Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
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John Quiggin 
Ruben Bolling nails one of the more obnoxious anti-science memes: that Galileo’s fate is a cautionary tale for climate change denialists.
Galileo used observable data to demonstrate that the assumptions of powerful organisations were factually wrong, and was attacked for undermining their power. So, between the carbon-emitting industry lobby, guys like Bob Carter and Willie Soon, and the climatologists producing the data on climate change, who is whom in a Galileo analogy?
I’ve seen a report today from the Grattan Institute claiming that our cities are ‘broken’ and I’ve just watched a report by Alan Kohler on ABC TV about the incredible inflationary increases in housing prices in Sydney. The latter, however, are apparently not included in Comstat analyses. Why is there no questioning of housing inflation in Australia?
I am beginning to wonder whether this phenomena is distorting our politician’s understanding of who can really afford what in relation to cuts to public services that people earning less than the median household income rely on just to get by. If I’ve got the wrong end of stick, don’t hesitate to say so! Thanks in advance.
This is a bit of a worry
http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2772427/survivable_ipcc_projections_are_based_on_science_fiction_the_reality_is_much_worse.html
PM Tony Abbott asserts that the Attorney General, George Brandis, is right to say the government has lost confidence in the president of the Human Rights Commission Gillian Trigg, because of this:
as quoted in The Guardian online.
So, the PM puts the loss of confidence in Gillian Triggs down to her inability to understand a simple fact, a simple fact that is largely the basis of the HRC’s report, The Forgotten Children. At this point, I can only surmise that our PM is batsh*t crazy. If she didn’t understand the “simple fact”, then I don’t see why she would have spent months of work on a report which zooms in on exactly that “simple fact.”
The simple fact is that holding people on remote islands under indefinite detention, including children, was LNP strategy as the deterrent to would-be boat-arrivals; if it wasn’t their principal strategy, they wouldn’t have given it the loud hailer treatment right at the start of their government. It’s a bit rich to then turn around and claim that this is the grounds for loss of confidence in the president of the Human Rights Commission in Australia. Replete with irony.
@rog
That’s a bit disappointing, I thought the free market would solve everything 😦
@Donald Oats
No, they would never have dreamed of such a brutal and inhumane policy after Howard was thrown out over that very issue in 2007.
It was an ALP invention. The LNP couldn’t believe their luck and picked it up and ran with it.
It is still ALP policy.
Every single child in detention today was put there by the ALP.
The ALP invented mandatory detention of refugees in 1992.
Any genuine criticism of this atrocity MUST start with criticism of past and present ALP policy first – otherwise it is tribalism.
@Megan
I totally endorse your reminder of the history of mandatory detention. Don’t forget, however, that the High Court of Australia is complicit in this. The HCA (in 1999 IIRC) said that such detention is legal so long as it is “administrative” and not “punitive” in nature (yeah, right). Regardless of any international obligations Australia has voluntarily undertaken, the HCA will allow Parliament to make any law that is broadly consistent with the constitution, and the constitution expressly gives Parliament to make laws with regard to “aliens.”
@JKUU
I don’t forget that. On several occasions the HCA has ruled, essentially, “This is completely wrong and unjust but it is within the constitutional powers of the legislature/executive and we can not interfere”.
They quite rightly lay the imperative for changing the government with us. If we keep electing the ALP/LNP duopoly that is not the High Court’s fault.
@maxine broughton
As Andrew Leigh and others have said, the house price boom is the great intergenerational theft of our time. It also raises an interesting point. It means that low interest rates are locked in forever, unless we get humungous inflation. Imagine a rise of 2% in interest rates. People would be going broke all over the place. The only way they wouldn’t go broke is if inflation was allowing their income to keep pace with their rising mortgage payments.
Hmm. Sounds a bit like the second half of the 80’s again.
I’m surprised to learn they ever had confidence in her. The Human Rights Commission isn’t about human rights. It’s about sticking it to the political enemies of Labor. It has been partisan for years. It’s take on human rights is highly selective and legalistic.
Re rog’s link to The Ecologist article I think some emissions scenarios such as RCP 8.5 cannot happen therefore are alarmist. Some suggest world peak liquid fuels could have been 2014, eastern Australia the UK and elsewhere face gas shortages and it’s getting politically harder to dig new coal mines. Manmade emissions could peak within a decade so hopefully Siberia’s methane craters won’t multiply too much. The Judith Curry website sometimes argues along these lines.
Re overcrowded Sydney I’ve observed that a number of retirees downsize, die, go into nursing homes, move to the south coast or nearer to their children. Apparently this isn’t happening fast enough to free up houses for the following generations. However around 2020-2040 it could turn into an avalanche. Then again retiring to the coast requires cheap fuel which we may not have.
@Donald Oats
I suspect humans will migrate towards the poles. Eventually, only places like Antarctica, Patagonia, Greenland and the current tundra reaches of Canada, Russia and Scandanavia will be habitable by humans. Tiny pockets of humans might live on mountain chains as well like the Rockies and the Andes. The Tibetan plateau too might support humans. Places like Australia, Africa, India, China and most of the Americas will be totally uninhabitable by humans. This is now about a 99% certain future.
The Antarctic landmass will look quite different after ALL the world’s ice melts. It would look like an archipelgo with large remnant sub-continental pieces remaining roughly southerly of South Africa. A big question would be whether humans could retain agriculture under such conditions of millenially continuous migrations towards the poles. Climate, weather, ocean currents etc. will be hugely disrupted and highly unstable under such conditions.
Newly available “arable” zones might not be arable in practice. It is hard to believe that glacial moraines left by a total melt will be arable except in some silt pockets. The landscape will be mainly rock, boulder, stone and scree. Melted tundra might also remain unsuitable for agriculture for long periods unless swamps were drained.
Under the above scenario, the potential for the methane clathrate gun effect to almost boil the world’s climate will be high. In that case humans and all macro flora and fauna will go extinct. Very long term, earth could re-stabilise for possibly one more evolutionary round of macro life before the sun gets to a stage that it destroys or fails to support all life on earth.
@Megan
I’ve roundly criticised every government on our asylum seeker policies, from the early Howard government through to the present day. I am not forgetting or diminishing the role of the ALP for the mess which is Australia’s asylum seeker policy for dealing with boat arrivals.
Kevin Rudd’s policy changes in the second Rudd-led coalition were egregious in the extreme, and I certainly called him out on it. Nevertheless, that is now history, whereas the LNP are the government of Australia now. Scott Morrison, as the Immigration minister, used the indefinite detention of children (off-shore) as a negotiating strategy to get his bill through the houses, a strategy otherwise known as emotional blackmail. Just because my criticisms at the moment are focussed on the LNP doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the ALP/Greens coalition and their morass.
If the two major parties would just take asylum seeker policies of the political table, and set up a committee for obtaining a policy which is fair-minded and sensible, we’d be far better off, as would refugees however they choose to arrive in Australia. The fact that someone arrives by boat shouldn’t mean they are treated differently to if they arrived by plane, all other things being equal. Of course we don’t want people to risk a boat journey, for we know it is very dangerous. This is an entirely separate issue to how we deal with refugees once they arrive and are in our jurisdiction. Going back almost two decades ago, the two separate policy issues became/were conflated, and haven’t been competently disentangled since.
What could possibly be the purpose of making such speculative projections as this one by the Parliamentary Budget Office? Funny how they demand certainty when it comes to climate change projections, but run with such back of the arse projections of a budget from an alternate reality.
Humph.
@John Brookes
Intergenerational theft due to house price boom? Some statistics on house prices in Australia.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/australia/housing-index
http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Pacific/Australia/Price-History
Is this capitalist serfdom – or worse?
Latest report from the citadel of capitalism – London,
See: http://www.archive.is/bqC9C
Would changing from Abbott to Turnbull make any difference?
@Ivor
This is apposite.
@Donald Oats
On the subject of treatment of refugees, you say:
If you are suggesting that the Greens share the ALP/LNP refugee policies, I have never seen any evidence of that.
@Megan
No, I’m not suggesting that the Greens share the ALP’s policies with respect to refugees and asylum seekers: in fact, they have generally been the sane voice of reason on the matter. The ALP in the last election was a minority government, requiring three independents, and the Greens’ Adam Bandt, to declare confidence and supply, as well as Gillard signing a formal agreement with the Greens to form government. Therefore, even if only on the periphery of government, the Greens were part of the ALP/Greens coalition—in formal agreement to be government—and so have some measure of responsibility with respect to policy direction of the asylum seeker issue. I don’t blame them for what are basically ALP policies, and they certainly advocated for more humane treatment of asylum seekers, but that doesn’t change the fact that they were formally part of government during some harsh policy changes.
@TerjeP
What alternative universe do you inhabit? Tim Wilson, crusader for the ALP. Triggs’ report on children in detention contains no criticism of Labor. Say Hi to Piers for me.
@Donald Oats
I think that misstates the true position.
In May 2011 Bandt introduced a motion, which passed both houses in June 2011, condemning the ALP’s “Malaysia Solution”.
In November 2011 he, and others, voted against the “Deterring People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2011”. It was rammed through in a hurry anyway by the ALP/LNP duopoly voting together as they so frequently do.
I think the ALP are proven to be on a “unity ticket” with the LNP when it comes to cruel, inhumane – and legally questionable – policies for the torture of refugees. The Greens have the opposite track record. It seems wrong to try to tie them in to that because they granted agreed not to block supply or vote no-confidence.
@TerjeP
T – now that the Coalition have forgotten their conservative roots they are not much concerned with human rights as a general concept -that seems too much like socialism for them. The Coalition are more concerned with bolstering the power of oligarchs, companies and markets than with ensuring anyone has rights simply because they are human. If Labor were less like that, then, the HRCommission may at times look partisan I suppose.
I think its interesting that the concept of general human rights didnt always exist. It arose and then evolved over time .Usually first only the ruling class had many rights we might call human .At various different times, and in various cultures and places to differing extents, they were then extended to slaves ,women ,the poor, other races, companies, etc. Many now like to speak of universal human rights .I dont think its too much of a stretch to think that non-human animals may get them one day too – that would stuff with a few markets !
@Megan
It is a correct statement of the facts, to the best of my knowledge. Since the Greens had a formal agreement with the ALP to form a government, that’s what I have stated. I have made it quite clear that I appreciate the Greens were, and are, markedly at odds with both the ALP’s various policy positions on this topic, and certainly the Liberals in opposition and as the LNP coalition government. Both things are true. Whether the Greens had any negotiating power on the asylum seeker issue or not, I don’t really know, but would guess not.
The real argument though is how to get politicians of all stripes to construct asylum seeker policy which:
a) Treats asylum seekers as humans with rights as enshrined by the Refugee Convention etc.
b) Does not discriminate among asylum seekers, irrespective of mode of transport, and irrespective of the transit countries they have passed through.
c) Does not use deliberately inflicted pain and suffering, such as is caused by indefinite detention, as a means of deterrent.
d) Processes people expeditiously and fairly, subject to oversight and rights of appeal.
Once we have made the decisions as to how we should be treating potential Australians who happen to be asylum seekers, we can move onto the separate issues of deterrence of boat voyage as a means of arrival, knowing that any such policy must not violate the human rights of those asylum seekers.
The big difficulty with the first Rudd ALP government was that while it paid some attention to the human rights aspect, it utterly neglected the lack of deterrence for boats as a mode of transport to Australia. Instead, they filled the airwaves with stuff about push factors (not untrue, but also not addressing the lack of deterrence). Surely we can construct deterrence, or strategies which render boat transport unnecessary, while still respecting the human rights for refugees. Note that banning arrival by boat, while deterrent, is also discriminating against those asylum seekers for which no other means of transport is possible; it is not an acceptable deterrence measure. So, other ideas are needed.
@Donald Oats
“Deterrence” needs to be chucked out. As Malcolm Fraser and many others have pointed out, the only way to “deter” a desperate person from doing a potentially dangerous thing in the hope of escaping their desperate situation is to make the alternatives WORSE.
However, I agree with you on the next bit: “strategies which render boat transport unnecessary, while still respecting the human rights for refugees”.
The Italians have rescued many tens of thousands of “illegal boat people” in the last few years. Shamefully, the rest of the EU has stopped paying their share of the funding for this effort.
We need to:
a) stop creating refugees – e.g. our illegal imperial wars of aggression, our support for dystopian neo-liberalism.
b) accept “our share” of the 50 million refugees we have created.
c) create serious pathways to refuge that do not involve 20 years in a fictional “queue”.
d) properly funding a properly functioning UNHCR operation in our region, this includes tar and feathering the IOM and ensuring it never gets anywhere near refugees again.
e) destroying the “people smuggler’s business model” by sending safe ships and planes to collect the refugees before they can be swindled into believing that a dodgy tub is even a serious option.
I think we probably agree more than we disagree and I appreciate your considered engagement on the topic, but the ALP is the enemy of sense in this area at the moment.
PS: To clarify that last bit, and to explain my oft stated position on this blog more succinctly –
While ever we split things into a fictional left/right divide, which really means ALP/LNP in practice, we will never approach anything like the necessary mechanisms for change (the immediate example being treatment of refugees).
It seems to me that most people here accept that premise in principle but then – come elections – reflexively default to supporting the ALP “no matter what, because the LNP will always be worse”.
And it seems to me that is a recipe for being taken for granted by the neo-con/neo-libs who run the ALP.
Using a concrete and recent example, would it really have made any difference in Qld today if it had been the LNP that formed a minority government, or even a majority government by one or two seats without Newman?
The answer is “NO”. Asset sales would still be “off the table” until next time they are back on the table, National Parks would be “safe” right up until they weren’t again, CSG is still going ahead with ALP/LNP support, …etc.
As far as I can work out, the LNP supporters mostly understand, accept and support what that party does. But ALP supporters keep pretending they are against those things while supporting a party that does the same things.
Its worrying that the messenger ,G Triggs, has been attacked but detaining children is still bi-partisan policy .I’m sure I can remember politicians saying we had to imprison them or boat loads of unaccompanied children will arrive. Also when did detention become about preventing drownings ?I dont remember any talk of that in the beginning.
@sunshine
The beginning – of the end of the Liberal party – for me was hearing the outrageous claim by Howard that ‘those people’ would throw their children overboard. That really did show how dysfunctional their assumptions about fellow human beings are.
They really do think that there is the ‘other’ and they are bad people and not like ‘us’. This was when the us and them thing became acceptable behaviour for the racists.
Is this really how our krazy Keynesians think?
You inject trillions, get Krugman’s magneto fixed, and then withdraw the trillions?!
Sounds like abracadabarra to me.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11361414/Economics-explainer-what-is-QE.html
@Ivor
It is indeed how they think and it has a valid application in a sense. But let me explain before I annoy a fellow Marxian too much.
I very much think of economics as a system conditioned discipline. The “laws” of economics, insofar as such can be derived, are system conditioned. Thus, within a capitalist system coupled with a modern monetary system of sovereign fiat currencies floated on a global foreign exchange system, you can do such things.
If one is following Marx, one is used to referring to real capital (factories, industrial plant) money capital (cash, bank deposits) and fictitious capital (stocks and securities). Fictitious capital is so-called because (quotes from Wikipedia);
“Fictitious capital could be defined as a capitalisation on property ownership. Such ownership is real and legally enforced, as are the profits made from it, but the capital involved is fictitious; it is “money that is thrown into circulation as capital without any material basis in commodities or productive activity”.”
“Fictitious capital could also be defined as “tradeable paper claims to wealth”, although tangible assets may themselves under certain conditions also be vastly inflated in price.
In terms of mainstream financial economics, fictitious capital is the net present value of future cash flows.”
It is “fictitious” because the ownership is a legally decreed fiction (essentially) and also because the “net present value of future cash flows” is also an assumption. Such future cash flows might never be realised.
A dotcom bubble, or any stock market bubble, beautifully exemplifies fictitious capital at the extreme. At the height of the bubble, the stock has some high face value assigned because people are willing to buy such stock at a high price on the expectations of high future earnings. Yet the dotcom company might have few real assets (running on hired servers) and some relatively dubious IP and “virtual assets”.
At the risk of stretching the terminology but not the truth we can say that all fiat money is fictitious. To state a truism, only real assets are real. Only real products and services are real. Every notional piece of value assigned (as dollars in our system) is notional or fictional strictly speaking. All fiat money is a fiction. It’s a useful fiction, existent relative to and dependent on the decrees of a particular system (late stage capitalism now), and it can be used or abused.
Once you are playing with fictional or notional quantities you can create and annul what you like IF you are the accredited authority with the right to perform said creation and destruction. The correct term for the monetary and financial system would be to term it a Formal System. This is as opposed to a Real System.
Real Systems.
1. A Real System is any system governed by the Laws discoverable by the hard sciences particularly physics, chemistry, biology and ecology.
Every real system will obey the highest or most general Laws if science has derived these Laws accurately. The laws of thermodynamics are amongst the highest and most general Laws derived. Physical processes, chemical processes, biological processes and ecological processes all obey these Laws. In fact, every real system obeys these Laws. Therefore, the real economy as a real system obeys these Laws. However, a total economy is a hybrid system. It consists of a Formal System combined with a Real System. To be more accurate it consists of a large set of Formal Systems combined with a large set of Real Systems.
Formal Systems.
2. A Formal System is any well-defined system of abstract thought based on the model of mathematics or language.
Examples: (a) The Federal constitutional-legal system of the USA is a formal system.
(b) The current monetary system of the USA is a formal system.
We can see that (a) above precedes (b) above in time and to a very considerable extent creates, amends and conditions (b) above. We must also note that a real society of real people precedes, creates, amends and conditions (a) above. These realities must be noted because real systems and formal systems when establishing and once established can condition each other in potentially endless cycles of feedbacks via the interface(s) of formal and real systems.
Formal systems have rules. Rules are alterable at the level of personal agency or at the level of social agency. However, within a given system, rules must remain strictly consistent if it is a maths based model or at least functionally or broadly consistent if it is a language based model. Rule inconsistency above a system-specific tolerance level will break the formal system.
It is here that I must refine terms. Legal “laws”, the laws of the land, the laws of the constitution and laws of legislation, must really be termed rules and not “laws” in this context. The reason is that we must reserve the word “Laws” for a more precise use. The term “Laws” must be reserved for the Laws of science that are Universal Laws like the Laws of Thermodynamics. The need for this stems from the fact that we are discussing Formal Systems and Real Systems and only real systems obey universal laws. Thus legal “laws”, for example in the US constitution and/or in the Federal legislation that creates the US dollar as legal tender and define its characteristics (e.g. fiat money) are to be termed “rules” in this discussion. They are rules because they can be and indeed are from time to time changed by humans. This is a key point. Under these precise definitions we can say that humans can change rules but humans cannot change laws (for these are the unalterable universal laws discovered by science).
Thus as a Formal System the monetary and finance system is subject to the principles I outlined above. The rules of the Formal money system (as a mathematical-accounting system) can be changed or innovated so long as its central axioms are not violated. If its central axioms are violated it becomes undependable/unworkable in its own terms (breaks its own accounting axioms). It becomes another kind of formal system which is outside the “game space” of the current formal system.
A central axiom set of the current system is that there are a limited number of legal ways in which a permitted agency or agencies or body or bodies can create fiat currency and/or fictitious capital ex nihilo and indeed destroy fiat currency and/or fictitous capital back into nothing. Here are the ways I can think of that are legal in our current system.
(a) A government budget deficit creates fiat currency ex nihilo.
(b) A government budget surplus destroys fiat currency.
(c) A legal bank loan creates credit money (with a concomittant debt offset).
(d) A loan repayment of part of the principle destroys credit money (and part of the debt).
Items (a) and (b) above might use accounting methods which set up balancing debts but these strategems are not strictly necessary for creating fiat currency.
Fiat created money and debt created money circulate in the same way in the economy and are indistinguishable while in circulation. They are both legal ways of creating money out of nothing but they both obey certain Formal System rules in their method of creation. There are limitations on their creation.
Q.E. simply fits within the axiom set “The state can create money out of nothing (according to certain formal system rules) or can permit accredited agencies (licenced banks) to create money out of nothing (according to certain formal system rules).
Q.E. is another way to create money out of nothing although there are arguments (too complex for me at this stage) about how much and in what way it actually creates money and how it affects the money supply.
Summing Up
Q.E. like all the other operations mentioned is consistent with the fictional nature of modern money in capitalism and such operations maybe would not even be limited to capitalism. It is possible and maybe even necessary to posit fiat currency operations and other operations in a modern market socialism for example.
Q.E. is an uncoventional move of realtively recent innovation I believe and it helps banks, the rich and share prices far more than it helps the poor. Capitalism keeps amending its own rules to assist the rich.
If we continue to proceed down the road of corporate capitalism I can imagine corporations (electronically) printing and managing currency in their own units and governments being relieved of this task. The whole world will be a company town then. Needless to say it will mean almost total oppression of all workers.
@Megan
For the record, on my ballot papers I have ranked Greens ahead of ALP more times than the obverse, and I’ve done so on three key issues: asylum seeker treatment/policy; AGW action; protection of intrinsically important environment. The Greens get a lot of bulldust thrown at them by the Murdoch MSM, and yet they are often the calmer voices of reason in committees and the like.
We exist in a crazy world where right wing implies free market capitalism-loving, therefore everyone who has issues with (some aspects of free market) capitalism is cast as left wing (or batshit-crazy), as if there is a single dimension to politics.
@Donald Oats
I should have thought for another second or two: the Iraq war II was another issue I considered.
The Government refused to support this notice of motion today in the Senate (the ALP was nowhere to be seen, of course, since locking children refugees in inhumane indefinite detention offshore is their policy):
I had a bizarre twitter exchange with an ALP loving “refugee advocate” today. This person repeatedly tried to argue that supporting the ALP is not inconsistent with opposing their refugee policy.
Apparently I can’t understand “nuanced political support”, or something along those lines.
This person is also a proud member of “Labor For Refugees”, a group that has been around since 2001 and has maintained its support for the ALP as its refugee policies lurched further and further toward the criminal.
“Labor For Refugees” strikes me as being an absurdity. A bit like “KKK for Racial Tolerance”.
PS: And yes, Ikon, I am well aware that Clive Palmer is a fat billionaire coal baron.
That doesn’t change the fact that he has consistently called for an end to mandatory detention of refugees – while the Wall Street-Fossil-Fuel-Loving ALP/LNP duopoly have voted together to imprison refugees and extend subsidies to the extractive industries.
Science nerds in trouble! Their funding is in jeopardy, and some research facilities have had no option but to plan for winding up come June 30. What an ongoing shambles.
@Donald Oats
Yes, one of our Nobel laureates was on RN this morning getting stuck into the government about this, followed by Minister Pyne whining about how he had to do this – destroying the village to save it, I think.
@JKUU
This reminds me that it was under Labor with Gerry Hand as Immigration Minister that mandatory detention came in. Hand subsequently became a ‘migration agent’ on leaving Parliament – a case of first clearly defining your market then servicing them.
@pablo
Not to forget Gareth Evans’ role. Peter Mares wrote an article in 2004 “Australia’s Sledgehammer”:
ALP fans’ selective amnesia on the origins of these policies may be accidental but I believe it is deliberate.
Yes, it is deliberate. Younger MSM journalists possibly don’t even know this history; they should be daily driving it right back down the throat of every ALP parliamentarian and member until they abandon their traditional right wing labourite racism and come up with a humane and fair approach.
@Donald Oats
I read a similar piece in the SMH today. As a scientist I am apalled, but not surprised, at the treatment of science by this government.
As the articles note, the damage has already begun. Talented researchers and technicians are leaving the industry and the country. Even if last minute funding is approved the damage to the reputation of Australian science has been done. I had personally considered applying for a Future Fellowship, expecting the call to go out last October as usual. Now 6 months on there is still no call and may never be one. I have lost interest and found alternative arrangements.
As one commentator noted on the SMH article, “what has science funding got to do with the privatisation of undergraduate university education?”. This has come about because we have no minister of science, and scientists (now derogatorily reffered to as “researchers” in the MSM) are seen as unnecessary in our economy.
As an example, for years I asked myself what is the use of the millions of dollars of funding in PV research that Australia has invested over decades, including my former lab at UNSW under Martin Green. The technology was just shipped off-shore to be manufactured under licence in China. There is not a single PV manufacturer left in Australia. Bu then I noticed that the price of PV panels was dropping rapidly and now 10% of Austrailian homes have installed PV capacity. This is a true example of the value of investing in Australian science. Even if we don’t make the stuff, we benifit globally from the science.
Chopping down our forests to dig new coal mines so we can build bigger houses is so yesterday!
@plaasmatron
During the great purge of ’14, CSIRO made the undoubtedly tough decision of axing the entire Urrbrae (Adelaide SA) staff from the division formerly known as CMIS (CSIRO Mathematics, Infomatics, and Statistics—note the three STEM fields that made up the division’s name), thus ending an enduring practice which began in 1944, uninterrupted until 2014. Farewell, 70 years of history making science (or, science making history). The office ran through a whole host of acronyms, among them: DMS, Biometrics, CMIS, CCI,–% snip %–
While change is the one constant of life, it seems so oddball that a capital city of a state—indeed, an entire state—of Australia should have no scientific research office/representation of the CSIRO Division for Statistics, Mathematics, and digital technologies, at its national research institute. I hope we see this decision reversed down the track, but that would require some major changes to occur elsewhere first…
@Donald Oats
I have noticed over the years that successive governments seem intent on killing off the CSIRO and transfering the research dollars to the universities. This raises the research rankings of the university and allows them to charge more for fee paying students, even though most research profs are absolved of their teaching responsibilities and the students are actually taught by under-qualified grad students and specialist educators.
Now Pyne has taken it to a new level. He has essentially said, privitise the universities and we will fund the research there (strange since they are now private and should fund their own research), or we will kill off the research at the universities too. If the research is killed off, the scientists will either leave the country or go into the private sector. In the first instance the government saves paying the salaries, in the second the private companies get highly qualified technicians at bargain basement rates.
I don’t know how much off this Pyne and Mr Rabid have actually thought through, but they have overlooked the fact that there are no private companies left to employ skilled technicians. They all left during the mining boom.
@plaasmatron
And then along comes this article, quoting Simon McKeon on a “one term rule” that seems to be in play for ALP appointed board members, eg CSIRO, but elsewhere too. I didn’t know it was sufficiently widespread for board members around the traps to register it, but once again this government has phlegmed me. I am not surprised; disappointed, very.
Successive governments have shown limited engagement with CSIRO in terms of retaining staff numbers; I think the high point was 1994/1995, and it has slowly declined since; well, until falling off the precipice in the great purge of ’14 😦
Seriously though, there has been a fairly steady downwards trajectory for staff numbers, which does highlight the question as to what end we would reduce scientific research staff numbers—it isn’t like we can purchase a robot off the shelf to go start a research project into X or Y; that requires individual people who can think things through, as well as supporting staff. Now, if CSIRO had its own footy team, they’d be flush with funds.
I stumbled upon a site called “Newslo.com” which bills itself as :
That description looks dodgy at first (e.g. the Onion, and many many others, have been doing satirical takes on “news” for ages). But when you look at it you realise that they really do mean a hybrid of news and satire. To the extent that they are deliberately presented as being indistinguishable.
The “unique” feature of the site is:
So you will get a headline that is a lie, but based on a kernel of truth, followed by a story that contains some facts but is distorted with fabrications to become the “shock, outrage, fury” story promised by the headline.
If you click the “fact button” the factually correct bits will be highlighted – and the fabricated bits won’t be.
The Murdoch empire is based on that model (except of course without the “fact button”).
This sounds familiar:
http://fcir.org/2015/03/08/in-florida-officials-ban-term-climate-change/
All over the Empire the ‘Faith-Based Community’ is bumping up against reality and despite their domination of the lying media establishment, it isn’t working out for them.
In Australia we really need a strictly non-ALP/LNP “Australian Centre For Investigative Reporting”.
This looks like one for the Quiggin files:
http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3666
I think Australia should be open to almost unlimited immigration. The only restrictions that I would like to see Australia have on immigration are as follows:-
1. We should not let individuals into the country if they are a clear threat. eg convicted violent criminals, suspected terrorists.
2. We should not let individuals into the country if they present a serious health threat to the general community.
3. Immigrants should make an upfront contribution towards public infrastructure. By my calculation the correct figure is about $25k. We should waiver the fee for a given number of humanitarian cases each year. And for nationals from selected countries (eg New Zealand) where bilateral immigration agreements dictate.
4. Citizenship should not be granted easily to immigrants. Specifically the waiting period between becoming resident and becoming a citizen should be much longer. Ten years or more.
5. Except for immigrants coming under humanitarian programs welfare payments (eg pensions, unemployment benefits) should not be available until they become citizens.
Interested to know what restrictions, if any, other people here think that Australia should place on immigration numbers. Especially keen to hear from those that favour completely open immigration.