The acquittal of Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley on charges of manslaughter and assault leading to the death of Cameron Doomadgee (Mulrunji) does not resolve all the issues raised by this tragedy. I won’t comment on, or discuss, the trial itself. The jury has given its verdict and Hurley is entitled to treat it as conclusive.
The whole sequence of events shows failure by the Queensland state at every level.
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It’s the winter solstice and this blog is five years old today. Not the oldest in the blogosphere by any means, but older than most.
The appreciation of the euro against the dollar has taken the currency close to its highest value ever around $1.35. By contrast, the rate estimated as Purchasing Power Parity by the Penn World Tables International Comparisons Project (ICP) is around $1.00 for most eurozone countries (It’s 1.10 for Italy, 1.05 for France and Germany, 0.96 for the Netherlands. The price differential between eurozone countries is interesting in itself, but that’s another post).
A gap of this magnitude between market exchange rates and estimated PPP values raises all sorts of problems. For example, using the Penn numbers, income per person in the Netherlands is about 75 per cent of that in the US, and this number is often quoted on the assumption that purchasing-power parity means exactly what it says. But using exchange rates, as would have been standard a couple of decades ago, income per person is a little higher in the Netherlands than in the US. Which of these comparisons, if either, is valid?
Technical problems are continuing to plague me. The main page http://www.johnquiggin.com/index.php appears to load reasonably reliably, but http://johnquiggin.com and http://www.johnquiggin.com, which should do the same, often produce blank pages. I thought this might be caused by the wp-cache plugin, but I’ve turned it off and the problem persists. If anyone has any ideas how to fix this, please advise.
It’s time, once again for the Monday Message Board. As usual, civilised discussion and absolutely no coarse language, please.
As the end of the financial year is approaching, it’s a great time to give charitable donations. I’ve used up all the gimmicks I could think of for the Great Australian Shave appeal, so this is going to be a bog-standard fundraiser. I’m giving $500 to Oxfam as my last donation for 2006-07. Anyone who would like to be part of a collective effort can announce their donation in comments, or (if you’re modest) in email to me. I’ll post a running total until 30 June. Give to whatever charity you choose, and whatever amount you can manage.
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain. I’ve bought a lovely Folio edition of this, and have just got started on it. While I’m not a book fetishist, and am perfectly happy to do most of my reading on screen, the book does embody a great tradition of craft values, which will, I hope, never disappear.
I once doubted that user-produced video would amount to much. This beautiful montage is one of many on YouTube that prove me wrong. (Via Jeff Weintraub, via Norm Geras)
On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether I can make the necessary code work. In the meantime, go here
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.
Following the collapse of its delusionist position on climate change, and the manifest failure of the war in Iraq it pushed hard, and with contempt for anyone who warned of the likely results, The Australian had a lot of ground to make up if it was to regain its status as a credible participant in Australian public debate. A straightforward admission of error, unlikely as it ever was, would probably have been the most effective way of achieving this goal. The more traditional route, safe enough in the days before Internet archives would be to change tack and simply forget about past mistakes. It seemed, a week or so ago, that the Oz would go that way.
Instead we’ve had a series of increasingly bizarre editorials, in which the national daily reads as if it is on the losing side in a blogospheric flamewar. The editorial on Saturday (the headline Editorial: Reality bites the psychotic Left gives the drift) made no sense until Clive Hamilton gave the backstory in New Matilda, showing how the Oz did its best to squelch Clive’s justified criticism in Scorcher. The Oz has come back with even sillier responses, such as today’s odd little snark (end of the page)
Although the Oz has been happy to personalise this dispute, demonising Clive and dragging in the usual suspects like Robert Manne for good measure, I’d rather not do so. Quite a few people I’ve generally respected at the Oz have gone way over the top in relation to both global warming and Iraq. My attempts to warn some of them that the paper was in danger of discrediting itself fell on deaf ears.
The problem appears to be institutional rather than individual. On these and other issues, the whole culture of The Australian has become insulate itself from reality in the same way as the US right. Now that reality is rudely obtruding itself, the reaction has been thoroughly counterproductive.
Given the inevitable parochialism of the Sydney and Melbourne Fairfax papers, the narrow focus of the Fin and the poor quality of papers elsewhere, Australia needs a high-quality national daily. The Australian went a fair way towards meeting this need in the past, admittedly with a clearly rightwing orientation. But the last few years have been disastrous, and it’s hard to see how the paper can recover now without a radical shakeup.
More from Tim Dunlop inside the news.com.au tent at blogocracy.
John Quiggin 