A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.
Monday Message Board
Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
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A small win in the class war
The comprehensive drubbing received by the LNP in yesterday’s by-elections has a number of implications. It’s another effective repudiation of the absurd literalism of the High Court: candidates claimed by the Court to be ineligible to represent us due to supposed dual loyalties have yet again been re-elected after jumping through the required hoops. Meanwhile, a number of Parliamentarians whose paperwork met the Court’s absurd standards, but who were shown to be actual agents of foreign influence, have been forced out by public pressure rather than court rulings.
More importantly, though, it’s a defeat for the Turnbull government’s class war agenda, including huge tax cuts for companies and upper income earners, attacks on Shorten’s union background, and the nomination of hereditary member Georgina Downer in the family property of Mayo. Labor campaigned successfully on the theme of “money for hospitals, not banks”. As a result, the government is now facing internal pressure to drop the tax cuts for big business that have not yet been legislated.
A side effect is that speculation about the Labor leadership has been killed off. Before Saturday, poll results were suggesting that Labor would win narrowly with Shorten, but easily with Albanese. However, to the extent that Albanese was positioning himself for a run, it was on the basis of unconditional surrender in the class war. Clearly, that would have implied a very different campaign to the one that actually worked for Labor.
The tip of the iceberg
The pursuit of wrongdoing by unions and union officials by the Abbott-Turnbull government has been highly successful in producing evidence of wrongdoing. The problem is that the wrongdoing has been that of the pursuers, not the pursued. Some examples
* The forced resignation of Australian Building and Construction Commission chairman Nigel Hadkiss, after he was found to have breached the Act he was supposed to be enforcing
* Two separate cases in which the Australian Federal Police were forced to compensate the CFMEU and its officials for unlawful seizure of documents, wrongful arrest and other offences
* A string of failed prosecutions of union officials, many of them obviously involving an abuse of process. The classic was one dismissed by the judge in which an official was charged for “having a cup of tea with a mate”
* The forced resignation of Michaela Cash’s senior media adviser David De Garis over an improper tipoff to the media regarding an equally improper AFP raid on the AWU
* The finding that Trade Union Royal Commission star witness Kathy Jackson misappropriated union funds, the very offence for which she had previously appeared as a whistleblower
But this is just, as Commissioner Dyson Heydon might say, the tip of the iceberg. It’s pretty clear that a more comprehensive inquiry would reveal extensive wrongdoing by senior ministers, and just about everyone involved in the Commission.
Alphabet soup of denialism
In the last week we’ve had reports on the future of the electricity system from the ACCC, AEMO and ESB. These acronymic bodies all share in the responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in today. Their reports are not only inconsistent with each other in critical respects, but internally incoherent.
The one thing they have in common is that they all assume that Australia should do nothing more about climate change. In this, they are reflecting the Trumpist views of our government, restated more elegantly by its vapid frontman, Malcolm Turnbull.
The idea that these denialist policies could somehow represent a solution to the dispute over energy policy in Australia is bizarre. When and if the Trumpists are defeated, we will need a radical increase in ambition. A carbon price should be part of this, but the policy disasters of the last five years mean that much more drastic action will be needed.
The only benefit of the last week’s output is to remind us that the entire alphabet soup of bodies running our failing energy season needs to be tipped down the drain and replaced with a publicly owned grid, and a radical transformation of electricity generation, phasing out coal as rapidly as possible.
Some big news …
… least for me. Princeton University Press has agreed to publish my book, Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work and Why they can Fail so Badly. I’ve been working on it for seven years, but it’s finally done. It should be published in the first half of 2019.
Stay tuned for news on a possible Australian edition.
What I’ve been writing in the last seven years or so (Part 1)
Now that I’ve finished a draft manuscript of my book, Economics in Two Lessons, I’m getting around to jobs I’ve been putting off for a long time (I started the book in 2011), such as updating my CV. At the moment, I’m working on publications in Internet outlets such as Aeon, The Conversation and the ABC’s (sadly departed now), The Drum. I’ve listed a bunch over the fold. The titles are mostly self-explanatory, so please take a look at any that seem likely to be interesting. If you’re so inclined, please comment.
There are plenty more to come, as and when I get free time and the inclination.
Sandpit
A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.
Monday Message Board
Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
If you would like to subscribe to an occasional email about my activities, please sign up using the following link
Ghosts of privatisations past … and future?
Most people won’t recognise the name “Leo Hielscher” unless they regularly cross the eponymous* bridge (better known by its original name, the Gateway). But he is a figure of great consequence in Queensland, responsible for the downfall of two governments. Hielscher ran the state’s finances for decades, and was the architect of the Bjelke-Petersen strategy of an extractive economy based low taxes, low services and low skill. His proudest boast was the state’s AAA credit rating
The low point of his career was probably the leadup to the 2009 election when Anna Bligh announced that, rather than cut infrastructure spending or sell assets in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, she would allow the state’s credit rating to be reduced to AA+. Bligh was re-elected, and promptly announced a massive program of asset sales. This was one of the rare instances where I was directly involved in the policy process, providing advice to the Queensland Council of Unions, and in this capacity I got to observe Hielscher in action. He was very effective in pushing the (economically spurious) case for asset sales and the need to regain the AAA rating.
Bligh, and her Treasurer, Andrew Fraser pushed through the asset sales and pushed the Labor government off a cliff, being reduced to seven members at the 2012 election. Of course, Bligh landed on her feet, ending up as CEO of the Australian Bankers Association. I didn’t get such a ringside view of the process that led Campbell Newman and Tim Nicholls to adopt their catastrophic “Strong Choices” asset sales campaign, but I have no doubt that Hielscher played a significant role in the background. Both Campbell and Nicholls have duly been consigned to well-deserved political oblivion.
Now the rightwing Australian Institute of Progress has staged a reunion.
John Quiggin 