Without a trace of knowing postmodernist irony (or is that Gen X?), the publishers of The Backbench lobbed an email into my inbox advertising their new website, offering “Gen Y opinions on current affairs” .

I was prepared for the worst, but the website is well-presented (with the exception of an article on blogs that unaccountably lacks hyperlinks) and the pieces I sampled seemed thoughtful, well-argued, and entirely free of generation-game cliches. Go and have a look for yourselves.

From ABC News (slightly rearranged for readability)

Prime Minister John Howard’s office has denied allegations that he took instructions from broadcaster Alan Jones to reappoint Professor David Flint as head of the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA). ..Rival broadcaster John Laws has aired an allegation that Mr Jones told him he had pressured the Prime Minister to have Professor Flint reappointed. John Laws said on Southern Cross radio in Sydney this morning that he was at a dinner party with Mr Jones and others on November 28, 2000, when Mr Jones warned him not to criticise Professor Flint…. “Alan Jones then went on to say in fact, ‘I was so determined to have David Flint reelected that I personally went to Kirribilli House and instructed John Howard to reappoint David Flint or he would not have the support of Alan Jones in the forthcoming election’,”

“The Prime Minister does not take instructions from anybody in the media about appointments or indeed anyone else in the discharge of his responsibilities as Prime Minister,”

the spokeswoman said.

He has no knowledge of any conversation that may have taken place between Mr Laws and Mr Jones at a dinner party.”

Now suppose that (most improbably) a videotape turns up showing Alan Jones telling Howard that he should reappoint Flint or lose his (Jones’) support. Howard could perfectly plausibly say that he doesn’t take orders (instructions) from Jones, and that he was going to reappoint Flint anyway. And of course, there’s no reason to suppose that Howard has any knowledge of what Jones said to Laws. No-one ever suggested he did.

Update 29/4 It didn’t take long for the nondenial quoted above to be subject to the same kind of close reading I offered – people are used to the need for this kind of thing now. After a pointless round of “not to my recollection” and “I don’t recall”, Howard has finally produced a clear denial.

I specifically deny any conversation remotely resembling what has been alleged,” Mr Howard said.

“If somebody approached me, somebody from the media with a threat that they would withdraw support from me if I didn’t do such and such I would to use the Australian vernacular tell them to get lost.”

The only problem is that Laws has witnesses who recall Jones’ statement to him. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Jones lied to Laws when he claimed to have spoken to Howard. Equally, it’s possible that Jones and Howard are both lying now. In the light of his thirty years in political life, are there any readers who have sufficient faith in Mr Howard’s word that they are willing to dismiss out of hand a second-hand report from a dinner party three years ago?

Following up on my previous posts, I thought it might be useful to summarise my objections to the claims put forward by Jennifer Marohasy of the IPA, supporting the conclusion that scientists have “greatly exaggerated their claims that the Murray River’s health was declining.” You can read her full paper here (1.5 Mb PDF).
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The big Oz political news of the week was the flap over Mark Latham’s remarks on education, which echoed similar remarks by Bill Clinton and led to claims of plagiarism from the PM. Chris Sheil rightly describes this as a terrific beatup, but asserts that “the Coalition has won the day so far on this one”, while in the comments box, Sedgwick rates it a nil-all draw. I count it as a 2-0 win for Labor, with J. Howard doing all the scoring (own goals in both halves).

First own goal: Latham is shown on TV over and over, making commitments to education. He would never have got such publicity on the strength of the speech itself.

Second own goal: Rather than using one of his taggers, ideally a snarky journo or even a blogger, Howard went for the king-hit himself, thus casting himself in the classic negative role of the carping critic with no substantive policy to offer. Opposition leaders, by virtue of their position, find it hard to avoid this role – for a PM to take it on voluntarily is stupid.

As it happens, I can apply the taxi driver test to this one. I heard this on the radio going to the airport and the taxi driver (middle-aged and not obviously a lefty) said exactly what I thought “So What”.

An obvious logical objection, that doesn’t seem to have occurred to those debating this issue is that any politician who uses a speechwriter is automatically guilty of plagiarism. The implication, I think, is that the term has no real applicability in politics, except in cases where a speaker explicitly claims words as their own (the opposite of the situation in the academic world).

Update: There’s a bit more about this over at Catallaxy. Showing yet again that it’s possible to agree on particular points despite important disagreements on values, Andrew Norton agrees that the kind of plagiarism undertaken by Latham is a trivial offence if it’s an offence at all. On the other hand, writing in the comments thread, Geoff Honnor makes the point that Latham also scored an own goal by denying the obvious. I’ll restate the score as 2-1.

Further update In the comments thread, reader TJW suggests that the story began with Laurie Oakes, who certainly fits the billl as a snarky journo. If this is correct, Howard’s own goal looks even worse. He would have been sensible to leave it with Oakes, rather than to jump in and open himself up to the inevitable finding that he’d done just the same thing himself.

Among my various activities, I’m a member of the Queensland Competition Authority, which is responsible for regulating a range of private and public monopoly enterprises[1]. I’ve spent the day in and around Mackay, looking at railway yards and coal-loading ports. I’ll be back tomorrow with more posts, and responses to the lively comments threads.

fn1. Just to be on the safe side, I’ll mention that nothing written on this blog purports to represent the position of the QCA, the University of Queensland, the Australian Financial Review or anyone else for whom I might do some work at some time or another.

There have been quite a few interesting posts at Catallaxy recently, and I haven’t got around to linking them. I meant to post a response to Jason’s discussion of flat taxes, but haven’t had time to polish it yet.

Instead, I’ll link to Andrew Norton’s response to Alan Wood’s claim that the way to voters’ hearts is via big tax cuts (which includes a further link to Stephen Kirchner. Andrew and I have both discussed this previously, and we agree that Wood is wrong, though of course I’m happy about this and Andrew is not.

One point I’ll make is that Sol Lebovic is quoted, endorsing the Oz party line, and claiming that “while health and education routinely top the list of issues of concern to voters, they don’t swing elections unless there is a clear difference between the parties.” I think this is silly (obviously, there is a clear difference, since Labor is invariably more favorably disposed to public expenditure in these areas). More to the point, I think it’s very unwise for a pollster to run down his own poll results when they yield a conclusion that’s inconvenient to his employer, as Lebovic now seems to do regularly.

If the poll answers were genuinely misleading, the correct response would be to change the questions, the sample, or both. It’s clear that the kinds of changes needed to give the answers the Oz wants to hear would involve blatant rigging that would destroy Newspoll’s credibility for all time. So Lebovic is unwilling to tamper with the polls, but he is willing to tell us to ignore some of the results.

The issue of whether the Howard government is, as the Labor party has claimed, the highest-taxing government in Australian history[1] is not only politically contentious, but statistically complicated. A couple of weeks ago, David Bassanese had a piece in the Fin using Australian Bureau Statistics data to argue in support of this claim.

I was disturbed today, to see a letter from Rob Edwards of the ABS, responding to Bassanese and supporting the government line. In particular, the letter accused Bassanese of unspecified errors and argued in favor of relying on cash measures of the deficit (Bassanese used accruals for recent years and “cash converted to accruals” estimates for earlier years). While the ABS has occasionally responded to direct criticism of its figures (for example, my own criticisms of its multifactor productivity estimates), I don’t recall a previous instance where it’s been involved in partisan controversy of this kind.

As readers of this blog will know, the issue is far too complex for simple answers like those put forward by Bassanese and Edwards to be regarded as definitive. But Bassanese is a journalist writing what’s clearly intended as commentary rather than news. He’s entitled to put forward his own views. Edwards is supposed to be a neutral public servant.

It’s been a long time since I took on trust anything coming out of policy departments like Treasury and the Productivity Commission. Under the present government, we’ve already learned we can’t trust statements from the armed forces, the Defence Department or the Electoral Commission. But until now, I’ve never seen any serious evidence of political interference with ABS. This letter suggests that the process has begun.

(The Edwards letter follows).
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In a recent comments thread, Derrida Derider asks about views on Latham’s proposal to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq. Like DD, I’ve been an advocate of the “you broke it, you own it” view, that, having invaded Iraq, the members of the Coalition had an obligation to stay and restore order. However, in the light of US plans to maintain the status of an occupying power indefinitely, I think the time has come to pull out, unless some more legitimate basis for the presence of our troops can be fashioned.

The central requirement is that the Coalition forces in Iraq (including US forces) would be answerable to some combination of an Iraqi government and the United Nations. Since I see no prospect that the US would even contemplate such a possibility, I think it’s time for our troops to leave.

Although there’s been a fair bit of discussion about the Newspoll showing that 65 per cent of people thought the war in Iraq had increased the danger of a terrorist attack in Australia[1], the really striking result was ignored. This concerned the proportion of people who accepted the government’s stated belief that the invasion of Iraq had reduced the danger of terrorist attack. Only 1 per cent of respondents said that the invasion had made a terrorist attack less likely, and less than 0.5 per cent said it made an attack a lot less likely. You can read the details here (PDF file). This is substantially less than the proportion of people who are reported (in other surveys) to believe that Elvis is alive or that aliens are controlling government policy.

fn1. The question doesn’t distinguish between the interpretations “the Iraq war has raised Australia’s profile as a target” and “the Iraq war has increased the risk of terrorism everywhere”. I have previously argued that the latter view is the right one.

Update By complete coincidence, this story in the Oz reports that, in polls for the mayoral election in the Gold Coast, an Elvis ‘tribute artist’ has 8 per cent support. OK, it’s in Queensland, but 8 per cent is still a lot more than 0.5.