Category Archives: Politics – Australian

Pre-budget nerves – my list of dos and don’ts

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I am getting a bit nervous about the budget that’s brewing, no longer behind the scenes but with a few strategic leaks breaking into the news. As you may know, I am no Keynesian but I went back and took a look at my own Free Market Economics text since I could not remember whether I even mention the word “deficit”. The index has it listed once, three pages from the end on page 332.

Here are my thoughts on things. Why they left a Labor-supporting Keynesian to manage Treasury in the single most important budget they will ever introduce is beyond me. Anyway, here are my thoughts.

It’s not the deficit per se that matter but the level of public spending.

If you want to fix the economy, resources must migrate from being under the direction of the public sector and into the hands of the private sector. Therefore, the focus should be on cuts to non-value-adding forms of public spending. If it doesn’t show a positive return within a reasonable period of time, cut it off. This, by the way, is not an anti-welfare message although welfare too must be affordable. I am talking about infrastructure and the many forms of waste and mis-regulation that are found at every turn.

The economy will grow, employment will grow, real wages will grow if and only if economic activity is directed by private sector entrepreneurs. It will shrivel under the direction of government. Do not even imagine anything much beyond the first 10 percent of what you are already spending will create economic growth. Cutting public spending will create growth, not maintaining existing levels.

Raising taxes to fund public spending is a deadly mistake and wrong twice over:

. Higher taxes will allow you to maintain the level of public sector direction of our scarce economic resources.

. Higher taxes will reduce activity in the private sector.

The core aim must be to encourage entrepreneurial activity. There is no budget problem that cannot be fixed by:

. Reducing the level of unproductive public spending

. Fostering private sector growth (where unproductive spending has its own very brutal cure).

If the strategy is to balance the budget in ways that will diminish private sector investment and entrepreneurial activity, it will make things worse, not better. Economic conditions have been improving since the change of government with nothing much at all having been done. Leaving things alone is better than introducing new programs or raising taxes to fund existing forms of waste. Step back, get out of the way, cut your own take up of resources. But for heaven’s sake, don’t apply some bizarre Keynesian budget-surplus strategy by funding the existing level of public spending at the expense of the private sector.

Same old same old

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According to today’s Oz, the Leader of the Opposition has joined the rest of us in seeing that the R-G-R government was a hopeless mess.

BILL Shorten has attacked the governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, highlighting their flaws, mistakes and misjudgments, arguing that he has learned the lessons of Labor’s election defeat and declaring the party must accept them too.

That’s a start, but where to from there? Will it be balanced budgets, no more wasted money, no longer jumping onto every PC bandwagon such as global warming. Will it be pulling unions off the back of business, reducing regulation, telling the truth before elections and then doing what you said you’d do? Well actually, nothing as specific as that. This is the list of six vapid principles, as content free as it is possible to imagine.

The first is to “treat people with courtesy and respect”.

The second is not to “launch a thousand ships, a thousand ideas (and) a thousand thought bubbles”.

The third is to focus on policy implementation.

The fourth lesson is to build a good relationship with business..

Fifth is to be a “no surprises” government.

The final lesson was to communicate with voters more effectively. “You have got to explain what you’re solving. Don’t go straight to the solution.”

And then there’s a seventh:

“Having a formal relationship with unions” which he said “is a strength, not a weakness.”

In other words, nothing new. Just hoping that the present government irritates just enough voters in doing what needs to be done to get Labor back over the line at the next election. A Shorten-Palmer Government should be quite an experience.

Home on the grange

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This business with Barry O’Farrell is one more example that the only way to keep government corruption down is by electing governments that journalists, and the media generally, don’t like.

I would venture to say that virtually none of the scandals related to the R-G-R governments has entered common consciousness across the country, not in any deep and enduring way. They are reported to the most minimal extent and explained away at every turn. Labor Members of Parliament and party executives have gone to jail for heaven’s sake, and a former leader is heading for a potential rendezvous with the court system for involvement in a SLUSH FUND, but who has been forced to notice?

Both the MYKI card and the Desal plant down here in Victoria ought to have been worth an ocean of printer’s ink and hours of media time but only we old hands even bother to notice and who within the community even remembers or understands how their living standards are being reduced because of such decisions. The NBN is potentially the most expensive but also potentially provides the lowest return on the dollar of any major infrastructure project in the history of this country. Literally billions have been wasted on projects that were never going to return a positive financial outcome but you won’t read about it in The Age or see it on the ABC, and certainly they won’t tell you the effect on our living standards, assuming they even understand this themselves.

Meanwhile a $3000 bottle of grange will undoubtedly remain headline material until the next election, and not just the election in NSW but federally as well.

The hardest quiz I ever saw

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The Guardian has set up a quiz based on a comparison of statements made, either by Patrick Bateman, the eponymous hero of American Psycho, and the other none other than our former Labor foreign minister, Bob Carr. As The Guardian explains:

One is Australia’s former foreign minister, the other a fictional investment banker and serial killer. But both share an obsessive attention to detail about diet, exercise and lifestyle. Can you tell who said what?

Here, as an example, is the first question in the quiz:

1. “I take a bran muffin, a decaffeinated herbal tea bag and a box of oat-bran cereal. A bowl of oat-bran cereal with wheatgerm and soy milk follows; another bottle of Evian water and a small cup of decaf tea after that.”

Bob            ο

Patrick      ο

You can do the rest of the test at the Guardian website online: Quotation quiz: Bob Carr or American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman – who said what?. But Bob, if The Guardian thinks you are a buffoon even with the Labor brand name, you are in some kind of new territory you have carved out for yourself.

[My thanks to JIK for sending it along.]

Andrew Bolt on “The Left is the natural home of the bigot”

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No one wants to be on the wrong end of a racist rant but more importantly, since so much of modern day racism comes from minorities who would like to see their bigotry protected, the only way through this mess is to allow free speech and discussion. If the decency or the Australian public will no longer protect you, then nothing else will either. This is from Andrew Bolt in a post he titled, Carr is a warning to Jews: the Left is the natural home of the bigot.

Many of Australia’s most prominent Jews face a terrible reality that I’ve warned about for almost a decade: the natural home of the anti-Jewish bigot is now the Left. Too many prominent Jewish intellectuals here have pampered their enemy.

ABC chairman Jim Spigelman concedes the point:

Spigelman: My father was a bit of a lefty from his Polish days because Jews in Poland tended to be on the left ‘cause all the anti-Semites were then on the right. That’s exactly the reverse today.

Throsby: Is it?

And, right on time, former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr takes the stage.

Carr is not an anti-Semite, but his views on the Jewish lobby are absurd and dangerously close to an anti-Semitic trope:

BOB CARR: … And what I’ve done is to spell out how the extremely conservative instincts of the pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne was exercised through the then-Prime Minister’s office…. I found it very frustrating that we couldn’t issue, for example, a routine expression of concern about the spread of Israeli settlements on the West Bank….

SARAH FERGUSON: You’re saying that the Melbourne Jewish lobby had a direct impact on foreign policy as it was operated from inside Julia Gillard’s cabinet?

BOB CARR: Yeah, I would call it the Israeli lobby – I think that’s important. But certainly they enjoyed extraordinary influence. I had to resist it and my book tells the story of that resistance coming to a climax when there was a dispute on the floor of caucus about my recommendation that we don’t block the Palestinian bid for increased non-state status at the United Nations.

SARAH FERGUSON: They’re still a very small group of people. How do you account for them wielding so much power?

BOB CARR: I think party donations and a program of giving trips to MPs and journalists to Israel. But that’s not to condemn them. I mean, other interest groups do the same thing. But it needs to be highlighted because I think it reached a very unhealthy level. I think the great mistake of the pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne is to express an extreme right-wing Israeli view rather than a more tolerant liberal Israeli view, and in addition to that, to seek to win on everything, to block the Foreign Minister of Australia through their influence with the Prime Minister’s office, from even making the most routine criticism of Israeli settlement policy using the kind of language that a Conservative Foreign secretary from the UK would use in a comparable statement at the same time.

Carr is not wrong to say there is a Jewish lobby, or Israel lobby, just as there are other ethnic and religious lobby groups, including Aboriginal ones. The Jewish lobby is more organised that most, and on certain issues speaks with more unity than most, too.

This can come with a risk, as we now see in the debate over the Abbott Government’s plans to reform the Racial Discrimination Act to allow more free speech. Jewish community leaders have been the strongest opponents of this change, and base much of their argument on an issue of particular concern to Jews: that such a change would permit Holocaust denial. I suspect most non-Jews also loathe Holocaust deniers but would not be so quick to say they should be gagged by law – and that the rest of us should be gagged from arguing other propositions as a consequence. The danger here is that Jewish leaders are seen to be arguing for an illiberal ban to the benefit of their own community, but at the cost of the wider one. Such tribalism comes at a risk in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith nation.

I think it is fair to make these points. But Bob Carr’s comments go further – dangerously further.

He is singling out the “Israel lobby” as having had a more “unhealthy” influence than other such groups in that it had “influence with the Prime Minister’s office” under Labor, seeking “to block the Foreign Minister of Australia” from aiding Palestinian interests. This influence, claims Carr, is exercised through “party donations and a program of giving trips to MPs and journalists to Israel”, trips which indeed both Gillard and I have received.

Here is where Carr oversteps.

Carr completely ignores the reality that many supporters of Israel in the case he raises have not been bought, bribed or otherwise influenced by “unhealthy” lobbying, but have reached their opinion by judging on the merits of the argument. They see a democracy threatened by terrorism, an open society challenged by a closed one, and they decide accordingly. Yet this difference of opinion is portrayed by Carr as just the evil product of “unhealthy” Jewish influence peddling.

It is a joke to believe Gillard as prime minister could be further influenced by the offer of trips from Melbourne Jews. Politicians and journalists are also offered trips to the Muslim Middle East, yet Carr does not declare those “unhealthy”.

And how much influence did those Melbourne Jews have really? Carr boasts that he actually defeated Gillard on the issue by leading a caucus revolt against Gillard’s position.

That raises Carr’s dangerous double standards – to decry a “unhealthy” a Jewish influence he defeated while saying nothing about the more troubling Muslim influence to which he surrendered – and Labor with him.

Labor politicians have done dangerous favors for Islamist extremists like Sheik Hilali, revoking moves to throw him out in exchange for votes, but Carr has not criticised that as “unhealthy”. Labor made a politician of a Muslim ethnic boss and supporter of the Syrian dictator in exchange for votes, but Carr did not say this was “unhealthy”. Nor did Carr say it was “unhealthy” when even Liberal Prime Minister John Howard appointed a Muslim Community Reference Group to advise him – one third of whose members were supporters of the pro-terrorist Hezbollah.

Carr did not denounce this “unhealthy” influence, either:

Australia’s senior Islamic cleric threatened to withdraw community support for federal Labor in Western Sydney if union leader Paul Howes replaced Bob Carr in the Senate, a leaked email reveals.

The email, written on behalf of the Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, by his chief political adviser, accused Mr Howes of a “blind bias for Israel” and said that if he was appointed to the Senate, community support for Labor that was mustered for the federal election would be withdrawn.

The email was sent to MPs and ­officials on September 9… Mr Howes, the national secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, withdrew from the contest …

Note that the Mufti has shown support for Hamas.

But let’s talk about the truly unhealthy influence in the very case Carr discusses – a bid by Palestinians for greater recognition.

Labor ditched Israel in that instance not so much out of principle but out of Labor self-interest. As former Labor speech-writer Troy Bramston wrote at the time after talking to the players, Labor feared the influence of the Muslim lobby and the votes it could muster in key Sydney marginal seats:

And, critically, there is the growing Muslim and Christian make-up of several key western Sydney Labor seats, which have exposed MPs to different points of view on the Middle East.

Some sections of the party suggest Victorian Labor is too close to the Israel lobby and does not fully understand the underlying changes in Sydney’s outer suburbs.

Did Carr denounce that “unhealthy” influence? No. He in fact was among the first to give in to it:

BUT of all reasons given, the worst and most repeated was as the Daily Telegraph said: “NSW Right MPs … were more concerned a no vote at the UN would offend Middle East and Muslim communities in their fragile southwest Sydney seats.” The Sydney Morning Herald heard the same: “Many MPs in western Sydney, who are already fearful of losing their seats, are coming under pressure from constituents with a Middle East background.”…

Carr reportedly stressed “the electoral problems in Sydney” to Gillard, and The Australian reported the “demographically challenged” Water Minister, Tony Burke, insisted on not rejecting the Palestinian resolution.

Burke’s “demographic challenge” is that the proportion of Muslim voters in Watson, his Sydney seat, has rocketed to an astonishing 20 per cent… In fact, of the 20 seats with the most Muslim voters, Labor holds all but one.

That’s why Carr’s attack on the Jewish lobby is so sinister. He exaggerates its power, falsely assumes those who agree with the lobby have been bought, and meanwhile is silent on the rise of more troubling lobby that has influenced Labor – the Muslim lobby, which includes supporters of extremists.

Something sick is at work in the Left. It’s not just Jews who should be alarmed.

UPDATE

What a disgraceful breach of confidence and a shameless betrayal:

Bob Carr has published private text messages between himself and Julia Gillard to reveal the “extraordinary” level of influence the pro-Israel lobby had on the former prime minister’s office.

In a remarkable disclosure of private conversations, Mr Carr said he chose to publish the text messages in his book – Diary of a Foreign Minister – without getting Ms Gillard’s permission, because to do so was in the national interest.

Carr wasn’t the foreign minister of Australia, seeking to advance the nation’s interests. It seems to me he was merely an embedded journalist, seeking material to advance his own.

The exchange:

Reproducing private text messages, Mr Carr suggests Ms Gillard’s support of Israel was so immovable that she would not even allow him to change Australia’s vote on what he considered to be a minor UN motion.

“Julia – motion on Lebanon oil spill raises no Palestinian or Israel security issues. In that context I gave my commitment to Lebanon,” Mr Carr writes in a text message.

“No reason has been given to me to change,” Ms Gillard reportedly replies.

“Julia – not so simple,” Mr Carr responds. “I as Foreign Minister gave my word. I was entitled to because it had nothing to do with Palestinian status or security of Israel.”

Ms Gillard shuts him down in a final terse message: “Bob… my jurisdiction on UN resolutions isn’t confined to ones on Palestine and Israel.”

UPDATE

Mark Liebler responds, during an aggressive interview with Tony Jones:

Just unpick for a moment what he’s saying. He’s talking about the Jewish lobby, he’s talking about a difference of opinion between him and the Prime Minister. Why can’t they have a difference of opinion on a matter related to Israeli policy? No, if there’s a difference of opinion, the Prime Minister has to be controlled or influenced by someone. So the Prime Minister has to be wrong ‘cause she’s controlled by the Jewish lobby. How does the Jewish lobby control the Prime Minister? Through donations to the ALP and sending people to Israel. I mean, give me a break. I mean, would anyone sort of seriously accept that? I mean, I’m very flattered.

By the way, the Jewish lobby he’s referring to is the Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. He’s referred to it in The Australian newspaper, so he’s referring to me directly. But, you know, as flattered as I am, this is really a figment of his imagination. I mean, Julia Gillard is an independent-thinking woman. She can come to her own conclusions without being influenced by the Jewish lobby and I suppose the Jewish lobby, according to Bob, … has the current Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, under its influence. After all, he’s adopted a very pro-Israel attitude.

OK you cowards at the ABC – why don’t you invite him?

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Now here’s a Q&A that would get a record audience. As Andrew Bolt has asked, Margaret, why didn’t you invite me?. The invitations that were extended come 58 seconds into the presentation, saving you more than an hour of tedium. Here is Andrew’s comment:

Margaret Simons, head of Melbourne University’s journalism course, introduces ABC boss Mark Scott by noting that News Corp people had declined to debate him.

Funny, I didn’t get an invitation. Nor did Simons mention I’d invited Scott to put his case on The Bolt Report and he has refused.

Now this would be a heavyweight division contest. My suspicion, though, on why Andrew wasn’t invited is because they know that one-on-one and over the course of an hour he would absolutely take Scott to the cleaners even with Tony Jones in the chair.

An Australian balanced budget amendment

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I may have been too hasty in judging our Treasury Secretary. My own fault for taking the word of the SMH. I, of course, remain adamantly against raising taxes to fix our current problems and repeat what I wrote yesterday:

Stop fixating on the deficit. Do the specific things that make the economy work better. Lower public spending. Reduce regulation. Fix up IR. Encourage private industry in every way you can.

But with my morning reading of the AFR there was an important detail left out of the SMH story. The AFR headline reads:

Push to lift GST, cut income tax

This is, of course, different and even if initially the size of the tax take stayed the same this would be a genuine benefit, both in terms of economic prosperity and broadening the tax base.

But the problem remains how you could make such a shift stick. If we raise the GST, it will stay raised forever. But if we cut income taxes, it is not likely at all that they would stay down. Governments are revenue hungry and very weak on keeping the lid on expenditure. There really needs to be something in place to ensure governments do not pocket one tax increase and then go back to where we were on the others.

An idea whose time may have come is the notion of a balanced budget constitutional restriction on governments. It appears that some kind of critical mass may have taken place in the United States over whether enough states have passed a balanced budget amendment that must lead to a constitutional convention which will determine whether or not the federal government of the United States must by constitutional restriction maintain a balanced budget. The article is titled, Balanced budget convention gains steam as congressman calls for official evaluation and this is how it begins:

Rep. Duncan Hunter on Tuesday asked Congress to evaluate whether enough states have officially called for a constitutional convention to propose a balanced budget amendment — marking the next step toward what could be an historic gathering.

Mr. Hunter, California Republican, said Congress should take stock of where things stand after Michigan last week approved an official call for a balanced budget amendment convention. According to some analysts, Michigan’s move makes it the 34th state to request a convention.

For something as unconventional as the notion of a balanced budget amendment to have passed at different times and in different states through 34 different state legislatures shows there is an understanding of the problems that runaway federal spending has caused. The multiplying economic problems that have befallen one economy after another due to the insane levels of public spending after the GFC are due almost in their entirety to the spending that followed the financial crisis and not to the crisis itself. But you almost have to be a non-economist even to notice. Economists still think that C+I+G provides them with some form of understanding about what to do in recessions, with no lessons learned from the past five years.

Since we will already be having a vote on amending the constitution at our own next election, I cannot see why we shouldn’t include one on a balanced budget as well. If we really want to fix our governments’ addition to higher spending we will have to tie their hands. If they want the money they will have to raise our taxes. Then we’ll see just a tad more care in what they do and how they spend.

Parkinsons’s disease

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If you keep a Keynesian as Treasury secretary you are going to get Keynesian advice. If you take advice from a Keynesian, you will never get the economy working properly again.

I have just seen this story at Andrew Bolt and it is a report of a speech given by the Treasury Secretary, Martin Parkinson, on what the government needs to do. Here is how it starts.

Treasury boss Martin Parkinson says the goods and services tax will have to be boosted or broadened if the budget is to have any hope of returning to surplus.

He must be from the same school of advisors who told the first President Bush to break his “no new taxes” promise. Paying for public service waste with higher tax revenues is both an economic loser and even worse, a political loser.

Stop fixating on the deficit. Do the specific things that make the economy work better. Lower public spending. Reduce regulation. Fix up IR. Encourage private industry in every way you can.

If you start raising taxes you will be out on your ear at the next election.

Are these really the people we trust to bring us the news?

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I get to the papers at the end of the day and when I saw the story that the “ABC’s Scott warns on News Corp’s position of power” on page 5 of today’s AFR, I went searching back through all of the other normal websites to see if anyone else had focused on such blithering idiocy but it seems not. It appears that whatever may be Mr Scott’s strengths, irony is not amongst them. The first two paras of the story:

ABC managing director Mark Scott hit out at Rupert and Lauchlan Murdoch’s News Corporation, arguing its newspapers have been never been [sic] more assertive in exercising their power through “aggressive editorial positioning”.

In a carefully worded attack, Mr Scott claimed News’s share of newspaper sales in Australian capital cities could rise from “70 per cent” to “80 per cent” and predicted that print titles which survive the digital revolution will be more powerful than ever.

Although this has been pointed out on endless occasions, he apparently still cannot see the difference between the number of newspapers and the number readers. For the kinds of things Scott would like to concentrate on, there is still The Green-Left Review which is another title although one without the circulation of The Australian say. Thus, two titles but a different number of readers. Should not be all that hard to see the difference. But then Mr Scott entered a zone of his own with the following:

He also predicted a rise in ideologically slanted news.

He is predicting this! This is the future someday but not yet! What a discerning mind he has! A national treasurer without a doubt. From someone at the ABC to say this is beyond the realms of normal out-to-lunchness and into some kind of stratospheric zone previously never encountered. But meanwhile back at the ABC ranch house:

Mr Scott defended the ABC’s role and hit back at allegations of a left-wing bias at the corporation as it braces for the Abbott government’s May budget.

One can only hope that the aftershocks he is bracing for will be even beyond anything he is capable of imagining today.