".
If this had happened anywhere in the 'civilised' world it would have been a tragedy, yet in America, 13 people in the grand scheme of things is neither impressive or statistically important.
My judgement must obviously clouded by virtue of the fact that I happen to live in a nation in which after just one mass-shooting, the people and government decided that that was unacceptable and passed laws to prohibit and restrict the use of semi-automatic weapons. When only a single tragedy happened, we in Australia looked at how to prevent it, which I think is a sensible reaction. Clearly I and indeed Australia must obviously be wrong because America looks at tragedies like the Washington Naval Yard and Sandy Hook, flagellates itself for 11 days in the media and then on average waits approximately 78 days for another 10+ people to be destroyed; only to repeat the process.
Really, I ask the question of the utility of law and whether or not it does any real conceivable good.
Didn't someone long ago write about truths which were held to be self-evident? What happened about those?
This is an example where people's "life, liberty" and "their pursuit of happiness" has been stolen, yet America seems to consistently arrive and even argue that allowing people widespread access to the instruments of death is somehow good.
Moreover I personally I fail to see how the continued inclusion of the Second Amendment furthers or promotes the fundamental purposes and guiding principles of the Constitution itself as laid out in the preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
A more "perfect Union"? The establishment of Justice? How does it insure domestic Tranquility or eve provide for the "common" defence? Does the destruction of people needlessly really "promote the general Welfare"?
The way I see it, each of those 12 deaths at the Naval Yard shouldn't be simply a statistic. Every one of those people was a father, a brother, a son, an uncle and very dear and special to someone. Yet because of the operation of the law which allowed someone access to the instruments of death, families are ripped apart, never to be healed. How about telling those families that the destruction of their loved ones and lives are really the "Blessings of Liberty"?
I'm afraid that I really really just don't understand the justification as to why the Second Amendment to the US Constitution should continue to exist, unless the destruction of people is the real aim of the people who continue to defend it.
I am of course talking about the incident at the Washington Navy Yard in which Aaron Alexis, who was working as a military contractor, went on a shooting rampage; killing thirteen and wounding a further eight.
Let me clarify this. Aaron Alexis, the gunman, not only completely legally purchased the weapons with which he destroyed people but was actively empowered by a constitutional right to do so.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution says that:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Yet somehow this (especially with coercion and "lobbying" from the The National Rifle Association of America) has morphed into a dogmatic barking of merely the last clause; namely "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" despite and in spite of the consequences.
Earlier this year we saw even more tragically those consequences when at Sandy Hook Elementary School, twenty-six people were destroyed; including twenty children. Yet what was the NRA's response to this? Rather what was the response of the CEO of the NRA?
"the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"
- Wayne LaPierre, CEO The National Rifle Association of America, 21 Dec 2012
Let's think this through shall we?
So, a bloke walks onto a naval base and kills 12 people, but arming teachers at Sandy Hook would have stopped a school massacre? If only, if only someone at defence establishments had more guns...?
As far as I'm concerned, I'm pretty well much convinced that the above statement has been pretty well much proven to be a fallacy and that there actually are no "good guys" with guns; or if there are, where are they?
Come on America... Something's clearly wrong... except...
Yet as far as the NRA is concerned, something is obviously very right with America or else pressure would be brought to bear to change the culture. The killing of 20 school children did nothing and the killing of 13 military personnel also will do nothing to change the culture, much less the idiocy of the Second Amendment and the results therein.
The American people have decided long ago that the deaths of 10,000 people a year and the residual medical costs of gun violence are an acceptable price to pay for "freedom".
If this had happened anywhere in the 'civilised' world it would have been a tragedy, yet in America, 13 people in the grand scheme of things is neither impressive or statistically important.
My judgement must obviously clouded by virtue of the fact that I happen to live in a nation in which after just one mass-shooting, the people and government decided that that was unacceptable and passed laws to prohibit and restrict the use of semi-automatic weapons. When only a single tragedy happened, we in Australia looked at how to prevent it, which I think is a sensible reaction. Clearly I and indeed Australia must obviously be wrong because America looks at tragedies like the Washington Naval Yard and Sandy Hook, flagellates itself for 11 days in the media and then on average waits approximately 78 days for another 10+ people to be destroyed; only to repeat the process.
Really, I ask the question of the utility of law and whether or not it does any real conceivable good.
Didn't someone long ago write about truths which were held to be self-evident? What happened about those?
This is an example where people's "life, liberty" and "their pursuit of happiness" has been stolen, yet America seems to consistently arrive and even argue that allowing people widespread access to the instruments of death is somehow good.
Moreover I personally I fail to see how the continued inclusion of the Second Amendment furthers or promotes the fundamental purposes and guiding principles of the Constitution itself as laid out in the preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
A more "perfect Union"? The establishment of Justice? How does it insure domestic Tranquility or eve provide for the "common" defence? Does the destruction of people needlessly really "promote the general Welfare"?
The way I see it, each of those 12 deaths at the Naval Yard shouldn't be simply a statistic. Every one of those people was a father, a brother, a son, an uncle and very dear and special to someone. Yet because of the operation of the law which allowed someone access to the instruments of death, families are ripped apart, never to be healed. How about telling those families that the destruction of their loved ones and lives are really the "Blessings of Liberty"?
I'm afraid that I really really just don't understand the justification as to why the Second Amendment to the US Constitution should continue to exist, unless the destruction of people is the real aim of the people who continue to defend it.
September 10, 2013
Horse 1542 - The Senate: The Great Tub Of Ice-Cream
Manipulated, Farscical, Undemocratic, Slapstick - these are some some of the words which have been used to describe the process which we use to elect Senators and the results they produce. I'd like to just add - LONG MAY IT CONTINUE.
Suppose for instance that parliament is like the ice-cream cabinet of your local supermarket. In the lower house we only really ever seem to get two flavours: Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana. Most of the time as these two flavours compete for space in politics, they move closer and closer to the centre and the net result is that a lot of the time despite the different branding we get, we always end up with something beige.
A French sociologist called Maurice Duverger theorised that over time in a single member district system, such as we have in the House of Representatives, tends to produce a two-party system. We can see over the long run of many elections, that two parties tend to occupy the vast majority of seats; including the hung parliament from 2010 to 2013 when the two major parties held 96% of all seats in the lower house. From 2013 onwards, that moves to slightly more than 96%.
In contrast, in the Senate where there is a system of proportional representation, this should produce a greater tendency to multipartism; lo and behold, this appears to be what we're going to end up with. The Senate has been accused in the past as being "unrepresentative swill" but arguably, it is the Senate which more greatly reflects the makeup of modern Australia.
Unlike the Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana House of Representatives, we've seen the election of swirls and nuts into the ice-cream tub that is the Senate. This is in addition to an already wider spectrum of flavours such as Green mint and red Strawberry.
How do we know for instance that the appointment of David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democrats and Ricky Muir from the Australian Motor Enthusiast Party aren't a deliberate protest against Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana? Suddenly we've got boysenberry and walnut in our tub of ice-cream.
What the Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana parties really fear is that the electorate might not like the bland taste that they've had in their mouths for a long time. What they fear is that the electorate might be yearning for a different set of flavours.
Certainly if I take the train and bus across Sydney, I see far far far more than merely the Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana people who make up the vast majority of the parliament. I see guava and pineapple, star fruit and nutmeg, kiwifruit and duku, durian and pitaya people. Does the tub of ice-cream with only two closely related flavours in the lower house better reflect society or do we prefer the multi-coloured kaliedoscope that we get with the tub of ice-cream that is the Senate?
We want to taste something new in politics. We want to experience new flavours, new ideas and new ways of thinking. We want to see the parliament properly represent all Australians rather than the duopoly of Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana; even if that does mean that the nuts get in.
We're sick of beige ice-cream.
Suppose for instance that parliament is like the ice-cream cabinet of your local supermarket. In the lower house we only really ever seem to get two flavours: Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana. Most of the time as these two flavours compete for space in politics, they move closer and closer to the centre and the net result is that a lot of the time despite the different branding we get, we always end up with something beige.
A French sociologist called Maurice Duverger theorised that over time in a single member district system, such as we have in the House of Representatives, tends to produce a two-party system. We can see over the long run of many elections, that two parties tend to occupy the vast majority of seats; including the hung parliament from 2010 to 2013 when the two major parties held 96% of all seats in the lower house. From 2013 onwards, that moves to slightly more than 96%.
In contrast, in the Senate where there is a system of proportional representation, this should produce a greater tendency to multipartism; lo and behold, this appears to be what we're going to end up with. The Senate has been accused in the past as being "unrepresentative swill" but arguably, it is the Senate which more greatly reflects the makeup of modern Australia.
Unlike the Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana House of Representatives, we've seen the election of swirls and nuts into the ice-cream tub that is the Senate. This is in addition to an already wider spectrum of flavours such as Green mint and red Strawberry.
How do we know for instance that the appointment of David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democrats and Ricky Muir from the Australian Motor Enthusiast Party aren't a deliberate protest against Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana? Suddenly we've got boysenberry and walnut in our tub of ice-cream.
What the Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana parties really fear is that the electorate might not like the bland taste that they've had in their mouths for a long time. What they fear is that the electorate might be yearning for a different set of flavours.
Certainly if I take the train and bus across Sydney, I see far far far more than merely the Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana people who make up the vast majority of the parliament. I see guava and pineapple, star fruit and nutmeg, kiwifruit and duku, durian and pitaya people. Does the tub of ice-cream with only two closely related flavours in the lower house better reflect society or do we prefer the multi-coloured kaliedoscope that we get with the tub of ice-cream that is the Senate?
We want to taste something new in politics. We want to experience new flavours, new ideas and new ways of thinking. We want to see the parliament properly represent all Australians rather than the duopoly of Banana-Choc and Choc-Banana; even if that does mean that the nuts get in.
We're sick of beige ice-cream.
Horse 1541 - Charity Sucks Because People Do
Every year the Australian Taxation Office publishes all sorts of really neat statistics (okay, I'm strange, I know) to do with Tax Returns that were lodged in the previous year. We get to find out some really cool things like (okay, I already admitted that I'm sad; strange little man, I know) peoples' wages, the ratio of income derived from sources like dividends and interest as well as the amount declared as charitable donations.
I had a ramble through the figures for 2011/12 and found a pretty sorry looking tale. At least as far as the Australian Taxation Office is concerned, we're just not terribly charitable as a nation at all, despite whatever lies we like to tell ourselves.
During 2011/12, as a nation Australia gave a paltry 0.5% of GDP away as charitable donations; that's pretty poor (now who's sad and strange?). When you consider that we spent 0.7% of GDP on "snack food" for the same period, it's downright scandalous. It seems that we would rather stuff chips down our faces than help those in worse circumstances than ourselves.
Forget the "lucky country", if anything we're the "stingey country".
So then, being disappointed by this "lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck", I decided to see how we fare against other countries and their rates of generosity; sadly, they don't tend to do much better either.
The UK's HM Revenue & Customs Office puts British giving at 0.77% of their GDP. The United States appeared to be way more generous with the figures produced by their Internal Revenue Service at 2.1% of GDP but they also included 1.15% of GDP which is tithes and offerings to church organisations, which are tax deductible. Still, at 0.95% of GDP, Americans are still more generous than the people of Australia.
I found that the Canadian Revenue website was hard to navigate and Germany and France's were simply impossible because I don't know enough German or French but by that stage, I'd lost heart and given up the search anyway.
I suppose that an argument could be made that people who make charitable donations aren't reporting them because of some weird piety or something but Occam's Razor (the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one) leads me to believe that as Adam Smith said in his 1776 book "The Wealth Of Nations" that people act according to their own rational self-interest and self-love (though I'm not terribly sure about it being rational most of the time).
It makes sense for instance that because of that Self-interest, people are more likely to spend that next dollar on themselves (me included) then give it away to charity.
Usually what people are likely to do with the next dollar they earn is described by their marginal propensity to consume or save; it's reasonably easy to calculate that ratio. However, when it comes to giving to charity, if there is such a thing as a marginal propensity to be charitable, it's going to be far harder to calculate.
Probably because there's not actually a direct benefit between the dollar given to charity and the benefit conferred on the person being charitable other than a sense of well-being and/or piety, charitable giving tends to be far more erratic.
Then there's the rather annoying fact that some people are just more generous by nature anyway. Granted that there is a general tendency for people statistically to be less generous as a percentage as their incomes increase but I don't know if that's more to do with the effect of increasing the size of the denominator in calculations or if richer people actually are generally more stingey.
There's a third problem in that people are way way way more generous after they've died than they ever are when they're alive. The realisation that you genuinely can't take it with you, does result in very big portions of some people's estates being given away to charity.
Thinking about all of this, I wondered if there's some sort of way to induce people to be more generous because if America is anything to go by, there must be at least a grain of hope there. What could be done to improve the system? Is there some sort of solution via the market? How do you induce people to be more charitable anyway?
Currently in Australia there is a tax deduction for charitable donations. What if there was some sort of bonus loading say of 25% on that? What if for donations to medical research, there was a specific deduction in one's Medicare Levy?
I will say this though, precisely because charity is such a poor mechanism, I'd prefer government intervention to solve some of societies problems. I'm reminded of the difference for instance of the impact of governments providing schooling in the 1900s as opposed to charities doing it in the 1800s; similar sorts of stories can be drawn from the history of governments providing hospitals as well.
What this does say though is that by force of taxation, society finds a better way to address issues than by leaving it up to the presumed generosity of people.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that charities aren't extremely valuable and that the work that they do is somehow bad, I am suggesting something even more fundamental than that; something darker about human nature itself.
I think I've come to the general conclusion that as a mechanism, charity sucks because people do.
I had a ramble through the figures for 2011/12 and found a pretty sorry looking tale. At least as far as the Australian Taxation Office is concerned, we're just not terribly charitable as a nation at all, despite whatever lies we like to tell ourselves.
During 2011/12, as a nation Australia gave a paltry 0.5% of GDP away as charitable donations; that's pretty poor (now who's sad and strange?). When you consider that we spent 0.7% of GDP on "snack food" for the same period, it's downright scandalous. It seems that we would rather stuff chips down our faces than help those in worse circumstances than ourselves.
Forget the "lucky country", if anything we're the "stingey country".
So then, being disappointed by this "lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck", I decided to see how we fare against other countries and their rates of generosity; sadly, they don't tend to do much better either.
The UK's HM Revenue & Customs Office puts British giving at 0.77% of their GDP. The United States appeared to be way more generous with the figures produced by their Internal Revenue Service at 2.1% of GDP but they also included 1.15% of GDP which is tithes and offerings to church organisations, which are tax deductible. Still, at 0.95% of GDP, Americans are still more generous than the people of Australia.
I found that the Canadian Revenue website was hard to navigate and Germany and France's were simply impossible because I don't know enough German or French but by that stage, I'd lost heart and given up the search anyway.
I suppose that an argument could be made that people who make charitable donations aren't reporting them because of some weird piety or something but Occam's Razor (the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one) leads me to believe that as Adam Smith said in his 1776 book "The Wealth Of Nations" that people act according to their own rational self-interest and self-love (though I'm not terribly sure about it being rational most of the time).
It makes sense for instance that because of that Self-interest, people are more likely to spend that next dollar on themselves (me included) then give it away to charity.
Usually what people are likely to do with the next dollar they earn is described by their marginal propensity to consume or save; it's reasonably easy to calculate that ratio. However, when it comes to giving to charity, if there is such a thing as a marginal propensity to be charitable, it's going to be far harder to calculate.
Probably because there's not actually a direct benefit between the dollar given to charity and the benefit conferred on the person being charitable other than a sense of well-being and/or piety, charitable giving tends to be far more erratic.
Then there's the rather annoying fact that some people are just more generous by nature anyway. Granted that there is a general tendency for people statistically to be less generous as a percentage as their incomes increase but I don't know if that's more to do with the effect of increasing the size of the denominator in calculations or if richer people actually are generally more stingey.
There's a third problem in that people are way way way more generous after they've died than they ever are when they're alive. The realisation that you genuinely can't take it with you, does result in very big portions of some people's estates being given away to charity.
Thinking about all of this, I wondered if there's some sort of way to induce people to be more generous because if America is anything to go by, there must be at least a grain of hope there. What could be done to improve the system? Is there some sort of solution via the market? How do you induce people to be more charitable anyway?
Currently in Australia there is a tax deduction for charitable donations. What if there was some sort of bonus loading say of 25% on that? What if for donations to medical research, there was a specific deduction in one's Medicare Levy?
I will say this though, precisely because charity is such a poor mechanism, I'd prefer government intervention to solve some of societies problems. I'm reminded of the difference for instance of the impact of governments providing schooling in the 1900s as opposed to charities doing it in the 1800s; similar sorts of stories can be drawn from the history of governments providing hospitals as well.
What this does say though is that by force of taxation, society finds a better way to address issues than by leaving it up to the presumed generosity of people.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that charities aren't extremely valuable and that the work that they do is somehow bad, I am suggesting something even more fundamental than that; something darker about human nature itself.
I think I've come to the general conclusion that as a mechanism, charity sucks because people do.
September 09, 2013
Horse 1540 - Election 2013: O Australia, What Hast Thou Done?
As Australia woke up on Sunday morning, as a nation we found ourselves metaphorically slumped over a picket fence, shoes missing, hair suddenly coloured blue, to see Tony Abbott cycle past as the new Prime Minister and whilst in a groggy state and with our heads thumping as if in a hangover thinking "Oh Dear, what have we done?"
Of himself I don't think that Mr Abbott is "the great Satan" for a second. He will probably make for a fairly standard sort of orthodox conservative Prime Minister and provide stable leadership within the Liberal Party; so in than respect I don't see him as necessarily a bad thing. What I am concerned about isn't so much this term of office but the next one following the 2016 election and the one after the 2019 election (assuming Tony decides to sensibly set aside his wish for a double dissolution).
What I fear about an Abbott Government will not happen in the first or possibly second term but might very well happen in the third term.
Mr Abbott went into the election campaign, only releasing costings and actual policy three days before an election. To actually achieve his savings will require the axing of about 600 public service jobs per month between now and June 30 2014. The problem with axing public service jobs isn't so much to do with eliminating waste but the nature of the jobs which end up being removed as a result.
If a government holds out the carrot of voluntary redundancies, then the people most likely to take them up are those people who have the most to gain monetarily. What that essentially means is that the people with the most experience, the people with the greatest skills and the people who potentially have the most to teach and pass on what they know are the first to go.
If you assume that half of the public service is wasteful (which I'm not going to suggest is the case because having been a public servant I can tell you we were hideously understaffed and overworked) then the half which goes are either the people whom a lot of the burden of work falls upon and those people in management who basically take free money and game the system. It is the worst of both worlds.
Instantly the policy designed to remove "waste" rewards wastrels and creates a skill drain and a brain drain. What is left is a public service which is less competent at doing the thing which was intended; serving the public.
Of course when you create a less competent public service by policy design, it leads to the impression of even more waste and the expectation that government isn't able to deliver; thus the door is open to privatisation.
The thing is that once privatised, you're never going to get back the thing which was privatised ever again.
When you think about entities like Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank, the Federal Airports Corporation etc. these things have on occasion gone onto produce massive massive profits. Those profits which would have rightfully have belonged to the government where they could have been reinvested or used to defer the costs of the public service, never again get ploughed into the public purse.
Think about it, Mr Keating who privatised the Commonwealth Bank in 1991 effectively has to date forgone in 2013 dollars the equivalent of $110bn. Mr Howard when he privatised Telstra effectively forwent in 2013 dollars $33bn to date. Now I don't know about you but I find that personally insulting. If someone in business tried to pull that sort of feculence, they'd be shown the door faster than Usain Bolt can run when he is late for the bus.
Mr Abbott's own words are of note here:
We will abolish new health and environmental bureaucracies. We will deliver $1 billion in red tape savings every year. We will develop northern Australia. We will repeal the mining tax. We will create a one stop shop for environmental approvals. We will privatise Medibank Private. We will trim the public service and we will stop throwing good money after bad on the NBN.
- Tony Abbott, Address to Institute of Public Affairs, 5th April 2013
I know I've made mentino of this before but:
http://ipa.org.au/library/publication/1350857668_document_novak_-_paper_-_federal_bureaucracy_-_october_2012.pdf
For example, privatising the ABC, Australia Post, Medibank Private and SBS alone would transfer 44,200 employees to the private sector – an amount 15 times greater than the Gillard government’s proposed 3,100 APS staff reductions for this financial year.
- Julie Novak, page 2 of Razor cuts, not paper cuts: A framework for rightsizing commonwealth government employment, Institute of Public Affairs, October 2012
Rightsizing? Seriously?!
If Labour does what the unions tell them too, then on the other side, the LNP does what organisations like the IPA tell them too. Policy in this country is hardly created by the parties anymore but by the people who fund them. It is the ones who pay the piper who get to decide what tunes are played.
This is what really scares me. Mr Abbott is by nature, a continuance of the Howard spirit whom he learned his trade off as a Cabinet minister from 1998 to 2007. He was part of that government which sold Telstra and the Federal Airports Corporation. Now that he is in government as the top dog, I can pretty well much guarantee that the ABC, the NBN and Medicare will be either privatised or dismantled by the end of the decade.
That's a world which I don't particularly want to live in but one which the Australian public thanks to three years of goading by the media and by scaring the illiterati who live in places like Sydney's west, we may have inadvertently signed up for.
2013 is not the election you are looking for, you can go about your business... move along.
Of himself I don't think that Mr Abbott is "the great Satan" for a second. He will probably make for a fairly standard sort of orthodox conservative Prime Minister and provide stable leadership within the Liberal Party; so in than respect I don't see him as necessarily a bad thing. What I am concerned about isn't so much this term of office but the next one following the 2016 election and the one after the 2019 election (assuming Tony decides to sensibly set aside his wish for a double dissolution).
What I fear about an Abbott Government will not happen in the first or possibly second term but might very well happen in the third term.
Mr Abbott went into the election campaign, only releasing costings and actual policy three days before an election. To actually achieve his savings will require the axing of about 600 public service jobs per month between now and June 30 2014. The problem with axing public service jobs isn't so much to do with eliminating waste but the nature of the jobs which end up being removed as a result.
If a government holds out the carrot of voluntary redundancies, then the people most likely to take them up are those people who have the most to gain monetarily. What that essentially means is that the people with the most experience, the people with the greatest skills and the people who potentially have the most to teach and pass on what they know are the first to go.
If you assume that half of the public service is wasteful (which I'm not going to suggest is the case because having been a public servant I can tell you we were hideously understaffed and overworked) then the half which goes are either the people whom a lot of the burden of work falls upon and those people in management who basically take free money and game the system. It is the worst of both worlds.
Instantly the policy designed to remove "waste" rewards wastrels and creates a skill drain and a brain drain. What is left is a public service which is less competent at doing the thing which was intended; serving the public.
Of course when you create a less competent public service by policy design, it leads to the impression of even more waste and the expectation that government isn't able to deliver; thus the door is open to privatisation.
The thing is that once privatised, you're never going to get back the thing which was privatised ever again.
When you think about entities like Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank, the Federal Airports Corporation etc. these things have on occasion gone onto produce massive massive profits. Those profits which would have rightfully have belonged to the government where they could have been reinvested or used to defer the costs of the public service, never again get ploughed into the public purse.
Think about it, Mr Keating who privatised the Commonwealth Bank in 1991 effectively has to date forgone in 2013 dollars the equivalent of $110bn. Mr Howard when he privatised Telstra effectively forwent in 2013 dollars $33bn to date. Now I don't know about you but I find that personally insulting. If someone in business tried to pull that sort of feculence, they'd be shown the door faster than Usain Bolt can run when he is late for the bus.
Mr Abbott's own words are of note here:
We will abolish new health and environmental bureaucracies. We will deliver $1 billion in red tape savings every year. We will develop northern Australia. We will repeal the mining tax. We will create a one stop shop for environmental approvals. We will privatise Medibank Private. We will trim the public service and we will stop throwing good money after bad on the NBN.
- Tony Abbott, Address to Institute of Public Affairs, 5th April 2013
I know I've made mentino of this before but:
http://ipa.org.au/library/publication/1350857668_document_novak_-_paper_-_federal_bureaucracy_-_october_2012.pdf
For example, privatising the ABC, Australia Post, Medibank Private and SBS alone would transfer 44,200 employees to the private sector – an amount 15 times greater than the Gillard government’s proposed 3,100 APS staff reductions for this financial year.
- Julie Novak, page 2 of Razor cuts, not paper cuts: A framework for rightsizing commonwealth government employment, Institute of Public Affairs, October 2012
Rightsizing? Seriously?!
If Labour does what the unions tell them too, then on the other side, the LNP does what organisations like the IPA tell them too. Policy in this country is hardly created by the parties anymore but by the people who fund them. It is the ones who pay the piper who get to decide what tunes are played.
This is what really scares me. Mr Abbott is by nature, a continuance of the Howard spirit whom he learned his trade off as a Cabinet minister from 1998 to 2007. He was part of that government which sold Telstra and the Federal Airports Corporation. Now that he is in government as the top dog, I can pretty well much guarantee that the ABC, the NBN and Medicare will be either privatised or dismantled by the end of the decade.
That's a world which I don't particularly want to live in but one which the Australian public thanks to three years of goading by the media and by scaring the illiterati who live in places like Sydney's west, we may have inadvertently signed up for.
2013 is not the election you are looking for, you can go about your business... move along.
September 06, 2013
Horse 1539 - When It Is Not News
ABC's Media Watch has pretty well much been Australia's only really serious media analysis television program... well... ever. It is frequently accused of being biased, being written by a bunch of "ratbags" and for promoting the ABC's opinions. Media Watch even says of itself that "everyone loves it until they're on it".
The week before last, it ran a piece which looked at News Corp's and specifically The Daily Telegraph's bias in the run up to the 2013 Federal Election:
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3834127.htm
In the last two weeks the result is even clearer.
Out of 107 stories:
59 in our opinion are quite clearly Anti Labor. While just four are anti the Coalition. Only three of the
Tele’s stories are pro Labor, while 19 are pro the Coalition. And the rest are neutral.
- ABC Media Watch, 26th August 2013
These sorts of stories being as they are will often attract supporters and detractors on both sides of the political divide; in many respects politics is the same as the Celtic vs Rangers Old Firm matches, the difference being that after shouting at each other for 90 minutes, the supporters go home.
One comment however drew my attention and so I've decided to copy it in full:
Paul,
You know as sure as God made little apples that the ABC has voted for Labor and your recent expose on Rudd's rudeness showed that. There was no need for the item about the make-up artist at all. It was hardly worth more than a moment. As for the Tele's bias the ABC's is as bad or worse. But then you must co-operate of be out of a job, eh? I liked your books. They are your strength but campaigning for the ABC and Labor is beneath you. Further your research and experience must show you that in any election News Corp or Fairfax or the like choose whom they will support. News Corp favoured Rudd in 2007. They are not as committed to balance as the public broadcaster should be but these days seems to have lost that characteristic.
- RH, 28 Aug 2013 5:55:33pm
This of course raises a very interesting point. It's all very very to accuse News Corp of bias but unless you actually look at the data, it's meaningless. I initially thought that maybe this may have been evidence of something called an "illusory correlation". That is, that we only tend to complain about things when they affect us for the worse. This also helps to explain why "the other lane always moves faster".
Is this merely a case of an illusory correlation which has been caused by a distorted influence of our memory on our judgments? Really the only way to properly answer that would be to collect empirical data.
I thought I'd have a look at the two final and therefore most heavily fought weeks of the 2007 election campaign.
From the 10th of November 2007 to 23rd November 2007, the Daily Telegraph ran 137 stories which could be described as political in nature. In my opinion, 48 were anti Labor, 9 were anti Coalition. 12 are pro Labor whilst 29 are pro Coalition. Curiously, 3 are sort of apologetic, perhaps lamenting the fact that Kevin Rudd would swing to power inevitably.
Of course even I could be accused of bias in collating the data and I'm sorry that I can't provide links because I was looking at these newspapers on microfilm at the State Library of NSW but I still thinks it illustrates the point.
It probably should have been obvious that The Daily Telegraph would show a degree of bias: every single writer who has ever existed displays bias. Because it is a commercially driven publication; living in a broadly rightist media group, of course it's going to act according to the business wishes of its owners. They even admit on their website that:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/help/about
Our political clout stretches from MacQuarie St to The Hill in Canberra thanks to a team of dedicated journalists who work round the clock. We are dedicated to listening to what our readers feel most passionate about. We don't just publish transport woes, we offer solutions.
- Daily Telegraph website "About Us"
The newspaper doesn't pretend to be a newspaper of record; why should it? I even support the right of the paper and its owners to push any political views that they may have because the right to free speech is one of the fundamental cornerstones of an active democracy. What is at issue though is the use or power that flows from having only a few major sources of news and drivers of political thought.
The question which the ABC is asking; which the Daily Telegraph doesn't answer and to which the general public are I think for the most part too dim to understand, is one of fairness, and the truth is that both the ABC and the Daily Telegraph are politically motivated in answering that question.
It's worth at this point revisiting the words of Benjamin Disraeli, who I think spoke eloquently on this very subject:
It is the initial letters of the four points of the compass that make the word "news," and he must understand that news is that which collies from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point of the compass, then it is a class publication, and not news.
- British PM Benjamin Disraeli, speech in the House of Commons, 26 March 1855
Just how much of the "news" is actual news and which is mere opinion and therefore not news? How much of published opinion do you need to change the political views of a nation; to persuade dullards and the illiterati to vote in a particular way?
Moreover, is the Daily Telegraph brazen enough to run with the headline on Sunday when Tony Abbott is Prime Minister "It's The Tele Wot Won It"?... maybe.
The week before last, it ran a piece which looked at News Corp's and specifically The Daily Telegraph's bias in the run up to the 2013 Federal Election:
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3834127.htm
In the last two weeks the result is even clearer.
Out of 107 stories:
59 in our opinion are quite clearly Anti Labor. While just four are anti the Coalition. Only three of the
Tele’s stories are pro Labor, while 19 are pro the Coalition. And the rest are neutral.
- ABC Media Watch, 26th August 2013
These sorts of stories being as they are will often attract supporters and detractors on both sides of the political divide; in many respects politics is the same as the Celtic vs Rangers Old Firm matches, the difference being that after shouting at each other for 90 minutes, the supporters go home.
One comment however drew my attention and so I've decided to copy it in full:
Paul,
You know as sure as God made little apples that the ABC has voted for Labor and your recent expose on Rudd's rudeness showed that. There was no need for the item about the make-up artist at all. It was hardly worth more than a moment. As for the Tele's bias the ABC's is as bad or worse. But then you must co-operate of be out of a job, eh? I liked your books. They are your strength but campaigning for the ABC and Labor is beneath you. Further your research and experience must show you that in any election News Corp or Fairfax or the like choose whom they will support. News Corp favoured Rudd in 2007. They are not as committed to balance as the public broadcaster should be but these days seems to have lost that characteristic.
- RH, 28 Aug 2013 5:55:33pm
This of course raises a very interesting point. It's all very very to accuse News Corp of bias but unless you actually look at the data, it's meaningless. I initially thought that maybe this may have been evidence of something called an "illusory correlation". That is, that we only tend to complain about things when they affect us for the worse. This also helps to explain why "the other lane always moves faster".
Is this merely a case of an illusory correlation which has been caused by a distorted influence of our memory on our judgments? Really the only way to properly answer that would be to collect empirical data.
I thought I'd have a look at the two final and therefore most heavily fought weeks of the 2007 election campaign.
From the 10th of November 2007 to 23rd November 2007, the Daily Telegraph ran 137 stories which could be described as political in nature. In my opinion, 48 were anti Labor, 9 were anti Coalition. 12 are pro Labor whilst 29 are pro Coalition. Curiously, 3 are sort of apologetic, perhaps lamenting the fact that Kevin Rudd would swing to power inevitably.
Of course even I could be accused of bias in collating the data and I'm sorry that I can't provide links because I was looking at these newspapers on microfilm at the State Library of NSW but I still thinks it illustrates the point.
It probably should have been obvious that The Daily Telegraph would show a degree of bias: every single writer who has ever existed displays bias. Because it is a commercially driven publication; living in a broadly rightist media group, of course it's going to act according to the business wishes of its owners. They even admit on their website that:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/help/about
Our political clout stretches from MacQuarie St to The Hill in Canberra thanks to a team of dedicated journalists who work round the clock. We are dedicated to listening to what our readers feel most passionate about. We don't just publish transport woes, we offer solutions.
- Daily Telegraph website "About Us"
The newspaper doesn't pretend to be a newspaper of record; why should it? I even support the right of the paper and its owners to push any political views that they may have because the right to free speech is one of the fundamental cornerstones of an active democracy. What is at issue though is the use or power that flows from having only a few major sources of news and drivers of political thought.
The question which the ABC is asking; which the Daily Telegraph doesn't answer and to which the general public are I think for the most part too dim to understand, is one of fairness, and the truth is that both the ABC and the Daily Telegraph are politically motivated in answering that question.
It's worth at this point revisiting the words of Benjamin Disraeli, who I think spoke eloquently on this very subject:
It is the initial letters of the four points of the compass that make the word "news," and he must understand that news is that which collies from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point of the compass, then it is a class publication, and not news.
- British PM Benjamin Disraeli, speech in the House of Commons, 26 March 1855
Just how much of the "news" is actual news and which is mere opinion and therefore not news? How much of published opinion do you need to change the political views of a nation; to persuade dullards and the illiterati to vote in a particular way?
Moreover, is the Daily Telegraph brazen enough to run with the headline on Sunday when Tony Abbott is Prime Minister "It's The Tele Wot Won It"?... maybe.
August 30, 2013
Horse 1538 - Syria, The Sixty Batman Gambit Pileup
"It is an offence against humanity and arguably is a crime against humanity. Therefore, it is now critical that the international community move towards agreement on a robust international response to the regime.
In the absence of such a response, the problem is that this regime could then take succour that it could do this again."
- PM Kevin Rudd, 29th Aug 2013
I think it's pretty obvious that if a chemical weapons attack upon its own people has been carried out by the Syrian Assad regime, then that's obviously a horrible horrible thing and an appropriate response needs to be made. The problem doesn't lie in recognising that this is a very bad thing, the problem is the gambit pileups which are going on.
A gambit in chess is when you play a trap, hoping that the other player will fall for it.
A regular Gambit Pileup involves complicated plans where I trick you into manipulating me who then manipulates you into manipulating me who then manipulates you. A Batman Gambit is a complicated plan that revolves entirely around people doing exactly what you'd expect them to do, like Batman.
A Sixty Batman Gambit Pileup... is sixty kinds of bad.
The United States is two parties divided against itself. You have Republicans who think it's a good idea, Republicans who think it's a bad idea, Democrats who think it's a good idea and Democrats who think it's a bad idea. The House and the Senate are currently cut right across party lines and getting anyone to agree on anything might well prove impossible.
Congress 113 is as dysfunctional as Congress 112 which managed to pass even less legislation than Congress 80 which was nicknamed the "Do Nothing Congress" by President Harry S. Truman.
On top of this is this rather glaringly obvious provision in the US Constitution as pointed out by Senator Rand Paul:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/rand-paul-syria-security-connection-96000.html
"The United States should condemn the use of chemical weapons. We should ascertain who used the weapons and we should have an open debate in Congress over whether the situation warrants U.S. involvement. The Constitution grants the power to declare war to Congress not the President."
- Senator Rand Paul, via Politico, 28th Aug 2013
Article 1, Section 8 provides that the Congress specifically has the exclusive power to declare war. There's also the 60 day in which forces can be deployed with a 30 day pull out period without without congressional approval. This provision met with howls of derision from Congress 112 and calls to impeach President Obama during the strikes on Libya in 2011.
Of course actually doing anything to Syria might be akin to poking a hornet's nest. I can pretty much guarantee that Hezbollah for instance would take US intervention as an offence and they're wacky enough to attack Israel in retaliation.
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Hezbollah-If-Assad-is-threatened-we-will-hit-Israel-324612
“In the event of a qualitative strike that aims to change the balance of power in Syria, Hezbollah will fight on 'various fronts'. However, if the Western attack is limited to certain targets in Syria, then, Hezbollah will not intervene”
- Jerusalem Post, 29th Aug 2013
Even though the Arab League basically slammed Assad for the gas attack on Tuesday I think that's only them trying to take out political cover against an impending Sixty Batman Gambit Pileup - even Risk players know that the Middle East is impossible to hold.
But there's an even more bonkers and wackier player out there and they come in the form of Hassan Rouhani of Iran:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/repercussions-us-military-strike-syria/story?id=20093229
Iranian leaders also issued strong rhetoric in recent days, warning the U.S. to stay out of the conflict in Syria and threatening to retaliate against Israel in response to any military meddling. One official was quoted in Iran's Fars news service saying that Iran would "flatten the place (Israel) that is tied to the U.S.'s national security."
So let me get this straight, if western powers attack Syria for its use of chemical weapons... then Iran who isn't part of this argument, then attacks Israel who is also not part of this argument. Forgive my complete lack of understanding here but I just don't see the logic of this at all, other than that Hassan Rouhani is just as bonkers as the guy he replaced as leader of Iran.
This gets even weirder:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10275158/Syria-crisis-No-to-war-blow-to-Cameron.html
Dozens of Conservative MPs refused to support the Prime Minister and sided with Labour in opposing a Government motion which supported the principle of military intervention. The motion backing the use of force "if necessary" was rejected by 285 votes to 272, a majority of 13 votes.
It is the first time that a British Government has been blocked from executing a military deployment and highlights the deep mistrust of official intelligence in the wake of the Iraq war.
- The Telegraph, 29th Aug 2013.
I found this remark most revealing by the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Milliband:
“I am very clear about the fact that we have to learn the lessons of Iraq. Of course we have got to learn those lessons and one of the most important lessons was indeed about respect for the United Nations. I do not rule out supporting the Prime Minister but I believe he has to make a better case than he did today.”
There are of course major differences between 2003 and a decade later.
In 2003 Labour had 413 of 641 seats; and had a spillover of 92. In 2013, Mr Cameron heads a coalition and of 650 seats, the Tories only hold 306; by themselves they're short by 19.
Would going into another war be enough to break the coalition between the Tories and the LibDems? Admittedly if the Lid-Dems were to switch their alliance to Labour, the new coalition would still be short by 10 seats on the floor and whilst that's not enough to form a new government, it might be good enough to cause a vote of no confidence or a loss of supply. If either of those were to happen, then that is the end of the current term of government and a general election might not return Cameron as PM.
On top of all this, it doesn't matter which way you try to unravel the explanation of everyone's response on the outside of Syria (which is chaotic and bonkers), there isn't even a proper explanation of what's going on inside because there's an evil government and several intertwined religious conflicts going on at the same time.
There's at least the Syrian government, the People's Army, the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front, Al-Abbas, Al-Tawhid, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah, the Syrian Islamic Front and a loose association of the Democratic Union Party, and that's all that's mentioned in this one article I've just read.
Meanwhile, even if there are or aren't any chemical weapons used, there still are conventional weapons used against ordinary people and that in itself is a stupid and pointless waste of money and more importantly, people's lives.
"It is an offence against humanity and arguably is a crime against humanity."
In the absence of such a response, the problem is that this regime could then take succour that it could do this again."
- PM Kevin Rudd, 29th Aug 2013
I think it's pretty obvious that if a chemical weapons attack upon its own people has been carried out by the Syrian Assad regime, then that's obviously a horrible horrible thing and an appropriate response needs to be made. The problem doesn't lie in recognising that this is a very bad thing, the problem is the gambit pileups which are going on.
A gambit in chess is when you play a trap, hoping that the other player will fall for it.
A regular Gambit Pileup involves complicated plans where I trick you into manipulating me who then manipulates you into manipulating me who then manipulates you. A Batman Gambit is a complicated plan that revolves entirely around people doing exactly what you'd expect them to do, like Batman.
A Sixty Batman Gambit Pileup... is sixty kinds of bad.
The United States is two parties divided against itself. You have Republicans who think it's a good idea, Republicans who think it's a bad idea, Democrats who think it's a good idea and Democrats who think it's a bad idea. The House and the Senate are currently cut right across party lines and getting anyone to agree on anything might well prove impossible.
Congress 113 is as dysfunctional as Congress 112 which managed to pass even less legislation than Congress 80 which was nicknamed the "Do Nothing Congress" by President Harry S. Truman.
On top of this is this rather glaringly obvious provision in the US Constitution as pointed out by Senator Rand Paul:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/rand-paul-syria-security-connection-96000.html
"The United States should condemn the use of chemical weapons. We should ascertain who used the weapons and we should have an open debate in Congress over whether the situation warrants U.S. involvement. The Constitution grants the power to declare war to Congress not the President."
- Senator Rand Paul, via Politico, 28th Aug 2013
Article 1, Section 8 provides that the Congress specifically has the exclusive power to declare war. There's also the 60 day in which forces can be deployed with a 30 day pull out period without without congressional approval. This provision met with howls of derision from Congress 112 and calls to impeach President Obama during the strikes on Libya in 2011.
Of course actually doing anything to Syria might be akin to poking a hornet's nest. I can pretty much guarantee that Hezbollah for instance would take US intervention as an offence and they're wacky enough to attack Israel in retaliation.
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Hezbollah-If-Assad-is-threatened-we-will-hit-Israel-324612
“In the event of a qualitative strike that aims to change the balance of power in Syria, Hezbollah will fight on 'various fronts'. However, if the Western attack is limited to certain targets in Syria, then, Hezbollah will not intervene”
- Jerusalem Post, 29th Aug 2013
Even though the Arab League basically slammed Assad for the gas attack on Tuesday I think that's only them trying to take out political cover against an impending Sixty Batman Gambit Pileup - even Risk players know that the Middle East is impossible to hold.
But there's an even more bonkers and wackier player out there and they come in the form of Hassan Rouhani of Iran:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/repercussions-us-military-strike-syria/story?id=20093229
Iranian leaders also issued strong rhetoric in recent days, warning the U.S. to stay out of the conflict in Syria and threatening to retaliate against Israel in response to any military meddling. One official was quoted in Iran's Fars news service saying that Iran would "flatten the place (Israel) that is tied to the U.S.'s national security."
- ABC News (America), 29th Aug 2013
“In case of a U.S. military strike against Syria, the flames of outrage of the region’s revolutionaries will point toward the Zionist regime,”
- New York Times, 28 Aug 2013
So let me get this straight, if western powers attack Syria for its use of chemical weapons... then Iran who isn't part of this argument, then attacks Israel who is also not part of this argument. Forgive my complete lack of understanding here but I just don't see the logic of this at all, other than that Hassan Rouhani is just as bonkers as the guy he replaced as leader of Iran.
This gets even weirder:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10275158/Syria-crisis-No-to-war-blow-to-Cameron.html
Dozens of Conservative MPs refused to support the Prime Minister and sided with Labour in opposing a Government motion which supported the principle of military intervention. The motion backing the use of force "if necessary" was rejected by 285 votes to 272, a majority of 13 votes.
It is the first time that a British Government has been blocked from executing a military deployment and highlights the deep mistrust of official intelligence in the wake of the Iraq war.
- The Telegraph, 29th Aug 2013.
I found this remark most revealing by the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Milliband:
“I am very clear about the fact that we have to learn the lessons of Iraq. Of course we have got to learn those lessons and one of the most important lessons was indeed about respect for the United Nations. I do not rule out supporting the Prime Minister but I believe he has to make a better case than he did today.”
There are of course major differences between 2003 and a decade later.
In 2003 Labour had 413 of 641 seats; and had a spillover of 92. In 2013, Mr Cameron heads a coalition and of 650 seats, the Tories only hold 306; by themselves they're short by 19.
Would going into another war be enough to break the coalition between the Tories and the LibDems? Admittedly if the Lid-Dems were to switch their alliance to Labour, the new coalition would still be short by 10 seats on the floor and whilst that's not enough to form a new government, it might be good enough to cause a vote of no confidence or a loss of supply. If either of those were to happen, then that is the end of the current term of government and a general election might not return Cameron as PM.
On top of all this, it doesn't matter which way you try to unravel the explanation of everyone's response on the outside of Syria (which is chaotic and bonkers), there isn't even a proper explanation of what's going on inside because there's an evil government and several intertwined religious conflicts going on at the same time.
There's at least the Syrian government, the People's Army, the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front, Al-Abbas, Al-Tawhid, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah, the Syrian Islamic Front and a loose association of the Democratic Union Party, and that's all that's mentioned in this one article I've just read.
Meanwhile, even if there are or aren't any chemical weapons used, there still are conventional weapons used against ordinary people and that in itself is a stupid and pointless waste of money and more importantly, people's lives.
"It is an offence against humanity and arguably is a crime against humanity."
August 28, 2013
Horse 1537 - Hashtag #ImVotingLiberal Goes Hilariously Wrong
Twitter is a sometimes hilarious place.
The Twitter handle @ImVotingLiberal and the corresponding Facebook page facebook.com/imvotingliberal have either been created by a Liberal Party supporter or the party themselves.
In the blurb for the handle @ImVotingLiberal it says:
We're young and voting Liberal on September 7, and this is why... Send us your photos to imvotingliberal@gmail.com.
This is an example of what they were expecting, I assume:
Or maybe this:
As you'd logically expect, Australia being the land of weird land of snark and political satire, had people who support the Labor Party hijack the hashtag #imvotingliberal to make fun of the Liberal Party and Tony Abbott. The joke didn't stop there though, the punchline just joke funnier.
After Australians started going to bed at about 10:30pm EST, the hashtag was re-hijacked by a large American audience. Suddenly, supporters of America's Democratic Party took it to mean that the hashtag was presumably in support of President Obama or something. Not long after that the hashtag was re-re-hijacked by supporters of America's Republican Party to join the land of snark and satire against them.
The word "liberal" in Australian politics (as indeed most of the Anglosphere) means set of idelogies which cover centre-right economic liberalism as opposed to the way it is used in the United States which is more closely aligned with social liberalism.
I get the impression that the American audience who saw #imvotingliberal
a) had no idea of the context that was intended for the hashtag
b) had no idea that there is an Australian Election on Sep 7
c) had no idea that one of the major parties in Australia is called the Liberal Party
d) had no idea that the Liberal Party is a centre-right pro-business party and is more akin to their Republican Party
When people in Australia began to wake up, from about 08:30am they saw what had happened. Suddenly, Australians coming from the land of weird land of snark and political satire, re-re-re-hijacked the hashtag until we have what we see now, a glorious mess.
This sort of thing isn't a new phenomenon by a long shot. The word which we most commonly use for this is "meme" which is derived from the Ancient Greek "mimeme" which means "an imitated thing". The internet and particularly Twitter which is pretty well much instant, is a perfect media through which things propagate.
"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation."
- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976)
It's just amusing in cases like this when memetic mutation happens so quickly that we end up with something being re-re-re-hijacked in the space of less than 12 hours.
The Twitter handle @ImVotingLiberal and the corresponding Facebook page facebook.com/imvotingliberal have either been created by a Liberal Party supporter or the party themselves.
In the blurb for the handle @ImVotingLiberal it says:
We're young and voting Liberal on September 7, and this is why... Send us your photos to imvotingliberal@gmail.com.
This is an example of what they were expecting, I assume:
Or maybe this:
As you'd logically expect, Australia being the land of weird land of snark and political satire, had people who support the Labor Party hijack the hashtag #imvotingliberal to make fun of the Liberal Party and Tony Abbott. The joke didn't stop there though, the punchline just joke funnier.
After Australians started going to bed at about 10:30pm EST, the hashtag was re-hijacked by a large American audience. Suddenly, supporters of America's Democratic Party took it to mean that the hashtag was presumably in support of President Obama or something. Not long after that the hashtag was re-re-hijacked by supporters of America's Republican Party to join the land of snark and satire against them.
The word "liberal" in Australian politics (as indeed most of the Anglosphere) means set of idelogies which cover centre-right economic liberalism as opposed to the way it is used in the United States which is more closely aligned with social liberalism.
I get the impression that the American audience who saw #imvotingliberal
a) had no idea of the context that was intended for the hashtag
b) had no idea that there is an Australian Election on Sep 7
c) had no idea that one of the major parties in Australia is called the Liberal Party
d) had no idea that the Liberal Party is a centre-right pro-business party and is more akin to their Republican Party
When people in Australia began to wake up, from about 08:30am they saw what had happened. Suddenly, Australians coming from the land of weird land of snark and political satire, re-re-re-hijacked the hashtag until we have what we see now, a glorious mess.
This sort of thing isn't a new phenomenon by a long shot. The word which we most commonly use for this is "meme" which is derived from the Ancient Greek "mimeme" which means "an imitated thing". The internet and particularly Twitter which is pretty well much instant, is a perfect media through which things propagate.
"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation."
- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976)
It's just amusing in cases like this when memetic mutation happens so quickly that we end up with something being re-re-re-hijacked in the space of less than 12 hours.
August 27, 2013
Horse 1536 - Just How Would We Pick A President Anyway?
In Horse 1500, I wrote a piece defending the position of the Governor-General and why I think that having a deliberately ambiguous set of powers has in practice proven to be a good thing. I want to know what would happen if Australia were to make that leap and become a republic.
Firstly it would be reasonable to assume that the people of Australia would probably wish for the President (for want of a better title) to assume the same powers that the Governor-General currently holds (even though the vast bulk of people, including the Governor-General in practice, don't actually know what they are).
I would think that this is probably the most sensible idea because it would be the least disruptive of governance and it would keep the vast bulk of the parliamentary systems which we have in place intact. The executive of the parliament would still remain in the House of Representatives and equivalent lower houses in State Parliaments like the New South Wales Legislative Council. In parliamentary systems where the executive and legislative branches of government are separated, it leaves the door open for the executive to be made up of people who were never elected. At least in a Westminster system, all the members of Cabinet have come from the floor of the House and therefore have been elected by someone.
Secondly, it would be reasonable to assume that, considering the main reason that that 1999 referendum failed, the people of Australia would prefer the direct election of the President.
Here we find a snag. Personally I think it would be best if the President were non-partisan and even better if they'd never been affiliated formally with any political party; however, as soon as you decide to elect anyone, the position itself becomes politicised.
One of the hard facts about politics that over time, people will naturally arrange themselves into more highly organised factions for the purposes of getting people elected; they also have the right to do so. The problem there is that concurrently with people arranging themselves into more highly organised factions, those factions which are otherwise called political parties, tend to drive out other non-affiliated candidates.
The question then I suppose is, how do you design an election process so that it produces non-partisan candidates?
If you open up the candidacy to everyone, then its very highly likely that lots and lots and lots of people will want to run for the position. In the Senate and other upper houses to Australia Parliaments, because there is Proportional Representation you always invariably get lots of candidates. For the 2013 Senate election there are 110 candidates contesting just 12 seats. In 1999 the NSW Legislative Council had 264 candidates in 80 groups contesting 21 seats. Somewhere down the line, the threshold of madness is crossed.
- 110 candidates: not quite the 'tablecloth'
Assuming that you do open up the candidacy to everyone, then how would you whittle down the field from many to few? If you open it up to parties with only a minimum number of members, then that immediately biases the race in favour of established political candidates. If the candidacy is limited by entry fee, then it's likely that only the rich or those endorsed by political machines would ever bother to run. Is that really the best outcome?
Mind you under the current system of appointing Governors and Governors-General there is no election at all and the monarch usually acts on the advice of the sitting government of the day:
http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchAndCommonwealth/Australia/TheQueensroleinAustralia.aspx
The Queen is represented in Australia at the federal level by a Governor-General. He or she is appointed by The Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister of Australia and is completely independent of the British Government.
At the state level The Queen is represented by the Governors of each state who are appointed on the advice of each state Premier.
- from the Official Website of the British Monarchy.
The list of Governors-General includes mainly ex-soldiers and legal people, though it has included royalty and a former leader of the Labor Party and Treasurer in Bill Hayden. Perhaps because we don't really see the Governors and Governors-General act on a regular basis, we're fine with the way that the system works. Certainly all of the complaints that I've ever read with regards Australian republicanism have more to do with existence of a foreign monarchy rather than their representatives who are currently not elected.
If we were to look Ireland and India which most closely resemble the likely configuration of what a future Republic of Australia would look like, we find that Ireland has a direct election but India uses an electoral college system which is even more hideously complex than the one used to appoint the President in the United States.
I suppose that Australia could run some sort of electoral college system like the United States which would give 226 electoral college votes all up (150 + 76) but that would mean that if New South Wales and Victoria both voted the same way, they'd rack up 109 of 113 votes required* and that's sort of counter intuitive to the idea that the little states shouldn't be bullied by the big ones and the reason that the Senate exists in the way that it does. The idea is probably fine for the United States which has 50 states or India which has 28 states and 7 union territories but for Australia with only 6, it starts to look silly.
What about the idea that out of the 23 million of us, we just choose someone at random. Just feed every name on the electoral roll in the country into some giant machine and then have it spit out one name. If we appoint them for 5 years, who wouldn't want to jump at the opportunity to be President of Australia?
What would be so bad about a plumber from Perth, or an architect from Adelaide, a builder from Ballarat or a lawyer from Lithgow being made Grand-Poohbah of Australia? Billy Hughes mended umbrellas, Stanley Bruce was a barrister, Ben Chifley a train driver and Joseph Cook had been a coal miner before becoming Prime Minister. Australia has a proud history of ordinary people eventually rising through the ranks to public office, so why not just pull up one of us to the top spot. If becoming a republic is inevitable which I suspect it is, I'd rather someone who's done a real job rather than a career politician become head of state.
Personally I think that the idea of apathetic inertia is the best solution and that the system remains as is but if we absolutely must change to a republic for change's sake (and I see it as no more than this), then I'd rather that the position remain as anonymous and vague as the Governor-General. It would be best if they were elected by the people, or not elected at all and better if they weren't a politician.
Well that is what I think anyway.
*Electoral College makeup if Australia were to adopt the same logic as the US.
NSW: 48 + 12 = 60
Vic: 37 + 12 = 49
Qld: 30 + 12 = 42
WA: 15 + 12 = 27
SA: 11 + 12 = 23
Tas: 5 + 12 = 17
ACT: 2 + 2 = 4
NT: 2 + 2 = 4
Mind you under the current system of appointing Governors and Governors-General there is no election at all and the monarch usually acts on the advice of the sitting government of the day:
http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchAndCommonwealth/Australia/TheQueensroleinAustralia.aspx
The Queen is represented in Australia at the federal level by a Governor-General. He or she is appointed by The Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister of Australia and is completely independent of the British Government.
At the state level The Queen is represented by the Governors of each state who are appointed on the advice of each state Premier.
- from the Official Website of the British Monarchy.
The list of Governors-General includes mainly ex-soldiers and legal people, though it has included royalty and a former leader of the Labor Party and Treasurer in Bill Hayden. Perhaps because we don't really see the Governors and Governors-General act on a regular basis, we're fine with the way that the system works. Certainly all of the complaints that I've ever read with regards Australian republicanism have more to do with existence of a foreign monarchy rather than their representatives who are currently not elected.
If we were to look Ireland and India which most closely resemble the likely configuration of what a future Republic of Australia would look like, we find that Ireland has a direct election but India uses an electoral college system which is even more hideously complex than the one used to appoint the President in the United States.
I suppose that Australia could run some sort of electoral college system like the United States which would give 226 electoral college votes all up (150 + 76) but that would mean that if New South Wales and Victoria both voted the same way, they'd rack up 109 of 113 votes required* and that's sort of counter intuitive to the idea that the little states shouldn't be bullied by the big ones and the reason that the Senate exists in the way that it does. The idea is probably fine for the United States which has 50 states or India which has 28 states and 7 union territories but for Australia with only 6, it starts to look silly.
What about the idea that out of the 23 million of us, we just choose someone at random. Just feed every name on the electoral roll in the country into some giant machine and then have it spit out one name. If we appoint them for 5 years, who wouldn't want to jump at the opportunity to be President of Australia?
What would be so bad about a plumber from Perth, or an architect from Adelaide, a builder from Ballarat or a lawyer from Lithgow being made Grand-Poohbah of Australia? Billy Hughes mended umbrellas, Stanley Bruce was a barrister, Ben Chifley a train driver and Joseph Cook had been a coal miner before becoming Prime Minister. Australia has a proud history of ordinary people eventually rising through the ranks to public office, so why not just pull up one of us to the top spot. If becoming a republic is inevitable which I suspect it is, I'd rather someone who's done a real job rather than a career politician become head of state.
Personally I think that the idea of apathetic inertia is the best solution and that the system remains as is but if we absolutely must change to a republic for change's sake (and I see it as no more than this), then I'd rather that the position remain as anonymous and vague as the Governor-General. It would be best if they were elected by the people, or not elected at all and better if they weren't a politician.
Well that is what I think anyway.
*Electoral College makeup if Australia were to adopt the same logic as the US.
NSW: 48 + 12 = 60
Vic: 37 + 12 = 49
Qld: 30 + 12 = 42
WA: 15 + 12 = 27
SA: 11 + 12 = 23
Tas: 5 + 12 = 17
ACT: 2 + 2 = 4
NT: 2 + 2 = 4
August 26, 2013
Horse 1535 - Let the Umpires Umpire.
Australia 492-9d & 111-6d drew with England 377 & 206-5
The Fifth and final Test between Australia and England has ended in a draw and it appears that there are several people who aren't happy with the result; this after a series which was full of controversy surrounding the Decision Review System.
Let's think this through properly shall we. I know that I've written about this sort of thing before but again we come back to one of the fundamental questions of umpiring: To what degree do we allow the umpires to do their job?
It is totally appalling that they can put regulations like this together without fully thinking through the likely consequences.
Neither is this bad-light ruling the only one. The other is the one that concerns runners. You could have a situation where a team needs 10 runs to win the Ashes, and a batsman with an injured hamstring cannot come to the crease because he is not allowed someone to run for him.
This sort of thing must never happen again - a full house, a terrific finish unfolding, and the umpires being forced to bring it all to a crashing halt. It's just not acceptable.
- by Jonathan Agnew, BBC cricket correspondent, 25th Aug 2013
Why Aggers, why? You don't happen to like the result, so why isn't it acceptable? I've seen it plenty of times in football where a penalty has been given where it shouldn't, where they probably should have been given and haven't and where far too much time has been added on.
Specifically, what was so unacceptable about the result to this match?
The umpires who, having been charged with the duty of overseeing the match have acted according to what they see fit. Arguably the most important law in all the laws of Cricket is Law 3 which states that:
Before the match, two umpires shall be appointed, one for each end, to control the game as required by the Laws, with absolute impartiality.
- Law 3 of the Laws Of Cricket.
Take note of those two words "absolute impartiality". The umpires whose duty it is to control the game must do so without showing any favour to either side. At parish, church, district and club cricket level where one player from the batting side must sometimes act as an umpire, there is an obvious internal conflict of interest but at international level where neutral umpires are appointed, this is not the case.
If we actually bother to look at the facts surrounding the decision taken on Day Five of the Fifth Test by Aleem Dar and Kumar Dharmasena, we'd find that their decision to stop play due to bad light with four possible overs to play, was taken precisely in that spirit of "absolute impartiality".
3.5.3 Suspension of play for adverse conditions of ground, weather or light.
b) If at any time the umpires together agree that the conditions of ground, weather or light are so bad that there is obvious and foreseeable risk to the safety of any player or umpire, so that it would be unreasonable or dangerous for play to take place, then they shall immediately suspend play, or not allow play to commence or to restart. The decision as to whether conditions are so bad as to warrant such action is one for the umpires alone to make.
That last sentence is of note: "The decision... is one for the umpires alone to make". Remember, on the Second Day of the same Test Match, play was also called off because of bad light but in that circumstance, the light was actually better. For the umpires not to call it off, would have been to make a mockery of their own decisions previous; so this decision was therefore consistent with what had already taken place.
Really this boils down to a matter of timing and perception. To be totally blunt, Michael Clarke's decision to declare for 111 was quite frankly idiotic. Kevin Petersen proved the idiocy of that decision to declare by coming out and smashing his 50 from 36 deliveries which was in start contrast to his very pedestrian display in the first innings. Clarke's decision put the smell of meat in the air and England came prepared to have a banquet.
Okay, so had the match gone on for just four overs more, would England have won? Possibly, but does that make the decision by the umpires to apply the laws with "absolute impartiality" any more or less acceptable? If the margin had been a mere 2 runs or a massive 400 runs, would the level of outrage be different?
I think that particularly in an age where "monetisation" of sport seems to be so much more rampant than it used to be, the level of respect given to umpires and officials is falling. Even if they do happen to be paid to do the job of umpiring, an absolutely partial audience isn't exactly the most reliable judges of the judges. Being an umpire, a judge or a referee of any sport is a thankless task and with a lot of decisions you make in administering the laws and rules of whatever sport it is, you alienate half the viewing audience.
Umpiring shouldn't be about delivering a spectacle or even the entertainment of the public. The task given to an umpire is the administration, application and judging of the game under the laws which govern it. Why must we continue to argue with the umpires, who are doing their job as they see fit?
Let the umpires umpire.
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