That’s the title of my latest piece in The Conversation. More soon

I gave up hope of getting much out of a Labor government when Albanese announced that he would implement Morrison’s top-end tax cuts, and it became clear that this meant abandoning most of the spending commitments Labor took to the 2019 election. But at least it seemed that Labor would be significantly better on climate policy. Now, that difference has been reduced to a minor point of semantics. Morrison has finally crabwalked his way to a 2050 net zero commitment. In deference to the sensitivities of the National Party, he refused to increase Australia’s 26-28 % emissions reduction target for 2030, while pointing out that the policies of state governments (both Liberal and Labor) would probably get us to 35 % with no action at the national level. Labor has yet to announce a 2030 target, but has already abandoned the 45 % target from 2019. So, it’s clear enough that the target will be indistunguishable from Morrison’s non-target, and will similarly imply no significant policy action.

More importantly, over the last week or so, Labor has acted to remove the remaining points of difference between the parties. Albanese backed Morrison’s refusal to join an agreement to reduce methane emissions. Then, Chris Bowen ruled out either a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme, and indicated Labor would continue the current governments’ voluntary policy, possibly with some minor adjustments.

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If the last five years have taught us anything it’s this: the fact that something being unimaginable doesn’t mean it isn’t going to happen. So, it’s worth considering the prospect that Donald Trump becomes President after the 2024 election whether by getting enough votes to win the Electoral College under the current rules, or by having a Democratic victory overturned. Trump has made it clear that, in such an event, he would wish to secure at least a third term in office and perhaps a life presidency.

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… but the real decisions on Australia’s emissions are happening elsewhere. That’s the title of my latest piece in The Conversation. Key paras

The Morrison government, partly through its own doing, has almost no control over Australia’s emissions trajectory. The real decisions on that are being made elsewhere – by state governments and civil society, or outside the country altogether.

Morrison’s last-minute reach for a 2050 net-zero target is almost entirely symbolic, as was the Nationals’ resistance to it.

A lot of discussion around “living with Covid” starts from the premise that, as long as vaccination rates are high (say 80 per cent of the population), we don’t need to worry about high case numbers. That’s because vaccinated people are less likely to suffer bad outcomes (hospitalization and death). The problem with this claim is that, because the primary function of vaccines is to protect against infection, unvaccinated people will be over-represented among cases. Let’s try some simple arithmetic.

Suppose the vaccination rate is x%, and that vaccination gives y% reduction in infection risk and z% reduction in bad outcomes (hospitalization and death) conditional on infection. Denote the percentage of bad outcomes for unvaxed by b %. Assume all unvaccinated will be infected if exposed.

Then, for each 100 people exposed, (100-x) unvaccinated and x*(100-y)/ 100 vaccinated will be infected. Example, if x = y = 80%, there will be 20 unvaccinated and 16 vaccinated. That is, even though unvaccinated people are only 20 % of the population, they will account for more than half the cases.

The number of outcomes will be

b* = (100-x)*b⁄ 100 + x *(100-y)*(100-z)*b⁄ (100*100 )

Say b = 5%, z = 80%, Then we get 1.16 bad outcomes, compared to 5 in the absence of vaccination. So the good news is vaccination works,

But as a proportion of cases, things don’t look nearly so good. In the absence of vaccination b=5 % of cases have bad outcomes, but with vaccination b*=1.16/36 = 3.2 per cent, which is only marginally lowe.

So, the idea that we don’t need to worry about high case numbers if vaccination rates are high doesn’t really stand up. We have to keep case numbers down. Taking the vaccination rate as given, that can only be done with measures like mask mandates, social distancing and vaccine passports.

It seems almost inconceivable that the culture wars that have dominated Australian public life for decades could end, and with victory for the progressive side on nearly every front.  And I have made premature predictions to this effect before. 

 But consider the following list of events over the last couple of years, many in the last few months.

*  After decades of quasi-legality in many states, abortion rights have been enshrined in law throughout Australia – attempts to mobilise public opposition went nowhere
*  Voluntary assisted dying has now been legalised nearly everywhere (a bill in NSW looks very likely to be passed) – again the debate was low-key and generally civil

*  The Morrison government, backed by the Murdoch press, appears certain to adopt a 2050 net zero target, and a somewhat more ambitious 2030 target. While there will still be plenty of fights about the details, these will be in the realm of normal political dispute. Culture war denialism (even of the nod-and-wink variety) is now outside the Overton window. 

* Transgender rights are estabished in law, and attempts to whip up culture war on the issue (as with Safe Schools) haven’t been successful.

*  Despite the long and bitter battle over equal marriage, the issue disappeared almost as soon as the law was changed. No one on the right even mentions the idea that it might be reversed. Nor do we see any of the snarky talking points and bogus studies purporting to prove that the idea was disastrous.  Religious freedom laws, if they are ever passed, are likely to restrict rather than expand the existing exemption of religious employers from anti-discrimination laws (an exemption which is becoming harder to exercise in the absence of social license)

The big exception to all of this is the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. As elsewhere it’s been a potent issue for the culture war right and one on which they have generally been successful.  

What remains of the culture wars is a kind of free-floating identity politics in which well-off university-educated people denounce others with indistinguishable lifestyles as ‘inner city elites’ and appeal to ‘real Australians’, which roughly translates to ‘people with moderately bigoted views about others, who want a free pass for this’.

We[1] are often urged to “get out of our bubbles” and engage with a wider range of viewpoints. This mostly turns out to be a waste of time. As I experienced from my side, engagement with the political right consists mainly of responding to a string of talking points and whataboutery, with little if any content. On the rare occasions these discussions have been useful, it’s typically because the other party in the discussion is on the verge of breaking with the right[2]

To restate the case in favour of getting out of the bubble, it’s easy to see examples of people on the left putting forward arguments that don’t stand up under criticism, but haven’t faced such criticism within the limited circles in which they’ve been discussed. But the most effective criticisms of such arguments is likely to come from people with broadly similar political aims and understandings.

As Daniel Davies once observed, opinion at Crooked Timber, the group blog of which I am a member, runs the gamut from social democrat to democratic socialist, and I have traversed that range in both directions. I get plenty of benefit from arguing with other people in that range and with some a little outside it, such as liberaltarians and (not too dogmatic) Marxists.

Opening up the discussion bubble now.

fn1. At least we on the left, I rarely run across this suggestion in the rightwing media I read.
fn2. TBC, I don’t think the powerful force of my arguments has converted them; rather it’s that people making this kind of shift often have interesting things to say,

Are we creating a society Jane Austen might recognise?

An updated version of an article I wrote a few years back, published in Inside Story

… We need more flexibility. That’s the headline for my latest piece in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/australias-covid-plan-was-designed-before-we-knew-how-delta-would-hit-us-we-need-more-flexibility-168189 (with Richard Holden and Steven Hamilton)

Conclusion

In these rapidly changing times it makes no sense to fix a policy plan based on a months-old model.

We need to respond flexibly to new evidence as it comes to hand. We need to consider all kinds of data, including new evidence on the transmissibility of the virus, estimates of the likely uptake of vaccines, and observations on the way restrictions reduce movement around our cities.

What we don’t need is more speculation about the hypothetical dates and vaccination rates at which various restrictions will be lifted (or perhaps, looking at overseas experience, reimposed). Let’s focus on the facts as they are now.

My contribution to Arena, now online in the September 2021 issue/