Ken Parish has an excellent post responding to the recent speech by Pat Dodson on the violence endemic in Aboriginal communities, and linking to a piece by Rob Corr. Although he raises a number of points, Ken’s focus (correctly I think) is on the corrosive consequences of the absence of productive work. I don’t have any new thoughts on this, but I thought it might be worth reposting some old ones (first posted 17 Jan 2003).

Following my posts the Windschuttle controversy, I promised to put forward some ideas on the current policy problems facing Aboriginal Australians, and particularly the problem of economic development. It’s always problematic for white ‘experts’ to tell black communities what to do and I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to do this. Although I have given economic advice to Aboriginal organisations on a range of issues, I don’t regard myself as an expert on the problems facing Aboriginal communities. My perspective on the issue comes more from a consideration of the general economic problems of rural Australia and particularly the general decline in population and employment.
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Jack Strocchi attacks what he takes to be the standard leftwing view of Howard as a free-market radical, quoting among others, Alan Kohler, Stephen Kirchner and Max Walsh to support his view of Howard as a crypto-socialist. This gives me the chance to have a test run for my own, more nuanced, assessment of Howard, which will be a book chapter in due course. Comments much appreciated. Here goes

Economic policy under Howard presents a contradictory picture. Sometimes the Howard government appears as a continuation of those of Hawke and Keating, implementing the reforms those governments were unwilling or unable to introduce. At other times, as in its ‘nation-building’ infrastructure exercises, it seems like a throwback to the developmentalist ideas of the 1950s and 1960s. Still more of the time, it appears content to drift, happily taking the credit for a long period of relative economic prosperity and putting forward economic reforms on a purely opportunistic basis, as and when the political climate demands an appearance of action rather than stability.
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Simon Crean has gone up a bit in my estimation by announcing his own spill rather than waiting for the Beazley push to organize one.

I’m not a huge Crean fan, but he has at least tried to put forward an alternative some of the time. When the best his enemies can come up with is someone who was an undistinguished minister, has already lost twice, contributed nothing to the policy debate in six years as Leader except the phrase “small target strategy”, and has contributed nothing more in two years on the backbench, I can’t believe the Caucus will be stupid enough to change leaders.

A decisive win for Crean could really turn things around. Labor is already close in the opinion polls and there’s now a Liberal leadership story to absorb the attention of the many political journalists whose approach is that of the gossip columnist. A strong focus on issues (Medicare in particular) could have Howard regretting his decision to stay on.

Reader Kevin Wenzel raises the point in email that, contrary to what might be inferred from one of my posts, the US death rate per vehicle mile travelled is only marginally worse than that in Australia. I actually addressed this in my Fin article, but since this is virtually inaccessible, I’ll state my points here.

I have three problems with deaths/VMT as the measure of road safety.,
(a) It doesn’t take account of vehicle occupancy. So a car with passengers counts the same as a car with driver only, although more people are travelling and therefore at risk of death or injury
(b) It’s not relevant in relation to risks to non-motorists: from an economic or libertarian viewpoint these are of particular concern since they’re involuntary externalities
(c) It takes car-dependence as given. This is a complex issue, but it’s striking that distance travelled/vehicle has remained almost constant in Australia, a country with similar geography, population growth and income growth, while in the US it has grown strongly.

Having had plenty of interest in my posts on road safety and speeding. I thought I’d work it up into a column for the Fin (Subscription required). Thanks to everyone who participated in the debate, on all sides of the question. This ‘road test’ certainly helped to sharpen up my arguments, and maybe also helped people on the other side of the question to clarify their position. Here’s the closing bit

One of the great strengths of the campaign for road safety has been the bipartisan support it has attracted. Labor, Liberal and National Party Transport ministers have been willing to brave the mindless reactions of those drivers who consider that their special skills should exempt them from the rules applying to the common herd (80 per cent of drivers class themselves as ‘above average’). Even more remarkably, their political opponents have refrained from trying to score cheap political points at the expense of public safety.
Until now, that is. Victorian Opposition Leader Robert Doyle pandered to the leadfoot vote at the last election with a proposal to legalise speeding, in the form of a 10 per cent tolerance above speed limits. Despite a comprehensive thrashing, he’s returned to his ‘soft on crime’ line, with complaints that the Bracks government is enforcing speeding laws too vigorously.
Doyle raises the tired argument that speeding fines are motivated by ‘revenue raising’. Even if this were true, what would be wrong with that? Governments have to raise revenue, and dangerous drivers are at least as good a tax base as gamblers, homebuyers and wage employees, the targets of the main taxes left to state governments. In fact, however, the increase in fines seems to be contributing to a renewed decline in road deaths, which have fallen sharply in 2003.
If he had any chance of being elected to office, Doyle’s irresponsible demagoguery would be dangerous. As it is, it gives his long-suffering colleagues yet another reason to dump him.

Fresh from his flogging at the last state election, when he advocated legalising speeding (he called it a ‘tolerance zone’), Victorian Opposition Leader Robert ‘Leadfoot’ Doyle is back at it again, complaining that there are too many speed cameras collecting too much in fine revenue. The fact that Victoria’s road toll is falling substantially (according to the same report “The state’s road toll was 160 yesterday, compared with 185 at the same time last year”) is of no concern to Doyle.

Until now, Victorian politics has been characterised by a bipartisan commitment to road safety which has been reflected in a stunning decline in road deaths. Since 1970, when seat belt laws were introduced (over the objections of people like Doyle),

road deaths in Victoria have been lowered from a peak of 1,061 to 378 last year, despite an increase of 140% in registered vehicles and 41% in population. The Victorian fatality rate in 1970 of 8.1 deaths per 10,000 registered vehicles was one of the worst among motorised countries, while the 1997 rate of 1.2 was one of the lowest.

By contrast, in the US, where people like Doyle have been successful in resisting strong road safety laws and effective enforcement, road deaths are rising.

Doyle is a disgrace. He has no place in Australian politics.

I kept away from the Hollingworth issue, but I enjoyed the Monday Message Board discussion on a possible replacement so much I started thinking a bit about it. The main argument against an elected President, as far as I can see, is that Australian democracy is built on the premise of Prime Ministerial dictatorship (similarly with discussions about ‘mandates’ and the Senate).

If you accept this argument, it seems that the best Governor-General is the one who does least, and therefore that the best option is to leave the position vacant, with a stand-in to do the necessary attendance at Parliamentary openings and so on.

An even better solution, and one which would surely appeal to John Howard, is for the PM to appoint himself as GG. This would resolve the 1975 problem once and for all, while making any challenge to the monarchy that much more difficult. There may be constitutional obstacles, but they’re not obvious to me. After all, the office of PM doesn’t appear in the Constitution, so it can’t be ruled out explicitly.

Update Glenn Milne gives a cogent exposition of the theory that the GG should be a clone of the PM.

Readers of yesterday?s post Spin Cycle got a preview of my piece in today?s Fin (subscription required) and the debate in the comments thread has already anticipated some of the issues I raise. I commend a policy of higher taxes and more services to both parties. Here?s an extract

For Labor, a policy based on an explicit tax levy would provide a resolution of the inconsistency inherent in promising both the return of bracket creep and improvements in public services. Although such inconsistencies are par for the course in opposition, they will have to be resolved before Labor can present a credible program to the Australian electorate.

To take this course, Labor would have to drop the refrain that Howard’s is ?the highest taxing government in history?. The argument is bogged down in definitional disputes about whether the GST is a state or federal tax, and has gained no electoral traction.

By contrast, Crean’s proposals on health, education and the rehabilitation of the Murray-Darling have produced a strong positive response. In particular, the AC Nielsen Poll, showing Labor with 49 per cent of the two-party preferred vote is scarcely consistent with the view that the next election is unlosable for the government. With the right strategy, Labor would be a serious contender.

Looking back at the last ?unlosable? election, in 1993, it is evident that the threat to Medicare was a more potent issue than the much-overrated GST.
The government should also reconsider the wisdom of cutting taxes and services It might seem paradoxical to commend a policy of tax increases to the current government, but Howard and Costello have shown a surprising amount of flexibility on this score. Despite the disdain of economic purists, they have introduced a string of special-purpose hypothecated levies, and do not seem to have suffered electorally as a result.

Given the adverse reaction to the erosion of Medicare under this government, an increase in the Medicare levy to finance a return to bulk-billing would be a sensible political response. And, for a government that prides itself above all on not being like the Fraser government, it’s worth considering that Fraser scrapped Medicare and abandoned tax indexation. This government would do well to take the opposite course of action on both issues.

Responding to the post-budget opinion polls, most bloggers (myself included) have seen what they want to see Tim Dunlop focuses on the good news for Crean in the Age/SMH AC Nielsen Poll. Gareth Parker looks at the bad news in the Oz Newspoll, and Tim Blair (permalinks still bloggered) accuses the SMH of spin. As Rob Corr observes Tim B seems to have missed the fact that the SMH and Oz each have their own polls, both out on the same day.

But for the real spin story you have to visit the Newspoll site and read the raw poll numbers (downloadable as PDF). Newspoll found that 15 per cent of voters thought the budget would make them better off 38 per cent thought it would make no difference, and 32 per cent though it would make them worse off. This mildly negative result (fairly typical of responses over the 15 years Newspoll has asked this question) was spun by The Oz into a ringing endorsement ?53 per cent of voters thought the Budget would make them better off or no worse off ‘(emphasis added).

The AC Nielsen Poll asked a clearer question and got a clearer answer. Asked whether they would prefer the tax cuts announced in the budget or improvements in health and education, 20 per cent opted for the tax cuts and 77 per cent for improvements in services.

Tim Dunlop has some interesting thoughts on a factoid reported by Kevin Drum that Australians are less likely to pay bribes than inhabitants of any other country. (the Finns, though, are said to be the least corrupt).

The closest I’ve ever come to paying a bribe is once when I had to collect a very heavy consignment of household goods from the Sydney wharves and a friendly wharfie forklifted the stuff onto our truck in return for a very modest backhander. (Even in this notorious milieu, I wouldn’t have known what to do if my Dad hadn’t been with me).

Although it’s not relevant, I can’t record resisting that on the same visit I saw a squashed Ferrari. One of a consignment of six it had been accidentally dropped from a great height, compressing its already low-slung profile to a height of about a metre.

In part, my limited acquaintance with bribery reflects the fact that I grew up mostly in Canberra. Until about a decade ago, federal politics in Australia was corruption-free to an amazing extent. Ministers of both parties lost their jobs over minor breaches of customs regulations, and the idea of bribing a public servant was pretty much unthinkable.

Things deteriorated in the later years of the Hawke-Keating government as it became expected that government ministers and senior public servants would move on to high-paying corporate jobs. It didn’t take long for people to work out that a few well-placed favors given out in office could be repaid with interest subsequently, and we’ve recently seen instances of blatant corruption at the ministerial and senior public service levels. (I won’t risk the first blog defamation case by naming names – Australian readers will know who I mean, and others wan’t care).

All of this has been accelerated by reforms (I don’t bother putting scare quotes around this much-abused word any more) which have grafted a US-style patronage system onto a Westminster system of unconstrained executive government. The logical outcome is a system with all the ill-effects of patronage, but without any of the checks and balances. This hasn’t yet come to pass – there are too many old-style public servants, and ministers haven’t yet realised the full extent of their power – but things are getting worse every year.