It’s time again for the Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language. Lengthy side discussions to the sandpits, please.
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John Quiggin 
I developed a personal measure to use to help determine when flat roof solar panel installation became competitive with other forms of generation here in Adelaide. I decided that it would be when the flat roofed building across the street stopped just advertising solar panels and actually installed some. A week or so ago they started installing panels, and while it’s hard to judge the capacity, they might be up to 5 kilowatts now and they still have plenty of room if they want to add more than they need for their own use and sell electricity to the grid.
in the west the front page of this mornings worst australian states that grid connected home power generation will no longer be accepted because it’s too popular.
this is the barnett(“the pre-emptive emperor”) lib govt.
I guess this raises the question of what the feed in tariff should actually be. I think it should be the retail price of electricity at the time it is fed into the grid plus a cent or two per kilowatt-hour to compensate for avoided CO2 emissions. Because point of use solar takes pressure off the grid and reduces the amount of money that needs to be invested in transmission infrastructure, it seems reasonable to me that people feeding in solar power should get the retail price for their electricity and not the wholesale price. If I run my airconditioning with the help of the solar panels on the building across the street, that is a big help to the grid during a period of high demand. Idealy people would be paid the retail spot price plus the extra payment for avoiding carbon emissions. However, most electricity meters are not capable of doing spot prices, so since most hours or daylight are peak hours the feed in tariff plus payment for avoiding CO2 emissions might be close to the peak electricity price. The drawback of this is that people aren’t being paid to optimise their solar panels to generate electricity later in the day when it would on average be more valuable than early in the morning, but I guess that’s difficult to avoid in places without smart meters.
That’s a slight exaggeration, may. The article said that the feed-in tariff will no longer be offered to grid-connected solar power owners after a financial limit is reached. It will still be possible to install grid-connected solar.
yeah well. a financial limit that is reached does seem to indicate a certain level of popularity.
if you check my oither comments,i have a tendency to fairly credible but not too bright.
except for turgid.
“underlying communistic whatever”
whaaaa.they’re under tha bed.
and any way JQ puts up with me,blowed if i know why.
may, I agree with your sentiments about the arbitrariness and high-handedness of the decision. As someone in WA who has had grid-connected solar power since before the feed-in tariff came in, I have always thought the policy was a bit of a scam which gave with one hand while taking away with the other. Before the FIT came in, we were getting time-based retail prices, which meant we got paid peak rates for most of the time our system was generating. Under the FIT, we get paid off-peak rates for all the power we generate (even though most of it is produced during peak hours), and the FIT comes in on the surplus. In my view, the older arrangement made more sense.
I’m not clear on what’s going on, but if Western Australia isn’t going to have any solar feed in tariff at all, that’s nuts. After all, it doesn’t seem that long ago that businesses in Perth were fined for running air conditioners or escalators during periods of high demand in summer because the grid just couldn’t handle it. If people are willing to build safe, low emission generating capacity right in the middle of where the electricity is needed most, that is a good and useful thing and should be encouraged.
The feed in tariff should be less than the wholesale price. Not only is solar electricity an inferior product it makes no sence for small scale generators to be paid higher prices than a wholesale supplier, even allowing for potential transmission cost savings. The politicisation of electricity and the move away from commercial management practices is another Green menace.
Ronald, as I understand it, solar power owners who already get the tariff will continue to get it at the rate they signed up for, but new installations won’t be eligible.
Maybe one day Terje will make a comment that contains original thought, as opposed to a restatement of libertarian doctrine. We live in hope.
Charming.
@TerjeP
How do you decide that ‘solar electricity is an inferior product’? What is the reasoning that says that small scale generators should be paid less that the prices paid to wholesale suppliers? Who said that electricity generation was ever apolitical; and isn’t your comment merely an ill informed part of the political process?
@TerjeP
TerjeP says, “Solar electricity is an inferior product.” I am glad TerjeP has cleared up the physics for us. Yep, those electrons that are driven to flow by solar voltaics are inferior electrons to those driven to flow by coal driven turbines. Yep, folks they are different!
“Hey! You wimpy SOLAR ELECTRON, I am a COAL ELECTRON! I am BETTER!”
Seriously now, since TerjeP refers to the “Green Menace” I think we can refer to the “Libertarian Menace”.
It is precisely the privatisation of power in this country that has lead to steeply rising prices far outstripping inflation. This is undeniable empirical fact as it is what has actually happened in the real world. TerjeP voices unempirical nonsense as usual.
@TerjeP
Electricity is electricity, ain’t it?
If what you are arguing is that the advantages of solar cogeneration are outweighed by the small supplier inefficiencies maybe you could try a demonstration by numbers without invoking the Dreaded Green Menace. It can all go into one big equation. In WA, aircon is a massive power user at peak demand times and it’s typically a pretty good fit with the daily insolation cycle. Realistic spot pricing would allow the market to find the fit.
It also makes sense for low pollution suppliers of just about anything to be paid more than the high pollution equivalent. Don’t forget to put that in your equation too.
@Tim Macknay
I agree Tim. If the rule were that you sold electricity back to the grid for exactly the same price as you would be charged for drawing upon it at the time, that would seem to be fair.
@TerjeP
The Productivity Commission estimates the cost of CO2 avoided by rooftop solar panels at $400 per tonne. See for example the 3rd para in http://climatecommission.gov.au/topics/how-can-carbon-pollution-be-reduced/
From the perspective of the larger grid solar energy may be an imposition not a bonus. Electricity resellers may be forced by quotas to take up to 20% renewable energy whereas if they had the choice they might only take predictable hydro. PV may peak at noon or the mid afternoon whereas Australian coastal cities may experience peak air conditioning demand in the late afternoon. Many homes have air conditioners that draw 2500w even in the evening whereas just a few homes have PV panels that produce 1000-1500w in the middle of the day. In my opinion PV should not get any feed-in tariff or capital assistance beyond that implicit in carbon tax. It is not a premium form of energy and does not justify a premium price.
@may
Barnett, and Baillieu and O’Farrell are showing their true stripes. One of the features of the sham Western ‘capitalist democracies’ these days is the ubiquity of rank lying and false presentation that the political parties, particularly on the further Right, engage in, between elections and during election campaigns. These three are performing like typical Rightwing Thatcherite, Kennetite regimes, after pretending to be otherwise to confuse and mislead the patsie in the electorate. Rudd, Blair, Obama and Cameron are of the very same ilk.
@Hermit
Not anymore Hermit. There’s an incredibly clunky scheme now which prevents fungibility between large scale and small scale renewables. Basically, large utility retailers are forced to buy a certain percentage of both. One big problem with the new scheme is that phantom RECS (solar credits) are still included (though on a 2-1 basis, reduced from 4-1) and now expanded to all small scale renewable generators *except* for the one really economical carbon abatement energy generation system, solar hot water. Still, it does represent a slight improvement on the old scheme.
On your figure of $400/tonne, I suggest that information too is out of date. The most efficient solar is down to $30 per tonne, and according to industry groups, rooftop solar in NSW is $80 per tonne.
Solar seems to offer a few other advantages not previously mentioned; communities are made more disaster tolerant for example.
I’d be happy to have solar receive no subsidies so long as the carbon price reflected the true social cost of polluting. John Quiggin estimates that to be $50 a tonne. Until we get there, I think the subsidies should stay.
I was wondering if anyone has come across any sources (government, media or NGO) that confirm/show how aid donated to various Horn of Africa appeals gets to the people who need it.
I’m concerned (though not surprised) that media coverage has largely been tragic-exploitation; Australian government comments are bureaucratic-tragic-good-news-stories; and the blog world is full of folk foretelling that individual (or UN) contributions are going to be commandeered by evil-warlords the moment they leave Australian wallets.
Has anyone seen anything that ‘proves’ how donations will go where they’re meant to and/or seen any constructive media coverage about how individuals can alleviate the situation?
It seems to me that if we had a free market in electricity, then the building across the road from me with the solar panels could offer to sell me electricity for one cent less a kilowatt-hour than I’m currently paying and I’d be happy to take it. Don’t tell them this, but because I gain utility from not drowning Bangladeshi’s, I’d actually be willing to pay above the market price. Now I don’t know how my neighbours feel about not drowning Bangladeshi’s. Maybe my Bangladeshi neighbours would be in favour of not drowning them, but either way, I’m pretty sure that they’d be interested in electricity that was cheaper than what they are paying now. So it seems a free market solution would end up selling solar generated electricity at a price just lower than the retail daytime price, and considerably higher than the current wholesale price. In fact, the mobile telephone tower right next door to the building with the solar panels chews through a lot of power. I’m sure whoever pays the electricity bills for that thing would be glad to get some cheaper electricity during the day. The transmission costs would be negligible. Only about about 10 metres of cable would be required. Tragically, the commie fascists in charge stomp on the free market with a jack booted iron grip and make these kinds of free exchanges between consenting adults almost impossible, so until my friend Dr Libertarian and I manage to install a truly free market in electricity, I suggest that a feed in tariff approximately equal to the current wholesale daytime price of electricity be paid as a rough simulation of what will occur once our longed for truly free market in electricity is installed, which will occur once we have raised the level of libertarian consciousness among the proletariat.
@sam
Suppose the LCOE for PV is $0.40/kWh = $400/MWh. A MWh of coal generated electricity results in the emission of about 1 tonne of CO2 and has a wholesale price of say $0.07/kWh
=> avoidance cost of $400 -$70 = $330 per tonne of CO2 avoided.
Sounds to me like the industry groups are making stuff up.
Quokka, I pay something like 26 cents for a kilowatt-hour of electricity, or I will once the latest increase goes through, and the levelized cost of flat roof solar PV appears to have come down to around that amount. I say appears to because I don’t know just what commercial feed in tariff the people across the street might be getting and I don’t know if they receive utility from not drowning Bangladeshis, but flat roof point of use solar PV that saves the retail price of electricity does appear to be, or is becoming, cost effective.
For the feed-in tariff debate. I would like to note that I am a fan of retail price for solar electricity but at the moment solar panels use the grid as a battery so there is a rationale that they should pay some part of the network tariff for the use of the grid. In a not so distant future of course we will have a smart grid that manages our loads and our local generation and triples the efficiency of our use of infrastructure. I’m betting that in the brave new smart world rooftop solar electricity will have a greater value than todays peak power – bring it on!
@curiouser – just watched Melinda Gates talk about how Coke gets its product into the Horn of Africa and suggesting the world of aid could learn a thing or two from them.
Hi guys – so, what’s the main argument against the view put forward by Steven Kates on The Drum today?
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2819698.html
He claims Keynesian stimulus is dead now that the US package has ‘failed’. Did it fail? Is he right?
He is wrong, of course. Real world evidence shows that the Australian stimulus worked (in the short to mid term because Australia has other problems too.) One issue is where the stimulus is applied. If it is applied to workers/consumers’ pockets, as in Australia, it does work. If applied to bailing out the banks and corporations as in the US, it tends to fail as the banks sit on the credit rather than spending it or lending it; thus no multiplier effect.
The bigger picture is that our economies were fuelled by a two decade debt boom. Thus lead to asset inflation, particularly in Real Estate. This was and is unsustainable. When the credit impulse of the debt boom is pulled out of the economy (by deleveraging) then the economy goes weak and unemployment goes high.
There are many, many issues at play. The problems faced by modern capitalism are not just about Keynesian stimulus. It is typical of neoclassical economists like Steven Kates to come up with simplistic statements like the USA stimulus proves that Keynesian stimulus doesn’t work. Such reasoning is akin to putting petrol in a car without a functioning fuel pump and then concluding petrol doesn’t work.
The mania of the US Right to slash spending now, by sadistically targeting the poor and helpless (while still loudly proclaiming their ‘Christianity’)will, I imagine, produce an even deeper crisis. But, that’s the intention. What we see here is ‘disaster capitalism’ coming home. After decades of inflicting it on the poor world through war, sanctions, economic subversion through Structural Adjustment Plans and sundry techniques like furthering the rise of narco-trafficking through insane ‘War on Drugs’ policies, the ruling pathocrats in the USA have turned their attentions to the rabble at home.
If the experience of Greece and Ireland holds true in the USA, the austerity that Obama was always going to acquiesce to (just as he will acquiesce to the Republican’s next bout of foot-paddery)will deepen the recession, and worsen the debt problem. The other side of the Right’s coin, as ever, is yet more tax cuts for the rich. The extension of the Bush cuts is certain, and elite greed being, physiologically and spiritually insatiable, more will come. The USA is in a death-spiral, which is a blessing for the world subject to its brutality and arrogance for too long. It could be a blessing for the USA too, if the people were able to throw off life-long brainwashing to see themselves as paragons and their corrupt kleptocracy as perfection itself. Unfortunately, unlike Greg Sheridan, whose trade-mark groveling before America’s ‘Greatness’ today was more than usually hysterical and-shall we say- liberal with the facts, I see the coming social collapse in the US leading to civil strife and a break-up into four of five possibly quite hostile states. If the Chinese were as unprincipled and destructive as the Yanks have been for decades, they’d be financing ‘dissidents’ and declaring them the ‘true representatives of the American people’. But what you can get away with in Haiti, Guatemala, Libya, Syria and Ukraine is rather perilous when the target is nuclear-armed and trigger-happy.
@Ikonoclast: thanks for the response. I’d like to be able to debunk the Kates’ claims a little more thoroughly than simply saying “The US stimulus was misspent and they were screwed anyway” but it’s a good start.
For a stimulus to work, you have to go in fast and spend the money in the right places to keep the economy afloat.
It does not work when the effects of the downturn are producing unemployment. Most countries use tax cuts, which I believe history has proven inefficient way of bolstering the economy. Most begin the spending too late.
Do as Mr. Rudd did, spend quickly and give the money to those who will spend.
Spend as much in infrastructure building as possible as a follow up action.
Do not withdraw the stimulus too early.
Do not forget that over a third of the money will come directly back to the government in tax gathered, by GST and income tax.
The stimulus money will also result in less government outgoings such as unemployment benefits. Bankrupt businesses do not pay tax.
It is a fact that the unemployment persists for longer periods after each of the last few downturns. It is a major problem in the USA.
If the country is not willing to go in fast and give the money to those who will spend, they are better off doing nothing.
They will not save, as the cost of rebuilding the economy will be much greater.
I do not claim to be an economist but the one thing I have noticed about the global booms and busts of the last fifty years is that all countries seem to be affected regardless of their economical beliefs. It does not appear to matter whether they are high or low taxed. It does not matter if they have comprehensive welfare or no welfare schemes at all.
It appears that we can only manage the economy over short periods of time. No matter what we do, the booms and bust continue to come. The best we can do is manage harm, not prevent the downturns. That is what a stimulus is meant to do.
If anyone is interested, the Solarbuzz site gives the cost per kilowatt-hour of point of use solar in the US:
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/solar-electricity-prices
If you poke around you can find their methodology.
Read Janet Albrechtsen online Oz opinion piece this morning (Wed 12:40am, SA local time); boy, is she a wind-up one. Talks about PC (Political Correctness) and makes an extremely lame attempt to connect the Left with gagging of debate. What a laugh, like in which national newspapers are the Left able to gag anyone?
Albrechtsen’s article is actually railing against people who would like to see a) a bit more politeness in what passes for public debate; and, b) want more factually based argument and less ad-hom style debate. Ironic, this.
The nub of it is this: Albrechsten is conflating an expressed desire by some people for more polite, non ad-hominem based arguments in public debates with the notion of censoring debate on “sensitive” issues (like multi-culturalism). Having made that erroneous connection, Albrechtsen then uses people’s quite reasonable dislike of censorship to connect this, via the above-identified conflation, to the people (supposed to be entirely from the Left, another tacit (incorrect) assumption of hers) she is not happy with, namely those who want fewer insults peppering arguments on public policy issues.
In short, Albrechtsen wants to conclude that the Left demand any opposing debate is shut down, gagged; she cannot do this without drawing an extremely long bow first. The final irony is that by virtue of her incorrect argument in her article, she may complain that those pointing out her errors are in fact just trying to stifle debate, etc etc. And so it goes…
Sorry if my demand for more civilised debate is considered by the right is seen as gagging free speech.
I believe the angst and ridicule that passes for debate in the Australian community today prevents any sensible solutions to our problems.
I believe in free speech. I also believe with any right we have, there also comes responsibility. This is what good parents teach their children.
Yes we have free speech. We do not have the right to harm using free speech.
Donald Oats, having read what, in my opinion, was another example of La Passionaria’s trade-mark ranting hysteria, with her usual inversion of reality where the poor, oppressed Right is being hounded from the public square by those evil ‘politically correct’ Leftists (one always wonders whether there is any particle of belief in this insanity, or is it pure humbug)I was once again reminded of the sad truth that nothing will ever turn the Right from its destructive path. For the Right the absolutely essential priority in all things is to dominate, to get its way, always. The behaviour of the Rightwing hatemongering media machine, before and since the Norwegian massacre, seems to me to represent evil in a really pure and irredeemable form. I’ve watched the Right intensely over the years, as they have driven the human world towards a social dispensation best described as neo-feudalism. I’m utterly convinced that the Right, the leaders, the propagandists and the Dunning-Kruger-Joyce rabble who support policies that will destroy their life prospects (mostly out of slavish adoration of Big Men, one of which they, crazily, imagine that they will become, one fine day)have been growing steadily more vicious, malicious and destructive. I see a truly dreadful synergy between the ecological crises, which the Right is fanatically determined to see remain unaddressed, the decline of the US ‘Real Evil Empire’ in a bloodbath of serial aggressions against the Moslem world (with Iran, Russia and China firmly in the gun-sights)and resource depletion with the absolute global dominance of a floridly psychopathic Right whose appetite for violence and destruction simply grows ever greater. A world where the media unquestioningly describes the carpet bombing of Libya and the active intervention of NATO to bomb a motley crew of jihadists and emigres on the CIA payroll to power, as ‘the duty to protect’, and the armed invasion of Syria by Sunni Salafists armed and financed by the medieval despotism of Saudi Arabia, where leading clerics are calling for the extermination of the non-Sunni third of Syria’s population, as a ‘popular uprising’, is one where Big Brother’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ simply doesn’t rate.
In the wake of the appearance of sometime “Marxist” Brendan O’Neill on QANDA I thought I’d report on the reaction at Catallaxy, for those whio can’t quite stomach going there. It won’t come as a shock to those here that their take on Mr O’Neill was somewhat generous, to put it mildly.
The post there by Howard-era ABC hack Judith Sloane is entitled:
Brendan: We Love You.
In true hagiographic fashion, Sloane fancied that his performance deserved an Oscar and Gold Logie all rolled into one. Given that these are awards for acting in an entertaining fashion, perhaps she had a point. Needless to say, the cheersquad was soon along to furiously agree. Adjectives like “brilliant” “steelwilled” and “articulate” were wheeled out for this dissembling rightwing loudmouth.
Bloghost Sinclair Davidson, ever the man to sort the wheat from the chaff, opened the chaff bag to pick out the most absurd of comments from O’Neill for special praise:
Jason Soon noted that the interesting thing is that Brendan and the Spiked team are rehabilitated Marxists. That didn’t discourage perhaps the most foulmouthed flamer at Catallaxy, one called “JC” who surely expectorates as he types.
This is very much this chap’s style. For him the difference between reasoned inference and the slippery slope is moot if it leads in the direction of concluding that left|sts are mass-murdering psychopaths. I stopped responding to him after he directly asserted the Greens qualified in that respect as I concluded that he was asserting that I must be one too. Tellingly, that logic wouldn’t apply to the Blotosphere and Breivik, but I digress.
Jason Soon continued to THR (a lefty regular at Catallaxy):
Another poster called “sdog” observed:
Prompting the circle jerk response from JC …
Sdog then affirmed that it very much was, pointing JC in the direction of the environmental policy of Sp!ked, which, it will come as no surprise, sounds a lot like the environmental policy of an organisation run by a global polluters’ cartel. Pollution is life don’t you know? Articles have catchy titles like “The rise of the
eco-imperialists”; “Admit it: environmentalism was an ugly experiment”; and from O’Neill himself: “The icy grip of the politics of fear”.
JC was suitably impressed:
Wow Dog … He’s a kindred spirit.
Charged up, JC continued on another theme to O’neill’s liking:
Certainly, JC has learned what O’Neill dogwhistled. Another rightwing poster, “papachango” cautioned:
JC was undeterred however:
Yet is it the case that the best libertarian, in the view of Catallaxians, is a “reformed” Marxist, or is he simply as, Sloane implied, a great actor?
SIked self-describes in part as follows:
An article by O’Neill himself in 2008, still on the site, in response to the official appearance of the GFC, commences as follows:
Deliciously, in that article, O’Neill takes a swing at another libertarian icon, Freddy Hayek, who had his own brief flirtation with social|sm before abandoning it:
So according to O’Neill himself, he’s still a Marxist. I leave it to the Catallaxians to work out how avowed Marxists can be the best libertarians.
Am I on permanent moderation PrQ, or are some words triggering the filter?
Must be the latter I guess …
@Donald Oats
Darnit – screwed up the quotes.
Brendan O’Neill emerges from the Living Marxism charade. A bunch of extreme Right libertarians (and O’Neill’s assertion that he is of the ‘Left’ is pure chutzpah)took over the defunct Living Marxism magazine and thought it a real wheeze to turn it into a Rightwing, Thatcherite organ, and simply assert that Marxism was now ‘libertarian’ and ‘free market’. Of course the Left, which believes in liberty, equality and fraternity, is the precise antithesis of libertarianism, which is the ideology of the psychopath who despises others and is interested only in himself and his greed and egomania. What more perfect milieu for Murdoch to dredge for really impertinent and audacious balderdash, that, mirabile dictu, always ends up arguing for the interests of the rich and powerful. What is even better, the Spiked mob are masters of phony solidarity with and concern for the downtrodden, and diverting attention away from the burgeoning serf class’ real enemies, the masters, and on to the ‘usual suspects’ in the Murdochean hate wars, environmentalists, ‘do-gooders’, unionists, the Left etc.
And these creatures found another niche akin to News Corpse at Channel Four in the UK where they were given free rein to run a series of utterly mendacious, hate-filled and brainless mockumentaries attacking environmentalism and denying every ecological crisis, the most notorious being the infamous ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’ which was imposed on the ABC over protests by the Howardite board, several of whose members (the synchronicity is touching) are also recipients of the Murdoch shilling. No wonder he is invited on to Q & A-one wonders if it was as a result of a direct ‘request’ from the Board.
I’m not going to indulge in animadversions, but I felt a real sense of nausea and revulsion at his smug loquacity and undisguised self-regard. In my opinion, a really fit example of what ‘libertarianism’ and ‘Murdochism’ truly represent.
After the decision to confiscate any profits from David Hicks’s book, I’m looking forward to Janet Albrechtsen’s next article at the Oz, the one in which she proudly defends Hicks’s right to publish and profit from such a book…crickets chirping…seasons come, seasons go…
The ABC dropped the snide and vicious description of Hicks as ‘convicted terrorist supporter’ for one brief interlude today, using the more truthful ‘former Guantanamo inmate’ instead. Good God, quoth I-an attack of honesty and principle! By the evening news, the earlier, dishonest and malicious description was back. No doubt one of Howardite grandees on the Board, or one of the Howardite placemen in the apparatus detected the earlier thought crime and knuckles were rapped.
Cute but stupid. Of course the electrons are identical. However the quality of a product or service goes beyond composition. Reliability of supply and price are just two issues that differ between coal generated electricity and solar generated electricity.
With this all electrons are equal argument you may as well claim that lightning is as good a souce of electricity as a coal fired power station. It is a simplistic and stupid line.
TerjeP, if the people across the road from me with the solar panels on their flat roof wanted to sell solar generated electricity to the business next door to them for one cent a kilowatt-hour less than what the business is currently paying, would you be be in favour of regulation preventing that?
@TerjeP
Are you sure they’re identical? I doubt there has been any research to back up that claim.
On a more important topic than non-discrimination between and equal rights for all electrons… The persecution of David Hicks will hopefully be sorted out by the courts. Hopefully, the courts will apply the law, even as perverse as it was written, and use some common sense, in which case David Hicks illegal incarceration and show trial by a bunch of lawless rogues will be correctly labelled and he will be able to keep the royalties from his book. Given how conservative and reactionary many judges can be, and resistant to any fact or sound argument, and all but their bigoted dispositions, I fear this will not be the outcome.
There really ought to be a backbench revolt on this one, and on the government’s endorsement of the US attacks on Assange.
The question is whether Mr. Hicks wrote the book for the money or to get his version of the truth into the public arena.
I suggest that the reason the book was written was to get his plight before the courts, where his conviction can be tested.
I have concerns that a person is denied their freedom of speech, when they are prevented fro putting their case before the public. I believe I have the right to hear what the man has to say.
The law to stop people from earning from their alleged crimes has not been applied to most criminals who have written books.
The authorities have been very selective in who they go after.
The present government has nothing to lose in allowing the matter to go before the courts. Whatever the result, it will not reflect badly on them.
The money appears to be held in a family trust. I suspect the reason for this is the prospect that they would end up in court.
An interesting aspect of this law is its wide scope. Even though, nominally, the law is about the proceeds of crime, it seems that the law can be used to take proceeds regardless of whether any crime was committed (or at least, whether the person was convicted of a crime) and regardless of whether the book was about, or gained its sales, as a result of the alleged crime. In the case of David Hicks, few if any, would have been interested in the book to find out about what crime if any he has committed. Rather, it is the crimes that have been committed against him that provide the interest. That is, his sale by the Northern Alliance to the Americans, his internment in Gitmo, his torture, so trial, the involvement of the Howard government, and so on, that is of interest. If he had simply committed a crime, been provided due process and been convicted, sentenced and jailed, I doubt there would have been interest sufficient for him to have even found a publisher.
@TerjeP
Putting pedantry aside for a moment (electricity is a medium for moving energy from one place to another, in the same way that money moves value from one place to another) that’s scarcely a good analogy. The devices attached to grid connected PV ensure that the output of solar panels is in a form that the grid can redeploy, ensuring that these electrons are indeed the same as the others being “supplied” by the grid to users. They are not comparable in form to lightning.
Fran – and you know better than most that the price utilities pay for coal fired power is lower than the retail price of electricity and that from their perspective a source they can buy when they want and need to has far higher utility than a source they must buy from when it suits the seller. The fact that both products entail electrons moving in a wire at comparable voltage and frequency is a technical imperative but it does not make them commercially equivalent.
If the government, in fact both sides of politics, don’t want to honour the refugee obligations that Australia signed up to a longtime ago, maybe they should simply ‘unsign’ that treaty rather than continue to go through the travesty that refugees turning up on our shores are somehow ‘illegitimate’.
I am also getting heartily sick of listening to the crocodile tears about the ‘people smugglers’ and their ‘business model’. First, they are not smugglers as there doesn’t appear to be any real attempt to ‘smuggle’. Second, the ‘leaky boats’ are a consequence of government policy which does not give them their boats back and let the so-called ‘smugglers’ go on their way after delivering their cargo. As the boats are confiscated, of course, they are the cheapest and most disposable possible. If the confected tears were real, then to save the ‘poor’ refugees from these ‘terrible’ risks the government would pick them up from the shores of Indonesia and transport them safely the rest of the way.
The unchallenged nonsense Ministers are talking on this subject is simply sickening to listen to.