12 thoughts on “Monday message board”

  1. Hey guys. On 25th January 07 I was reading the Australia, when I read the following quote by their environment writer Matthew Warren regarding the drought:

    “Its the absence of wet rather than the presence of dry which defines
    drought in Australia”

    I might be a bit dumb but does this statement make any sense?

  2. Hey guys. On 25th January 07 I was reading the Australian, when I read the following quote by their environment writer Matthew Warren regarding the drought:

    “Its the absence of wet rather than the presence of dry which defines
    drought in Australia”

    I might be a bit dumb but does this statement make any sense?

  3. If this seminal distinction had got through to me during my years of meteorological study and research at three Australian universities I would now probably be able to write environmental pieces for a newspaper.

  4. Its just that ever since I read it, its been driving me crazy as to whether it actually makes sense. I know to write for the Australian you normally only need to be qualified from the Institute of Public Affairs, but really…..

  5. John Howard offers lots of money – and his deal is a billion a year for the next ten years. However there has been a lot of money supposedly already provided by the Federal government for the Murray Darling and yet things are worse than ever.

    Telstra was sold to save the environment – so perhaps the money is there but why will it take 10 years to allocate?

    John Howard does not have a good track record on laying out the issue and setting up an answer with good economic, social and environmental outcomes.

    What guarantee will there be that once the Federal government has control they won’t sell it off to the largest American (or Chinese, Indonesian etc) bidder. The water then wouldn’t be allocated to environmental development at all but be for the largest profit for the new owners whose loyalty will not be to the country and will not be under the control of the national government.

    John Howard is very good at serving up what the public wants – he is very good at delivering something else. So the public supported the idea that small enterprises of under 20 employees would not be subject to unfair dismissal. What they got once power was obtained was a trashing of the spirit of the constitution and the wind back of conditions that ensured things such as equal pay for equal work. The organisation which was responsible to the wheat farmers under his watch was not only privatised but operated in a way to put our soldiers in harm’s way.

    Mike Rann has suggested a way to get major river decisions out of the political cycle and into the hands of those who are able to look at the national interest without looking at the pork barrel. It is not so very long ago that the Howard government was set on selling off the Snowy River project despite the potential impact on the river system downstream. The wolf in sheep’s clothing may have had a change of heart but it seems to me that we are operating under Howard’s version of There’s one born every minute. If a population has no memory of the events of the past year then Howard’s Way of sleight of hand will prevail.

  7. Hi – the Productivity Commission is holding an inquiry on the consumer policy framework. (See http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiry/consumer/index.html) Does anyone have a view on whether Australia would benefit from having a “Market Investigation Reference” process as set out in the UK Enterprise Act? I understand that the OFT can make Market Investigation References to the Competition Commission, and I wonder whether the ACCC could perhaps be allowed to make Market Investigation References to, perhaps, the Productivity Commission. It seems to me that ex-post enforcement of competition laws, while having a place, is not necessarily the best tool for addressing the underlying (structural) problems of market failure. A Market Investigation might be a good way to identify the root causes of market failure, and working out the most effective remedy. A significant problem with ex post enforcement, I think, is that it unreasonably forces firms to work out in advance what conduct is or is not legitimate. An ex ante approach seems fairer – any remedy for market failure is only implemented going forward, without having to find that there has been a contravention of the Trade Practices Act. For example, I have some reservations about the criminalisation of cartel conduct. I don’t think co-operative conduct is always bad, and the criminalisation of cartel conduct makes it very difficult when it is not always clear when co-operative behaviour is criminal and when it is not. Another benefit of a Market Investigation is that it gives consumer, business, and other community groups an opportunity to participate in the Market Investigation, and to work out a remedy that addresses market failure. In contrast, ACCC enforcement action is generally confined to a judge, the ACCC and the defendant, with little opportunity for the wider public to have any say at all. I wonder whether we rely too heavily on enforcement of the Trade Practices Act to deal with market failure. For example, I wonder whether the small business lobby has unrealistic expectations about the ability of the ACCC to use section 46 (the provision that prohibits misuse of marke power) to solve address concerns about big business bullying. I would be grateful for anyone’s views, particularly in relation to the efficacy of the UK Market Investigation Reference process.

  8. Jill, I think you have a few points there!

    My major concern is that the only state premier agreeing whole heartedly is NSW’s Iemma, who only interest is to stay out of trouble by passing the buck (blaming Carr, the contracts in PPPs, interest rates, etc.)

    If at the same time he hands out this piece of trouble to the feds, they happen to pass back a bit of money from another public-private-partnership, well all the better!

    I actually quite like what SA’s premier Rann has said, since the Reserve bank may indeed be a decent model to use for such cases: still plenty of gov. say in the appointments, but at least a bit more open decision making that’s at least somewhat open to scrutiny.

    A guarantee that no water assets will be sold and that state rights will not be abused should be set in stone!

  9. However, we need strong fearless leaders that can face up to the feds and even the state premiers.

    Call their BS! Guarantee of no privatizations in water and environmental assets!
    Tear to pieces the IR bullsh*t No Choices!
    Strongly criticize their lies taking us to war!
    Destroying Human Rights and the value of an Australian passport!

    Im afraid the ALP is no hope and can be as big a sellout as the libs. For example, NSW the only state giving up state rights and water powers (for how much extra GST for the troubled NSW state budget? just before the state election..)

    Remember: both Bracks and Iemma were quite happy to join their federal sell-out colleagues trying to sell the
    Snowy Scheme!

    SA’s premier Rann, and now Beattie have started to make sense. An open decision making body is required! with an extra guarantee that no water assets will be sold!

    Unfortunately,
    Turnbull     has been appointed there for only one reason: to sell the new policies to the business lobby. Of course that also means selling the water resources, setting up a lame and weak but good money making scheme for carbon trading, more pork barreling for mates -ethanol anyone?, etc.

    Macquary Bank execs must be licking their lips..

  10. And on a completely unrelated topic, RW Baker and J Nordin have a piecein the latest Ecoomists Voice on Dirty Money flows, which they value at an annual $US1 trillion. Here’s a quote:

    “By dirty money, we mean money that is illegally earned, transferred, or utilized. Money that breaks laws in its origin, movement, or use merits the label.

    “Each year, at least $1 trillion flows illegally and undetected across borders according to our estimates. And at least half of this amount—$500 billion a year—comes out of developing and transitional economies into western accounts.

    “Illegal financial flows—dirty money—come in three forms: corrupt flows from shady government officials hiding their loot abroad; criminal money from the illegal trade in drugs, women, arms, counterfeit goods, and other activities; and commercial money from abusive transfer pricing and tax evasion. The ease with which dirty money moves around the world stems from the elaborate structure of tax havens, secrecy jurisdictions, shell banks, dummy corporations, anonymous trusts, fake foundations, falsified pricing of trade transactions, and myriad other techniques. The dirty money structure offers the same discretion to corporations, criminals, and greedy government officials alike”.

    Baker and Nordin complain that lack of attention to the scale of dirty money flows has compromised estimates of foreign trade, international capital flows and National GDPs, not to mention the outflows of dirty money from underdeveloped countries, which they imply seriously compromises the whole aid/trade issue. Baker published a book on dirty money in 2005, referenced in the Economists Voice article. I found the article interesting partly because it addresses the definitional issue (what exactly is dirty money?) and the staggering scale of their estimates.

    I have a vague memory that the OECD Competition Committee did an investigation into cartels some years back, maybe 2001 oer 2002, but I don’t know whether the Baker book goes into that.

  11. Dave

    During El Niño sea surface temperatures decease off Qld and NT resulting in less warm moist air blowing in to eastern Australia from the north east. The wet convective patch actually moves out into the central Pacific. In a sense you could say that the wet is missing, but you could also say that the dry has expanded and displaced it. Both contain an element of truth but aren’t what you’d call reliable beliefs.

    People have always been using wildly simplifying heuristics to describe the weather and to a degree it works, psychologically anyway. However, the atmosphere-ocean system is actually an extremely complex three dimensional system that behaves counterintuitively in many important aspects. Or to put it another way, the advance in meteorology over the last several decades has come more from better mathematical models of the physical system than better verbal characterisations.

  12. Hi Guys.

    Right, well lets explore this statement from Matthew Warren. (Incidentally Matthew, I did email you and your editor about your statement but you didnt get back to me – dont you know this is driving me nuts?!).

    When its wet, it is not dry. When its dry it is not wet: the state of one implies the absence of the other.

    therefore the statement could be written this way:
    – Its the absence of wet (and therefore dry) rather than the presence of dry (therefore no wet) which defines drought in Australia

    – or better still this way:
    ‘When we have drought in Australia, its because its dry’

    – or given that drought is a state of great dryness we could say
    ‘gee it gets dry here, we have lots of droughts in Australia’

    Another analogy for this statement is to talk about soccer goals. My team plays soccer, and in a particular game either scores a lot, a bit or scores lowly or not at all. If you kick a high score, it means an absence of a low score. If there’s a high absence of score, it means a low score.

    Therefore applying Matthew’s formula:
    ‘It was the absence of high scores rather than the presence of low scores which defined my teams bad performance in last weeks match’.

    Matthew, its the absence of clarity from you rather than the presence of no-clarity which defines your writing in my opinion.

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