So Ziggy Switkowski is out as CEO of Telstra with a golden handshake of only $2.1 million. This seems a little unfair – executives with far worse records have got much more – but executive compensation remains a mystery to me. Perhaps the new book Pay without Performance will help me here.

Ziggy was a mate of Richard Alston (whose admiring assessment is currently enjoying top billing under my photo) but it seems that Peter Costello is less impressed. Since most of the internal candidates are implicated in Switkowski’s bad decisions, his replacement seems to be a bit of a problem.

On reflection, I’ve decided that I would be a great choice for this job. On almost every issue Switkowski and Alston got wrong, I was on the public record pointing this out and advocating something more sensible. For example:

* I said in 1996 that partial privatisation was ‘the worst of all possible worlds‘, as Costello now agrees[1]

* I opposed the great cable race between Telstra and Optus in 1996 and 1997

* I condemned Switkowski’s offshore ventures which were later closed down with huge losses

* I proposed selling off the dotcom part of the business in March 2000, just before the crash

* I attacked the idea of buying newspapers and TV stations, which ultimately sank both Switkowski and his CEO Bob Mansfield.

Based on this track record, I ought to do pretty well as CEO. But wait, there’s more! If I stuff up, I promise to leave with a token payment of $999, 999.99. That’s right! Less than a million dollars!

Please write to the shareholding ministers, Coonan and Minchin to support my candidacy.
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Comments are currently turned off due to a massive attack of comment spam. I’d just like to repeat my observation that spam is financed, to a significant extent by major corporations, which deserved to be sued into bankruptcy and beyond. If there are any underemployed trial lawyers out there, please consider a class action. I’ll be happy to join up.

update 6:30 Comments have been restored! Death (or lengthy terms of imprisonment and crippling financial penalties) to spammers !

There’s been a fair bit of discussion among academic bloggers about whether blogs count for the purposes of vitas and publication lists) and if so how. The maximalist position (so far not put forward seriously by anyone as far as I know) is that each blog post is a separate publication. The minimal claim is that blogs are a form of community service, like talking to school groups and similar. A good place to start, with plenty of links to earlier contributions, is this post by Eszter Hargittai at Crooked Timber.

Rather than engaging directly with the arguments that have been put up so far, I want to claim that the question will ultimately be settled by the way in which blogs are used and referred to. In this context, I have a couple of observations.

First, I’ve had one reader tell me that he’s cited one of my posts in an academic work, and I think this is not unique. Clearly, the more this happens, the more conventions for referring to blog posts will be developed, and the more easily they can be incorporated in vitas and so on.

Second, I had an interesting recent communication from the Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia, which sets school examinations. They used this post in an exam paper for Year 12 politics. They wrote asking for copyright permission to print it in their set of past papers[1].
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Tyler Cowen links to Martin Wolf (FT, subscription) on the failure of the radical free-market reforms undertaken by New Zealand from 1984 to the mid-90s. The results are even more striking when you observe that the only sustained period of growth has come after 1999, when the newly-elected Labour government raised the top marginal tax rate, amended the most radical components of the Employment Contracts Act, and undertook some renationalisation. I’ve written about all this many times, for example in this AFR piece and this Victoria economic commentary published in NZ (PDF file).
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At the suggestion of reader wbb, I’ve reorganised the sidebar, promoting recent comments to pride of place, ahead of the testimonials and recent posts. I hope this will prove useful both to regular commenters and to general readers, who will be aware that the comments here are often better than the posts. I also cleaned up some minor blogroll problems (thanks, PML!).

I’d be happy to hear what people think of these changes, and if there are any other suggestions.

Update Of all the testimonials on my page, Jason Soon’s inspired comparison with Britney Spears has been the popular favorite, even getting a run in the Oz. So, at James Farrell’s suggestion, seconded by others, it’s in pride of place, below the photo.

Also, I’d appreciate advice from readers for whom the sidebar doesn’t work, for example if it appears at the bottom of the page.

Following Chris Sheil’s recent departure, “Closed” notices have been going up around Ozplogistan. Among the departures, the intermittently brillianTugboat Potemkin and Paul Watson, supplier of comedy, media commentary and general Gen X bitterness. At the same time, Tim Dunlop is welcoming a flood of new arrivals. That’s great, but I still feel a sense of loss.

Whenever one of my favorite blogs shuts down, I feel guilty that I should have linked more to their posts. Then again I feel guilty about not linking to new bloggers and not updating my blogroll often enough.

On the other hand, lots of people seem to give up and come back, so maybe there’s not such a problem. Here, for example, is Don Arthur running a post that I was working out in my head this afternoon, and doing a much better job than I would have done.

Andrew Leigh has some tips for Op-ed writers (PDF file). Most of them are sensible, and I’ll add my own, which is that a good Op-Ed piece should contain, on average, 1.5 ideas. That is, the piece should have a main argument that is spelt out and defended in full (there’s an art to doing this in less than 750 words), and an offshoot from the main argument that is stated or hinted at, but not fully developed.

This isn’t a universal rule. A decent piece must have at least one idea (a large proportion of opinion pieces fail these test) and can have two or three. But 1.5 is a good average.

Chris Sheil has announced that Back Pages is closing down, after exactly one year. Chris is taking six months off to write a book, which raises the prospect that he may return to the scene at some future date. Chris has a lengthy farewell, but isn’t taking comments, so I’ll be glad to host any appreciations here (critical comments aren’t precluded, but I’ll be ruthless in enforcing the norms of civilised discussion, which include respect for the recently departed). Chris also offers a lot of useful advice for bloggers.

I haven’t had time to formulate my own thoughts, but I’ll try to write something later.

In the meantime, this is as good an opportunity as any to note that Chris’s blog and this one were joint winners, with Surfdom and Troppo of Lord Sedgwick’s award for blog which consistently attracts the best comments. So you can all give yourselves a pat on the back.

I’ve been working on the website, putting up most of my journal articles from 2004. I’d appreciate any info on broken links, comments on possible improvements and, of course, substantive comments on the papers themselves.

I’ve also added the following newspaper articles from the leadup to the Australian election

* Time to recast health roles Australian Financial Review,23 September 2004.

* Demonising the greens Australian Financial Review,9 September 2004.

* Labor must stand firm Australian Financial Review,26 August 2004.

* Doubters warm to detail Australian Financial Review,12 August 2004.

* Don’t fear a greens senate Australian Financial Review,29 July 2004.

My Fin column on the US election is up at Australian Policy Online

It looks as if I’ve got problems with my MT database. I hope to restore full service soon.