Month: October 2004

Meanwhile, across the Tasman

John Quiggin6 Comments

It seems as if the dying days of a political party inevitably generate this kind of moment. The ACT (Association of Consumers and Taxpayers) Party is the last remnant of the NZ Labour Party’s diversion into radical free-market reform, and is heavily backed by the NZ Business Roundtable, run for many years by Roger Kerr[1]. Finding that few voters want to hear about radical free-market reform any more, ACT shifted its ground to law-and-order populism and race-baiting a few years back, and just managed to maintain a presence in Parliament.

But then the main opposition National Party elected Don Brash as his leader. At the helm of the NZ Reserve Bank, Brash presided over some disastrous monetary policy failures, most notably the Monetary Conditions Index, but still seemed like a decent person. But then he resigned and (very improperly in my view) promptly ran for Parliament for the National Party (as a List MP, he didn’t actually run, but was effectively appointed). He made little progress until his Pauline Hanson moment – the Orewa speech attacking Maori native title rights.

As with Pauline, Brash got an instant surge of popularity which he backed up with law-and-order stuff to the point where the Nationals led Labour in opinion polls for some months. But, also as with Pauline, it didn’t last, and Labour is now back in front.

Meanwhile, though, Brash managed to steal ACT’s remaining <raison d’etre . With the Nationals playing the race card, and pushing a hard line on law and order, there’s no reason to vote for ACT, and the party is now in its death spiral. It’s at this point that the kind of incident that would be a mild embarrassment for a successful political party assumes the dimensions of a fatal blow. This story, involving Kerr pursuing an ACT MP looks like the last straw for ACT and perhaps also for NZBR[2]. Good riddance.

fn1. Disclosure: I’ve had occasional run-ins with Kerr, and he’s always struck me as a thoroughly nasty person. So I’m naturally inclined to view him as the bad actor in this story.

fn2. Both parties have issued MRD denials

How big is the blogosphere ?

John Quiggin15 Comments

And why should we care? I’ll leave this question for later and take a look at some numbers

There have been quite a few attempts to measure the growth of blogging. As this site devoted to the topic notes, Technorati passed its 4 millionth blog a week ago. Both Blogger and Livejournal claim over 1.5 million users, and a broadly similar estimate can be obtained if we take this Pew Study from 2003 and make the reasonable assumption that numbers are doubling annually.

But these are almost certainly overestimates.
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They should ask for their money back

John Quiggin11 Comments

Antoine Clarke at Libertarian Samizdata writes

I get paid to write the occasional article about environment issues. One story which intrigues me is the often repeated claim that “Half of all living bird and mammal species will be gone within 200 or 300 years”. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the source of much of this garbage.

Because half of all the world’s mammal species are supposedly in Australia, this equates to five species of mammal becoming extinct every year, or one mammal extinction every 2.4 months.

I don’t suppose I need to tell Australian readers that this claim is nonsense. The Bio-diversity Audit Project (word file) estimates 331 species: 305 indigenous and 26 exotic species. The FAO estimates the total number of mammal species in the world at over 4000. That is, Australia has about 7 per cent of the world’s mammal species. It took me all of ten minutes to get these numbers using Google, but Clarke apparently couldn’t be bothered.
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A distorting mirror

John Quiggin2 Comments

We’ve all heard about the US embassy in Baghdad, with its thousands of employees, advisers in every department, and capacity to instantly countermand any decision made by the Allawi government. But until now, I’d never given much thought to its opposite number, the Iraqi embassy in Washington. It turns out to be a kind of funhouse mirror image, as indicated in this story in the Washington Post which discusses Allawi’s tour and the ghostwriting of his speech

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and British Foreign Service officials also helped Allawi with the text and delivery of his remarks, said administration officials who were involved. The State Department and officials elsewhere in the government took the lead in booking Allawi’s interviews. Administration officials said that the Iraqi Embassy in Washington consists of just a few officials and has only a dial-up Internet connection, so was incapable of preparing for the high-profile tour.

One might think that with the IMF and World Bank located in Washington, not to mention the US Congress, the Iraqi government might feel the need for a more substantial presence, and that a few million of the billions of dollars supposedly allocated to reconstruction might have been used to establish it, if only for PR purposes. But obviously these institutions negotiate directly with the US Administration. Why talk to the monkey when the organ-grinder is right next door?

More on the speech from Mark Kleiman

Bomb us, it’s OK

John Quiggin44 Comments

Rising to my challenge of a consistent approach to unilateral pre-emption, Alexander Downer has stated that the Indonesians would be justified in bombing Australia if they thought a terrorist group was located in Australia (thanks to Jack Strocchi for this link).

It would be “absolutely” understandable if the Indonesian air force bombed the Kimberleys believing terrorists who threatened Indonesia were located there, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said.

Defending the Government’s doctrine of last resort, pre-emptive military strikes against terrorists, Mr Downer said he would expect Indonesia to do the same if the situation were reversed. “Absolutely, by the way, absolutely,” Mr Downer told Darwin radio station Top-FM.

“If the Indonesians rang us up and said there’s a terrorist group in the Kimberleys who are planning to launch an attack on Kupang, and we said: ‘Well, we don’t really care, that’s your problem, pal, and we’re not going to do anything about it,’ and they sent an F-16 over and bombed the terrorist group, you could understand that.

It’s fortunate that this doctrine wasn’t put forward in the 1990s, when Fretilin, described by the Indonesian government as a terrorist group, operated openly in Australia.

Some good news

John Quiggin18 Comments

The Russian Cabinet has agreed to submit the Kyoto protocol to Parliament for ratification. It is probable, though not certain, that the Russian Parliament will approve it, though it’s not clear how soon. Russian ratification would bring the treaty into force.

Australia and the US are now the only significant holdouts. Promises by Bush and Howard to produce an alternative, more effective policy have come to nothing. It’s time for us to join the rest of the world on this one. Howard could win himself a bit of credit by changing his position here.