Memories of Chowilla

John Quiggin10 Comments

Also a bit belatedly, my Fin column from Thursday. I got a call from a cotton grower who was upset by the column, but as we talked about it, was reacting more to the general tendency to demonise irrigators, something I’ve criticised in the past . It’s important not to blame people for decisions that made sense in the light of public policy at the time, and certainly, those of us who wear cotton clothing are in no position to talk as if growing cotton is a bad thing. That said, too much water was allocated in the past, leading to a situation where promised allocations can’t be met and the residual flow to the environmental is disastrously low. We need a policy that allows farmers positive opportunities for adaptation through the sale of water rights at a fair and acceptable price.

Update The Bonfire of the Vanities dvd

88 Minutes rip

This column was perfectly timed. On the very day it came out, Victoria caved in on allowing water sales to the Commonwealth, though South Australia still wants the remaining restrictions lifted.

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Economists and public debt

John Quiggin82 Comments
.!.

Belatedly, thanks to site crises, I’m linking to Nicholas Gruen, who organised this article in Wednesday’s Fin, signed by 21 prominent economists from across the political spectrum (text over the fold).

Combined with the good GDP number released the same day (I discussed it at Crooked Timber , this letter does as Peter Martin says, leave the opposition looking naked. They haven’t really offered any analysis to justify their opposition to economic stimulus, and unless the rest of the year brings really bad economic news, it’s hard to see them recovering any credibility on economic issues. Unsurprisingly, the government ran with it in Parliament , and the best Joe Hockey could do in response was to sneer at Bernie Fraser.

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Fitzgibbon out, Faulkner in

John Quiggin12 Comments

The departure of Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon is, on balance, good news for the Rudd government. Most importantly, in the first real test case, Rudd has stuck to his ministerial standards rather than bend the rules for a close ally. Fitzgibbon had received the benefit of the doubt a couple of times, but allowing his office to be used by a family member for lobbying was just too much. (Note the family motif in most of Fitzgibbon’s problems – another argument against hereditary MPs).

A scandal of this kind is never good, but such things are inevitable. That the Rudd government has suffered only one such loss after 18 months in office compares very favorable with state Labor governments and with the Howard government, which lost a string of ministers and Parliamentary secretaries before Howard threw out the rules to save Warwick Parer – after that, there was scarcely a member of the Cabinet who wasn’t implicated in some kind of corrupt or dodgy dealing.

Finally, if there’s any truth to the claim that Defence staff were undermining Fitzgibbon to block his reform agenda, they scored a Pyhrric victory here. John Faulkner is going to cause them much more grief than Fitzgibbon ever could.

Back on air

John Quiggin10 Comments

The site went down this morning and my hosts at Joyent diagnosed a problem with the red theme I was using, so I’ve temporarily switched to blue.

Quite by chance, this matches some words of a song I wrote a long time ago, which, I just found out were sung by Warren Fahey on Radio National Breakfast this AM. You can listen here (near the end).

I’ve added a caching plug-in to speed up performance. Please advise if you notice any benefit, or any adverse side effects. If you are locked out altogether, you can email me or reach me on Facebookfinal conflict the download

Rising Damp dvd

Queensland privatisations: good, bad and ugly

John Quiggin34 Comments

I’ve been opining in all sorts of media on the Queensland government’s asset sales programs. A couple of general points, both favorable.

1. The government has said that the sale process will take 3-5 years, and that the assets won’t sold if the offers are inadequate. They need to be held to this
2. The privatisation story has swamped the abolition of the fuel subsidy. At some level, I think everyone recognises that this program was at best an unaffordable luxury in the current environment, and at worst a counterproductive and damaging misuse of public funds.

Coming to the asset sales, and with a whole day to reflect on a $7 billion program here are my provisional views

Good: Queensland Forests. State forestry has never made commercial sense, since the timber industry has always had effective control, ensuring no proper return on the public capital investment. There were moves towards reform, but plenty of obstacles. Easier to let a private buyer set commercial prices

Bad: Queensland motorways. Toll roads are bad, private toll roads are worse. We need a comprehensive system of road pricing, with congestion as the main driver. The existence of privately owned toll roads is a huge obstacle to this goal

Ugly: QR coal freight and coal terminals. There are potential gains here, but there are also some huge traps, as illustrated by disastrous rail privatisations elsewhere. And there will be a lot of problems with wages and working conditions to be sorted out. I don’t think the government will be able to get away with using privatisation as a backdoor route to large-scale redundancies, but a sale with union conditions attached will have obvious problems

Indifferent: Port of Brisbane. A regulated monopoly asset with secure returns. Selling this and using the proceeds to repay debt doesn’t really change anything but perhaps it will fool Standard and Poors.

Queensland budget

John Quiggin29 Comments

Big news just now. The Bligh government has abolished the fuel subsidy with effect from 1 July, and announced the sale of a huge range of asset s, with QR coal freight, Port of Brisbane and others to be privatised.

I support the first of these measures (with marginal regret that they didn’t take up my idea for a phase-out starting five years ago when I first put it up).

As for the asset sales, they need to be evaluated on a case by case basis. A crucial requirement is a high reserve price and a willingness to retain the asset in public ownership if this price is not realised. In the current environment, the government’s estimates look optimistic, but I haven’t seen any detail yet.

A detailed response to come, when I get a free moment.

Update: I just did an interview for 7:30 report, so you may get to hear a minute or so of my thoughts on the subject tonight

What is to be done?*

John Quiggin54 Comments

I’m working on a bunch of essays, book chapters and maybe even a book or two in response to the global financial crisis, making the general point that the sudden collapse of the neoliberal order has found social democrats unprepared for the shift from a long defensive struggle to the opportunity (and need!) to develop a progressive response to the crisis. As obvious examples, it’s necessary to reconstruct the global financial system and to ensure that the burden of the debts that are building up so rapidly is not borne by the poor, who did nothing to create the crisis. This piece (PDF) is an example of what I’m thinking.

I have plenty of ideas about policy (though of course I’m always interested in new ones). But, I don’t have much of a feeling for the political strategies that are needed, so I thought I would try the crowdsourcing thing, which has worked pretty well for me in the past .

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