My understanding of the legal status of treaties is imperfect, to put it mildly. I know that, unlike the US, there is no requirement for Parliamentary ratification of treaties. And I recall from the Franklin Dam case, that the Commonwealth Parliament can pass legislation to implement a treaty in a field that would otherwise be outside its jurisdiction, such as environmental protection.

But I don’t know what happens in the case of a treaty like the just-signed FTA, which apparently requires changes to Australian law in a large number of areas – certainly copyright and probably the PBS. I assume the entire treaty must be put to Parliament as a package and ratified without amendment, otherwise the US side can just walk away.

But if this is the case, I would judge that the treaty is already dead. It’s hard to see how Labor can consent to any watering down of the PBS, in full knowledge of the fact that Big Pharma is out to kill the scheme altogether. If no amendment is possible, they’ll have to vote against the treaty outright.

The politics of this seem entirely straightforward for Labor. Hardly anyone in Labors constituency has anything obvious to gain from the deal (in fact, the immediate benefits for anyone in Australia are trivial and the indirect benefits entirely speculative) Latham has already alienated anyone who objects to standing up to the Americans. OTOH, the majority of the Labor base who objected to the Iraq war can see that Howard hasn’t even managed to secure fair treatment in return for our loyal support of the US, let alone any favours.

Conversely, the politics seem diabolical for Howard. If legislation has to be pushed through Parliament that means De-Anne Kelly, Ron Boswell and the rest of the North Queensland Nationals will be opened up to ferocious attack from Bob Katter if they vote in favor. Labor can just sit back and watch, throwing in quotes from Howard and Anderson to the effect that they would “never ever” abandon the canegrowers (and, for that matter, the beef industry). And once the deal is rejected, everyone except the canegrowers and cattlemen will forget about it.

But of course, all of the above is premised on my shaky understanding of the procedural rules – would anyone care to set me straight.

Update Ken Parish answers my questions on the process and argues that the procedures for examining the treaty mean that nothing will come before Parliament until after the next election. It seems to me that this makes things even better for Labor. Rather than rejecting the treaty outright, they can say that, when elected, they will demand a renegotiation of the treaty (the fact that the US will also have an election complicates the issue, but mostly in a way favorable to this claim – for example, a statement by Bush that the terms of the agreement are ironclad can’t bind his successor).

I was going to post on a piece by David Dale in the Sun-Herald asserting (with reference to the use of the baseball code [first base, etc] as an indicator of progress in dating) that no-one under 60 now uses Australian sporting metaphors. He cited “sticky wicket” and “hit for six” as examples that have gone out. In my lexicon, the first of these has always been confined to toffee-nosed Poms, and the second is still current. But I’m only a decade or so short of 60, and I thought perhaps I was just showing my age.

I’m therefore please to note the following unsolicited comment from Steve Edwards, on the FTA “Latham is 10 metres out, directly in front on this one. He can’t miss.”

On a marginally more scientific note, a Google search on “hit for six” :.au produces 1660 hits. Most are in a (metaphorical) sporting context, but there are also several political and financial instances.

Here (late again, but on Monday at least) is your chance to comment on any topic (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). I may be a bit quiet for the next few days. (I’m in Melbourne to become a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society), so please do your best to fill the gap in my absence.

So far, all we have on the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement is a rewritten press release, but I think that’s enough to conclude that this is an election-loser for Howard. The reports have noted that there’s nothing on sugar and nothing much on beef or dairy, but it’s more revealing in some ways to look at the list of wins. Of particular interest is that the US Federal government procurement market has been opened up to Australian suppliers. As of last weekend, our demands included state government procurement as well, particularly in California.

And of course we have yet to see the list of concessions on things like IP, parallel importing and so on. The PBS looks to have been kept off the table, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Overall, this is about as unbalanced an agreement as could be imagined.

Update I’m travelling and haven’t yet had time for a detailed study, but I thought I’d look at the US reponse. Naturally, it’s anything but front-page news. Buried deep in the business section of the NYT, I found this article, which notes, with respect to the abolition of tariffs on manufactures

supporters of the trade pact said its main significance, assuming Congressional approval, was the virtual elimination of import duties on American manufactured goods to Australia. Currently, the United States pays 10 times as much as Australia does in tariffs in the joint trade between the two countries.

This is a pretty fair summary of the distribution of gains and losses in the deal. The Washington Post has a story leading to a broken link and the LA Times nothing I could find.

Further updateI’ll take this chance to welcome Ken Parish who’s back as an active blogger. Ken is deferring judgement, but has a lot of useful links.

Welcome back also to Kim Weatherall who reports that the IP components of the agreement are as expected, that is, about as bad as they could possibly be.

Anyone who’s been following recent discussion of the US economy will be aware that the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces employment statistics from two different surveys, and that the results have diverged radically since 2001. The BLS preferred numbers on employment growth come from a survey of employers (the Establishment Survey) while other numbers, including the unemployment rate are derived from a survey of households (Current Population Survey). As the BLS Commissioner’s latest statement notes (PDF file)

From the trough of the recession in November 2001 through January 2004, payroll employment decreased by 716,000. Over the same period, total employment as measured by the household survey increased by about 2.2 million (after accounting for the changes to that survey‚s population controls).

Not surprisingly supporters of the Administration have been pushing hard to discredit the Employment Survey in favour of the CPS. While noting some reasons for the discrepancy, the BLS seems to be sticking with the payroll survey, noting that there are a lot of problems in estimating employment growth from the CPS, and that the payroll data is consistent with data on new claims for unemployment benefits.

If that’s the case though, the implication appears to be that the CPS results are unreliable, and therefore that the unemployment rate (derived from the CPS) is an underestimate. Allowing for the fact that non-employed people are divided between unemployed and those not in the labour force, the discrepancy could easily be a full percentage point, implying that unemployment is now higher than when the recovery (as measured by output) began. This seems consistent with anecdotal impressions.

I’m reading After the New Economy by Doug Henwood, after Brad DeLong kindly sent me a copy. I plan to do a review of this book, which has already been reviewed by several contributors to Crooked Timber.

I watched the first round of The Einstein Factor, which turns out to follow, in crucial respects, the Mastermind format peculiar to public broadcasters, namely a round of questions on a special topic that would be regarded as too narrow if proposed for a PhD thesis (those today were Jack the Ripper, Australian campaigns in France in WWI and heavy metal bands of the 1980s), followed by absurdly easy general knowledge questions (in one round there was even multiple choice – shades of Eddie McGuire!).

The “special topic” approach is unsatisfactory in too ways. First, even a well-informed viewer doesn’t have a chance of answering more than a handful of questions, which makes viewing not that much fun.

Second, it’s impossible for anyone (including the setters) to tell whether the questions are of comparable difficulty between topics. Which is harder, to name the head roadie for Megadeth or the constable who discovered the body of Jack the Ripper’s third victim? For all I know, one question is comparable to naming the song sung by the Sirens and the other is basic knowledge for all aficionados of the topic. Think about blogging as a special topic from the viewpoint of your non-blogging friends, and see what I mean.

Electoral commentary hasn’t yet absorbed the magnitude of the disaster suffered by the anti-Labor parties in Queensland tonight. It’s true that Labor’s massive majority has been reduced a little relative to the outcome in 2001, but this was distorted by the presence of One Nation, which has now been almost completely eliminated. This was a ‘normal’ election, with no last-minute scare campaign or other disturbing factor, and the coalition has been crushed.

Let’s look first at the National Party. They are supposed to be the alternative government, but they got only about 17 per cent of the first preference vote and have been reduced to the status of a rural rump, as in NSW and Victoria, the only other states where they remain a significant force. The seats they have regained have been in areas that should have been safe and were lost because of the One Nation upsurge. . Outside their heartland, they actually lost more ground this time around, losing the seat of Keppel. In the Gold Coast, where they were once the dominant party, they have disappeared for good. In provincial cities like Cairns, Toowoomba and Townsville they have gone nowhere. Even in the heartland, their gains were partly dependent on the “agin the government” vote in sugar electorates – this will work against them when the Federal election comes around, unless the fabled FTA with the US includes access to sugar markets (and, since GWB has an election of his own coming on, that’s not very likely).

Then there’s the Liberals. They hold about half the Federal electorates in Queensland, but they remain completely marginal in State politics. It’s quite possible that they will hold only one Brisbane electorate in the new Parliament, as they did in the old one. As a resident of Indooroopilly, I only have to walk down the street to be stunned by the idea that this is a marginal Labor seat. admittedly the University of Queensland is a disturbing factor (it brought me here, after all) but the general ambience is that of Toorak or Double Bay. The same is true in spades of Clayfield, which Labor looks certain to retain. At least at the state level, urban electors want schools and hospitals and think Labor is more likely to deliver them than the Liberals.

Perhaps the best feature of the election from my viewpoint is that Labor’s massive win followed the introduction of a new tax (the ambulance levy) and there was no commitment not to raise existing taxes or introduce new ones. There were some justified tax cuts (for example, in stamp duty on house purchases) but the government is now in a position to meet its expenditure commitments without resorting to deficit finance.

State and Federal politics are very different, but the core vote from which the Coalition is working is about 35 per cent. Given a competent campaign, Federal Labor should pick up enough Queensland seats to make the next election a very close call.

The old Australian tradition ‘vote early and vote often’ is under official attack here in Queensland. The pamphlet distributed by the Electoral Office laid great stress on the fact that we should vote exactly once.* And a fair bit of publicity was given to the fact that polling booths are most crowded between 8am and 10am.

*For non-Australian readers, I should point out that not voting at all is not a legal option here. If you want to abstain, you have to do so actively, by turning up and casting a blank ballot.

In the middle of a generally reasonable Newsweek article about the failure to find WMDs, I came across the following para

But if Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, why didn’t he come clean? After all, he could have given U.N. inspectors free rein; he could have allowed them to interview all of his scientists in private—even outside the country—and let them rummage through his palaces. Faced with war, wasn’t that the sensible option?

But, but …(lapses into stunned silence)

My posts regarding the third-hand junk science on DDT presented by Christopher Pearson have provoked an interesting debate, which leads me to want to clarify my position on the issue. You can find relevant references in my previous posts and the comments threads. Here are the conclusions I have drawn:

The ban on the agricultural use of DDT, beginning in the US in 1972, and much reviled by junk scientists, was fully justified, for several reasons.

• DDT has well-established adverse environmental effects, particularly on predatory birds
• DDT persists and accumulates in human body tissues, which is an undesirable property for any potential toxin. There is strong, but not conclusive evidence of health risks to humans  arising from this
• DDT has broad-spectrum effects, killing beneficial as well as harmful insects, and is highly persistent
• Indiscriminate agricultural use of DDT promotes the development of resistance, reducing or eliminating the usefulness of DDT in its most beneficial use, as an antimalarial

The early success of DDT as an antimalarial in countries such as India and Sri Lanka was not sustained, but this had little or nothing to do with the 1972 ban. The main problems were the development of resistance and the lack of sustained funding. Resistance problems also reduced the effectiveness of antimalarial drugs and there was little commercial interest in the development of new ones.

The use of DDT as an antimalarial, sprayed on house walls or insecticidal nets was not banned in 1972, and never has been. The majority of junk science diatribes, including Pearson, state or imply the contrary, either through ignorance (almost certainly the case for Pearson) or malice.

Between about 1995 and 2000, debate over DDT was intensified because environmental groups wanted a complete phaseout of DDT as part of the UN convention on persistent organochlorine pollution (POP). Environmental groups argued that there were safer, and equally effective alternatives, such as pyrethroids and pressed developing countries to adopt these methods. In some cases, for example in South-East Asia, this worked fairly well. In other cases, such as South Africa, the alternative methods failed or funding was inadequate and it was necessary to return to DDT. During the debate leading up to the POP convention, rhetoric on both sides was heightened, tending to obscure agreement on the basic points that the only legitimate use of DDT was antimalarial and that replacement of DDT was contingent on the provision of affordable and effective alternatives, funded by rich countires. Quoted out of context, some of the arguments on the pro-DDT side have been used by junk science writers to back up their attacks on the 1972 ban. There are some instances in which environmental pressure led to ill-advised decisions to abandon DDT. But far more damage to the viability of DDT as an antimalarial was done by its use as a broad-spectrum agricultural insecticide – the very policy defended by junk science writers.

The current position is that, in at least some poor countries (particularly those where there has been no history of extensive spraying and therefore no buildup of resistance) there is no affordable and effective alternative to using DDT spray on house walls. As long as this remains the case, DDT use should be continued. Where there is a more expensive, but equally effective, alternative, the cost should be borne by rich countries, since the benefits of reduced DDT in the environment are global.