Thoughts on Beattie’s resignation

John Quiggin17 Comments

A few thoughts, not well organised, which I may update

* Labor has now changed leaders in five states, twice as a result of illness and three times because of a voluntary decision to retire, with no sign of any damage as a result. Such a string of smooth transitions is almost unprecedented in Australian political history where the rule is that all careers end in failure (defeat by the electorate or by a party rival, or resignation in disgrace)

* Following from the previous point, if the Federal Libs get the drubbing predicted by the opinion polls and Rudd doesn’t run rapidly into disaster, Labor will be established as the natural party of government. It’s hard to see how the Liberals, for whom success is the main raison d’etre could survive this for long

* I imagine Beattie’s departure will take the sting out of the council amalgamations issue in Queensland, which will be a gift to Kevin Rudd in a couple of marginal seats such as Herbert.

* Obviously, this has contributed to the pressure on Howard to follow Beattie’s example. I can’t see him caving in to this, nor can I see a last-minute switch to Costello doing the government any good. On the other hand, the way things are going, this is Costello’s last chance to be PM, if only for six weeks or so.

The Sydney Declaration – mostly harmless

John Quiggin20 Comments

Unsurprisingly, the APEC leaders meeting in Sydney have signed a statement on climate change, grandly described as the
Sydneydeclaration
Sydney Declaration and described by Dennis Shanahan and Cameron Stewart in the Oz as a ‘sweeping triumph’.

It’s unsurprising because once the host nation has proposed a topic, it’s pretty much unthinkable for a meeting like APEC to break up without some sort of agreement, because such agreements commonly have grandiose titles and because the Oz … well, you get the idea.

Most of the attention so far has been focused on the set of initiatives referred to as the “APEC Action Agenda”, which includes various voluntary steps on energy efficiency, reafforestation and so forth. As my co-author Frank Jotzo notes, “In practical terms, that will mean almost nothing”. A fair indication of the significance of this agenda is its treatment by the New York Times, which gives a one-line link to the AP wire service report in which Jotzo is cited. The Washington Post has a story on the Bush-Howard statement a couple of days ago, but nothing so far on the great Declaration.

The really important point, though, is the section on Future International Action which begins “We reaffirm our commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).” (Kyoto is a protocol to this convention). There’s more, spelling out the post-Kyoto bargaining process embodied in UNFCCC In other words, the idea that APEC would produce an alternative to Kyoto, or a post-Kyoto agreeement outside the UNFCCC is dead.
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Fat and thin

John Quiggin37 Comments

The latest Scientific American is all about food and includes the striking fact that there are now more people who are overweight or obese (1.3 billion) than people who are chronically malnourished (800 million). This makes it obvious that the world could feed all its people if we had the right social organisation. It’s closely related to the fact that there are now more rich people (by any historical standard, most people in developed countries are rich) than very poor people (income of less than $1US a day). The overlap here isn’t perfect – most of the malnourished are very poor, but obesity is mostly a problem of relatively poor people in rich countries, and it’s now common in poor and middle-income countries as well.

The main point though is that we have the resources to end poverty. Doubling the income of the very poor would cost about $300 billion a year, which is pretty close to the 0.7 per cent of total rich country income that was promised as a target for foreign aid years ago. We’ve got nowhere near that, and much of what is given doesn’t go to the very poor. Admittedly, there will always be leakage, but if the rich countries were prepared to allocate as little as 2 per cent of their income to a well-planned and well-funded effort, we could surely pull most people out of extreme poverty. The task would be made even easier if the benefits growth in China and India, both of which still have many very poor people) were spread a bit more evenly.

Foreclosure and bankruptcy

John Quiggin2 Comments

A few weeks ago, I noticed this piece saying that the mortgage problem in the UK might be worse than that in the US. The reason given (also applicable to Australia) is that the UK boom or bubble in house prices has been much more dramatic than in the US. One statistic quoted in the piece was that there were 14 000 foreclosures in the first half of 2007 a statistic that, as the author notes, makes grim reading. It’s striking then, to read this piece in the NYTimes, predicting 2 million foreclosures in the US this year (since most mortgages are taken out by couples, many with children, the number of people affected is probably more like 4 million). Even allowing for the larger population in the US, this is a huge difference. It now appears that foreclosure has taken over from bankruptcy as the primary mode of financial catastrophe. (Bankruptcy rates plummeted after the “reform” of 2005, but seem certain to rebound in coming months).

Taking Aboriginal land

John Quiggin38 Comments

One of the striking features of the government’s intervention in Aboriginal communities, embodied in the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 was how rapidly the ostensible motive of intervening to tackle social problems, most notably child abuse, was swallowed by the ideological push to refashion property rights, taking over land owned by Aboriginal communities, with the presumed goal of turning it into individualised private property

A question that’s come up a couple of times and to which I haven’t seen an answer is how this squares with the Constitutional requirement for “just terms” in acquisition of land and other property, and also the statutory requirements of the Lands Acquisition Act (unless these have been overridden by the latest legislation). Is there anyone with a legal background who can comment on this?

Update Several commenters suggest that the focus on the land grab is a reflection of the left’s concern with process issues or political advantage, and a lack of concern about child abuse. So it was striking to read in yesterday’s Crikey a pice by Anna Lamboys saying that that with half of the government’s six-month time frame completed, there are now some figures on
(a) the number of arrests for child sex abuse laid as a result of the intervention
(b) the number of referrals to child protection authorities
Results are over the fold
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Weekend reflections

John Quiggin8 Comments

Weekend Reflections is on again. Please comment on any topic of interest (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). Feel free to put in contributions more lengthy than for the Monday Message Board or standard comments.