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'Australia Rising' ...
... Coalition falling. John Howard's 'vision for 2020' seems from the news reports to have been more about what the future isn't (it isn't about climate change, it isn't about workers rights) than what it will be. Full text below for your comments ...
SMH poll on "Who do you agree with on climate change?" has been fairly consistently running 76% Rudd to 18% Howard, so this looks like another one where the famous Howard political antennae are twitching in the wrong wind.
Nonetheless, you have to see this as an attempt to get a late entry in the "great speeches of our time" polls. Who can resist a rallying cry like: "(in per capita terms) the largest middle class in the world" ... Makes your heart palpitate ...
Transcript of Prime Minister John Howard's address to the Queensland Media Club, Sofitel Hotel, Brisbane
Australia Rising
Queensland is a big part of the Australian success story in the early 21st Century. Perhaps the closest analogy is California’s hold on America’s imagination last century – the magnetic pull of a better life; a place where dreams are realised and trends emerge that alter a nation’s temper.
My speech today is about the future of our nation. It looks ahead to an Australia rising to the challenges of the next decade and beyond – to an Australia within reach.
This is the first in a series of speeches I’ll make in coming months on a wide-ranging future agenda: an agenda that includes further strengthening our economy, education reform, new social policy challenges, climate change and Australia’s APEC agenda this year.
Next month’s Budget will outline a forward-looking strategy to further build Australia’s prosperity. Consistent with the last 11 years, the Government’s core objective is to keep the economy strong and the nation secure so Australians can plan for the future with confidence.
I want to begin by sketching the sort of world Australians are likely to be living in a decade from now; for argument’s sake let’s say by 2020, when most of today’s children will be young adults.
Liberal democracies will flourish, yet their purpose, patience and resolve will continue to be tested. For a country like Australia, there’ll be no holiday from history or from the long struggle against terrorism.
This fight is a different type of war against a different type of enemy. Our interests and ideals demand we stay engaged in the world and in the global battle of ideas.
Australia’s defence forces must be combat ready and well-resourced and our alliances close and strong in 2020.
We will continue to carry a heavy burden for order and stability in this part of the world. One of the most far-reaching national security decisions this Government has taken was to end a posture of benign neglect in the Pacific. There will be no going back from that commitment.
In 2020, policy makers will still be grappling with the great disjunction of our age – between a globalised economic order and a fragmented political one. Australia has a profound interest in a stable, cooperative and market-oriented global system underpinned by stable, cooperative and market-oriented nation states.
No-one should pretend the nation state is going anywhere. People will continue to express their demands for security, economic wellbeing and identity primarily through national politics. And the duty of political leaders will still be protecting and advancing the national interest.
It will be a world where economic and geopolitical power is more evenly distributed; more so perhaps than any time since America’s rise in the late 19th Century.
The human face of globalisation in 2020 will be increasingly Asian and middle class – as our region becomes the epicentre of history’s first truly global middle class.
It will be a world of intense competition for markets and for global talent. Australia must work hard to earn our place in a fiercely competitive global economy. We must ensure Australia retains and attracts our share of the best and brightest – the researchers, scientists, innovators and risk takers who’ll generate the ideas for a rising Australia.
Australia’s workforce will continue to face challenges from demographic change, from technological change and from globalisation. The Treasurer’s Intergenerational Report earlier this month showed that we have made progress in meeting the challenge of an ageing society.
Many families are confronting these pressures directly with the rise, for example, of the so-called sandwich generation. More and more baby boomer women in particular carry heavy responsibilities around caring for ageing parents and for children still at home, while also holding down a job in the paid workforce.
All this points to the need for governments to become even more nimble and responsive to individual needs in the next decade. The old rigid welfare state models have become increasingly obsolete.
It also underlines the need to maintain a strong economy. Despite the challenges we face, there’s no reason why Australia should not be even more prosperous by 2020.
But it means becoming even more competitive through economic reform. It means keeping the size of government and our tax burden down on workers and risk takers. It means keeping downward pressure on inflation and interest rates through budget discipline and a flexible workplace relations system.
It means creating the conditions for growth so business will continue to invest and create jobs. It means ensuring our schools, tech colleges and universities are institutions of excellence. And it means investing in our people so they have the skills required in the 21st Century.
In the late 20th Century, the great genius of our democracy was the ability to reform Australia’s economy while not leaving behind those who felt threatened by economic change. A rising tide that lifts all boats is our abiding national challenge – a calling for our time and for all time.
I spoke about this last year at the National Press Club in Canberra. I talked about the best kept secret of the Australian achievement – our national sense of balance.
This sense of balance is the handmaiden of national growth and renewal. It means we respond creatively to an uncertain world with a sense of proportion.
What helps us keep our balance? To me, it’s no secret. It’s economic growth, leavened always by Australian commonsense.
Priorities matter
Just as we face a global battle of ideas so there is a battle of ideas going on here at home over Australia’s future. A battle over which side of politics has the policies, discipline and experience to foster a rising Australia that can prosper in a fast-changing world.
One side – we in the Coalition – aims to build on what’s been achieved over the last decade. To build on policies that have helped sustain the longest economic expansion in our modern history, created 2 million new jobs, slashed unemployment, cut welfare dependency and given more Australians a stake in our economy.
The other side wants to tear down this achievement. It wants to go back to government by a few mates for a few mates – where favoured groups get a special say in our workplaces, in education policy, in environment policy and in welfare policy. Where the national interest gets squeezed out in favour of noisy sectional interests; and where the quiet voices of those who work hard, pay taxes, take risks and contribute to their communities get drowned out.
It’s critical that Australia not slip back to the ways of the past. It’s especially critical there be no roll-back of the reforms that have kept our economy growing through a turbulent decade.
Any step back will see Australia fall behind in the global economy, reducing our capacity to create jobs, to innovate, to care for the sick and the aged and to help those who need a leg up in today’s competitive world.
This is not simply an economic argument. It lies at the heart of our quest for a better society. Ultimately, it is a moral argument that bears on what I call the human dividend of economic growth.
It’s a moral argument because of what growth means for a fair and decent society. The American economist Benjamin Friedman argues this point at length in his book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth.
Broadly distributed economic growth, he notes, provides benefits far beyond the material, supporting political and social stability, fostering tolerance and enhancing opportunity. It’s crucial not just to meeting our economic challenges but to meeting our social and environmental challenges as well.
Ladies and Gentlemen, priorities matter in politics. My government’s number one priority is strong growth, greater prosperity and wider opportunity. An Australia rising to new heights while preserving our great traditions of a fair go and pulling together in times of adversity.
An Australia where people have more choice in their daily lives and a strong sense of social cohesion. I’ve never understood or accepted the argument of those who say one detracts from the other.
By raising families, by employing other Australians, by giving back to their community, Australians show every day how the two go together.
I want Australia in 2020 to still be the best country in the world to live, to work, to start a business and to raise a family.
As a Government, we’ve made decisions in the last 11 years that impact directly on the lives of Australians. No doubt we’ve made our mistakes. All governments do.
But we have never lost sight of the big things that affect people’s lives – their jobs, the wellbeing of their families, decent health care, genuine choice in education and a good social safety net. We’ve never lost sight of the human dividend of a strong, growing economy.
We’ve also never lost sight of the need to strike a balance between different interests and objectives. That’s not the same as always seeking consensus and always looking to please.
It often calls for hard choices:
• putting the budget into surplus;
• reforming the tax system and the welfare system; and
• abolishing laws that protect a few jobs but destroy many, many more.
Hard choices imply trade-offs. When these are ignored, when ideology takes over, that’s when costly mistakes are made. It’s when unintended consequences multiply.
Why do I dwell on this? Because my political opponent pretends to have discovered a different brand of politics – a politics without hard choices, without trade-offs and without unintended consequences. A politics of gestures and good intentions and little else.
Mr Rudd argues that in this world Australians face one overriding moral challenge – climate change. I’ll talk more about this challenge in a moment, but let me say where I stand on priorities, on decision-making and on the moral challenge of our time.
Climate change is a serious policy challenge and a major priority of the Government. At the same time, we know independent action by Australia will not materially affect our climate.
No-one – not the IPCC, not Sir Nicholas Stern, not even Al Gore – makes this argument. Australia emits less greenhouse gases in a year than the United States or China emit in a month.
Do we need to lower carbon emissions over time? Of course we do.
But to say that climate change is the overwhelming moral challenge for this generation of Australians is misguided at best; misleading at worst.
It de-legitimises other challenges over which we do have significant control. Other challenges with moral dimensions just as real and pressing as those that surround climate change.
It also obscures the need for balance in government decision-making. It feeds ideological demands for knee-jerk policy reactions that would destroy jobs and the living standards of ordinary Australians.
To me, the moral challenge of our time is not vastly different from the challenge earlier generations faced. It’s to build a prosperous, secure and fair Australia – a confident nation at ease with the world and with itself.
It’s to give every generation of Australians the chance of social mobility. That’s why jobs and economic growth are so important.
Our economic challenge
A generation ago, this challenge revolved squarely around reversing the decline of our economy. This has been the work of both sides of politics in government. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been the work of both sides of politics in opposition.
Looking back, broad consensus surrounded the need for five major structural reforms to give Australia a shot at prosperity in the 21st Century. The big five were financial deregulation, tariff reform, privatisation, tax reform and workplace relations reform.
I have always paid credit to the former Labor Government for its reforms regarding financial deregulation and tariffs. The Coalition has gone further with tax reform, privatisation and workplace reform making our economy more flexible and competitive.
Where the Coalition supported all the big reforms undertaken by the former Labor Government, the Labor Party in opposition has fought every major reform we have taken to strengthen our economy.
Labor in 11 years has not developed a coherent alternative plan to keep the economy strong, has totally indulged in the negative and on the eve of its national conference in an election year is still bereft of a credible, forward economic agenda.
Labor has opposed our policies for macroeconomic stability and disciplined fiscal management. By balancing the budget, paying off government debt, establishing the Future Fund and confronting the challenge of an ageing society, we have laid the foundations for a new era of growth, prosperity and opportunity.
But the job is not done. While Australia has lifted its game, so have our competitors.
We must stay the course on economic reform, including workplace reform.
Australia’s workplaces are the arteries of our economy. Clog them up with more and more regulation and you slow our economic pulse. WorkChoices is not just about more jobs and higher wages, compelling as that case is. Its importance extends to the macro-economy.
We all know Queensland is doing well from high commodity prices in the mining sector. In the past, under centralised wage fixing, a terms-of-trade boost like this would have triggered a wages break-out across the economy. Manufacturing would have been decimated.
This time that has not happened because relative wages have reflected industry fundamentals and because overall wages growth has been well-behaved. This is an historic achievement for modern Australia in a time of prosperity. Quite simply, it never happened under the old centralised, union-dominated system.
It’s meant inflation has been contained which in turn has limited upward pressure on interest rates. It’s meant the Reserve Bank hasn’t had to slam on the economic brakes. It’s meant Australia can continue to grow, now for the 16th year in a row.
Crucially, the industrial relations system that Mr Rudd has promised to give us will bring back the worst excesses of centralised wage fixation.
Higher wages paid in very profitable sectors of the economy will flow through to other industries which can’t afford them with adverse economic consequences including job losses.
There’s also a microeconomic case for WorkChoices that often gets overlooked. Flexibility at the workplace creates an environment that encourages innovation, the acceptance of new technology and the development of worker skills.
Without genuine flexibility the underlying dynamism of our economy ebbs away; the spirit of entrepreneurship (especially in small business) is crushed and Keynes’ ‘animal spirits’ become very tame and timid beasts indeed.
A rising Australia needs that entrepreneurial spirit. It needs the enterprise workers in our mines, factories and services firms who’ve transformed our workforce and its aspirations.
Mr Rudd has made his work choice. He has put union power ahead of workers’ jobs.
The risk takers in our economy need to know that they will not have Julia Gillard, Greg Combet and Sharan Burrow looking over their shoulder every time they employ a person or restructure their firm. Not to mention Simon Crean, Martin Ferguson, Jenny George and Bill Shorten.
Mr Rudd can’t have it both ways. He can’t prattle on about productivity while proposing to hand over power to people who have never taken a business risk in their life.
Underlying competitive pressures in our economy remain strong, as illustrated by the rebound in productivity growth in the December quarter. It’s increasingly clear, as noted by Treasury and the Productivity Commission, that the lower productivity growth of earlier periods was the result in part of an established pattern of employment in mining growing well ahead production in the initial phase of a commodities boom.
Labor’s real agenda isn’t productivity. It’s power – and for that it’s prepared to undertake the first major reversal of economic reform in Australia in 25 years.
Continued economic reform remains a vital part of the National Reform Agenda being pursued by the Australian Government together with the states and territories. At the COAG meeting this month we agreed to take forward reforms that will deliver more competitive energy markets, better transport infrastructure and less red tape.
We also agreed to invest more in our people.
Some pretend that structural reform is all that matters for future productivity growth. Others claim that the magic bullet lies in that wonderful technocratic term, ‘human capital’.
In reality, we must do both – press on with ensuring our markets and tax system are competitive and continue to invest in our people.
On human capital, at COAG I put on the table $100 million to tackle diabetes, to be matched collectively by the states.
I believe the Commonwealth should take the lead on an issue like this, where there is a clear policy case for a new initiative to address a critical health issue that affects peoples’ capacity to work and to lead a full life.
The Australian people expect the national government to provide this sort of leadership. But they also expect the Australian Government to look after taxpayers’ dollars.
That’s why I made it clear to Peter Beattie and to the other Premiers at COAG that the Commonwealth will not write open cheques for states and territories when they fail to meet their basic responsibilities.
All levels of government in our Federation must live up to their responsibilities. In the end, this is only long-term answer. The only sustainable federalism is a federalism based on accepting responsibility.
Mr Rudd claims he will end the blame game in the Federation. What he’s really saying is that all criticism of state and territory governments (all of which happen to be Labor) is off limits. The only game he plays is absolving Labor Premiers of any and all responsibility in areas like education, health and water management.
He talks about saving money by getting rid of duplication. Yet all his actions point to more overlap and duplication.
A large slab of his so-called ‘education revolution’ is nothing more than allocating Commonwealth money to things that States have already said they’ll fund or where they have failed to deliver good outcomes.
There’s a particular irony in Mr Rudd saying he’ll reform national education standards given his time in the Queensland Cabinet Office. A scathing assessment of those years by Professor Ken Wiltshire of the University of Queensland points to a litany of failures to implement proper assessment, quality assurance and a core curriculum based on high standards.
Mr Rudd made much of discovering the link between education and the economy earlier this year – a link by the way that would hardly have surprised Adam Smith. Yet he fails the basic test of economic literacy by focusing almost exclusively on inputs into the system rather than the quality of outputs.
The economic literature is very clear about what makes the difference. It’s education quality.
Julie Bishop has outlined a wide-ranging agenda to raise standards and the Australian Government is spending record amounts on education, offering parents more choice than ever before on where they send their children to school. That is the terrain the government is fighting on – choice and quality – an education system that puts the needs of students and parents ahead of education bureaucrats and teachers’ unions.
That is the new frontier of education policy – higher standards, greater national consistency, greater transparency and more power to parents, principals and school communities to shape what happens on the ground.
Climate change
Ladies and gentlemen, I mentioned earlier the important challenge posed by climate change. Climate change is, in essence, a large and highly complex global coordination problem.
It’s a challenge for all nations. Currently, there is a lot of talk about targets in the context of debate over a possible emissions trading system in Australia. I have appointed a joint Government-Business Taskforce which will report on this issue at the end of May.
Of course, Australia already has an emissions target for the period through to 2012. And unlike many of the European countries who regularly lecture us on this issue, we are on track to meet it by our own efforts.
Any decision on a future (post-2012) long-term target will be the most important economic decision Australia takes in the next decade. It will affect every industry and every household. It will change the whole cost structure of our economy.
I want to ensure any decision is made very carefully in a way that takes full account of jobs and investment in Australia, of climate change action by others and of global technology developments. As the Productivity Commission has warned, there are potentially very serious costs to Australia from acting alone and getting this decision wrong.
Australia fully accepts its responsibility to constrain emissions, to improve energy efficiency, to invest in new technology and to further the transfer of clean energy to poorer countries. We have committed more than $2 billion to climate change action involving regulation, economic incentives and voluntary measures.
But I will not subcontract our climate change policy to the European Union.
Indeed, I worry about the consequences for Australian families of Mr Rudd’s policy of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent from 1990 levels. I worry about the impact on jobs in places like Moranbah, Mackay and Gladstone.
Like Michael Chaney of the Business Council, I worry about targets being plucked ‘out of thin air’ without any analysis of the consequences for Australia’s economy. I worry about policies whose main target is a preference deal with Bob Brown and some cheap applause at a Labor Party conference.
My government will continue to place the highest priority on working for an effective global response to climate change, through our global forests initiative and other practical initiatives, especially with our economic partners in the Asia Pacific region.
That’s why I have made this a key topic for discussion by Leaders at APEC this year. Initiatives like the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate and our clean coal partnership with China are focused on what ultimately matters – breaking the nexus between economic growth and greenhouse emissions.
It’s here where the divide over the future is very stark. Mr Rudd made his big pitch as a man of ideas last year railing against ‘the forces of economic liberalism’. He panders to the gesture politics of anti-capitalism. His hand-picked environment spokesman, Peter Garrett, said not so long ago that economic growth ‘almost always’ leads to a worse environment.
Both are wrong. Both start from a false premise. History shows that economic growth and technological change have given mankind not just greater material wealth, but also cleaner air and water.
In the end, it is technological progress funded by economic growth that holds the key to environmental progress. In the end, our environment is too important to be left to the opponents of growth and economic liberalism.
Conclusion
Ladies and Gentlemen, Australia may never be the most powerful nation in the world. But we can be an even greater nation.
We are here in the Asia-Pacific region, a region which will be the cockpit of history in the 21st Century. We have enormous assets with which to meet all the challenges of the next decade.
Many years ago when I was Treasurer, I first met Alan Greenspan before he became head of the US Federal Reserve. He said something to me that I have never forgotten. He said: ‘of course, Mr Treasurer, you come from Australia. That country has (in per capita terms) the largest middle class in the world.’
Eleven years ago, we inherited a country where that great social achievement seemed to have slipped far from reach. And while we still have a way to go, Australia is on the road back.
Today, with effectively full employment and the strongest economy in decades, Australia is again in the top tier of the world’s economies.
My commitment to the Australian people is to work as hard as possible to keep us at the top. To ensure greater social mobility for as many of our fellow citizens as possible in the 21st Century.
To build towards a new era of growth, prosperity and opportunity – a rising Australia; an Australia within reach.
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What happens
Oh ... I understand.
What has just happened, Alan, is that you've publicly announced a "promise" to sack 55 workers.
And you've made that public announcement prior to telling the very workers you now "promise" to terminate.
Just remember that on 29 April you said: "All my employees have a sense of security and dignity ..."
Looks like from Monday they'll have neither.
You'll have "promised" to kill their jobs ...
... and then there's the indignity of you discussing that job destruction in public prior to informing them.
What happens after that is that the Your Rights at Work campaign could make a case study of your company (subsequent to discussions with the 55 people you've decided to sack), which might put your business practices in the spotlight (like this) ...
... and perhaps a bit of media coverage of the story?
A STRAIGHT PUT-UP JOB
One maintains one's position that you are an AWU put-up job, Akka, intent on making Tories look goofy, confused and corrupt. And very, very silly.
That is, one don't believe you exist in the real world - cut it any way you wish, Akka me luv.
XXXXX Frère Jihad Jacques OAM née Woodforde, easily to be found in the telephone directory, according to the authors of much of one's hate mail.
PS: I know yr NOT going to China, Akka, but could you take one with you? One could be a very helpful valet-cum-general factotum, and would lay out your livery beautifully every morn, you know ... and on the way out, one would discreetly blow up your failed NSW works in such a way that it would be blamed on Anna Fundamentalist Tourists and unionist Bolsheviks, and you could cop the insurance payout.
Then we could live like kings in Macao, Akka.
I suggest you keep one on Alan, just in case
Alan Curran, as more and more business heads offshore under Howards rule, be it by cutting labour here and importing the cheaper product as you suggest you will do, outsourcing services overseas, or simply moving the whole show overseas, companies may well find in the long run that they have made the wrong move. Cheaper does not necessarily mean better or more efficient. Those shops who only stock cheap and poor quality Chinese clothes lost my business long ago, and I now deliberately look for Australian or European made clothes, because I know they will at least last through the first wash.
Less efficiency? Well take Chubb Security for instance. I wonder how long it will take Chubb to wake up to the fact that outsourcing work to India is sending out signals of inefficiency to its clients. I have these past few years felt Chubb had become increasingly inefficient. It would not be the first time we came home to find the blue light of the security system flashing on the front of the house, clearly singalling to us that while the patrol might have come and walked around outside, they did not bother to enter and check the house and reset the system. Nor did they bother to ring us either. When questioned on this we were told they did not have a key to get in. Now I wonder what happened to the keys we issued them with? Minor detail I suppose.
Just this week I got a letter on behalf of Chubb, the second I might add of exactly the same nature in the past year. It had no return address, just a 1300 number. It sought to find out whether we had invoices from them for three payments they claim to have received from us in a two year period and they gave the dates those amounts were received. If not they said they would credit them to three invoiced amounts they suggest we still owed them, notwithstanding there was no date correlation between either the payments or debits.
Well, having searched the cheque book and files, I could neither find that I had in fact ever written cheques for those amounts on or near the dates given, had no invoices for those amounts, and certainly had no outstanding invoices in the files for the alleged debits. So the first time round I got out an old Chubb invoice to get their address and sent the form back noting all that information.
Six months later the same lettter comes again, seeking exactly the same information. Irritated I wanted to just return it saying: Refer to my previous response. But no address to send it back to and so instead of looking up the address again I rang the given 1300 number.
An Indian accented voice answered. The girl did not have a clue what I was talking about, nothwithstanding that she had answered the given number. So I asked her to put me through to someone else. She hedged and kept asking for information that was not on the letter, eg the account number. In the end I got frustrated and told her to simply give me the address of Chubb and I would send the letter back. After a long pause I got suspiciious as she clearly had no idea what that was. So I said: Where are you? Finally she said In India.
After much delay she finally came up with the address, but was reluctant to let me off the phone, asking was there anything else she could help me with.
I sent the letter back to the Australian address, and no doubt will get another one in a few months time. Now I wonder what Chubb pays for that service it has outsourced?
I assume you have a security system Alan, but I wonder how long it will be that you might soon have to wait for someone to answer your alarm should it go off. Why they might have to fly in from India to check your premises. It would seem to me to be a good idea to keep just one of those 55 you plan to sack on, just to mind the place when you are away.
Just in case
Outsourcing and inefficiency
Alan Curran, Chubb - Notwithstanding that I personally never chose them or signed up with them (but that is beside the point as I do not have to prove anything to you) Chubb was twenty years ago a good and reliable security firm. Their problems started when they outsourced to local contractors. The whole show deteriorated from that point on. Now they seem to have gone offshore with some of their accounting, no doubt laying off clerical staff in Australia, with predictable outcomes as shown in my post. Therein lies a lesson for you my friend. Take it or leave it. Makes no difference to me either way.
Outsourcing
Jenny Hume, have you ever thought of changing Security companies if you are having so much trouble with Chubb? There must be dozens in the Yellow Pages. Perhaps the Union can negotiate a deal for you.
Choices
Actually Alan Curran we signed up with the only security firm in town, which later sold out to Chubb. So forget the yellow pages unless you live in the the big smoke, and to that, thanks but no thanks. And in any case I don't do expensive gear or jewellery so any burglar would find the pickings in our town emohruo pretty slim, so I'm not too phased, and I refuse to pay the call out bills until they do the job they are paid to do. Maybe they will get the message one day.
But as for Unions, I thank the one I belong to for its newsletter. It pointed out how the Commonwealth Government had stuffed up on various entitlements going back 16 years, so a nice backpay cheque of around $40 grand eventually hit my bank account when I followed up on the Union's information for members. I would never have had the time myself to plough through the multitude of, and ever changing regulations and entitlements, so in doing that the Union did me quite a service.
I notice Howard is beginning to panic, revising his Workchoices to try and protect those earning up to $75 grand. To me that smells of an admission that the lower income earners were in fact being disadvantaged under WC and he knew that, something he was at such pains to deny before. Well you can fool some people some of the time, but you cannot fool everyone all of the time.
Fairfax's Islam
It is fascinating to watch the Sydney Morning Herald remember what journalism is, in this 'series' on Islam in Australia. It is using both traditional journalism, which involves asking real people about their experience, as well as an interactive blog format by a specialist in the field. Dr Zacharia Matthews appears to be little more than an apologist for Islam but that is fine, that is how it ought to be. This model appears to have came from nowhere, but is evidently based on a lot of research and experience of the online environment.
The responses from Muslim women on Hijabism are broad and nuanced, reflecting a certain the ambivalence and ambiguities of the question but also the sincerity of their religious conviction. There is a slide-show sponsored by ANZ and VISA (and maybe that is not so bad after all). It contains some exceptionally beautiful photographs of ordinary Muslim people. I was especially touched by the photographs of Muslim girls playing sports, especially given the comments made by Rochayah Machali.
It is extraordinary how belatedly all this came. The overall "niceness", the friendliness and openness is a relief. The recognition of diversity is a relief. The revelation of business woman Aheda Zanetti is stunning for both its inevitability and its absence from the scene. The compassion inherent in the coverage for the issues faced by Hijabis, which boils down to physical discomfort and discrimination (especially work) is impressive. These issues are not news to anyone who has paid the slightest attention but they don't become dry with repitition, when discussed in terms of individual experience, as they are here.
The ability to work has always been fundamental to the liberation of any group of women and active discrimination in employment seems to be the consensus about priorities in Islam. An introduction to Voltaire or Kant, like in The Caged Virgin is inevitably secondary.
That this effort from the SMH is deliberate public relations for Islam is hard to doubt. It follows the tried and true market principle of telling you what you want to hear. The kind of negative pathology, the kind I have tried to act out by turning my 'life and opinions' in to a narrative, so that others don't have to, is actually both a destructive and economically unsound practice. The idea that Muslim people might read newspapers and would prefer to see their own reflection, or that ordinary, friendly Australians from other backgrounds might also prefer to see their own experience reflected in the news media, makes basic business sense.
That it took this long to come about is, arguably, because of an institutional disinterest - not in "multiculturalism" but in individual people within those cultures. Remembering people is a good first start. It is far more effective than "markets". People are interested in other people, not in mutilated advertisements of themselves. The process need not be wholly artificial.
I wrote to Miranda Devine recently to tell her I loved her, in as many ways, and for as many reasons I could find. She wrote back for the first time saying "Thanks - I think", justly suspecting me of perhaps being less than sincere. I was, nevertheless, sincere. I could see in her work a certain professionalism and care. She cares about individuals. She hurts people, too, but there is a method to it.
There is a debt to be owed to Miranda Devine, Andrew Bolt, Janet Albrechtsen, Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Panopolous for trying to drive this debate. The Fairfax coverage is what has been missing, a forthright and honest right of reply to their revolutionary zeal. Whilst Ayaan Hirsi Ali might be sexy in an Oprah Winfrey Book Club kind of way (in which the tragedy of individual women is mythologised in to the tragedy of 'women' as a universal), the broad nature of experience by Islamic women ought to be documented, and, finally, it is.
The healing that I see here is of a wound that has been played out in the media and as such the healing ought to begin in the media. I understand Miranda's caution about "Media-manufactured role-models" but I am also a pragmatist, and, also, I recognise the de-mediating aspects of an interactive medium such as the internet, and the discreet and private nature (read: safety) of all media. Also down-to-earth journalism is not "manufactured" except in a very literal and parochial sense, it contains all the basic elements that make reading about others worthwhile. It can clarify your common elements and your differences.
My reaction to Islamic people, after writing Confronting Islam last year has been one essentially of melancholy. I visited the Paris Mosque and the Arab institute whilst in France, out of genuine curiosity, rather than to assuage my guilty conscience, but I learned very little about the French attitude, nor the reality of life of Islamic people in France. All that I conclude was that there was a rift and I was somewhere in the middle of that rift, lost.
Lost to all the world.
Shadafarin Ghadirian is my heroine, the one to whom I have decided to defer on questions of conscience. She uses photography, rather than law, to try and make her voice heard. Her unfocused series, showing dark-clothed Iranian women in elegant poses, but blurred, has a haunting beauty to it, especially when you consider, alas, what the photographs actually mean. That Shadi declines to blame Islam but rather Iranian society for the censorship and difficulties of women, as Hirsi Ali does, has an intellectual honesty and rigour to it. Islam need not be oppressive in the way that it sometimes is. Zhara Rhanjbar's work is also beautiful, whilst melancholy.
I wrote not long ago that I thought it was right for the French to ban Islamic head-scarves in public hospitals. My over-riding concern is for the sensitivities of the French public. Multiculturalism is very different when someone from another country is in a position of authority over you. The situation is especially delicate in the case of psychiatric patients. My position is one that comes from the belief firstly that the world is a kind of federalism, almost literally in the case of the European Union, and that there ought to be a place that accomodates a diversity of societies. That includes those that are militantly secular like France and Turkey. It also includes Israel which, like Voltaire's God, I expect had to be invented.
I see the world as in a state not quite of 'terror' but of mutual trauma, between Muslims and Non-Muslims, and that is not something you can go to 'war' on. It is something that is eased away over a long period of time, if at all. Howard's restrictive immigration policy is really only a kind of censorship. We censor others from our society, to prevent us from being disturbed, or, in its best light, to ease us in to a state of enlightenment, through a crucible of pain.
Fairfax's coverage is as necessary as it is pretty. A cushion against which we may fall.
Howard's rising Australia'. Rising housing cost?
Thanks Ernest, for your encouragement.
We have a lot in common. I am a returned veteran about to celebrate my 60th birthday. I also managed to buy my first home due to a War Service Loan. My wife and I have moved several times since and are still paying off a large mortgage on our current home. I too was a sailor for 12 years. Our combined income is nearly $30,000. P.A, so someone has our share of the average.
I am sure you are right about the unfair distribution of wealth. The point I was trying to make is that we are a rich country even though the wealth is by no means distributed equally. There are still many in the world that envy us.
I feel for the youngsters trying to buy their first home struggling with climbing rents and home costs. The main thing that is rising in Howard’s Australia is the cost of housing.
Saturday Evening Post
Australia's Moral Challenge
Howard says “To Say that climate change is the overwhelming moral challenge for this generation of Australians is misguided at best; misleading at worst."
Last time I looked Gluttony and Greed were two of the 7 deadly sins.
Gluttony: an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
Greed: desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.
Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas said of Greed:
We do face an overwhelming moral challenge. Even though Howard may not think so, it just shows his lack of understanding and strange version of Christian philosophy he follows.
Australian average income is over three times the world average. Australian income per person is $32,000; the world average is $10,000. See here.
Australia is the world’s second highest emitter of C02 per capita.
It is a moral issue. Our greed is causing the death of millions and destroying a large percentage of the animal and plant life on the planet. This make is imperative to act.
It is an overwhelming moral challenge and we need leaders who will act, not just pay lip service to the situation.
Australia is a rich country, as the developing world catches up to us in wealth, they will want their share. We must reduce our environmental footprint to make space for the billions that desire what we have.
To John Pratt.
G'day John Pratt,
Firstly let me commend you on your posts - both your opinions and the facts you provide.
However, while your article re "Australia's Moral Challenge" is excellent in it's content, it does tend to mislead on one very important issue - that is the "average income per person at $32,000."
As one of the many hundreds of thousands who are below that figure, I think people who created the debt laden false economy would be flattered I am sure.
I am sure you know, John, that the wealth of Australia in the 21st Century is with less than 20% of the population and it has been organised to be so by the "New Order" Liberals.
Personally, as a returned veteran of 76 years, my wife and I receive about $29,000 p.a. mainly from savings interest and pensions.
I was a 22 year old Sailor with three sons during the Menzies lengthy era of "never never" hire purchase, etc. It took me until I was aged in my late 50's to own my own home, which was for War Service.
I would like to know the actual figures of the millions of Australians who would be earning less than say $50,000 p.a. and those who earn above $150,000 p.a.
That, John, would give a more realistic picture of the burgeoning gap between the haves and have nots.
While that would give more perspective to the "money to spare", it nevertheless does NOT alter my support for the principle of your post.
Keep up your posts John, my Wife and I find them comforting in a period that so many Australians would like to forget.
Cheers. Ern G.
Staggered
Ernest William: "The wealth of Australia in the 21st Century is with less than 20% of the population and it has been organised to be so by the "New Order" Liberals."
I am staggered that anybody could believe that the Liberals could have organised the above.
I am also staggered that someone on $29,000 p.a. could possibly think about voting Labor. Knowing that under Labor, Inflation would be running rampant.
If things were so good under the previous Labor governement, I would have thought you would be earning more than $29,000 p.a.
Question for Alan Curran
Australia in the top three C02 emitters a moral issue?
After the USA, the two highest Carbon Dioxide emitters are Australia and Norway. Australia is particularly hot, requiring cooling, and much of its electricity comes from cheap opencast coal, which produces the most CO2 level per unit of electricity.
Australia is in the top three C02 emitters per head. How can Howard say this is not a moral issue?
California, rest in peace..
To tell you the truth, Craig, I am still struggling to find any solid rationale for Howard comparing Queensland to California. It did occur to me that perhaps it was specifically designed for Governor Schwarzenegger himself; Perhaps it is an olive branch. They were such close pals before, if you recall (echoes of Twins). The whole analogy is unconvincing. What trends has Queensland ever set that "alter the Nation's temper"? There was of course "One Nation", I will give them that. The idea is utterly preposterous.
I am reminded of Warner Brothers movie world and their slogan "Hollywood on the Gold Coast". It might be true if it they actually had a significant film industry there instead of simply a collection of people dressing up like Bugs Bunny and wandering around a theme park with helium balloons. Is that the apex of our enterprise spirit?Australian actors go to America. They don't go to Queensland - not even as a joke. There is something cheap and tacky about the whole idea, which suits Howard, because he is cheap & tacky royalty.
The idea was not even cooked up by an Australian but rather by someone that "Flew in" and saw an opportunity. Surely this is a testament to Australia's lack of an enterprise spirit. Nevertheless I think there is a case to be made for the swamp.
What else is there that could possibly tie Queensland to California? There is the climate and coastal qualities, but they are enjoyed by a certain portion of the population of both states. Any trends dictated by weather are fairly weak. We could just as easily compare Queensland to Hawaii, if all it is about is "Sun and surf".
I have been stuck, nevertheless, on the first paragraph of this tortuous speech. Later he says:
Surely if the neglect was "benign" then what use is there of ending it? Perhaps he means simply that it was no threat to our interests, however, if that is so how can it be a national security decision? Is he referring to East Timor? Fiji? New Guinea? The Solomons? All the government appears to have done is to respond to situations as they occurred, as any government ought to have done. Nothing they have done in the pacific can, as far as I can tell, have much of a bearing on our national security. There may be an issue of Islamic extremism in a country like Indonesia, but since when does this extend to the pacific islands?
But the real rub is always the economy:
As I think Bryan Law was suggesting, Howard seems to want to alter the definitions of a "Job". Essentially he wants to turn the casualised workforce into a kind of small business. This has long been what I thought has been Liberal party policy. In this environment "Job security" simply does not exist and workers truly do have to be "flexible". Full-time, permanent jobs will be erased, I expect, in all parts of the economy. It really will take a change of culture and I am not entirely sure our countries workforce is up to it. There is a vision behind it, there truly is. But it will take more than rhetoric and de-regulation to build it.
Interest rates buffer the economy against shocks. What he describes as "Microeconomics" appears to be a kind of "floating" of workplace conditions and wages, depending on supply and demand. It places the burden of the unpredictability of the market place on to individual workers. They will carry this burden up to a point and then "Crack-up" as Scott Fitzgerald dubbed the process.
Security is an illusion, in all its forms. My expectation of the world to come is of a peeling away of such illusions. I suppose that is what happened to Argentina.
Moral erosion by the market
There is a note of Mcluhanist technological determinism in Miranda Devine's analysis of the Patrick Power SC child porn case. It is hard to disagree with the assertion that the internet is playing a role in these cases, by granting easy access to the material, however it does not explain the human element involved. The corruption of his character and integrity, perhaps, has something to do with the system of the law itself. Her reference to the "legal fraternity" perhaps implies as much. The defence by his barrister, whilst unconscionable, is necessary under an adversarial system. It is morally correct, in this world, to play Devil's advocate, from time to time.
The whole issue is rather bizarre - she is wise to call it a "mystery". To me there is simply no explanation. Surely he knew that he was going to be caught? I absolutely agree with Miranda that this is not a victimless crime. She calls it "The last taboo". Murder, I suppose, is no longer a taboo. Miranda herself has been complicit in the erosion of other taboos. She tries to exchange one for the other.
A significant portion of Japanese Anime contains illustrated images of both under-aged girls and rape. Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence is about this very question, though it disguises itself in the safer realms of a Mother-Son relationship. Watch the film closely.
If no children are actually harmed in the process there arguably ceases to be any moral reason to condemn it. Simulated violence for pleasure is one of the staples of Hollywood. Yet the idea sits uncomfortably, as there is a potential link between fantasy and reality. The very reality of the pain inflicted on the children involved would, arguably, be part of the appeal, as the viewer's descend down this "Slippery slope".
The nature of the internet is instant gratification. This is crucial as it can see people who would not go out of their way to view such material, the ability to satisfy a momentary desire. Instant gratification becomes a habit, not technically "addictive", but not unlike it either.
It is of course fallacious to use this process as applying to all viewer's of pornography, considering he only interviewed those involved in a child porn bust. It doesn't speak for a general trend, so all the moralists can't use it as a weapon to attack adult pornography. Yet I think there is something to be said for the observations that he has made. It is not an immediate phenomenon but rather a gradual erosion of ethical inhibitions. I wonder at a publication like Hustler's Barely Legal, which exploit the letter of the law whilst satiating a desire for infantile sexuality. It is, I hope, possible to go up and not down, in such an environment, with normal adult sexuality acting as the apex.
I support Miranda Devine in her support for the ideal of marriage. It is an unmediated and mature institution, requiring heavy amounts of skill, empathy and negotiation. Pornography doesn't require anything from you. Neither does the media generally. It has created a culture where teasing, innuendo and fantasy rule out over consumation. Satisfaction and contentment are against the interests of a market-driven society. It is the nature of the media that it provides an alternative to reality and as such it gives you something that you cannot ordinarily have. It encourages social myopia.
A film like The Woodsman, about a pedophile trying to live in society after serving his term, has no moral opinion at all. It simply observes him as a character, without making any moral condemnations. This is troubling, too, if put in to the wrong hands. Hollywood both guides and reflects public opinion. I don't believe the media creates problems but rather that it acts as an enabler for individual's own persuasions. This is a right-wing belief but one that grants people a certain amount of credit for their actions.
In my review of Lolita I argued that the answer wasn't high art as a civilising process, and that neither was it to ridicule those who engage in this behaviour. I did not have any answer then and I still don't. I argued in the piece that the 12 yr old girl was portrayed as an equal partner in the relationship, for which I was criticised. When I think about it now, though, my method of thinking was very corporate. There has been much criticism of "Corporate pedophiles" who create sexualising clothing for children. One of the assumptions made by marketing is that your target audience is an equal, regardless of whether or not this is actually true.
Lolita, with all her magazines and celebrity worship, is perhaps a product of American corporate culture - a consumer, and a consumer is always an equal. They need to be considered as having the ability to make choices, because that is the system in which we live. A consumer wont tolerate being patronised and when I wrote the piece, I had half in mind conversations I had had with teenagers on the internet, and their forthright assertions about their own maturity (regardless of evidence to the contrary).
It is interesting, indeed, that Miranda Devine does see the child pornography issue in terms of "Supply" and "Demand". The moral culpability is at both ends of a black market economy - but a market economy nonetheless.
California Dreaming
Something about the allusion to California in the speech still pesters me. I wonder if the film The Mask of Zorro, aired on channel 10 not long ago, played any part in the speech-writer's calculations. In it there is much talk of the prospects of California, admittedly by the evil rich, however Liberal party supporters are quite capable of "deconstructing" that aspect of the work and imposing their own interpretation on it, regardless of the specific 'facts' of the fictional world in which it operates.
I did the same in my review of East of Eden. The ultra-feminist principles on which I read the text dictated a (warped) interpretation, that ignores the evils of the character as the sins of the author. I expect this is not an uncommon mode of interpretation.
In the film, California is treated by the aristocracy of a place where wealth can be made - a new world. The political assumptions inherent on the Zorro myth are not shared by the right-wing and as such, they are capable of creating their own interpretation. Not, precisely, of the film, but of the world that inspired the film.
Analogies to computers are usually beyond tedious, however, there is a sense in which the speech is like "Packing" and "Unpacking" in information transfers along computer networks. A large amount of information goes in to little bite-sized morsels and then the user "unpacks" such information upon receipt. The difference is, of course, that in an electronic transfer the originating information is the same as the information recieved. In this situation the government simply sparks interest and then the reader/listener is left the job of discovering the meanings buried within the paragraph. I say this because I find that this is how I write nowadays. I think of it as a kind of shorthand but that is not precisely accurate.
Howard wants you to read American history. There will, inevitably, be a limited amount of material available about California and so perhaps, without you even realising it, Howard is able to guide you towards texts that he thinks you should read, as well as providing you with an interpetive principle: that this is like Queensland and that Queensland ought to be like "America", with its enterprise and its romantic attachment to rags-to-riches stories. Howard does all this without actually giving you a reading list but rather simply by sparking your curiosity and by placing the reading of American history as having implying that it has a practical benefit.
The point here being that we seldom pay attention to politicians for very long, with short sound-bites the most that gets through on any given night. When full speeches, debates or advertisements are aired during an election time we still only get a tiny glimpse of them. Al Gore broke ground when he released a feature film about global warming. The mere fact that people will sit and watch him for an extended period is enough to get people thinking. Reading history can have a profound effect on a person's understanding, however, so can fiction, whether it be film or a book, simply because of the amount of time spent engaging with it. Any politician ought to know a little about the ethics of Tolkien as of Kant.
The use of media to construct "realities" works best when you are able to use various media in tandem, to "close ranks", so to speak. Not every politician can get away with making a feature film about his or herself. In a documentary of the length of Australian Story, as we saw with Alexander Downer not long ago, is rare. Yet it is still nevertheless possible to use fiction to make subtle arguments that apply to your own actual situation. You can do this without any actual conspiracy, but rather simply by advertising media that you like (which people do naturally, and which opinion-makers do self-consciously) and by creating an interpretive framework for your victims to utilise.
When I wrote Confronting Islam I based my arguments surrounding the Nixon administration on Oliver Stone's Nixon, after reading in the Oz that indigenous leaders were comparing Howard to Nixon and that this might be useful for reconciliation, because Howard had such anti-Aboriginal credentials. Oliver Stone's film is largely Nixon revisionism, at least on certain foreign policy points, even if it does portray him at times as similar to Danny Devito's "Penguin" in Batman Returns. Simply spending a movie-length time watching a character, even one as largely unsympathetic as Nixon, can create a certain understanding of him or her. The film humanises him, rather than delighting in exposing his evil, as the Hollywood-Media machine is generally inclined to do. It is an editorial.
There are some similarities in personality. Howard, too, was a methodist, but according to this article in The Age it probably had little influence over him. What I was trying to do was to use concepts in other media, as pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, to try and create a world. I expect, largely, that it did not work to any large degree. It is too ambitious - in order to make it work, I would have had to have hammered out the case to treat film seriously. That is a case that I haven't made - but the methods behind the work are sound.
More recently I was trying to make an argument that stalking is becoming normalised in the corporate world. This is a theme I brought up in the context of the new film Disturbia, without having mentioned the film at all. There is only one good scene in the film and it illustrates the principle I was talking about. The girl next door confronts the boy about his spying and he goes in to a monologue of how wonderful she is. She pauses and says: "That is either the creepiest - or the sweetest - thing anyone has ever said to me". This is the process advertising uses: observation, identification and flattery. It is stalking but it is not all that it is, because the victim is given something he or she craves. The exploiter and the exploited are, as I have said before, interchangeable.
Film is important. One of the few criticisms I have of Jonathon Hyde-Page's work, The Education of a Young Liberal, is that he scoffs at the influence of the "Godfather" films on members of the Liberal party. Coppolla's films are explorations of power and are full of insights. He makes the same error when he criticises fellow Young Liberal Michael Braddon for his liking of the computer game "Civilisation". Sid Meier's "Civilisation" was a popular and critical success, often considered to be one of the greatest video games ever made, and the spawn of numerous imitators. You can learn something about politics from it, especially about juggling priorities.
The essential point being, however, that we are influenced by such media in our decision-making, whether we are conscious of it or not. Whether we like it or not and whether we think such sources are legitimate or not. The media environment in our Liberal-democratic society is such that there is no central controller, not even News corporation, and one in which politicians cannot directly control. For any government, literary criticism (and other types of criticism) will become on of the central tools of persuasion. It will be the faculty that tells people what to consume and how to consume it. If you can get ahold of the part of a person that interprets their reality, then they are yours. Modes of interpretation of fiction, quickly turn to non-fiction, and then finally to reality. This is philosophy.
If you dismiss fiction in its entirety (Computer games being kinds of fictions) as Hyde-Page does, you leave yourself vulnerable to subtle forms of persuasion that get at you whilst you are not paying attention. Jacques Derrida once said that literature is "the right to say everything". This is so because it allows the author to disclaim responsibility. Inevitably we have arguments put to us in fiction that are not put in real-life. It is a kind of hypocrisy.
People are vulnerable in our society because they work long hours. The media has the greatest effect on people when their real-world experience of the subject matter is limited. When people are confined to their workplace all day, then use their leisure time to consume media, they are in an extremely vulnerable position, whether they watch the news or American Pie. The danger that I see in the workplace laws are not on the wealth of individuals, but rather on their time. Yet I suspect that this is a trade-off that many want and far be it from me to judge or question their motives. Some people are simply workaholics and materialistic. It is easy to forget that such people exist when you spend most of your life ignoring them, as I am want to do.
Kevin Rudd does not seem to understand that Howard's success is the result of his compassion towards his constituents. He succeeds because of his permissiveness. My attitude towards fiction, the kind that may horrify traditionalists, is something that Howard would accept and also, in a peculiar way, respect. Howard is permissive towards the construction of fictions, whether they be ANZAC myths, mateship, larrikinism, sporting legends or anything else that is said to contribute to the amorphous concept we call "Australia". Nationalism itself is the creation of fictions. There are no "borders" to Australia, or to particular states, but for those that we arbitrarily dictate. "Border protection" is an expensive bed-time story, told through facts like ships and leaky boats, but nonetheless fundamentally fictitious.
One of the essentials of functioning in a modern workplace is "Professionalism". This works best for people who have no personality. Sometimes hard work is for the sole purpose of avoiding having to face the fact that you have no sense of self. It is a deliberate distraction - it is also useful, in that those who can keep their thoughts on the job are more productive. Relaxation and rest in fiction worlds, also mean that people are more productive. Professionalism also divorces your actions from your conscience. You hand your conscience over to someone else. Over time this can be oppressing, I expect, which is the only way I can account for the "Mid-life crisis" phenomenon.
Yes, compassion is at the heart of Howard's success. A brute compassion for people as they are, living largely in dreams, among "spectres" as Derrida put it. Derrida, ultimately, saw hope within this spectral world. I only wish I could share it.
Howard's Hollywood Nightmare
Pssst ... Solomon ... I wonder how you, my friend, came around to wondering whether The Mask of Zorro (even if it was aired on channel 10 not long ago) played any part in the speech-writer's calculations, whilst ignoring the question of whether what's said in Laurie Oakes' Howard's Hollywood Nightmare might have figured somehow.
The chief challenge - moral or otherwise
"Mr Rudd argues that in this world Australians face one overriding moral challenge – climate change."
So, it seems, does Pope Benedict XVI (and many consider him infallible).
So too does ethicist Peter Singer who has described John Howard as "selfish" for placing economic growth before climate change and backed Kevin Rudd's stance:
"I applaud his courage in seeing this as a moral issue, because that's what so important about it. We've got to see that in order to continue our rather luxurious lifestyle we are putting at risk the lives and the livelihood of hundreds of millions of poorer people who can't defend themselves. If that's not a moral issue, I don't know what is."
That's a pretty good argument, but regardless of what beliefs there are about whether "climate change" is the key "moral challenge" or not, from a pragmatic point of view I reckon achieving a more environmentally friendly economy is probably best conceived as the overriding intergenerational challenge Australians face. It is a vital issue. It's got to be kept in focus.
Why only a few weeks ago we heard Peter Costello claiming:
OK, but there is this bigger economic challenge tied to that one. If we agree with Costello that "demographics is destiny" then the way to keep "Australia rising" is to keep our GDP growing at a long-term sustainable rate.
But listen to Costello again:
That's a consequence of the dependency ratio. So how do you turn things around and get higher real GDP per person projections? Well first you'd try to optimise the productivity of the non-dependent portion of the population and then you'd have to increase the proportion of the population that is productive, wouldn't you?
And here's the chief challenge:
How do you do that without putting an additional strain on the already overstressed environment in which your economy operates?
Hockey schtik
Australia’s “avuncular” Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey seems just a little bit confused...
Poor Uncle Joe’s going to have an anxious few months leading up to the election if he can’t decide whether or not the Opposition has a policy.
Sadly he can’t even bring himself to acknowledge his own Government’s policy.
o_O_o
In other news, Australia’s flagship businessmen’s union, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, wants Australian children to compulsorily learn a foreign language from the age of seven.
In a new report — or ‘blueprint’, as they prefer to call it (wink, wink) — ACCI has floated some 153 recommendations that flag increased education expenditure by federal and state governments of $8-billion over the next 3 years.
Like any union would when spending other people’s money, ACCI couches its wish list in flowery terms, its purported aim being to socially engineer
But, buried in the detail, one finds the central plank of ACCI’s log of claims, the objective being to
Sadly, it seems the old adage still holds true: Scratch a unionist, and a Stalinist commissar is revealed just beneath the surface.
ABS is another "New Order" Liberal scam.
With the firm acknowledgement that I am not a very "literate" Computer person, I have found over the years, perhaps since 2001, that I have great difficulty in finding the simple ABS figures I would like to access.
I realise that a large part of the ABS stats are given to them by the Federal Government and, IMHO, the "New Order" find it easy to "confuse the illiterate" as well as the inquisitive.
Nevertheless, I have a simplified report which was "the Federal Government's own report given as evidence to the Budget Senate Estimates Hearings in May 2006" and "shows that its new AWA individual contracts are cutting the pay and conditions of Australian workers".
Add to that:
This "New Order" Liberal government has proven that "crime does pay" and "never give a sucker an even break."
Business would consider those amoral attitudes consistent with the principles of big business. I guess they are, when we observe a federal government avoiding its duty of care by saying - buyer beware! Devil take the hindmost!
But at what cost?
NE OUBLIE.
Fair Work
Ernest William, Labor's Fair Work Australia is a great sounding name, but that is all it is. With Labor in power and unemployment creeps up to 11%, what will Fair Work mean to those on the dole?
If I had to deal with the Unions again I would take my manufacturing off-shore. At the moment it costs me $38 to produce my product for the market place, and I employ 63 people. I can get the same thing made in China and landed here for about $8. I would need to employ about 5 people to distribute the product. I would think this applies to many small businesses in Australia.
Only this week in NZ two very large companies (Fisher Paykel & Sleepyhead) have gone off-shore, 1 to China and 1 to Thailand. This was blamed on the governement (Labor) for "high interest rates" and for the governement creating an unfriendly environment for manufacturing. Sounds a lot like the last time Labor was in power in Australia.
G'day Alan Curran.
IMHO, that is the first of your posts that genuinely expresses a very reasonable concern.
I believe that in your position, I too would be wondering how to survive as well, in this ever-changing country of depraved indifference.
Nevertheless, the US/Howard gallop into Globalisation must eventually destroy small businesses due its very objective of Nations competing with Nations.
Is that not so? Though I do not understand it completely.
My parent's family were true Liberals, like J.F.K. They too were small business people up to and during WW.2 The stress on my Father contributed largely to his death at the age of 46 years in 1946.
With that background I would suggest to you that you may well be better served if your employees have a sense of security and dignity that, under absolutely normal democratic circumstances, you would gain something, that business in Australia not longer has.
And that is trust.
I had a Lady tell me recently that she supported the new IR laws because, before them she had a young Lady working for her who was stealing - and she couldn't sack her. Of course that was an indication that, under the pre Howard laws, she didn't really know that she was stealing at all. Fair dinkum Alan.
As a Union delegate for 22 years in big business, that I shall not name, who treated their employees with respect and consideration, as indeed, they deserved from us - I have lived on both sides of the equation.
We had a voluntary situation where IF, a staff person was abusing and threatening the workers, for no genuine reason other than a "New Order" attitude - the company would promote him and there was no problem.
Conversely, if an employee behaved in a manner contrary to the employer's instructions, he would be either sacked (if entited to long service benefits) or demoted if that was an alternative.
No strikes for seven years - and then an American came in and demanded, like all amalgamations and take-overs, a complete change of the worker's rights with no consideration for their loyalty of service or their "secure feeling" that they had helped their employer to prosper.
We had seven strikes in one year.
While John Laws and Alan Jones claimed that we orchestrated a problem for a dispute when there where holidays or special occasions - I tell you Alan - the opposite was true.
Nevertheless, I had a very enjoyable 28 years employment with this Company because, maybe, they had a "Noblesse Oblige" which can be afforded by large Corporations.
So Alan, contrary to popular belief, I am sure that the biggest enemy of small business is the current "powers that be".
You are the largest employers in Australia.
Surely it is logical that the policy of the Labor Party, which is really about jobs for our people - can only be maintained by protecting small businesses?
It is surely unrealistic to accept the Howard/US policy of Nation versus Nation without the enormous loss of the "corner store" in both countries.
I am getting carried away Alan - but let me say this - IF you come back with reasoning debates - I for one will engage you.
NE OUBLIE.
G'Day
Ernest William, I think you have got it all wrong, I am not only surviving but business is growing in spite of Globalisation. All my employees have a sense of security and dignity and it will remain so as long as they obey my rules. I pay their wages, so they play to my rules, and are very happy to do so.They also know that if they do not do their job properley they will be shown the door.
The only thing I do not want to happen is the re-appearance of the Union dills that used to call on us about 7 years ago. As none of my employees belong to a union there is no need for a union official to be involved.
Contrary to your beliefs the biggest danger to small business would be the election of a Rudd/Burrows/Combet government.
Yes, we are the largest employers of people, and have continued to do so under Howard, unlike the days of the last Labor governement where unemployment reached 11%. So it is not logical to elect Rudd and his inexperienced team.
As for the "corner store" going belly up, this is usually caused by mismanagement or strong competition. In my suburb there is a shopping centre comprised of 43 small shops all doing well, despite the fact there a number of large stores (Coles, Westfield etc) near here.
As for your 7 strikes in one year, at least you were showing the workers that the Union Delegates were doing something. Nothing like looking as though you are doing something.
A fair case for deskilling and de-industrialisation
Alan Curran, I am not being sarcastic here, but it seems to me that you make out a good case for both of the above, or else for Australian workers to have to satisfy themselves with Chinese wages if they are to keep their jobs.
In your area of business, what is to stop some competitor of yours driving you to the wall by doing just that, giving your workers a choice of being in a race to the bottom or out of a job? Note that the logic of the situation says that this will take place under governments of either complexion.
Blundstone (boots) is merely the latest example.
What do you suggest is the answer?
In my line of business
Ian MacDougall, in my line of business I have two competitors, one in WA and one in SA. However I like to think that with superior marketing skills we leave them far behind. As for driving me to the wall, I don't think that will happen. By the way, I do not pay "Chinese wages".
However, as I have said previously, if I have to deal with the Unions again under a Rudd governement, I would go offshore with the loss of 55 jobs. I am sure Combet and Burrows will find them jobs the following day - L.O.L. The more I think of getting my product made offshore the more appealing it becomes. I would be able to take it a little easier ... maybe play some golf on a Wednesday.
Just for a bit of fun and research, go shopping and try and find products that are made here and not in China. You will not find many, I can tell you.
Your use of the catchy phrases like "race to the bottom", is typical of the Labor Party; good at words, but not very good at anything else.
Racing to the bottom
Alan Curran: "Your use of the catchy phrases like 'race to the bottom', is typical of the Labor Party; good at words, but not very good at anything else."
The term “race to the bottom” was, as far as I can gather, first coined in 1933 by US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who used it to describe competition between states seeking to attract investment by progressively dismantling regulatory controls.
I have encountered its use by people of varied political inclinations. Your sentence quoted above implies either that (a) I am the Labor Party, or (b) I am an ALP member, or (c) I am an ALP voter. As I happen to be a swinging voter, none of those is strictly true.
Unless you want to describe Forbes Magazine as part of some global bunch of leftist fanatics, you will have to admit that the term has wide currency across politics.
But none the less, you leave me perplexed. In your original post of April 28, 2007 - 9:54am, you said: "If I had to deal with the Unions again I would take my manufacturing off-shore. At the moment it costs me $38 to produce my product for the market place, and I employ 63 people. I can get the same thing made in China and landed here for about $8. I would need to employ about 5 people to distribute the product. I would think this applies to many small businesses in Australia."
That prompted my ‘race to the bottom’ query. You say you have two competitors, one in SA and one in WA, but you are in front of them both due to your superior marketing skills. However, if one day you find just one of those competitors marketing under their own brand a Chinese-made product equal to yours for 25% of your price, I doubt that your superior marketing skills will count for much. The further you leave your competitors behind, the greater the incentive they will have to catch up by going offshore. Perhaps they, like you, have had the same thought: "The more I think of getting my product made offshore the more appealing it becomes."
I have been aware of the thinning out of Australian products in the marketplaces of Australia for many years now, and I think that the jury is still out on globalisation as far as the general welfare of the Australian population is concerned.
So I repeat my question: doesn’t this imply a great deal of de-industrialisation of Australia, along with de-skilling of the workforce?
Race to the bottom
Ian MacDougall: "The further you leave your competitors behind, the greater the incentive they will have to catch up by going offshore."
What do you suggest I do? Adopt the Teachers Union attitude of no failures and everybody down to the same level? No thank you, I will continue to work hard to make sure my children and grand-children have the best of everything.
I did not imply that you were a Labor voter, I was just pointing out that Labor like to use catchy phrases like "fork in the road", "mums and dads" and "kitchen table"; sounds great, but it is b******t.
Round and round the mulberry bush
Alan Curran, what on Earth has the alleged Teachers' Union attitude of 'no failures' got to do with the original question I asked, and to which you still have not deigned to give an answer?
You know, the one about globalisation leading to the de-industrialisation and deskilling of Australia?
Surely that must count for something in your concern for your grandchildren? They just might have to go offshore (say to China) to find a job.
... not very good at anything else
Alan, sounds like you run a reasonably successful shop .... but I'm wondering, how do your fifty-five employees feel about the way you've been so publicly speculating about whether you will continue to employ them?
And, when you stop to reflect on it, how do you really feel about threatening the living standards of those fifty-five workers and their families?
Policy issues?
Hello I've seen a pre-election survey by a business lobby group and it just might provide a little insight into possible policy options the Liberals could put into play for the election.
Aside from questions on the policy stuff already out there - the push for greater Federal power, pushing AWAs, pushing the go button on nuclear reactors - it has a few you might not have considered so far.
Here's a sample:
Howard's dream Housing cost rising?
Howard’s Dream of Australia Rising must be the rising cost of Housing.
“The average Australian household can no longer afford to buy the average Australian home -- that's the succinct summary of Tim Colebatch, Economics Editor for the Age newspaper.
He was commenting on a report that shows housing is more unaffordable today than at any time since the issue was first assessed 23 years ago.
Despite relatively low interest rates, despite grants to first home buyers, despite the promises to cut stamp duty at state elections, despite the boom in apartment building, for many Australians real estate just keeps getting further out of reach.
And Tim Colebatch might have added that 'the average renter can no longer find the average rental property', with vacancy rates in capital cities below 2 per cent -- the lowest rate in a quarter of a century.”
Howard must live on another planet!
Howard says “History shows that economic growth and technological change have given mankind not just greater material wealth, but also cleaner air and water.”
Now I know Howard lives on another planet. Is Howard saying that the rivers of Sydney and the Air we breath in our cities is cleaner than it was 200 Years ago?
Science Daily reports:
Howard faces the future with his eyes closed.
"Despite the challenges we face, there’s no reason why Australia should not be even more prosperous by 2020," says Howard.
How about the following reasons?
1. If it occurs, the suspension of irrigation in the Murray-Darling basin would have a devastating effect on Australian agriculture, creating a ripple effect throughout the economy. The failure of crops grown in the region—which accounts for around 85% of Australia's irrigated land—could cause the price of food products ranging from dairy to fruit and vegetables to rise sharply. (The price of meat, however, would be likely to fall as lack of feed and water forced farmers to slaughter livestock for early sale.) In turn, there would be some danger that higher food prices would push up overall inflation, which is already uncomfortably high (inflation climbed to 3.5% in 2006). Higher inflation could then prompt the central bank to raise interest rates, although Australia's finance minister, Peter Costello, has denied that the government would respond in this way. See here.
2. The US Government Accountability Office in late February issued a report called "Crude Oil" - Uncertainty about future oil supply makes it important to develop a strategy for addressing a peak and decline in oil production." It is to date the most strongly-worded and unflinching view of the state of the global oil supply ever to have been issued by any of the western nations. Importantly, the US Departments of Energy and the Interior both "generally agreed with our message and recommendations," the report says. ..
What is striking about this report is that its authors don’t consider any scenarios in which the
3. Flood of Chinese Graduates - Figures vary, but the size of
4. End of the Mining Boom - A reduction in demand for imported Chinese goods would quickly entail a decline in China’s economic growth rate. That is alarming. It has been calculated that to keep China’s society stable – ie to manage the transition from a rural to an urban society without devastating unemployment - the minimum growth rate is 7.2 percent. Anything less than that and unemployment will rise and the massive shift in population from the country to the cities becomes unsustainable. This is when real discontent with communist party rule becomes vocal and hard to ignore.
It doesn’t end there. That will at best bring a global recession.
The crucial point is that communist authoritarian states have at least had some success in keeping a lid on ethnic tensions – so far. But when multi-ethnic communist countries fall apart from economic stress and the implosion of central power, history suggests that they don’t become successful democracies overnight. Far from it. There’s a very real chance that China might go the way of Yugoloslavia or the Soviet Union – chaos, civil unrest and internecine war. In the very worst case scenario, a Chinese government might seek to maintain national cohesion by going to war with Taiwan – whom America is pledged to defend.
Deep Throat Tells All – Tickets Please!
The Emperor Howard’s Headjob Speech Mk II
History shows that economic growth and technological change have given mankind not just greater material wealth, but also cleaner air and water.
So we wait to reach the star enviro-economic billing of Chattanooga, Houston, Tokyo, Osaka, Pusan, Eastern China, Omsk, Rostov-on-Don, the Ruhr, Mexico City and Sao Paolo.
During the wait, Australians should arrange for the deranged Education Minister to Klag Australia’s universities and schools. Just to f*ck the future generation’s heads and minds while they panic over water and the heat. While Sydney Harbour laps at Kirribilli’s ridge-capping. And we wipe our collective arses on “economic growth and technological change” with “not just greater material wealth, but also cleaner air and water.”
Meanwhile, the unlovely Immigration Minister (formerly gamesmistress and head altar boy at St WorkChumps™) floods Australia’s temporarily booming construction sector with easily exploited and cheap Section 457 visa “temporary” workers.
William Wilberforce, eat ya bloody heart out.
Or, if ya won’t, crazy Miz Bishop, the Aztec Gargoyle from Hell, will cut it out for ya with an obsidian dagger and chomp down the still beating bloody muscle like an apple before ya eyes, all the time keeping her own colourfully fixed mad stare to-camera.
Howard and the sinister PMO love this kind of vaudeville, and often film it like rural rorters on a spendthrift bingeing spree, lurching drunkenly through Kings Cross and doing crass things with their cameras.
And don’t worry about the Bishop’s ritual sacrifice, Mr Wilberforce. It’s not just you. She does that to all the Maoist Educators.
Just remember – it’s the price you must pay for abolishing the 19th Century version of WorkChumps™.
Frère Jihad Jacques OAM née Woodforde, deputy Station-Master-in-Chief to Mr Alan Jones of St James Station, last stop#457 on the UnderGround Railway
What a morning
Little Kev is a copycat;
"I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty"
"America can do better. And help is on the way."
"My name is Kevin, I'm from Queensland and I'm here to help."
As for looking to the future, what about this.
Thirty years ago, about half of all Australian workers were members of unions. The union representation in Labor's party conferences today is representative of the Australian workforce of that era.
Today, only one Australian worker in five is a member of a union. Yet the union representation in Labor conferences is unchanged, frozen in a time at which almost half the current Australian population was not born.
What about the special song written for him, shades of the Whitlam "It's Time", I'll bet that sent some shivers down peoples spines.
Craig R: Alan, where have you copied this material from? All the stuff that was in Comic Sans MS font that is (i.e. everything after the first comma).
Why?
Craig, why?
Craig R: So I know how best to explain how you can submit comment without the Comic Sans MS font formatting, Alan.
BIG MAC ... comin' to git ya, baby
Better still, Akka, invest in a Mac.
Make life simpler and faster, with or without Comic Sans (a beautiful default face, but not as legible and tight as Trebuchet MS).
Frère Jihad Jacques OAM née Woodforde, power mac beasty boy and Akka's closest personal friend and life partner, down in Florida, writin' swamp music
Comic sans
Craig, I use Comic Sans as the default font in Word.
So I just copy and paste from the Clipboard.
Craig R: If you could please, Alan, copy'n'paste to Notepad or Wordpad and then to WD and that'll strip the font format. Why? See here.
Comic sans
Hilarious.
Alan Curran, you are trying to be funny are you not? I mean you asking others for substantiation is hilarious!
As to the runt being visionary, well, you might as well say Jack the Ripper was a philanthropist. To preempt any complaints about what some might think is an unfair comparison, my apologies to any descendants of Mr The Ripper who are reading this.
Howard's economic nonsense
Howard admits:
Under Howard manufacturing has been decimated. See here: http://www.ibisworld.com.au/pressrelease/pressrelease.aspx?prid=81
It is only the Mining boom that has kept us afloat. Howard who has claimed economic success has in fact stood by as our manufacturing industries are all moving overseas.
Howard's speech is only words.
G'day Bryan, Ian, Jacob and those interested.
It is becoming obvious to me and I hope to others, that the intelligence and forthright opinions we read in WD are mostly logical and reasoning.
I believe that, even without a University education, most people have the God-given gift of reasoning and applying logic.
I have no doubt that Howard's speech was written for him by some clever individual, but that is not unusual for any politician.
However I think, even a clever speech writer like Alan Jones, can only use the points the speech maker desires. He/she may embellish the wording, improve the syntax and generally colour the lack of substance with a pleading style of "trust me".
Most of us have, I believe, seen through the charade of a chastised and compliant Prime Minister. It reminds me of the man who murdered his parents and then asked the jury for mercy because he was an orphan.
For people known for their scaremongering, Howard seems to have exceeded even the most pessimistic of his "New Order" caveat emptor with that speech.
Doom and gloom and only I can save you! Fair dinkum, John?
It is most encouraging to our people who will badly need compassion and justice in the workplace and the extensive mortgage debt, to know that Webdiary is one forum of free speech that Howard has been unable to silence.
It may follow that people will realise that the incompetence and Corporation controlled "New Order" doesn't have one Minister who really knows what they are doing. Howard then moves the pawns so that they are moving targets. Struth.
It is because of the latter spin that we Australians have to consider every single Liberal and National federal M.P. as complicit in the crimes that the "New Order" have committed in our name.
Personally I am convinced that Howard and his minions would not have dared to carry out their many anti-international moral and legal crimes without the aegis of the Bush Administration. So reminiscent of his school days at Canterbury High?
There will be dirty days ahead - I guess that Labor will try to appear to be honest and true, which has failed in the past.
I guess that the ALP conference will be open and transparent and will be roundly criticised by the media - no matter what.
I guess that our people have forgotten that democracy demands our representatives must argue the case of their constituents, not their faceless controllers.
While judging the two leaders, our people will have to REASON with a barrage of Corporation news and biased interviews. The mere fact that Howard is crying "poor mouth" is a sure sign that he will use the bottomless pockets of our taxpayers. And I don't mean the Corporations.
Let's list Howard's promises; core and non-core; never-ever; "rock solid and Iron clad" propaganda of the Ivory Tower group who is dismantling our democracy.
Labor doesn't have to prove anything. The control of both Houses by the "New Order" is frightening enough, due to their behaviour, for all Australians to unseat every one of them while we still can.
"He who hesitates is lost."
It's time to take back Australia - not a Costello "bit by bit" but with one massive bite.
NE OUBLIE.
Only words
They failed because they are dishonest and at all levels State and Federal they are ripping off their own supporters.
"I guess that the ALP conference will be open and transparent ..."
You are dreaming, this is going to be the biggest con we have ever seen.
"Webdiary is one forum of free speech that Howard has been unable to silence".
Please name some of the forums of free speech that Howard has closed down.
A Great Speech
It's the kind of speech I wish I could have made. Apart from a few ideas I disagree with.
Two quotes from Howard show the shadow and light of his belief in the dualistic world of his corporate God.
"For a country like Australia, there’ll be no holiday from history or from the long struggle against terrorism."
"Australia has a profound interest in a stable, cooperative and market-oriented global system underpinned by stable, cooperative and market-oriented nation states".
In other words, we'll keep making the profits, you keep paying the price. Followed by: Why do they hate us?
I'm suspicious of the domestic and global visions of a middle class Asia. Mmmm ... Shades of Bob Menzies.
All this talk of social mobility based on "jobs" is amusing. People with "jobs" are working class John. I suppose you want to change definitions by making a "job" a small business for the sharks to feed on. Social mobility indeed.
C'mon Kevin, match the vision thing.
If you can.
A truly hoorible thought
I was truly shocked when I first read this, and am grateful to Mr Howard for bringing it to my attention. That favoured gropers should get loose in environment policy, and nosy sectional interests get into our workplaces is bad enough. But tearing down the sound achievements of the Liberal Party so that a few mates can scratch each others’ backs would be an outrage, and a fork in the road we’d better not take. So I’m not voting for Rudd, that’s for sure; and I thank Mr Howard for his timely warning.
That leaves me with the only problem I have with this speech: I can understand that sectional interests should never get in front of national interests, such as the National Australia Bank, the National Nine Network, the National Capital Private Hospital and the National Dinosaur Museum. But Mr Howard seems to imply that those who generate the most noise are the ones who work easiest, live safest, bludge on their communities and above all, pay least taxes.
Now Mr Howard is well established, and confirmed by this speech, as one of the great noise makers of Australia. So I am horrified to think that his own speech might imply that he is an easy-working, safe-living bludger who pays little or no tax. In the interest of clearing away any doubt on this important point, I am happy to publish my tax return on Webdiary if he will publish his.
Californication
I quite like the speech. Comparing Queensland to a nascent California is a pretty little idea.
This is a lovingly written sentence. I wonder who wrote it - Howard himself often has idiosyncratic and sometimes feral uses of words but this paragraph has a loving clarity to it. It is almost cavalier in its appropriation of American concepts in order to interpret Australian phenomenon. This is a process about which Howard would be proud, rather than concerned, despite his intense Australian nationalism. It is a kind of inclusive nationalism that draws on outside sources in order to strengthen itself.
I wonder what exactly he means by "last century"? It could be the kinds of social mobility, caused by economic disaster, that Steinbeck documented in The Grapes of Wrath, during the depression era. California then offered dreams but the moral of the story is not in the revelation of a promised land but rather that nowhere was really very good. The Joad family often encounters people on their way back from California on their pilgrimage. It is as if California is hope, in a time of hopelessness; A modern day dream of a new Israel, for those dislocated by the conditions of the contemporary world.
Howard's comment is perhaps a reference to the glitter and promise of Hollywood. Hollywood is of course an easy target but I have enough imagination in me to still believe in its potential worth. In The Last Tycoon, Scott Fitzgerald defends (and tries to guide) Hollywood, as it was in the early forties, and I am inclined to follow his cue, as I do on so many ethical dilemmas. My love of film, especially American film, perhaps dictates that I take a charitable view towards California. There is also, of course, Governor Scwarzenegger, whom I expect does about as good a job as any other politician.
Hollywood produces great art but it also chews up and exploits people. The pornographic film industry for aspiring actors and actresses is a case in point. Even within the mainstream film industry there is a certain pimp element.
John Dos Passos wrote that Fitzgerald attempted to give the "pimp" aspect of Hollywood a certain dignity. He argues that Scott wrote fiction aimed at the literacy of a12 yr old, for money, but that he had difficulty repressing his genuinely creative side, producing fiction that deals with the dilemma any artist faces between "serious" work and "popular" work. This is believable; Even today, tabloid newspapers are aimed at the level of a 12 yr old.
All media acts as an ego-stroker and in a very real sense Hollywood film culture means that our culture is dominated by the desires of 12 yr olds. Nabokov's Lolita subsequently becomes the key figure in world culture, the one to whom the money-hungry corporate world defers but also attempts to groom and exploit. This is a process in which no-one is culpable and yet everyone is involved. It is a deep, cutural problem. It is something that causes panic because it is is heavily connected to the temporal, to the transitory phase of puberty, but also to the world of disposable cinema or other media.
"Real-time" as they call it in online gaming, makes dealing with complex phenomenon all the more difficult. Humans would prefer a turn-based world, one where your opponent stops whilst you gather your thoughts, and yet we live in a world that never stops. The erosion of moral clarity by the American entertainment complex, and the ensuing moral panic by conservatives, stems in part by the pressures of time. We live in a world that demands more of us in less time and as such we engage one another in more immediate, honest and uncontrolled ways.
I can see now in my own work a kind of softening of my moral centre by this corporate pull. I am torn between fighting the current or of going with it. I have as yet not found the line that needs to be drawn.
Also in California are the Red Hot Chili Peppers, very much the ambassadors for the Californian way of life, but who also came out with a lovingly composed condemnation of its imperialism in their hit song "Californication", not so long ago. This from the band that once sang "Catholic Schoolgirls rule".
We call Queensland the "Sunshine state" and I am remined of Nazism. The Aryans were meant to be blonde-haired, blue-eyed, smiling and sunny people. Australians have long claimed to be sunny, athletic, friendly beach-goers - that this is partly true only strengthens the myth. Magazine photography in the 20's played a heavy role in constructing this myth.
Nazism promised a better life in the future, a society of strong and athletic people. There is a metaphysical element to it - a dream, an abstraction, an act of the imagination, that is divorced from the present moment. That is not to say that I think Howard is using similar tactics to Nazism - I am well beyond that - but that there are certain universals in the way people respond to the world. These dreams are powerful. They are so powerful that they can seduce a country away from their moral obligations and allow atrocities to occur on their watch.
My overwhelming experience of late has been of grief, with tragedies piling up on tragedies, to the point where I am losing even my most grim sense of humour, in the face of a kind of grave, devestated melancholia. Personally I am happy within myself, more than at any other time, but that the cut-throat environment in which we live causes me to dip in to the misery of the collective. And once there I struggle to find the will to lift myself out.
A respite from the morbid nature of the Howard years would be welcome. It is strange how hard he tries to liberate people to be happy but always seems to throw the country in to a maudlin state. Happiness is, I suspect, a state the country has forgotten. Those that are substantially happy, live in a different country to the one in which I live. The national borders may be the same but the circles I swim in simply do not cross with theirs. I know they exist but I do not belong to them.
I say this because I want to acknowledge the power the notion of the "Pursuit of happiness", that we borrow from the US declaration of independence, can have on me.
To accuse California of spreading across the world, as the RHCP do, is problematic, given the potential universal nature of its world-view. However what it stands for certainly conflicts with Islam and many other conservative societies. The push to "modernise" such countries is arguably a mere front for the corporatisation of the world, the turning of individuals away from their Gods towards the new Gods of Hollywood. It is to secularise the world, turn us all in to 'materialists', and then make us in to 'Lolita'. Not in her sexual aspect but in her vanity, level of maturity and essential powerlessness.
We are going back to worshipping the sun and life and nature and sex and enterprise. The modest gains of Christianity in civilising the world may be losing influence. Right-wing governments are criticised for their Christianity but it is really the only moral protection we have from the utter dominance of the corporate world over civil life.
Democracy is like being hand-cuffed to somebody you do not like and whom you suspect does not like you either. At first you ignore one another, then you work together on issues of mutual necessity, then of mutual interest and finally you begin to have a certain empathy and understanding with and of them. Then if you stay around long enough you start to become like them. I have come to respect Howard, after a long and arduous study of the man. I want to work for the Liberal party and write speeches for them and work as professional communicator. I think I could do that very well, and, also, when I truly consider it, there may be nothing else left for me to do. This feels like the corner that I have backed myself in to.
Banana-led recovery
Australia has recorded its lowest annual inflation rate for two years, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rising by only 0.1 per cent in the March quarter, leaving the annual increase in the cost of living at 2.4 per cent.
Who’d have thought that the recovery of the banana industry should help save Australia from an inexorable slide into Banana Republicdom??
Viewer’s of last night’s Lateline program on ABC-TV will have witnessed presenter Tony Jones badgering Labor’s shadow treasurer Wayne Swan to admit that this result is due to the sound economic management of the Howard Government (in vain, as it turns out).
It should be noted, however, that all the commentariat so far has failed to acknowledge the role of the Reserve Bank of Australia, whose tweaking of interest rates at several crucial stages in the current cycle may well have contributed significantly to this splendid result.
Oh, that together with the hard work and fiscal discipline of the Australian people generally.
Good work, Australia!!!
Surely what JH says on education
Surely what JH says on education is piffle?
It's all piffle
F Kendall, the whole darmed speech is generalised piffle. This man is really starting to worry me.
He talks about the strong economy and the need to ensure growth continues. Doesn't that also mean population growth?
Time someone told him you cannot grow or sustain anything without water, and not just plants. Not a word about the impending economic disaster in the food bowl of this country. Stand by for the blow out in the balance of trade when we start having to import much of our food.
Out of interest I can tell you that cattle prices have collapsed this past month in regional selling centres. That I could buy a T bone for four dollars (instead of the usual 9) in Woolies told me something was afoot. So I checked with neighbours who sold cattle lately and they said the price had collapsed. That on top of the drought was all they needed. I am not sure what is driving this fall. Seems like a good time for you meat eaters to stock up because when it does rain, farmers will be hoping this is only a blip.
Educator's View
As an educator I am somewhat shocked by Mr Howard's speech.
It's hard for many to see past the party political rhetoric of an election year campaign speech. However Mr Howard's speech struck a chord with me. Perhaps that ought to be "discord".
You see, out of all the 21st century skills, flat world, what if, shake it up, type presentations that I have been referring to in my previous posts, (presentations which in my opinion inspire and motivate many educators), it took Mr Howard to link 2020 to the ongoing global war on terror. (In my mind at least).
Mr Howard's choice of words is very telling. When describing Australia in 2020 he uses, Struggle, terrorism, fight, war, enemy, battle, defence force, combat, heavy burden.
Have the educators got it wrong? Or is it the politicians that refuse to shift from 20th century "world is round" thinking? What kind of world are we creating? Do we tell the class of 2020 (today's kindergarten), that our leaders are planning to continue the war? That the world they graduate into will be a burden and a struggle, or ought we be trying to inspire them with some other, more hopeful vision?
More at my blog...
Craig R: Welcome to Webdiary, Mark.
Release
My theory is that both the climate change debate and the Workchoices debate are being given so much prominence because all the grave and traumatising issues that we have been subjected to since 9/11 have made people emotionally exhausted. This is a ball we can kick around and release some of that energy. It is something everyone can get involved in and it is relatively "safe" politics. Usually no-one dies. That environmentalists are insisting on making this about "Life or death" spoils the party somewhat but I suppose that was inevitable. Moralists spoil every party.
Howard's statement about other moral issues is peculiarly generic. Presumably it is meant to apply to the economy, since he labours that point somewhat, however it could apply to whatever suits your fancy. It is another example of political persuasion that seeks to liberate you from your conscience, rather than control your information flow. If abortion is your particular obsession then Howard gives you permission to indulge in it, even without having mentioned it. It allows the audience to author its own meanings. Roland Barthes lives! I wonder at Howard's ability to communicate something without actually expressing it at all. He would be at home in a Henry James novel.
I find myself largely convinced by Howard's rhetoric. There is something insecure about Labor's incessant desire to be involved in multilateral treaties and bodies. Wesley's The Howard Paradox paints a surpirsingly convincing portrait of Howard's approach to foreign policy.
Speeches are just cheap words - Howard.
Let's hope that by "Australia Rising", the "New Order" are admitting to the:
I have said so often that the Howard/Bush adviser, Karl Rove, engineers the methods used by both "wannabe dictators" regarding negative politics; wedges; diversions; lies; core and non-core excuses, for so many blunders, that it would take a book to record them.
Indeed the quintessential "moving target" moves, and having moved - moves on! (Apologies to Omar).
Howard has already started his diversions (gee, I hope so - most are stupid and thoughtless) but - he gets maximum exposure from the media - free of charge - and there is no one given an equal opportunity.
He, and his conga-line of servile ministers, will spend the largest part of their propaganda with the gutter-snipe negatives invented solely by their depraved leader.
There will not be any new and constructive policies at all while Howard, the Corporations and the media extol his debt-ridden economy and presidential un-challenged speeches. Because this person has a history of not being able to debate anyone on equal terms.
A stubborn person is hard to convince - a pig-headed person is impossible to convince.
Let's hope that the "understanding" of "Australians" is "Rising" as to the magnitude of the "New Order's" past crimes and, more importantly, the retrograde plans they have for the future of U.S. wars of choice.
NE OUBLIE.
When you think of Howard's "economy" - Think.
Peter Costello added:
Now, after a decade of mis-management, the $180 billion debt has become $520 billion.
Struth - can any thinking and reasoning Australian vote for the "New Order's" continuing plans for this debt ladden economy, to remake us in the absolute and a Menzies' "Never never" rental cost of living in our own nation.
The Media does elect governments and/or can destroy them.
We Australians have just one more chance to stand up for our Nation this year - even if the choice is to tell America that we have a real democratic voting system in our independent Nation.
God bless our independence - if we can protect it.
NE OUBLIE.
Cheap words
Ernest William, I am looking forward to your comments on the Labor "gabfest" starting this week in Sydney, especially after this gem from you.
"Howard has already started his diversions (gee, I hope so - most are stupid and thoughtless) but - he gets maximum exposure from the media - free of charge - and there is no one given an equal opportunity."
I await the floorshow of Rudd and his conga-line of Union bosses. I am sure the venal media will cover this for you.
It's Climate Change stupid
Howard says “But to say that climate change is the overwhelming moral challenge for this generation of Australians is misguided at best; misleading at worst.
It de-legitimises other challenges over which we do have significant control. Other challenges with moral dimensions just as real and pressing as those that surround climate change.”
Howard misses the point on Climate Change. Thousands of our Farmers face a future without water; as a result the cost of food is set to sky rocket. The Great Barrier Reef is under threat of destruction, with thousand of jobs at risk in the tourist industry.
The Snowy Mountain Hydro is running out of water and may no longer be able to generate power. Sea levels may rise flooding Kakadu and other low lying areas, Including all those canal homes.
Thousand of species are going to be extinct.
It is the greatest challenge the human race has had to face; it may even lead to our extinction. Compared to Global Warming there is no other challenge, moral or otherwise.