Category Archives: Politics – Australian

Did you cringe at the jingoism, the unthinking patriotism and crass commercialism? – Actually, no I didn’t

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Do people really believe this? This is a quote, now taken down, it seems, from Martin Hirst, who is a journalism lecturer at Deakin University which I picked up at Andrew Bolt discussing more Leftists protest in relation to ANZAC Day.

Did you cringe at the jingoism, the unthinking patriotism and crass commercialism that now defines ANZAC day? Or did you, like the free speech fundamentalists and Abbott apologists, take time from your orgy of bloody celebration of war, to call for a young journalist to be sacked for daring to question the ANZAC myth?… The myth is that both world wars were fought to protect “our” freedoms and that without them “we” would not enjoy the lifestyle we have today. That is utter tosh and ahistorical nonsense and it also conveniently lets the warmongers off the hook. War is never about principles and morals, it is about money… War benefits the capitalists who stay behind. There are profits to be made in the killing and in the rebuilding, which brings us to imperialism… It is a sad day for freedom of speech when telling the unpalatable truth to a nation that collectively sticks its fingers in its ears and sings the anthem to drown out critical voices causes someone to lose their job. [My bolding]

It’s not even that he is a stray, an outlier, but is as mainstream amongst the media/intellectual class as you could find. I am astonished that SBS actually sacked their sports reporter for discussing an issue in such an offensive way, over which he could not possibly have had the slightest expertise. We now indulge opinion journalism, but the carriers of these views merely have opinions. Research and detailed knowledge of any kind seems irrelevant. They read each other’s ignorant rants and then reword and repeat.

It really shouldn’t be so hard

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Here’s the strategy:

Arthur Laffer has a simple theory of politics. It’s about as simple as his theory of economics. . . . The economic theory says that the lowest, simplest tax code will produce the most growth. The political theory goes like this: Politicians crave love from voters. So if you want to get a politician to do what you think is right, give him a plan he can easily sell, and make sure that plan will deliver a lot of crowd-pleasing economic growth.

George Bush Snr sat in the Reagan White House for eight years and didn’t learn a thing. Nor did the voters who elected Obama. Even here, we had a government that brought us lower taxes and ongoing prosperity, so we rewarded them by bringing in the other side. There is, of course, more to the theory than we see at the final upper stage. And it is even possible he is right about what might happen in the US next, assuming someone can be induced to actually take those crucial first steps.

His economic calculations have led him to believe that the U.S. economy is primed, after a decade of slow growth and middle-class income stagnation, to grow rapidly – it just needs a big tax reform bill that would lower rates and eliminate most deductions. . . .

This is Laffer’s unshakeable belief: that once voters elect a supply-side acolyte to the White House, massive growth will follow. That growth will please voters. Voters will reward the president’s party. And Republicans, he predicts, will go on to enjoy a generation-long lock on Washington – until, he says, voters forget the power of supply-side economics, and the cycle begins again.

Here, alas, we are still trying to unwind from the old cycle never mind starting a new one.

MORE ALONG THE SAME LINES BUT FROM AUSTRALIA: Peter Costello’s taxing truths. Here is what you need to know but do read the rest:

The government has been hurt by the former treasurer’s claim that it is leaning too heavily on tax increases and not enough on spending cuts to repair the budget.

Raising taxes is bad economics and will repel votes. Other than that, it’s a great idea.

Peter Walsh and Richie Benaud on the same day

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This is quite a tragic day. I only knew Benaud from his commentary days for which he was exemplary. It was Peter Walsh I knew – he would not have known that he had known me, however. This on Peter Walsh from the AFR, picked up at Andrew Bolt, is exactly how I remember him. They really don’t make ’em like that any more.

[He] came to despise the hand-out, protectionist and regulatory populism of the then Country Party and the sway it held over the fate of the Australian economy in the post-war decades.

But Walsh was not selective in his hatred of rent-seekers and protectionists: He despised trade union leaders as much as he despised farm and business leaders for their special interest pleading. And he was just as withering in his critiques of the environmental movement’s anti-growth agenda.

His contempt for the Green movement remained with him after he left politics and motivated him to be a founding member of the climate change sceptic lobby. He was a founding member of the Lavoisier Group which disputes the scientific basis on which climate change forecasts are based.

Walsh described global warming as “highly speculative science” and argued that those most active in proposing legally binding greenhouse emissions limits as “self-serving propagandists and bureaucrats”.

He abhorred the rising influence of the environmental movement on the Labor Party and wrote that “since the 1980s Australian Labor Party policy has been incrementally hijacked by well-heeled, self-indulgent, morally vain and would-be authoritarian activists whom the media often describes as the intelligentsia”.

Walsh became increasingly disillusioned by what he saw as modern Labor’s infiltration by “the chattering classes”.

And let me add a quote from the article which has a certain resonance today:

Walsh hated wasteful spending, especially on politically fashionable causes. And he hated the rent seekers who cruised (and still do today, in greater numbers than ever) the corridors of Parliament House trying to convince ministers that their cause is the one that really deserves support.

Because of this, Walsh played a critical role in the transformation of Labor’s economic policy reputation during the Hawke and Keating era.

Mathias Cormann, please take note.

Do NOT raise taxes and do NOT lower rates

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If the Government’s suicidal tendencies continue, there will be no saving them from their own idiocies. It’s not even that raising taxes is politically popular. It is absolute voter poison. Raising taxes is guaranteed to lose you the next election.

But what makes it worse, is that raising taxes is also economic poison. The Treasurer has his eyes firmly fixed on 2055, forty years from now. I wish he would occasionally also glance at 2016 and 2017, which also happens to be when they will be trying to get re-elected.

It is bad economic management to raise taxes in a recession. Let me say this again with emphasis: It is bad economic management to raise taxes in a recession.

You have to stop looking at things from the perspective of those dunces in Treasury. All they can think of is how are they going to find the money for all of those programs you and Labor have committed us to?

If you really do think that recovery is in any way promoted by government spending, other than in a very very narrow and select range of areas, then you have not even got to first base in understanding how an economy works. Stop listening to these people and start thinking about who you really want to put purchasing power in the hands of.

It is business and the private sector that will give you growth and lower unemployment. It cannot come from any other source. And if you think that business will be encouraged by hearing that the budget deficit is fractionally lower, then you are so far off the beam that I don’t know where you think you are. Business is encouraged by making money. The economy grows through productive investment. Jobs and real increases in income are based on faster rates of private sector growth. If you think private sector growth driven by some form of government-financed activity is the same, then your whole basis of thinking about these issues is a FAIL.

And then there are the supposedly popular cuts to interest rates. Here’s a small test. Suppose interest rates went up by a quarter of a percent (which is what they should do, but won’t). You tell me: what would happen to the housing market? It would stall and possibly crash. Housing is already unaffordable. Why would you want to continue to finance a bubble that has now trapped every government so deeply, that it seems almost impossible to imagine rates going up any time soon. Although given past history, they will, in the month before the next election.

Lies, damned lies and politics

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The interviewer is Dana Bash. The interviewee is Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader in the United States. During the election in 2012, he helped lie Obama back into the White House by stating that Mitt Romney hadn’t paid taxes in ten years. And so, the other day this is what he said:

BASH: So no regrets about Mitt Romney, about the Koch Brothers. Some people have even called it McCarthyite.

REID: Well… [shrug] … they can call it whatever they want. Um … Romney didn’t win, did he?

This is how it works on the left in politics everywhere. There are the “intellectuals”, academics and journalists. And there are those who are on the receiving end of a pipeline of government money, some rich (crony capitalists and all) and most not so rich. Good governance is the farthest thing from their minds. With the media as slanted to the left as Pravda in the days of the Soviet Union, it is a generally winning combination. That the US is now a mess, and becoming less consequential every day, is no concern of theirs. Harry Reid speaks for them all. Admits he lied, but so what. Obama won and Romney didn’t.

And in Australia. You have the same combination of the left intellectual “elite”, who generally are anti-market, and the ALP/Green support base, who have little clue where the good things in life come from, other than knowing they aren’t getting their fair share. What’s cheaper electricity and a more reliable supply got to do with anything? If you can make ownership of poles and wires work for you, you can win government. Everybody at the top of the Labor Party knew Martin Ferguson was right. But had it not been for him and a few others, Labor might have won the election, just as Obama did in 2012.

In Australia, our media is not as slanted. You do get to hear both sides on most issues – although the ABC, being a public broadcaster and the most far left of the lot is a major distortion in our news and information flow. Under the Harry Reid Principle (or lack of principle), Martin Ferguson is being forced out of the Labor Party for telling an inconvenient truth. Truth in politics is what you can get away with.

Victoria’s union chiefs have unanimously called on Labor to expel Rudd-Gillard frontbencher Martin Ferguson from the party as anger rises over recent comments savaging the ALP and the trade union movement.

Mr Ferguson, a former ACTU president and federal resources minister, describes himself as “Labor to the bootstraps” despite now working as a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry and representing companies including Shell, Exxon Mobil, Woodside and BHP.

But a slew of recent political attacks by Mr Ferguson have sparked frustration and a strong push to turf out the former Labor heavyweight from the party.

Tensions spilled over this week, with Mr Ferguson publicly supporting the reinstatement of the hardline Australian Building and Construction Commission, claiming the militant construction union must be “brought to heel”.

He also accused NSW Labor leader Luke Foley of “rank opportunism” and “blatant scaremongering” in the run-up to Saturday’s state election. Mr Ferguson became the face of a NSW Liberal Party campaign ad, where he expresses disgust over his party’s anti-privatisation campaign. [Bolding added]

And where are we now? Labor might well have won had Ferguson not said what he said as publicly as he did. The entire east coast would have then had the same junk governments, and Tony Abbott would have had to go. An informed electorate is one thing; a perpetually deceitful and ignorant media class is quite another.

And I draw your attention to the implicit bias in the story which clearly implies that working for the resources sector and trying to control rogue unions is somehow against the Labor Party ethos. It may well be so, but it is not a winning combination for the long-term prosperity of this country.

Common decency and the Australian Prime Minister

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This is part of a story on a murder investigation, but the alleged murderer turns out to have been part of a past incident with our Prime Minister. This is another side to the PM, who is vastly under-appreciated, especially by people who are nothing like him in their common decency.

The man . . . punched Prime Minister Tony Abbott in the face nine years ago.

Mr Abbott was visiting the Thomas Embling [Psychiatric] Hospital on February 22, 2006, in his capacity as Federal Health Minister when he was attacked in the hospital’s acute care unit. . . .

Media reports of the incident say Mr Abbott was hit twice, without warning.

In an interview with an Age journalist . . . Mr Price said that he was the man who hit Mr Abbott, adding that the incident had given him “new respect” for the man who would become Prime Minister.

“I hit him and he stepped back and shaped up like a boxer,” Mr Price said.

“Then he dropped his hands and smiled, and said ‘I’ve been hit harder than that on the football field’.”

Mr Price, who remains in custody, said he had admired Mr Abbott’s self-control, saying not many people would have been able to refrain from hitting him back.

Mr Price’s story has been confirmed by a psychiatric nurse who worked at the Thomas Embling at the time of Mr Abbott’s visit.

“Much to Mr Abbott’s surprise, he realised there was no security operating in the hospital as such,” he said.

Mr Abbott was reported at the time of the attack as joking that “some people probably thought he had a sane moment”.

A spokesman for Mr Abbott said at the time that it was “a matter of complete inconsequence”.

“(The man) did take a swing. He did connect, but to say he punched him is overstating it,” the spokesman said.

[Via Tim Blair]

Packed full of platitudes

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Let me start with Malcolm Turnbull’s speech on the economy the other day and about what a great job he believes he could do to sell the current need to bring fiscal responsibility back into vogue. Maybe so, but the evidence Turnbull can sell anything other than pre-approved Labor polices to Labor voters is still untested. So it is therefore good to have seen another perspective: Hartigan attacks Turnbull on “woeful” record, also a few days back. It begins:

FORMER News Corp boss John Hartigan has launched a blistering attack against Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull for failing to reform media laws, accusing of him of having a “woeful” track record and ignoring regional communities.

The chairman of regional TV company Prime Media Group was responding to Turnbull’s “tough talking speech about the economy” to the Brisbane Club yesterday, which he said was “packed full of platitudes about embracing the future and the need for reform”.

Hartigan said: “Malcolm Turnbull reckons he can sell tough reform, but his track record in his own portfolio is woeful.”

“The Minister likes to talk the talk when discussing the economy, but when it comes to tackling much needed media reform in his own portfolio, I wonder if he will walk the walk?

For Malcolm to think he has been a political genius in finding a way to bring in Labor’s NBN with a mild reduction in the level of pure waste may seem wonderful to him but not to me. Where was he when the NBN was being debated in the first place? A white elephant that will sink our living standards, an outcome on which I have never heard Turnbull say a word. I wonder if he even knows.

The Australian and Mr Abbott

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The Australian seems ever so gently to be edging towards an anti-Abbott position which may, or may not, reflect the views of its owner, but which definitely does not reflect the views of at least one of its readers. I almost always start the paper with Cut and Paste which, up until recently, had always been written up in a way that matched my own view of things. But of late, there have been a few that have left me completely perplexed, since to make sense of them as a form of irony, you would have to be pro-Labor. Today Cut and Paste was devoted to Andrew Bolt’s deconstruction of John Lyon’s nonsense story on Abbott’s supposed plan for a unilateral invasion of Iraq. Andrew is back on this theme today, and you will have to pardon his French: This campaign to intimidate me will not work: Lyons’ claim remains bullshit. Why The Australian persists with this story, since it was utterly implausible from the start, I do not know, but it does make me nervous. The editorial, also today, critical of Abbott’s statement about the cost of funding remote aboriginal communities, was more of the same.

And just to push the same message along, there is the feature opinion piece of the day, also a negative take on the cost of servicing remote aboriginal sites, and written by the presenter of Radio National’s Drive Program. Naturally, the need to contain costs is as remote from her consciousness as are these various sites.

And again today, also on the opinion page, there is an article near on incomprehensible to me by Nikki Savva, who I normally ignore, about something Credlin wrote to some Senator and the smouldering resentment it seems to have caused for reasons that remain unclear. Whatever it was, she has seen fit to do a bit of troublemaking, whose long-term good can only be for the Labor Party, but may provide some assistance along the way to Malcolm.

Then yesterday, on the front page but below the fold, there was a small but respectful article about Malcolm Turnbull’s speech on the economy and about what a great job he believes he could do to sell the current need to bring fiscal responsibility back. Maybe so, but the evidence Turnbull can sell anything other than pre-approved Labor polices to Labor voters is still untested. So it is good to see another perspective: Hartigan attacks Turnbull on “woeful” record. It begins:

FORMER News Corp boss John Hartigan has launched a blistering attack against Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull for failing to reform media laws, accusing of him of having a “woeful” track record and ignoring regional communities.

The chairman of regional TV company Prime Media Group was responding to Turnbull’s “tough talking speech about the economy” to the Brisbane Club yesterday, which he said was “packed full of platitudes about embracing the future and the need for reform”.

Hartigan said: “Malcolm Turnbull reckons he can sell tough reform, but his track record in his own portfolio is woeful.”

“The Minister likes to talk the talk when discussing the economy, but when it comes to tackling much needed media reform in his own portfolio, I wonder if he will walk the walk?

For Malcolm to think he has been a political genius in finding a way to bring in Labor’s NBN with a mild reduction in the level of pure waste may seem wonderful to him but not to me. Where was he when the NBN was being debated in the first place? A white elephant that will sink our living standards, an outcome on which I have never heard Turnbull say a word. I wonder if he even knows.

But the story is also anti-Coalition since it the Government’s media policy, not just Turnbull’s. Not good. Very not good is all I can say.

What’s the point of a forecast 40 years out?

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From the only economy with no deficit and no debt, this is where we are only ten years later:

The forecasts are a central feature of a new Intergenerational Report to be released tomorrow showing that federal deficits were on track to reach almost 12 per cent of the total economy by 2055 under Labor policies.

Preventing that outcome, Coa­lition policies will instead cut the deficits to 6 per cent of GDP by 2055 as a result of tax increases and spending cuts that have ­already been legislated.

But what really is the point of looking at things in 2055, about which we can know nothing. A report in 1975 about Australia today would have been just as meaningless.

Stop wondering and get back to work

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Is this really true?

Bishop said: “I won’t die wondering like Peter Costello.”

That is, she won’t die wondering whether she could have knocked over Tony Abbott and become PM, the way that Peter Costello might now be wondering whether he ought to have tried to take on John Howard before the 2007 election.

If she really did say this, she is even more deluded and destructive than I might ever have thought possible.

Peter did not challenge because it would have split the party and turned a probable defeat into a certainty. It was the action of someone who put principle over personal ambition. But this was also after having become the greatest Treasurer in Australian history, leading us not just to years of strong growth where not only did Australia, year after year, record the only surplus economy in the world but was the only economy I can think of ever that had absolutely zero debt.

Meanwhile, Julie Bishop remains a person thus far of limited political accomplishment so far as I can see. On what she personally stands for, I remain at a loss. You should google, “Julie Bishop Islamic State” and then do the same for Tony Abbott. If she stands for anything, I haven’t worked out what it is.