Second thoughts

John Quiggin29 Comments

In a recent post, here and on Crooked Timber, I remarked on the fact that hardly any self-described climate sceptics had revised their views in response to the recent years of record-breaking global temperatures. Defending his fellow “sceptics”, Crooked Timber commenter Cassander wrote

When’s the last time you changed your mind as a result of the evidence? It’s not something people do very often.

I’m tempted by the one-word response “Derp“. But the dangers of holding to a position regardless of the evidence are particularly severe for academics approaching emeritus age[1]. So, I gave the question a bit of thought.

Here are three issues on which I’ve changed my mind over different periods

* Central planning
* War and the use of violence in politics
* The best response to climate change
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Dealing with racism

John Quiggin36 Comments

The Senate results are in, and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has won four seats. That’s not a disaster in itself. The point of democracy is that everyone gets a say, including bigots and racists. One Nation members, including Hanson herself, have been elected to Parliament before now, without doing any great harm.

That’s because the major parties have, until nowl taken a principled stand against racism, putting One Nation last in their preference allocations and refusing to do deals. Tony Abbott took the fight against One Nation even further (too far in my view) pushing the prosecution of Hanson for alleged breaches of the electoral act (she was convicted and jailed, but ultimately freed on appeal).

Following the Senate election, however, it will be impossible for the government to pass legislation opposed by Labor and the Greens unless they have the support of the One Nation party. Already, the Oz is pointing out how convenient it will be for Turnbull to be able to bargain with Hanson for her four votes, as opposed to the splintered remnants of the Palmer United Party in the last Senate.

The correct response, advocated by the LNP in relation to the “tainted” votes of Craig Thomson and (in Queensland) Billy Gordon, would be to nullify One Nation votes by directing four government Senators to cast opposing votes. Of course, that’s not going to happen. Failing that, the only response that avoids complicity in racism is a refusal to have any dealings with One Nation. That is, the government while accept One Nation’s votes in favor of government legislation, they should not discuss it or modify it, let alone offer support for One Nation proposals.

Of course, the same applies to Labor on the handful of issues (such as a Royal Commission into Banking) where they might be in agreement with One Nation. If securing a majority on any particular issue involves making deals of any kind with Hanson, it would be better to lose.

It seems likely, however, that Turnbull is going to treat One Nation, for the first time in Australia, as a normal political party, and to negotiate with Hanson as an equal. That would be a new low for him, and for Australia. And, sooner or later, it will come back to bit him and the LNP. For an object lesson in the dangers of courting racist votes while maintaining a claim to be non-racist, he need only look at the US Republican party,

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Should the census be compulsory?

John Quiggin71 Comments

There’s been a lot of discussion about the ABS decision to retain names and addresses in the Census until 2020 rather than deleting them more rapidly as in the past. Although the details differ, there’s been a dispute of this kind before every Census I can recall. Rather than debate the details, I’d like to think about the question: should the Census be compulsory, and if not what kind of requirement should there be?

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For his own self-respect, Turnbull should quit

John Quiggin85 Comments

As I mentioned in my last post, Turnbull’s narrow win has left us with a government standing for nothing but delaying various inevitable outcomes, including
* equal marriage;
* participation in global action on climate change; and, most notably
* Turnbull’s removal from office, whether by voters or, more likely, by his own colleagues.

The “economic plan” on which the government was supposedly elected consists of a single element, a cut in company taxes mostly deferred far enough beyond the forward estimates to dodge the question of how it will be paid for. In any case, it’s dead in the water, as, in all likelihood is the pretext for the double dissolution, the ABCC bill.

Turnbull’s lame duck status was made farcically clear by Cabinet’s non-decision on Kevin Rudd’s proposed nomination as UN Secretary General. The Right-dominated party didn’t even bother to overrule Julie Bishop (and, pretty obviously, Turnbull’s own inclination). Instead, they told Turnbull to make a “captain’s call”, while making it clear that the wrong call would be fatal.

If Turnbull had any self-respect left, he’d resign and let this crew sort out their own mess. Instead, he gets to hang on in office, at the price of being made a fool of on a daily basis.

Crossing the floor

John Quiggin16 Comments

Back in the day, it used to be claimed as one of the glories of the Liberal and National Parties that their MPs had freedom to vote as they chose, while Labor MPs were bound by Caucus solidarity, except in the case of an explicit “conscience vote”, which has been traditionally confined to issues of (sexual) morality.

I had the impression that his freedom was now only a memory in the LNP, but this story has George Christensen threatening to cross the floor over the government’s superannuation reforms. The defeat of a key budget measure in the House of Representatives is (I would have thought) tantamount to a vote of no confidence in the government. Nevertheless, the story goes on to cite Barnaby Joyce as defending Christensen’s right to vote against the government and says that Joyce himself has crossed the floor 28 times.

I’m genuinely bemused here. If it’s OK to vote against budget policies, what can it mean to say that Liberal MPs are not free to vote as they choose on equal marriage? What is the penalty for doing so? If there is none, why don’t we see anyone willing to do so?
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We don’t need another Royal Commission

John Quiggin20 Comments

I haven’t had much to say about Australian politics since the election. That’s because I see the Turnbull government as a nullity, which will achieve nothing however long it survives.

Turnbull’s first substantive action since the election (in fact, since the election was called) only confirms me in this view. It’s a knee-jerk reaction to a TV program, the Four Corners report documenting appalling abuse in a juvenile detention facility in the NT. Rather than considering any coherent attempt to consider and address the issues, Turnbull offered the most clichéd possible response “when in doubt, call a Royal Commission”. He made it lazier still, by proposing that the Commission focus on this single facility, and has now reluctantly agreed that it should look at the NT as a whole.

For once, I’m in agreement with the Oz. We already have a Royal Commission looking at institutional abuse of young people, which could easily have its terms extended to cover this.

More importantly, we don’t need any more Royal Commissions to establish that institutions are failing young people in trouble. The real issues are much more intractable than finding and punishing some abusers.

To start with, there’s the fact that, throughout the country, services for young people in trouble are chronically underfunded and overstretched. If Turnbull had announced that the money he was planning to give to corporations would be used to help young people instead, that would have been some genuinely decisive action. But that would be politically impossible.

Still, at least in the case of youth services, it’s obvious what needs to be done. The bigger problems of social breakdown and family crisis are much more complicated and difficult to handle. But these aren’t the kinds of question that can be handled by a press release or a Royal Commission.

Do climate sceptics exist?

John Quiggin60 Comments

June 2016 was the hottest month globally since records began in 1880, and marks the fourteenth record month in a row. For the great majority of people who’ve been following scientific findings on climate, there’s no great surprise there. There is very strong evidence both for the existence of a warming trend due mainly to emissions of carbon dioxide, and for the occurrence of a peak in the El Nino/Southern Oscillation index. Combine the two, and a record high temperature is very likely.

But suppose you were a strongly sceptical person, who required more evidence than others to accept a scientific hypothesis, such as that of of anthropogenic climate change. Presumably, you would treat the evidence of the last couple of years as supporting the hypothesis. Perhaps this supporting evidence would be sufficient that you would regard the hypothesis as confirmed beyond reasonable doubt, perhaps not, but either way, you would be more favorably inclined than before. And, if you were a public commentator, willing to state your views honestly, you would say so.

Does such a sceptic exist? I haven’t seen one, although I follow the debate fairly closely. In fact, in the 25 years or so in which I’ve been following the issue, I can only recall one instance of someone described as a “sceptic” changing their view in the light of the evidence. And of course, his fellow sceptics, who’d been promising that his research would reveal massive errors in the temperature record, immediately decided that he’d never really been one of them. In any case, while Muller was and remains a scientific sceptic, he’s no longer a climate sceptic.

Operationally, it’s clear that the term “climate sceptic” means someone whose criteria for convincing evidence are those set out by the Onion.

I’d be happy to be proved wrong (by counterexample), but as far as I can see, if the ordinary usage of the term “sceptic” is applied, the world population of genuine climate sceptics is zero.