The 2020 summit kept me too busy to blog. Looking back on the weekend I have a range of impressions.
* Rudd’s opening speech was inspiring, one of the best I’ve heard from him. The same was true of the opening ceremony as a whole.
* As numerous speakers said, the sense of new possibilities and a new openness to ideas has been one of the striking outcomes of the change of government, to an extent that has certainly surprised me.
* In many areas, including the water and climate change sessions, the real message was not so much the need for new ideas (though there were some good ones) but the need to act much more urgently on what we already know
* From the government’s point of view, the Summit had a couple of effects. One was to shake up the policy agenda, giving Rudd the chance to pick up a lot of ideas that are broadly consistent with Labor’s policy platform but got crowded out of discussion in the course of me-too election campaigning. The other is to raise expectations that the government will actually achieve things in areas like climate change and indigenous policy, rather than putting a better spin on marginal changes to the policies inherited from Howard.
* It was already obvious that, with Howard gone, and Labor in office, the Republic issue would return to the agenda. It’s something we have to come to anyway, and is just awaiting the right mood of national optimism. To sustain what is bound to be a fairly lengthy debate, we need more than the natural optimism of an electoral honeymoon. For that reason, I hope, and expect, that concrete moves towards a Republic will be deferred for a while, until the government has some concrete achievements to celebrate.
John Quiggin 
What about Iraq? Not a single mention that I have seen, not even in reports on Security discussions:
Despite the presence of high profile military figures, including former defence chief General Peter Cosgrove, there was little consideration of traditional security matters.
Well of course not. Because as we all know, these things are far too important for the public to be involved.
The conventional wisdom is that the republic won’t happen while the Queen is in situ. This is probably right. There is a lot of respect and affection for her, but very little for that tosser Charles.
Since it appears that the Queen intends to leave the Palace feet first, let’s hope she doesn’t live as long as her mother.
Salusinsky gets it uncharacteristically right in the Oz
“the summit was less a seminar on national identity than a showcase for Kevinism (and Country Road). Rudd’s modus operandi seems to be to allow a thousand flowers to bloom, then carefully cherry-pick those that suit his agenda.”
“the summit was less a seminar on national identity than a showcase for Kevinism (and Country Road). Rudd’s modus operandi seems to be to allow a thousand flowers to bloom, then carefully cherry-pick those that suit his agenda.�
What a brilliant Idea.
I think we will put off the Republic debate for a while. We have to resolve the divide between those (like me) who just want to change over the stationary, and those, and I think they are the majority, who want to elect the head of state (shudder), in some manner. I tend to think that the compromise may have to mainly come from people who think as I do.
Tried to follow some of the debates on ABC 2 while doing a bit of gardening. While I caught on to some interesting ideas, it was hard to follow – so I am looking forward to reading a more detailed report. Noticed some of the usual suspects like Bill Heffernan ranting on about turning the far north rivers to flow southwards. This sort of thing is like a disease with NP types.
Bob Katter’s contribution to the summit was this poisonous little flower.
“Bob Katter, the independent member for Kennedy in outback Queensland argued for the creation of two new Australian states, North Queensland and North West Australia in which to house a booming population and new primary producers.
“If you took out the capitals and coastal towns in the golden boomerang around the south and south east of the country you would still have 90 per cent of Australia left and hardly any people in it,� he said.
“It is immoral that we are not using that land and putting people in it. About 80 million of our neighbours go to bed hungry and yet we sink their boats when they try to come here. We need the put people into northern Australia.â€?”
Until this I had a lot of respect for the man but now I can see he is just another cornucopian who wants his own empire up north where the beautiful rainforests try to clean our polluted air and humans go mad in the ‘wet’.
How is it that, with all the evidence of peak oil, resource depletion, over-fishing, climate change etc, otherwise intelligent people still see the natural world as somewhere to put more people? This flower would best be left to wilt.
I assume Kevin Rudd staged this show to engage with intellectual elites around the country – not an unworthy objective given that governments don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. Anyway he seems to have won at least one supporter as a consequence.
The problem with catering to elites is that it fosters illusions about what interests people in a democracy generally. The reports on the republic issue suggested that Rudd saw the defeat of the referendom 10 years ago as a constraint to be overcome by a careful conditioning of the population this time around.
Another interpretation is that people voted sensibly last time around on the basis of a preference for retaining historic links to Britain or that they simply thought that an element of political trickery must lie behind pushing what to most of them would be a low priority policy.
Hopefully it is a sense of such that makes you wish to defer raising the republican issue anytime soon.
I had a different interpretation generally of the 2020 show although I wasn’t there and could only watch bits on the tele. It seemed to me to provide a mirror image of Kevin Rudd’s devotion to symbolic gesture, cliche and a preference for shadow over substance.
Have been reading the report on the summit. Not convinced that its worth is in the substantive policy suggestions. Bit too heavy on rhetoric, rather than the practical. Which is to be expected, I suppose.
Perhaps the main benefit is simply the process itself.
One concern I have is that this is a consensus driven outcome.
Given that the formidable challenges ahead may require ideas that are unpopular, discounted or simply too challenging. It may be that reaching a broad consensus view is an unhelpful bias.
Do we get to hear about the minority views from this summit? – they could be the important ones. Though, no doubt, many submissions will have been counted out for good reasons.
Like mine that we scrap the AC power network and replace it with a high voltage DC network. 🙂
Persse, I know that power losses are less with DC. Can you give me any idea what is involved in changing over? At what point does the DC return to AC? What would would it cost and what would the savings be?
I suppose if you convene a roomful of republicans they will recommend a republic. Wow.
As I’ve commented before, changing to a Republic won’t make anybody a better person; it won’t make us richer; it won’t improve our sex lives; it won’t make it rain and it won’t reverse our alarming slide into a society of haves and have-nots.
The republic may be the only issue on which Australia’s chardonnay socialists can all agree, so it’s always a good excuse to open a bottle. Smiles all ’round. And maybe a lot of valuable networking opportunities for people looking for Govt. jobs and contracts.
What a crock!
I’m scratching my head about the Republic thing. From where I stand it is a strange thing to make a high priority.
Can anybody point me to some detailed coverage of the outcomes from each stream? The initial report on the official 2020 page is very light on details and the MSM coverage is so light about actual policies proposed as to be almost vacuous (as usual). All the blogosphere coverage seems to consist of either whinges or fairly vague generalisations. I know the blogger participants must be exhausted so no fault in that but I would like a bit more detail from somewhere.
There will be an official report but that is two weeks away, which is forever in internet terms. Is there somewhere I can simply get the agreed recommendations of each stream?
hc. Lets face it, we live in the age of symbolism.
We can wear red bandanas,shave our heads, march over bridges, feel very good about ourselves and not have to get out of our middle -class comfort zones.
Perfect
My understanding is that the dominant issues were the republic and abolishing the states; due to the complexity of the legal structure neither of which will be easy to undertake and unlikely to be ever achieved.
As David Marr said, its was a bit of a yak amongst like minded people.
The Security group’s write-up in the initial report PDF suggests that there were basically two opposed sides who used very similar language to drive radically different agendas. Surprise.
The advantage to Rudd is that he gets issues out in the open, sees how much passion various talking points can generate, and controls which issues flood the media over coming weeks.
I notice the Republic issue was heavily pushed by the News Ltd bloke, so no surprise it is getting lots of air time.
From Annabel Crabbe liveblogging the 2020 gabfest:
So … if you had to come up with a sign for the economics group what would your “big idea” be in ten words or less?
Mine would read: TAX CARBON, NOT INCOME
I would be interested to know John, what you thought of the performance of your co-chairs. I watched a little bit on the weekend, and while all of the other streams seemed to involve quite interactive and open discussion, the climate change/water/sustainability stream seemed to be dominated by Penny Wong barking orders and extinguishing free thinking. On TV there seemed to be a marked difference in “vibe” between yours and other streams; seeing Penny Wong perched above everyone else with her seemingly “dictatorial” style was a little disconcerting.
Cheers
carbonsink, are you seriously proposing to scrap income taxes? I’m all for decreasing income taxes in the lower brackets and making up the revenue loss with carbon taxes, but any tax scheme that leaves those on the lowest incomes worse off is not one I would want to see.
carbonsink, are you seriously proposing to scrap income taxes?
No, of course not, but Terje would probably support such a proposal. (No, really).
I’m all for decreasing income taxes in the lower brackets and making up the revenue loss with carbon taxes, but any tax scheme that leaves those on the lowest incomes worse off is not one I would want to see.
Yes agreed, but that’s bit hard to fit on a sign.
My point is, the one big idea that needed to come out of this summit is a big shift away from income taxes and towards carbon taxes, or at least a price on carbon.
The one politician giving this serious consideration is Malcolm Turnbull. If Turnbull became leader and this became official Liberal policy at the next election (unlikely, but you never know) I’d vote Liberal … and I’ve never voted anything by ALP/Green in my life.
No, of course not, but Terje would probably support such a proposal. (No, really).
Yes agreed, but that’s bit hard to fit on a sign.
My point is, the one big idea that needed to come out of this summit is a big shift away from income taxes and towards carbon taxes, or at least a price on carbon.
The one politician giving this serious consideration is Malcolm Turnbull. If Turnbull became leader and this became official Liberal policy at the next election (unlikely, but you never know) I’d vote Liberal … and I’ve never voted anything by ALP/Green in my life.
(apologies for the double-post … how about a preview button ProfQ?)
Actually I agree – if Turnbull took charge of the Liberal party and turned it into a genuinely small-liberal party prepared to take a rational approach to environmental issues, they’d have my vote over the ALP anyday.
Anyway, it seems the momentum is unstoppably towards cap & trade schemes, despite the slightly underwhelming evidence from Europe of their likely effectiveness.
(on and ditto on the preview feature please – with forced preview before submit. Then I might have noticed my missing ” l” after “small”.
wizofaus: I’m agnostic on the ETS vs carbon tax issue. I don’t really mind as long as there is a price put on carbon that’s high enough to discourage consumption of fossil fuels. But as you say, the momentum towards an ETS is unstoppable.
If you follow the Turnbull link above you’ll see he is proposing using the revenues from the ETS to reduce other taxes, including income tax.
Yes abolishing income tax and replacing it with either a higher GST or else a broadly based energy tax (or carbon tax) is something I would support. However you would need to tweak welfare and I’d still argue for a lower tax take overall. In fact the key reason I would prefer such a tax structure is because it would place more political constraints on creating and maintaining oversized high taxing government. Of course elliminating payroll tax would be a good alternative to reducing income tax and probably more politically viable.
Further to my comment #7 para 2.
It is interesting to note – see this document circulated to Summit Show attendees (here)– that support for a move to a republic has declined since 1995.
SG
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
From the Scientific American website encapsulates the idea. The essential point as far as AC/DC is that modern high power electronics give the ability to manipulate both with a high level of efficiency.
The restrictions on DC that lead to Edison losing his historic battle with Tesla no longer apply.
Efficient transport of electrical power is dependent on high voltage, the higher the more efficient.
The traditional advantage of light weight and cheap motors is less with advanced electric motors today.
In the article, I found particularly impressive the concept of compressed air storage in convenient locations (already done by the gas industry) and using the compressed air with natural gas(in much smaller quantities to drive a turbine than a conventional gas power plant).
However the sums involved in establishing a solar etc infrastructure take the breath away except when you compare it to not doing it.
Either summiteers cant read, or dont want to read, or are in denial (or all the above)
Terje, there’s a very big difference between an energy tax and a carbon tax. I can’t see any justification for an energy tax, and it would surely have a significantly depressive effect on economic growth.
I’m curious what political constraints you think scrapping income tax would have on maintaining high-spending government programs. After all, significant tax cuts haven’t stopped Bush et al from running what is surely the highest-spending government of all time.
This is cherrypicking on your part Harry. The same graph shows that opposition to a republic has also declined since 1995 – the 1995 survey found almost no-one indifferent. Support for a republic declined a few percentage points in the last years of the Howard government, but remained well above opposition.
Basis for the graph
Click to access 0103%20republic.pdf
“I had a different interpretation generally of the 2020 show although I wasn’t there and could only watch bits on the tele. It seemed to me to provide a mirror image of Kevin Rudd’s devotion to symbolic gesture, cliche and a preference for shadow over substance.”
Settle down Harry. I think we need to give Rudd at least 12 months in office before making judgement.
I agree with JQ, Rudd needs to get some runs on the board before prioritising the Republic debate. Such a debate can wait for a second term.
It’s probably worth noting the divergence between the 2020 graph and the actual vote in 1999 where 55% voted ‘No’ – the graph says that in 1999 34% said ‘No’
#32 Umm, perhaps you’ve forgotten, but this was because lots of supporters of a directly elected president voted “No”.
However, in the interests of seeing Rudd remain PM until 2020 (at least) I encourage supporters of the Liberal party to demand strict adherence to monarchism from the party and particularly from anyone who aspires to lead it :-). Honestly, guys, why are you rushing to pick up this tarbaby?
It’d be nice to think that we might try to achieve something some time soon. Here’s a vote for the idea of taxing “bads” such as carbon emissions, with offsetting easing of taxes on “goods” such as wage and salary income.
William Nordhaus:
Which can you count more efficiently, more certainly and more accurately – carbon as it flows from a few large pipes and mines or carbon as it vanishes out of exhaust pipes and smokestacks all over the world?
On the equity issues of a uniform global tax rate for carbon Nordhaus also offers this:
One of the outcomes was this; “Stage 1: Introduce an Australian republic, via a two-stage process, with Stage 1 ending ties with the UK while retaining the Governor-General’s titles and powers for five years. Stage 2: Identifying new models after extensive and broad consultation.”
This would mean that the PM appointed GG would be the monarch whilst alternatives are sought. I cant see that one getting of the ground in a referendum – from memory the people want to vote for the head of state.
You characters attempting to persuade yourselves that Oz sans little Johnnie still really and truly loves to swear its loyalty to an English monarchy – you’re sadly serious aren’t you. Move on doodz, Johnny Howard’s been moved on.
It’s a 2020 tarbaby JQ. Without public support via a referendum to alter the constitution the idea of reforming governance will be still born
The ARM recommend a plebiscite to establish the direction re republic and then, if successful, plebiscites to determine the mode of government. This was not the 2020 proposal.
John, According to Rog’s table – opposition to a republic hasn’t declined.
Opposition to republic 1995 was 34%
Opposition to republic 2007 was 36%.
My claim, ‘Support for a move to a republic has declined since 1995’.
Support for a republic in 1995 was 47%.
Support for a republic in 2007 was 42%.
On this basis my claims are correct.
There were many in the Liberal Party who supported a republic and many who opposed it. No-one would seek to tie the party down on this one.
My main point was that the views of 1002 delegates meeting in Canberra do not create conditions for believing a groundswell of opinion is returning for a republic.
Nor do the published opinion polls – quite the opposite.
Further to my point #1 above, here’s Juan Cole today:
It is an index of the despotism to which the United States has fallen victim that we must hope for other, more civilized countries, to try our war criminals. Why can’t public officials be prosecuted for violating the Bill of Rights’ guarantee against cruel and unusual torture? Why can’t an International Military Tribunal be set up as at Nuremberg?
Was anybody discussing that at 2020? Why not?
Aussie SAS troops drew first blood in Iraq, Aussie officials were present in torture sessions, Aussie lawyers, politicians, media and military voices loudly supported the US re-interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, the Howard government silenced dissenting opinions in the intelligence community, we have backed US War Crimes to the hilt (including the claimed right to further “pre-emptive” wars and the habitual targeting of civilian areas)…
And to all intents and purposes, given the continuing official silence on these issues, we remain beholden to the US neocon vision. We still pretend the invasion was legal!
How do we move on with these horrendously important issues unresolved?
I don’t get it.
I don’t get it.
I don’t get it.
I agree. I think the majority of people really couldn’t care less. Hence the summit being labeled as “elitist” as it doesn’t reflect the feelings of normal, everday Australians.
Cheers
Keep it up Harry, you can be the last monarchist to switch out the lights at the palace if you’re good. What you won’t be likely to be doing is gaining new converts to the great cause.
Personally I can’t see much justification for a carbon tax except as a means of cutting income tax but I suppose thats beside the point. All taxes depress growth. If you removed income tax and introduce an energy tax (or carbon tax) I can’t see the latter as being worse than the former in growth terms.
I didn’t mean to say it would stop them spending. It would however make it harder politically to keep on taxing so much and easier politically to cut taxes. Essentially because you can’t wedge one income class against another.
Oh I don’t know, ummmm, lemme see, I knew there was a reason …. oh yeah! to prevent the destruction of the planet.
You know, that might actually be more a important goal than reducing tax and smaller government.
The core issue is whether you go with quantity regulation with tradable permits or price regulation with taxes. It all depends on the nature of the environmental damage. Over time, climate change is being seen as a threat with increasing urgency; this has largely put to bed the idea of “carbon taxes” per se, and enhanced the focus on quantity regulation, albeit with tradability.
Of all people, I’d expect someone with strong pro-environment views to much prefer carbon regulation over a carbon tax; after all taxes leave the extent of pollution in the hands of largely unpredictable individuals, while regulation ensures a solid, definite level of pollution, regardless of the distortive and detrimental effects on individuals and overall efficiency (although tradability offsets this somewhat). Or at least that’s my understanding of the issue.
Cheers
Steve, people with “strong pro-environment views” won’t get what they need by being anti-market or economically irrational. The likely effectiveness of regulation and taxation in achieving a decrease of our carbon emissions can certainly be argued. Against arguments in favour of cap and trade regulation I’d firstly pose that when the dominant rentseekers today are so keen for it this must tell you something significant – it has at least one major flaw that they believe they’ll be able to exploit to their profit. For instance I think a cap and trade scheme intended to be enforced at the consumer level must be more easily rortable than a carbon tax at well and mine-head would be. I don’t want to see players getting rich by gaming a cumbersome regulatory system as it fails to produce real, provable, improvements in global carbon emissions. I think we should aim to raise increasing fractions of our taxes from “bads”, in this case killing two undesirable things – market gamers and reckless carbon pollution – with each stone.
John, I’m deleting this and anything further from you that contains references to “Luvvies”. If you can’t make your point without this tiresome stuff, please comment elsewhere – JQ
John Greenfield #47,
Your comment is almost a verbatim repeat of today’s editorial in the Australian. Funny that.
Please read the comments policy and the post on Trolls before commenting further – JQ
Frankis (#36) – as gandhi (#40) notes, our problem with Empire is no longer with the UK, and hasn’t been for a long time. Our Imperial problem is now with the US. If you started a movement for National independence from Washington (and consequent withdrawal of Australian military from Iraq and Afghanistan) I’d join up like a shot. Such a movement might actually have some substance. But maybe Australian republicans are actually supportive of the US “alliance� and its illegal and inhuman consequences.