Hard to describe how depressed I am feeling about Australian politics right now.
The Voice Referendum was always going to be a longshot because referendums usually fail. But Albanese’s refusal to put forward a model, and the promotion of someone as abrasive as Noel Pearson as a leading advocate risk a defeat so bad that the fallback of option of a legislated Voice is unlikely.
In economic terms, Australians will be worse off by the next election than when Labor was elected – lower real wages, higher unemployment, higher interest rates, a more regressive tax system.
The fact things would have been even worse under the LNP doesn’t cheer me up
And just to make the picture complete, the Greens are overplaying their hand on housing. Should let #HAFF thro
John Quiggin 
Hi John,
I noticed that Bernard Keane of Crikey thinks the HAFF is , in essence, useless and a waste of fund fees that would be owing. Is there a point of difference you could point out between yourself and BK which explains the disagreement? Just asking.
just have faith, once Labor wins the election and forms government they’ll do all the left policies they were afraid would spook the public — er, I mean once they win the *next* election, or maybe the next one after that
“The standard estimate of the “equity premium” is around 4 percentage points,” says JQ in 1. below “”Labor’s $10 billion social housing fund: the frill necked lizard of Australian public expenditure” (love the fnl analogy)
Michael West 2. says “investors expect to receive a return higher than cash over the longer-term, for taking on the higher uncertainty of actual returns (the so-called ‘equity risk premium’)” in “Housing Crisis: forsake the Future Fund Albo, you’ve already found a better build”
If the equity premium 4% , why doesn’t the Government just print the money as it is against the most secure asset class known to humanity – housing.
Is the perception of the surplus in the public’s mind so strong we can’t equate personal property investment with the government doing the same yet with the ability to print money?
And the missing money as Julian Rooney says re Crikey article “and a waste of fund fees that would be owing.”
Q: How much is lost to (gained by) ticket clippers / money shufflers?
*
1. “Labor’s $10 billion social housing fund: the frill necked lizard of Australian public expenditure
…
” The standard estimate of the “equity premium” is around 4 percentage points, meaning that the government could borrow at 2 per cent and plan to earn a 6 per cent return on average. That yields net earnings of $400 million a year, enough, on the calculations above, to pay for 1600 homes. That would be nice for the people who got off the waiting list, but not really a big deal.
…
https://johnquiggin.com/2021/12/12/labors-10-billion-social-housing-fund-the-frill-necked-lizard-of-australian-public-expenditure/
2. “Housing Crisis: forsake the Future Fund Albo, you’ve already found a better build
by Harry Chemay | Jun 21, 2023 |
…
“Such is the nature of investment markets; the future is unknown to all, even the brightest of investment gurus with the most sophisticated of market forecasting algorithms.
“That’s precisely why share market investors expect to receive a return higher than cash over the longer-term, for taking on the higher uncertainty of actual returns (the so-called ‘equity risk premium’). Whether it pans out as expected in the timeframe desired, well that’s really in the lap of the gods.
…
https://michaelwest.com.au/housing-crisis-forsake-the-future-fund-albo-youve-already-found-a-better-build/
https://johnquiggin.com/2021/12/15/hypothecation-and-housing/
*
Haff
Etymology
Ca. 1800, from Low German Haff, from Middle Low German haf, from Proto-Germanic *habą(“heaving sea”). Cognate with Old Englishhæf.
Haff n (strong, genitive Haffs or Haffes, pluralHaffe or Haffs)
“a lagoon behind a spit or narrow island, especially in the Baltic Sea”
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Haff
Forget the HAFF. Here comes the ‘double hafta’, which is a variant of the old favourite “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”. It goes like this:
The RBA thinks that approx. 140,000 people will ‘hafta’ lose their jobs to get inflation to where the RBA wants it to be. “For the good of the economy” etc.
Then, after those people have sacrificed their well-being for the sake of a reified abstract concept called the NAIRU, they’ll head to Centrelink. Where they’ll be told “you ‘hafta’ apply for [arbitrary number of] jobs per fortnight! Or we’ll cut you off your pittance!”
Maybe Phil Lowe could supply them with a note that says:
“Dear Centrelink,
The bearer of this note is unemployed because we at the RBA thought that their being jobless would be helpful in the War On Inflation. They are exempt from victim-blaming (oops, sorry: “mutual obligations”) until inflation falls below 3%.”
At a housing forum a couple of weeks back Richard Denniss implied that the HAFF was designed to do pretty much nothing. So I guess that’s the government’s revealed housing policy preference.
And of course as our host said earlier, it’s also designed to do whatever it’s doing while frill-necked-lizard style, puffing up and looking as impressive as possible.
But maybe you can make a case that pointing out the emptiness of the government’s posturing is bad politics on the Greens’ part. After all the (majority?) land-owning class wants its warm fuzzies while the status quo is steadfastly maintained.
Noel Pearson is politically polarising; however, this issue of the Voice is not necessarily so polarised. If there are some other Indigenous advocates from across the political divide, I don’t think one person will shift opinions one way or the other.
While there is little doubt that there is a range of views about the meaning and purpose of the Voice, it’s worth remembering that the Constitution articles of most democratic societies were made by negotiation, not by some universal agreement at the start. We shouldn’t panic that a political character has decided to back it, or not. Sure, there are many better spokesperson representatives, so go get them out there, on the stump.
My view of the contretemps between the Greens and Labor on housing policy – and I think this is more broadly applicable – is that the Greens need to act like the 12 per cent party they currently are rather than the 30-something percent party they aspire to be one day, and Labor needs to act like the 32 per cent party it currently is rather than the 52 per cent party it nostalgically remembers being in 1972 and 1983.
As for the Voice, I think that the window of opportunity for a different approach closed some time ago, and I will be campaigning for a “Yes” vote because it is the right thing to do, not because I expect to be on the winning side.
The general question of how the Greens should utilise their present Parliamentary numbers to influence policy outcomes doesn’t have a single simple answer, and the answer will vary according to the political and policy aspects of different issues. The state of public opinion and the views of stakeholders also need to be factored in. However, having 12 per cent of the vote and minorities in both houses of Federal Parliament means that there will always be a limit to how hard the Greens can prudently play – even when there are strong in-principle reasons to believe that the Greens’ starting position is much better than Labor’s.
Gloomy elsewhere too.
“However, once we control for other negative emotions and life satisfaction, anger no longer operates as a separate channel in driving the populist vote share. Instead, our results indicate that a more complex sense of malaise and gloom, rather than anger per se, drives the rise in populism.
“Does Anger Drive Populism?”
Omer Ali,
Klaus Desmet &
Romain Wacziarg
ISSUE DATE June 2023
https://www.nber.org/papers/w31383#fromrss
Via MR “It’s the malaise and gloom, not the anger”
by Tyler Cowen
June 26, 2023
With the aid of a compliant media Dutton is now centre of attention, Albanese has slipped into opposition. .
Murdoch may be beyond contempt but his deep pockets still buys plenty of media space, losses through legal processes aren’t sufficient to curb his ambitions.
Gloom and philosophy, my two cents worth. When the moment is good, live in the moment. When the moment is bad, shift awareness to things outside of the moment. When big things go badly, concentrate on little things. When little things go badly, concentrate on big things.
Currently, big things – especially big political and economy things – are going badly; really, really badly. So, concentrate on little things. Fix up things where you can in your own life, no matter how little. Ignore the big picture. Give yourself a holiday from the greater mess. It might even be a good idea to shun thought of it indefinitely. I’m starting to think so. The best thing may be to resolve not to add to the mess. First, do no harm. Reduce consumption, reduce connections, reduce social media, reduce human interactions: but not below necessary and healthy minimums of course.
“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.” – William Wordsworth.
It doesn’t cheer me up, either, but it doesn’t need to. I don’t need to feel cheerful about the prospect of a Labor government to have all the reason I need to vote against a Coalition government.
@Paul As the post indicated, the Greens need to take account of the limits on their support when judging how far to push Labor, especially when their effectiveness depends on the LNP voting the same way. But I no longer see Albanese Labor as a party of the left (or centre-left) with which the Greens should be in alliance. Rather, it’s a Macron-style centre/centre-right party.
This is obviously sensible strategic advice for any political party trying to exert leverage over any other political party: the difficulty is that even after the best and sincerest attempt to make this kind of assessment, it can still be difficult to get it right. I’m not defending the call the Greens have made in this particular case, but it does seem fair to acknowledge that these calls are usually going to be difficult.