As has been true since 2010, our aspiring leaders seem to be determined to outdo each other in silliness this week. Since Julia Gillard will (with 90 per cent probability) be nothing more than a bad memory in a year’s time, while Tony Abbott will be an unavoidable reality, I’m going to ignore Gillard’s “Rob Peter to Pay Paul” aprroach to funding Gonski and talk about the National Broadband Network.
The Abbott-Turnbull proposal for a cutprice NBN has been an amazing success in clarifying issues that previously seemed too complex to be resolved. Until now, it’s been far from obvious how to assess the NBN – the complaint that we didn’t have a benefit cost analysis was obviously silly in the absence of any easy way of quantifying the benefits. But now that we’ve seen the alternative – a 25MBps network, dependent on Telstra’s failing copper network and non-existent goodwill, it’s obvious that the NBN is the only option that gives us any hope of keeping up with the steady growth in demand for information. The claim that individual subscribers can choose to upgrade to fibre-to-the-premises appears to have collapsed in the face of expert scrutiny. Instead, it seems, we’ll end up with lots of street-corner boxes, which will have to be ripped out and replaced wholesale when their inadequacy becomes apparent.
Given that he is going to win the coming election anyway, Abbott could greatly improve his chances of re-election in 2016 by admitting his mistake and going with the existing NBN plan, maybe with some cosmetic tweaks. As a bonus, from Abbott’s POV, Turnbull would have to eat a lot of humble pie.
The same is true for the other slogans on which he’s relied so far, like “Stop the Boats’ and “Axe the Tax”. Thanks to Labor’s implosion, he can afford to dump them now, and replace them with something more realistic – there’s no shame in changing policies before an election.
I don’t expect Abbott to take this unsolicited advice, but he could look at the cautionary lesson provided by Bligh, Gillard and NSW Labor among others, and consider carefully whether it’s better to take a few lumps now, or gain office on the basis of commitments that will prove a millstone, whether they are abandoned or adhered to.
[Comments are closed]
* I know, this quote attributed to Thomas J Watson is apocryphal, as is a similar one attributed to Bill Gates, but lots of similar statements have been made in reality, and they’ve all proved to be silly. For example, I can remember people saying in the early 80s that 8-bit address space of 64k (a double octet) were all we would ever need. Many more people said, well into the 1990s, that graphical interfaces were an unnecessary luxury and that personal computers would always start with a C:> prompt.
John Quiggin 
Also I apologise it looks like I’ve misrepresented JQ’S in an earlier comment – I can’t seem to scroll back far enough through comments to double check, but I accused JQ of saying that Gillard had never supported a carbon price, and apparently it wasn’t JQ who said that. My mistake, sorry.
@Jim Rose
You mean, hypothetically?
@alan @tyler …
This apologia “Rudd had a hostile senate” radically misstates the practical politics. Had Rudd moved swiftly to implement Garnaut, the Libs would have rolled over — Abbott was pressing for this option and with the polls as they were in August 2009, they were never keen on a double dissolution in November. The Libs didn’t find their courage until Rudd began playing silly games with the policy in order to undermine Turnbull and freeze out the Greens. He overplayed his hand and lost and then wasn’t willing to opt for an s57 resolution.
Rudd was revealed as an empty suit when push came to shove.
@John Quiggin
It is said much better than I could by Paola Totaro in the Guardian in an article entitled, “Australians don’t know how lucky they are” and begins, “A leadership threat to Julia Gillard seemed churlish – given the strong economy – but disgruntled Australians are a common breed.” I don’t dare post the URL and the article is un-cuttable and pastable. Maybe people can google it.
Although I really don’t like growth and most of the things that the article praises, most people would because that’s what our mass media praises in other politicians, but not in Julia.
I like the fact that Gillard’s government is now free of a lot of old heavies who were sent to the back bench after the last ridiculous Rudd attempted coup. There will maybe be more room for new ideas. I keep a faint hope that Gillard might actually try something new and ecologically sustainable. This almost certainly means that I am a poor deluded fool, but Gillard’s predecessors were even less likely to do so. Gillard has promoted Kelvin Thomson, who I like because he really does like the Australian environment and wants a small population. He is also really smart in my opinion, so that is a small indication from my own slight experience, of her displaying good judgement.
@John Quiggin asked me whether I think “cutting uni and TAFE funding (but not payments to wealthy private schools) to pay for school funding is a good idea? If so, make the case.”
I liked the last budget because it cut taxes for the poor. The universities seem to have become huge dens of commercialised corruption and too expensive already and seem mainly to be used by foreign students. I think there should be fewer vocational courses and more core theoretical stuff, which vocation can then be built on. I think policy on them since Keating has been terrible. Julia has to use what she’s got to work with in the parliament. Could she be reducing the power of the old guard that supports business as usual in the universities?
Don’t all labor governments subsidise private schools – notably Catholic ones because they get votes from the poor catholic students and the churches are so powerful in persuading people which way to vote? (On the other hand, after the pedophile revelations, I am surprised that any of them still have pupils). Public schools certainly need funding. They are a great concept, poorly honoured. TAFEs – not sure where I stand on that one, but Howard also cut their funding, didn’t he? There are a lot of overpriced and light-on courses in the TAFES, although not on the scale of the universities.
Similarly with 457-baiting, cuts for single parents, equal marriage, Afghanistan war, US deputy sheriff, citizens assembly, cash for clunkers etc etc – Murdoch and Fairfax didn’t make these up.”
Well, I approve of reducing immigration. I think population growth and infrastructure expansion is suicidal in a world reliant on fossil fuel that is depleting rapidly. The 457 visas not only accelerate this process, they are used to avoid employing and training locals. They contribute to high housing prices, spread of infrastructure, higher cost of living and taxes, in my view (possibly not yours).
I thought Rudd was the biggest joke out with the commercial propagandists he paraded at his Australia 2020 (or whatever it was called). I hated his Big Australia project. It was ignorant and pretentious and there was no chance of real democratic input. I was also really bothered by his association with Labor Resources and Labor Holdings.
So the best thing that Gillard did was get rid of Rudd, or at least fill the space so that he could not come back. I admire her courage in surviving his attacks and those of Rudd’s cronies. I like the fact that she does not ostentatiously want to ‘put Australia on the map’ and that she quietly surprises – for instance in her recent trip to China. She is no coward.
Equal marriage is something that Gillard did not support herself. I can see it for what it is – a territory grab by the ALP – for voters who might otherwise vote for the Libs. For me it will be yet another skewing of our inheritance laws, but they are so stuffed anyway that there is little point in getting upset. I don’t believe in romance as a basis for marriage but I can understand why gays would want to have equal rights to spousal superannuation etc. I would chuck our entire system for the Napoleonic one, so I’m not going to get excited about this.
Cash for clunkers was pretty dumb when keeping old cars on the road reduces materials use and entropy. But Gillard was probably dog-whistling the car manufacturers, no? She has to talk to them; they represent a huge related employment sector the size of which constantly amazes me as I drive in outer suburbs. All the pollies deal with them in a similar way.
I liked the Citizens assembly idea and was disappointed that it did not take off. Anything that sounds like participatory democracy appeals to me. However I know that such policies are put out there, along with her remarks about not wanting big populations, to attract votes rather than as sincere policy previews, unfortunately.
She didn’t start the Afghanistan war, which I agree is an appalling thing to continue. As is the one in Syria that we are funding. But no-one else has tried to stop the Afganistan one either. John Howard was the one that got us involved in that war.
Oh, the single mothers funding withdrawal … I do not know enough about it.
There you are – a revelation of my eccentric voting values. What does it really reveal? That I pay absolutely no attention to the Murdoch press and am completely unbothered by the things that seem to get most peoples’ goats and which are endlessly discussed re Gillard, and that I like her courage, even if I know she won’t deliver on the big things that I want.
@Val
I have a great deal of sympathy for the notion that in some circles, a) legitimate disenfranchisement with the PM can lead to a minimisation of just how appalling Tony Abbot is and b) that sexism plays a role. I’m hardly qualified to guess about the overall gender bias or lack thereof of anyone here so I’ll leave b) alone, but I’m a quite amazed at the suggestion (if I read you right) that commenters here are guilty of a).
Are you really proposing that all of the comments on this blog put together are going to result in a single extra vote for Abbott? This sort of community (relatively well informed and progressive) is precisely the place where we should be *most* critical of the ALP. Otherwise we’ll be in danger of mimicking certain other political corners of the internet that just descend into online echo chambers
@Val
I’ve said this before, particularly in the context of Queensland – but it applies here as well, everything that happens after the next federal election is the ALP’s fault.
They have had far too many chances to avoid losing the election. They have come up with nothing better than: “When we do neo-liberal free market fundamentalism it’s different” & “Abbott will be worse”.
PR spin and working social media with asinine talking points will only get them a few percentage points but unless they pretend (convincingly) to stand for something substantially better than what the LNP will (presumably) deliver, your point just isn’t going to get through.
“Support Gillard because she isn’t Abbott” is about as powerful as “Support Abbott because he isn’t Gillard” – and sadly, that seems to neatly summarise our political duopoly’s election campaign strategy.
We have 5 months until the election. An Israeli lead war on Iran (which would of course be blindly supported by both the ALP/LNP and Murdoch/ABC) would perhaps be this ALP government’s “Tampa” or “9/11” or “children overboard”. Unfortunately, die-hard ALP supporters would applaud that “victory” just as loudly as Howard’s did.
I assume I’m not talking to idiots and I assume they know this but want black to be the new white and up to be the new down etc..
@Neil
Neil, I am not overtly sexist. The studies and methods you mention would no doubt uncover unconscious and implicit sexist attitudes in me. I am currently aware, in principle, of sexist attitudes in me. After detailed studies of me and detailed reporting of the studies results to me and even counselling of me, I would be better aware, aware in more detail and perhaps behaviourally more capable of preventing my unconscious sexism from affecting my actions or behaviours at least in some respects.
Now, let me ask a rhetorical question. Given my very strong left wing views (many examples in this blog), do you think I could ever support any person (female or male) who sides (and even conspired in my view) with oligarchic, capitalist mining bosses against the workers?
The substantive fact is that Julia Gillard’s government’s policies are anathema to me and scarcely distinguishable from general neoconservatism IMO. Were I to be the mythical man with zero sexism but still my same left vs right political views, I would still trenchantly reject Julia Gillard and her policies.
However, given that sexism in the general population is another thing J.G. has to fight, it’s another argument against her adopting neoconservative policies scarcely distinguishable from Abbott’s. She is handing it to the conservatives on a plate. The sexist conservatives say oh well we might as well have a bloke conservative.
@Ikonoclast
Answer to your rhetorical question: probably not. Friese (2012) – in PLoS One, and therefore open access – found that explicit attitudes predict voting intentions better than implicit attitudes. I don’t think that’s surprising. All I ever said is that it is very likely that negative implicit attitudes explain some – I stressed small – proportion of even well-justified responses to JG, probably by making them harsher than they would otherwise be.
@Sheila Newman
I’d not be so harsh, but I would say that your hope has no basis at all. Left to her own devices, Gillard will do exactly nothing of substance in this area, because almost all those keen on it will vote ALP “in the faint hope”. Moral hazard applies, and the ALP can afford to ignore you and pitch at people with the opposite view.
Oh for pity’s sake. “Dens of corruption”? “foreign students”? “Kelvin Thomson”? Population policy? “reducing immigration”? You really are pitching at the Lindsay crowd. It ‘s ugly and it won’t work.
This would not have been anything of the sort. It was simply an artifice for burying the issue of carbon pricing during the election which, had she somehow won the election in her own right, she’d have used to do exactly what Rudd did — dropkick it down the road.
Given that the Murdoch press is running hard against “foreigners” {“boat people”} and “Big Australia” I don’t agree that’s so.
@Fran Barlow
What you say is completely accurate. It does not, on the other hand, alter the senate numbers that Rudd faced or create a path by which a cleaner bill could have been passed with Green support when the Greens did not have the balance of power in the senate. Val’s claims about Rudd, but not yours, are factually incorrect.
Apart from wishing Rudd had not caved on the double dissolution, I really wish he had invited Gillard and Swan to test their opposition to the CPRS in caucus. there was no prospect that they could have succeeded and no prospect that they could depose Rudd until he threw away the CPRS and his electoral standing with it.
I also agree with you about the citizens assembly. Kerry O’Brien repeatedly asked Gillard what would happen if the assembly voted against the science of climate change and she was unable to give an answer. Citizens assemblies on electoral reform have been successful in the Netherlands, somewhat less so in Canada. It was an extremely silly idea to refer carbon pricing to a citizens assembly and was just classic ALP Right governing by being seen to be doing something.
@Megan
You argue that there is no real difference between liberal and labor and that they are both neo- liberal free market fundamentalists. The point is, labor actually are not free market fundamentalists. Since Hawke and Keating they have adopted neoliberalism to an arming degree, I agree with that, but they still see a role for government in preventing inequity (to a degree) and in promoting public good. The NBN is actually an example of that, although I don’t think the message is being well- communicated. The LNP aren’t in practice free market fundamentalists either because it would be politically dangerous, but like Campbell Newman there, or Kennett previously here, they will probably go as far down that road as they can. If you haven’t done so, I urge you to google the IPA manifesto – it’s hard to find on their website so try something like ‘IPA key points’. Those are the people that Murdoch, Rhinehart and Abbott are closely associated with.
In terms of the long term project of freeing Australia from the dominance of neoliberalism and free market fundamentalism, I completely support that and am trying to address it in my PhD, as I mentioned. Happy to have further discussions about that, but you won’t convince me that personalised and implicitly sexist bagging of Julia Gillard is going to contribute to that project in any way.
@ John Quiggin
I found your comments re Hawke, Keating etc very interesting, but there is nothing that compares with saying, five months before an election, that the labor prime minister will soon be “nothing more than a bad memory”. If you said anything like that about Keating in 1996 for example, that might be more convincing.
This blog, as good as it can be, continues to astonish me with the depths of its pro-Rudd revisionism. I can assure you that based on real-life, unscripted remarks I’ve heard in conversations, the gender bias against the PM is very real. That being said, I don’t think it is even the main issue.
I don’t care what people’s unconscious biases are on this blog, but in my view it’s clear many here:
(i) grossly underestimate the influence of the hostile mainstream press (News Ltd, Fairfax, ABC, which set the agenda for TV & radio)
(ii) grossly overestimate the extent to which people hate the PM because of some cosmic policy reason
(iii) are in complete denial about how difficult Rudd was to work for (read the two big James Button articles in Fairfax) and perhaps think the only thing important to governing is philosophy – without any need for the practicalities (negotiation, dealing with people, managing staff, being efficient & organised, etc)
(iv) are quick to criticise the PM, often with justification, but hold her up to standards of perfection not applied to anyone else, and without a necessary sense of ‘realpolitik’
(v) are convinced that a Rudd Govt was, and would be, more left wing, when there is absolutely no evidence for this apart from asylum seekers
(vi)
@Val Here’s what I wrote in the Financial Review, just before the 1996 election, in a piece which presented Keating and Howard as the joint architects of micro reform.
That’s actually stronger than my view this time around. I’m definitely advocating putting the Liberals last. And if I had any belief that Gillard could beat Abbott, I’d be backing her to the hilt, regardless of her policy failures.
“without a necessary sense of ‘realpolitik’”
Where’s the realpolitik in sticking with a leader who is pulling in 29 per cent of the vote? To repeat, if Gillard was doing what was needed to beat Abbott, I’d hold my nose and support her.
The fact is that, with Labor as it is now, realpolitik is about squaring various union heavyweights who suppose (wrongly, in my view) that they can benefit by controlling the party even if it means handing government to Abbott.
@Martin Spalding
All good points Martin and (mind you) most points I and others have raised on this blog in the past too. I will add: the difficulty of dealing with a hung parliament is an absolute nightmare for a PM. Especially having very little scope or authority to discipline bad eggs within your own caucus (which effectively extends to the cross benches in some respects).
I don’t think you’ll find anyone here who under-rates the malignant influence that the right-wing misinformation brigade at news ltd have on Australian politics Martin.
Beyond that i doubt we’d have seen cuts to university funding/single mothers etc out of a Rudd government. The mining tax might even have raised a bit of revenue! As an added bonus they probably wouldn’t have utterly capitulatd on the refugee issue and might even poll higher than 45% occasionally
Pr Q: ‘Where’s the realpolitik in sticking with a leader who is pulling in 29 per cent of the vote?’
For a blog that focuses so heavily on policy and ideas, I am surprised at how much you and several commenters here focus on the polls. Poll-driven political behaviour is one of the No 1 problems with politics today, and one of the key factors in the ‘NSW disease’ that characterized the NSW Labor Right, a group you have rightly denounced many times.
This issue should have been Point (vi) in my list above: excessive reliance on polls as measures of policy worth, and (inherent in this) a view of voters as ‘rational actors’ who think in policy terms & are unaffected by media bias. This to me is very misguided. Politics is like ‘Aust Idol’ to many people, and the popularity or otherwise of politicians (incl Rudd) is vaporous and not based on facts.
Changing leaders because of poll numbers also plays right into the media’s hands – they love this stuff. They would do it time and time again even once a Rudd honeymoon Mk II wore off. Given Rudd’s weakness at critical moments (CPRS & spills 1 & 3), what gives you the impression he would have the internal steel this time?
@Val
Are you sure your assessment that anyone who criticise Julia Gillard are sexists is not at the same level as as anyone who believe in global warming are communists? Also, is not criticising a bad policy (or self perceived bad policy) because of the political party any different to rightwing tribalist?
“Changing leaders because of poll numbers also plays right into the media’s hands – they love this stuff.”
I’m from Queensland, where Labor stuck with Bligh and asset sales to the end, despite appalling poll numbers.
Hope is a wonderful human quality – it is probably essential to maintain reasonable mental stability. Nevertheless we should try not to let hope triumph over experience, or indeed over empirical evidence.
The chances of Labor ever adopting reformist ecological or social policies are evidenced by its instinctive, implacable hostility to the Greens, whom the party has often attacked more vigorously than it tends to treat the Coalition. If you want to get a good indication of what Labor thinks of environmental sustainability (not to mention hear lots of overt sexism), you need go no further than your local Labor Council. Spending time with trade union officials will give a much better understanding of core Labor values than working in an office in Canberra.
@John Quiggin
It was the asset sales (along with a few other issues*) rather than the sticking with Bligh that was the problem.
* The health system payroll mess, Jayant Patel/Bundaberg Hospital;
Colleague has just pointed out what should have been obvious to me – pro Rudd positions on this blog probably reflect that a lot if you are Queenslanders and have an emotional attachment to Rudd – the hometown boy who got done over. I’m not trying to put it down and I can sympathize with it, but I still think people have to get over it.
@Tom
Hi Tom, that’s not what I’m saying.
@John Quiggin
The difference between what you said about Keating (et al) and what you say about Gillard is that one the one hand you are analysing what voters think, and on the other (“bad dream”) you are expressing a personal view. It’s a really important difference.
I’d say real politik says you should support (or at least stop bagging) Gillard anyway at this time, even if you don’t think she can beat Abbott, in order to minimise his success. Otherwise you are playing into the hands of the right wing media.
@Fran Barlow
Agreed – but given Bligh’s inflexibility, the only way to stop the asset sales was a spill, or the threat of it.
@Val
I think you’re setting up impossible tests here. I’m violently critical of Hawke and Keating and you say it’s not close enough to an election. I impute to voters a view with which I obviously sympathise and you say it’s not first person.
Why can’t you accept that I make political judgements based on political actions rather than because I’m a sexist, and now apparently, a parochial Queenslander. Looking at my records, I wrote only favorably about Gillard from her entry into Parliament until she came up with the Citizen’s Assembly – which turned out to be a fairly typical initiative from her (I was out of the country when she replaced Rudd, and held my judgement afterwards to see how she would turn out).
Still, on the realpolitik, you’re right. To the extent I can motivate myself to do any election commentary, I’m going to advocate Greens 1, Labor 2, and focus on the need to put Abbott last.
I’m from Adelaide, can’t say i think of myself as a parochial Qlder terribly often 😉
No one would be silly enough to suggest Rudd was perfect, a number of the initial failings of this labor government can be sourced to his timidity on several fronts. However given the apparent loathing he faced internally his hesitation makes an awful lot of sense and was as it turns out eventually justified (from his perspective at least).
What some of us look on fondly is a brief time where a labor leader was popular and willing to spend/cut back some of the more egregious Howard policy directions without totally compromising the left’s moral position on issues like refugees. The political trainwreck that Gillard looks likely to preside over only heightens the sense of nostalgia, if he looks good now imagine what we’ll think after a term or two of Abbott.
@Val
I have to tend the still, check my fur traps and then make sure I get to banjo rehearsal on time, so I’ll have to be brief:
I’ve never been “pro Rudd”. In hindsight I assess Gillard as genuinely “worse than” Rudd on policy and actions – (not gender or postcode).
I always maintained that sacking PMs is something Australians feel some attachment to doing themselves rather than have others do it clandestinely and think that Gillard’s despatch of Rudd was probably one of the most ill-advised and politically foolish acts in our political history.
Getting over it is not something I need to do. All my criticism of Gillard stands and nothing offered has caused me to feel I should shut up and blindly get behind Gillard.
@Megan
Ha ha Megan that’s very funny. I’m not trying to be insulting and I certainly don’t want anyone to get “blindly” behind Gillard. It’s just that I, like some other commenters on this site, am struggling to understand why apparently well-informed and well-meaning people on this site persist in apparently counter-productive bagging of Julia Gillard that seems to play directly into the hands of the right, from my perspective.
One of the things I believe is that people are motivated by feelings as much as (or more than) reason. That’s not an insult, it’s a valuable thing and part of our common humanity, but I guess we have to be self-aware. In trying to understand why people would act this way, emotional attachment to Kevin Rudd seemed to be a possible contributor. By saying “hometown boy”, I wasn’t trying to make a hillbilly reference either! Sorry if this still sounds insulting or patronising, it’s honestly not intended that way.
@John Quiggin
I’ve replied to Megan re the ‘parochial Queenslander’ stuff but I just wanted to respond briefly about the sexism. I completely understand how if you interpret what I am saying as blatantly calling you “sexist” it is really an insult and that’s not what I intend. Neil has gone to huge amounts of trouble to try to explain about implicit bias and I’m not going to go over all that again, but it’s just really common for women to be judged as both less competent and more devious than men, and it’s extremely hard to avoid the conclusion that it is happening on this site. It’s incredibly frustrating to see the mess Labor’s in and the mistakes they keep making, and as leader Gillard needs to take responsibility, but that’s different from people on the left just (even if inadvertently) falling back into convenient sexist stereotypes and saying everything is just the fault of one incompetent individual. Anyway I’m really glad if your focus is moving off what’s wrong with Gillard and on to how to prevent a far right takeover.
Val in my experience most people react badly when a stranger starts commenting on their character, motivation, intelligence and so on based on laughably inadequate data. Moreover as has been repeatedly pointed out in this thread, political actions can be analysed having regard to the evidence, independently of the reasons why people might put forward one argument or another. Your persistence in trying to focus attention on people’s motives is starting to come across as nothing more than sophisticated concern trolling.
@Ken_L
(Mostly) in support of Ken, it is worth noting that if we couldn’t escape, to some extent, our prejudices and biases we would not be able to be so confident that they play a significant role in our thought. If you can’t know anything with reasonable certainty, you can’t know that you can’t. Implicit attitudes are decisive in two kinds of situations. One is non-expert judgment where people don’t have a clear idea of what basis to make a choice on. In these circumstances, they may (without realizing it) make up the criteria they then apply by reference to gender (so you have two applicants for a job, one male one female, and they have very different cvs. You might think the man’s qualifications are the relevant ones, when you only think that because of gender). I think it is very likely that this plays a role in political decision-making by people who are not engaged with politics. The second place implicit attitudes can be decisive is when experts are making very close calls. There is a famous study looking at auditions for a symphony orchestra. Women violinists were more likely to be selected if the audition was held behind a screen. There is no way the people making the choice would choose a merely competent man over an expert woman, but confronted by two plays of nearly equal expertise, they may wrongly perceive the male as better.
All of this is to say that I suspect that implicit attitudes play a very small role in the topic under discussion for most of the people actually engaging in it on this blog. In the minds of people who are less engaged and less informed, I think it will be quite a different matter.
Not sure if this conflicts with your point or complements it (maybe neither): Coupla years ago I was chatting to an ex Telecom/Telstra engineer from back in the 80s-90s. Apparently back (sometime during that period) it was pretty much considered that 2400 baud (or something in that ballpark) was the physical maximum achievable through copper wires- ie. it was considered within the engineering community to be essentially impossible to exceed that rate of data transfer through copper.
Just more of an interesting piece of trivia than anything else.
For intelligent, englightened types like yourself inherent biases play a minor role but for the unwashed masses it is quite a different matter?
An interesting claim to make. Unsurprising, but interesting.
@tgs
Apparently for some people prejudice prevents them from being able to read.
I confess! I lived in Queensland for a while! But it was only Brisbane! How can I wash myself clean of this stain on my soul?
@Ken_L
Hi Ken, I wasn’t commenting on anyone’s character or intelligence, just trying to understand motivation. I think calling me a troll is pretty harsh and unjustified but maybe I should take a break, you have got me really worried now.
I don’t know about sexist, but I thought it was well overdue that we finally have an atheist as the prime minister of Australia. Just a pity about the manner on which it happened.
@Val
I’m not at all convinced by the statistical evidence given in these “implicit bias” tests on populations. The results you discuss could just as easily be explained by a small subgroup of people being VERY sexist, rather than the whole population being slightly sexist.
On tests performed on only one person, very often no bias against women is revealed.
I really don’t like this kind of “collective guilt hypothesis,” that we’re all a little bit of sexist. It seems to tap into the same kind of psychological need to feel ashamed of ourselves that’s exploited by the Catholic church.
“You’re dirty, rotten, and sinful from the day you were born, but there’s good news! The Church is here to make you slightly less horrible. It won’t completely cure you, and you’ll need to keep repeating the mantras every day, but it will help.” It’s easy to see how this kind of thing is useful for the survival of the meme, but it’s not at all clear how it helps the meme’s hosts.
Just replace the word “Church” with your particular brand of identity politics, and this is essentially your position. The best part is, people like JQ have no way to prove they aren’t mired in original sin. In fact, his denial is only proof of his disinterest in, and hence probable hostility towards (your version of) Feminism!
FYI, I hate Gillard, but marginally less than Rudd, and a lot less than Abbott.
@Jim Rose
I’d actually be happy to support the last 4 points you raised, but I’ll just talk about Telstra/Telecom here. Are you really arguing that the privatisation of of Telstra has been anything other than a complete disaster and fiasco? Where have you been for the last 20 years?
@Sam
‘On tests performed on only one person, very often no bias is revealed”
I’ve been working professionally on this for a decade and I know of no evidence to substantiate this claim. Please enlighten me!
@Donald Oats
We’ve already had half a dozen openly atheist/agnostic PMs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Australia
One of my big objections to Gillard is that she takes the same positions on religion-related issues (equal marriage, school chaplains etc) as Abbott and Howard (and is, if anything worse than Rudd) even though she’s not a believer herself.
@Jim – I agree with about half the items on your list. I’ll leave you to guess which.
@Neil
Well Tim Macknay for one. Lot’s of people I know personally take these kinds of tests and are judged “non sexist.” If you’re saying you have evidence against this, and that in almost all cases an implicit bias against women is revealed even when the test is done on just one person, please show it to me.
@Sam abroad
@Jim Rose
Obviously.
@Sam
Sam, I have cite pd extensive evidence already. There are a number of review papers available on the web, on researchers’ websites. Look for instance at Anthony Greenwald or Nilajana Dasgupta. As I have said, the overwhelming majority of people have at least unconscious moderate biases against women. There is a reason we cite evidence, from controlled experiments, and not anecdotes. First, Tim Macknay is not “lots of people”. Second, he was not the subject of a controlled experiment. In year 11, I had to replicate Hooke’s law in physics class. I failed: I got results inconsistent with the law. Surprisingly, the text books have still not been undated to celebrate my major advance in physics.
@John Quiggin So you are Hawke Keating lite. I am so disappointed. An undercover Tory Wet!
So you do not want to just step in a time machine and go back to the good old days unvarnished. Prove your mantle by campaigning to close down Jetstar.
Some had the courage of their convictions, recently saying
I visited a carpet factory with the rest of my HSC economic class. The idea was to motive us to work harder and go to university for otherwise this is where we will end up working.
I only mentioned Tim Macknay because he was on this thread, as an obvious example. The whole thing seems like quackery to me. There seems to be lots of criticisms of it’s use and wider applicability, and plenty of disagreement among experts, see for e.g. here http://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/07-08/psychometric.aspx
Once this kind of thing has near unanimous expert endorsement, I’ll be interested. Until then, I’ll think it’s just one more fad in experimental psychology.
@John Quiggin One of the nice things about late 20th century Australian politics is only sad political junkies can even name the religions of most political leaders.
the Christian and the family parties spent more time fighting each other to form into any sort of long-term effective political force. All members of these parties want to be the leader; all of them think they are the chosen one. Few want to be the adoring followers.
Interest in religion fell away inside a generation in Australia.
One reason is fragile networks. If a lot of people are religious, it pays to be religious as there is plenty of company and things to do. When network good use falls below a certain level, the value of the network good collapses? who wants to go to a half empty rock concert or church?
One study pointed to the opening of malls as a major dampener on church going. More interesting places to go at the weekend opened up.