Just picked up at Tim Blair with the very clever title, Everybody Out. For the first minute you won’t know where this is heading, with many destinations possible. As he wrote “Shortly after it was posted, this trade union ad was removed from YouTube following hilarious leftist outrage.” Just watch it. Anything said before will spoil the fun.
Either we are at war with an existential enemy or we are not. Either these things are a threat to our way of life or they are not. We are either so in command of the situation that it does not much matter what we do today or we are not. From how things look to me, we are on the losing side in a hundred years war that will end early in the next century. Any thoughts on what the name on the door of what we today call Westminster Abbey or Notre Dame will be on this day in 2115?
The 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta will be commemorated on 15 June. On 18 June, we will also be commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. And also this year, on the 25th of October, we will be celebrating the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. And do you know what they all had in common? Each was a contest using force of arms to determine an outcome.
Tell me this as well. If Winston Churchill were in the Abbot cabinet, would he side with the PM or with Turnbull over how to deal with dual citizens who take the side of the enemy? This is from Gerard Henderson today:
Here’s a news flash (without an exclamation mark). The so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, or ISIL or Daesh, is intent on establishing a caliphate run by Sunni Islamists throughout the world. Contrary to Vanstone’s opinion, there is no evidence that the leaders of Daesh have a cunning plan to reduce the democratic protections that prevail within democracies. Rather, they want to destroy democracies and autocracies alike and establish a theocracy.
There is a genuine debate in Australia and elsewhere as how to handle the Islamic State threat, at home and abroad. This extends all the way to the Abbott cabinet as was evident in leaks about the discussion among senior members of the Abbott government (the Prime Minister himself, Julie Bishop, Kevin Andrews, George Brandis, Peter Dutton, Barnaby Joyce, Christopher Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull) about the implications of terrorism on Australia’s citizenship laws.
As the Australian government’s discussion paper “Australian Citizenship — your right, your responsibility” makes clear, the Abbott government “intends to modernise the Australian Citizenship Act to enable the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection to take action in the national interest to revoke the Australian citizenship of dual citizens who engage in terrorism that betrays their allegiance to Australia”.
There appears to be a broad consensus among Coalition and Labor parliamentarians in support of the proposal that Australian dual citizens who fight with IS should have their citizenship revoked. This would extend the 1948 legislation which entails that dual citizens who fight with a country at war with Australia will lose their Australian citizenship.
The dispute on citizenship turns on the issue of whether the Minister for Immigration should be able, in the words of the discussion paper, “to revoke Australian citizenship where there are reasonable grounds to believe the person is able to become a national of another country under their laws and would not be made stateless”.
The Government has made a judgement call about how best to go about preserving our freedoms in the face of a barbaric and determined enemy that has made astonishing headway in the 14 years since 911. As Henderson says at the end of his article, “There comes a time when democratic rights have to yield to national security considerations.” Democratic government, whatever else it may be, is not a suicide pact. We will either defend this way of life or we will lose it. The Turnbulls of the world have so little political imagination that they cannot picture the world in any other way but the way it is. It is an extreme form of ignorance, who would rather lose in a dignified way than win even if we have to bomb Dresden into matchsticks.
Here is a story that is in some ways easy to understand but not in others: Major networks, cable and streaming services reject Gillard biopic as too toxic for TV ratings.
Surely there is someone out there willing to sacrifice a few dollars on behalf of the country. The only condition if they are to get the money is that the film must be released a month or two before the next election. The whole story is even worse than you can imagine, the blacklisting of this film and all. As Tim Blair discusses:
Everything was looking good for Griffiths when plans for the biopic were announced in 2013. “I am thrilled to portray Australia’s first female prime minister and explore the private aspects of her remarkable term,” Griffiths said.
“I believe that the creative and intellectual capacity of the team involved will produce a stunning drama that will reframe this historic period in our cultural and political life.”
Alas, television networks and almost everybody else did not share Griffiths’s belief. The project was rejected by networks, cable broadcasters, digital streaming services and possibly even children’s puppet theatre workshops.
“They think the public were sick of the story and no one will watch this show,” moaned the telemovie’s executive producer Richard Keddie.
“The networks think people still hate Julia.”
Not to worry. I’d watch it for sure. It would be better than The Rocky Horror Show and then some.
Joe was Great! There was not a moment in the whole of Q&A tonight that I thought he was behind, and this is enemy territory. But most importantly, this was even when the one-eyed Labor Party stooge, Tony Jones, tried to sandbag the Treasurer with a NATSEM study that had not been released EXCEPT TO THE ABC!!! And without showing the level of disgust he no doubt felt at such obvious ALP-ABC gotcha attempts to undermine the Treasurer, he simply turned it aside. He embarrassed the ABC for its obvious duplicity.
But I would have left this alone, except that there is one thing I think the Treasurer needs to tighten up on. He is trying to get there, in fact he is almost there, but his Keynesian minders or whoever it is that surrounds him, don’t quite let him see through to the point he is obviously trying to make. But if he gets there, he will be impregnable.
He was asked something like this, which I almost thought of as a friendly question, from Gai I think it was:
Why is household debt good but public debt bad?
Why are you encouraging people to borrow and spend at low interest rates when they may end up in serious trouble when interest rates go up?
Spending is not what you want. Joe, listen to me. Spending is not what you want to encourage. Growth and employment is not a the result of spending. Growth and employment are the result of VALUE ADDING production. That is, the result of production where the value of what is produced will, within a reasonably short period of time, create an income flow even greater in value than the value of the resources used up. That is the meaning of value adding.
Private households do not create value ever. A household uses up value, but it is not from households that economic growth occurs (except for the occasional plumber that gets called in). Growth comes from business. If you confuse personal spending with business spending you will never get these things clear in your head. There is personal consumption, which is the point of economic activity. And there is business activity which is continually trying to add value to the resources they use up. Please, Joe, stop looking for consumer demand to lead the recovery. It cannot be done.
One more reminder in the video below about the difference between those bad Keynesians, who used to be in government, and who thought about spending, versus you supply-siders, bless your hearts, who have replaced them, who are concentrating on value adding production.
This is lifted straight from Tim Blair.
Labor’s Bill Shorten spoke at a press conference earlier today:
JOURNALIST: There were three Aussie jihadis trying to come home at the moment, should the Government be helping them to do that?
SHORTEN: Well first of all let me just state the principle that Australians shouldn’t be going overseas to fight in these causes or these battles. We’ll get an update about the national security and about what’s happened with these people reported in the media in the last couple of hours.
JOURNALIST: I guess our justice system is based on belief in rehabilitation and shouldn’t that apply to everybody?
SHORTEN: Well fundamentally we believe in rehabilitation, there’s the law of the land and we’ll seek a briefing from the Government.
JOURNALIST: What sort of punishment do you think though they should receive if they were to come home? A jail term?
SHORTEN: There are laws in place, I’m not going to play judge and jury and again we’ll ask the Government to update us with what’s happening with these matters that have just been coming through in the last couple of hours.
Contrast Shorten’s pathetic timidity with the Prime Minister’s more direct approach:
“We have seen with our own eyes on TV the mass executions, the beheadings, the crucifixions, the sexual slavery. This is a gruesome, ghastly, medieval barbarism which has erupted in the modern world. The last thing any Australian should do is join it.
“The Australian people expect their country to be safe and someone who has been a terrorist abroad could very easily become a terrorist here in Australia.
“If you go abroad to join a terrorist group and you seek to come back to Australia, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted and jailed.”
And Shorten wonders why Labor’s poll advantage is eroding.
I don’t watch TV so I don’t have to put up with any of it. Helps me keep a perfect calm in the midst of life. But there’s the interview above, and here is her comment below:
Alberici said she doesn’t “understand the hoo-ha” about her post-budget interview with Finance Minister Mathias Cormann in which she accused the government of making up “nonsense” figures that “you continue to trot out”.
“I was just trying to bring facts to the table – that’s what we are supposed to do. I don’t think doing a challenging interview is biased. I think the opposite: we should be challenging everyone who is in front of us.”
The moment that matters is around 3:30. If she was right, then she has a point. If she was wrong, then she should apologise. In any case, she should be civil to a Minister of the Crown. Watching it for the first time, I have to say it was a perfectly normal interview and I thought Cormann answered everything as well as one could hope. But arguing about budget facts is unfair, since no one watching will know one way or the other.
But the question remains: who was right about the figures?
THE ANSWER: The answer that has most satisfied my curiosity was provided by Ray. A fine piece of investigative journalism, unlike the sort of common garden invective dished up by the ABC.
Cormann quoted a figure of $667 billion. Alberici said that was made up and the correct figure was $370 billion. However, the only reference to $370 billion I can find in PEFO is the projected face value of Commonwealth securities as at 2016-17. The $667 billion reference from Cormann relates to the projected face value of Commonwealth securities in 2023-24. Since PEFO contained no estimate for this out to 2023-24, Alberici has no basis to her claim that Cormann was wrong.
By the way if we really want to compare apples with apples, MYEFOs projection for the face value of Commonwealth securities in 2016-17 was $440 billion.
Watching Malcolm Turnbull defend the ABC on Bolt is the final straw. Who on our side of politics does he represent?
He is defending the ABC in its vicious and lying attacks on The Coalition! The ABC is not called to account! The ABC is publicly funded. This is not competition! It’s not there based on ratings success.
If that is the best he can do, he has lost us all.
And after the break: Q: Have you ever been a conservative?
A: Yes, BUT. Conservatism is a process. It is an approach. It is not being reactionary. Conservatism seeks to reform in an organic way. Wishes to have a strong link to the shore even as we set out to sea.
Q: Climate change? Four problems with the consensus.
A: I’m not doing pick-a-box. My position on GLOBAL WARMING. Greenhouse gases affect the climate. Many think this will be a problem. There is doubt about the rate. Any sensible personal has to have scepticism. We should take a prudent cautious approach, to reduce greenhouse gases.
Q: Freedom of speech.
A: Plenty of scope already in the Act for debate. There was a general consensus to remove the words humiliate etc. The proposals that the government produced went beyond that. The government went further than it should have. Need to get the right balance.
Q: How different is the govt today from when you tried to topple Abbott.
A: I don’t accept the premise of the question. We now have a good budget, and a united government.
As I was picking up the paper this morning, my wife said to me, it’s just like reading The Age. You may be sure she did not intend that as an encouraging sign of the times. I fear I have to agree, at least to some extent. But there were areas of redemption. The truest words on the budget commentary were by Mark Latham:
It’s all about dickheads talking about stuff they know nothing about — that’s what it’s about.
Certainly when I read (well, glanced through) the diatribe from Niki Sava, it was discouraging. Seriously, she is moving into the spot vacated by Michelle Grattan. It did take the government, and not just Joe Hockey, a year to work out that the only way to get the deficit down is to grow the private sector around it. And they finally removed the Keynesian head of Treasury and brought in John Fraser which probably has made a world of difference. I don’t know why she focuses on personalities, but with her Malcolm Turnbull fandom, nothing will satisfy her blood lusts, it seems, not even a really together budget that works economically and politically.
More to my taste was the article by the CEO of the Council of Small Business of Australia, Hockey’s ‘small-business budget’ perfect for the sector. Here is someone who know that perfection nowadays almost entirely consists of “didn’t make things worse, and perhaps made them a bit better”. I’ll give you his last two paras and you can read the rest for yourself:
The depth of announcements in the budget shows the government understands it is the little changes that make a difference. The small-business person’s capacity to start up, operate and, if desired, expand their business has been enhanced. The whole business life cycle seems to have been covered.
Overall this has been a great budget for small business and for the economy.
This is not some side-line observer but a representative of the people who are going to make the difference in how the economy goes. There is a terms-of-trade shift putting money into the hands of business. Keynesian theory also pretends that it is doing the same, except that to get the money, businesses must hand over the things they produced to people who are busy digging holes so they can be refilled. The net is not all that large for any firm nor is there any net addition to the economy. What the government has done is inject after-tax cash flow straight into the hands of producers. If you go to my second edition, right there on page 359-361 is the list of what a government should do to revive and economy. Number one reads: “priority should be to lower taxes, especially on business.”
As for the coverage by the ABC, I have only Andrew Bolt’s word for it since I never watch myself, but if his observations are anything like the reality, and I have no reason to doubt it, there are huge savings to be made on the budget bottom line that are begging to be made. If there is anyone at Cabinet level still protecting this hopeless bunch of leftists from a day of reckoning, they should be taken out, have their epaulettes removed, and sent off to be ambassador somewhere properly remote.
You know, the Government may actually have gotten the point. Early days, and we haven’t seen the budget yet, but these are positive straws in the wind. This is good: Budget 2015: rewards for seniors to stay at work. I don’t know whether keeping me around will be like getting an ARC grant, but nonetheless:
Older Australians will get new rewards for finding work and strong incentives to put off their retirement as the federal government recasts its controversial pension savings in a wider budget reform aimed at boosting the workforce at the same time it helps to cut the deficit.
Federal cabinet has agreed to make faster payments of up to $10,000 to employers who hire older Australians as part of an overhaul of job programs to help tens of thousands of people back into the workforce.
A separate budget measure will give people approaching retirement a new incentive to stay at work for a few more years in the knowledge they could collect a bonus when they choose to claim the Age Pension.
The budget will also spare about two million retirees from an unpopular change to pension indexation, making the savings instead from fewer than 400,000 people with substantial private assets.
Yesterday, or maybe the day before, it was childcare payments that were redirected towards supporting women at work, not to support those on maternity leave which was the original plan last election. Instead, the need to make employment grow and people in jobs secure seems to be the underlying theme. Supply-side economics comes in many forms.
Jobs growth in a market economy just happens. The question, where will the jobs come from, an ever-present idiocy of those who have no feel for market outcomes, is answered by the fact that jobs just seem to come, almost from nothing. The more public spending that could be pared back the better, but with the active promotion of the private sector merely to get on with it, the funny thing is that it will do just that.
Craig Emerson has a column on Ideas needed for next economic growth phase. Here are, according to Emerson, “five ideas that could make a material difference to Australia’s future living standards”. He is certainly right about that, but you would think he would want to see our living standards rise rather than fall. The five:
1. A very fast train.
2. Lift the asylum seeker intake.
3. Double teachers’ salaries.
4. Increase land tax.
5. Accommodate disruptive technologies.
The support for “disruptive” technologies I find revealing. Why doesn’t he just say support the market and encourage entrepreneurial change? It’s not ideas that cause change but commercialisation of the ones that will work by the private sector. Everything else is almost inevitably waste. See the NBN and the series of Desal plants scattered around the country for recent examples.
Law of Markets 