Economic rationalism, water and conservation

John Quiggin18 Comments

Following on from yesterday’s post , I note that
Howard has moved quickly to oppose the idea of urban-rural water trade. Putting on my economic rationalist hat, it’s hard to see the rationale for this, and certainly those offered in the article are incoherent.

In thinking about irrigation water and trading, I always find it useful to mentally substitute “land” for “water” and see what conclusions you draw. The analogy doesn’t work perfectly, since water is movable and land is not, but it often works well enough to be helfpul.
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Labor roots

John Quiggin70 Comments

In the Monday Message Board, Paul Norton points to this piece by Trevor Smith of the CFMEU, advocating a culturally conservative agenda for Labor, and points to similarities with Michael Thompson’s Labor Without Class. There is one important difference, in that Thompson sought to combine cultural conservatism with support for economic rationalism, while Smith is opposing it.

I reviewed Thompson’s book when it came out (over the fold). The conclusion I drew was that it was, in effect, a policy manifesto for Howard.

I’m not necessarily averse to a conservative approach. And I’m no fan of cafe latte. Still, I don’t think the apparent equation of “conservative” with “whatever Howard supports” is valid. And I don’t think much of Smith’s one concrete example, the fight over Tasmanian forests, the issue on which Smith and his union sold out Labor’s chances last year and helped to give us such blessings industrial relations reform. If conserving our natural environment isn’t conservative, what is?
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Bradfield in reverse

John Quiggin20 Comments

Australians have long been captivated by the idea of turning coastal rivers back, to irrigate the dry inland. The most famous advocate of such a scheme was John Bradfield, designer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Such schemes have always foundered on the ugly physical fact that water is heavy. Any significant amount of uphill pumping is prohibitively costly, so schemes of this kind require lots of expensive tunnelling, and can only get access to water from the upper slopes of the Great Dividing Range.

As coastal populations have grown, we’ve seen increasing interest in the reverse option, of taking inland water to the coast. Adelaide is already buying water back from irrigators on the Murray. Current Victorian policy prohibits Melbourne from doing the same, but it’s hard to see this ban being sustained as water restrictions are tightened, and the technical difficulties are not great.

Today’s Australian has a proposal from Dennis O’Neill of the Australian Council for Infrastructure Development to take water from the Tantangara Dam on the Snowy to Sydney, via Googong dam near Canberra. This sounds a lot more expensive than the options for Melbourne and Adelaide, though not in the same league as Colin’s canal. And at least the scheme works with gravity rather than against it. I’ll look forward to seeing a more detailed proposal.

All of this will certainly make for interesting times for irrigators on the Murray-Darling, the main focus of my research and modelling. On the one hand, those who are able to sell water rights stand to do very well. On the other hand, those wanting to buy will be competing with the swimming pools and gardens of the big cities (the uses currently subject to the tightest restrictions).

Request for help: US Quality press ?

John Quiggin13 Comments

I’m busy writing an academic paper on blogging, wikis and so on, which will form the basis of my presentation at the forthcoming Adelaide Festival of Ideas, and as on past occasions, I’m hoping to enlist the help of readers as unpaid research assistants.

I want to compare blogs (or rather plogs) with the mainstream press alternatives, and I’ve started by comparing Australian political blogs with the alternative provided by the quality press, which I say is generally agreed to comprise four newspapers (Age, Australian, Australian Financial Review, and Sydney Morning Herald) [more over the fold]

My question is whether there is a similarly agreed notion of the quality press, applicable to the United States. I read fairly widely, both Internet and print sources, and the only papers I see mentioned regularly are the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and LA Times. Are there others that are similarly taken seriously, or is the whole idea of “quality press” inapplicable given the greater dominance of TV?

<b>Note</b> I imagine most readers will find at least one paper listed above objectionable. I’m going to delete comments bashing particular papers on the grounds of ideological bias, stupid columnists and so on. I’m only interested in whether the paper is taken seriously, either as a source of useful analysis or as a target for criticism.
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Tsunami update

John Quiggin4 Comments

Six months ago, a number of readers of this blog gave generously to the Red Cross Tsunami appeal. I’m planning another appeal before long, and I thought it might be useful to link to this report (PDF file) on what’s being done.

Progress is slow, as a number of recent reports have pointed out, but things would be much worse if not for the generosity of the relief effort.

Aid is good, and so is trade. Watching TV tonight, the beaches of Phuket looked very tempting, and as one of the few hardy tourists pointed out, there’s no real reason to fear another tsunami hitting the same spot. If you’re thinking of a beach holiday, it looks like this might be a great opportunity to get a good deal and do a good turn at the same time.

What I’m reading

John Quiggin10 Comments

“Vision Splendid: A Social And Cultural History of Rural Australia” (Richard Waterhouse) A valuable work in the Raymond Williams cultural tradition, notably free of any desire to interrogate boundaries or supply transgressive hermeneutics, but still capable of challenging some of my preconceptions. I’ve written a review which is over the fold. It’s aimed at my local economics journal, Economic Analysis and Policy, hence the somewhat idiosyncratic focus.
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Weekend reflections

John Quiggin60 Comments

This regular feature is back again. The idea is that, over the weekend, you should post your thoughts in a more leisurely fashion than in ordinary comments or the Monday Message Board.

Please post your thoughts on any topic, at whatever length seems appropriate to you. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

Ferguson out, Tanner in

John Quiggin89 Comments

I haven’t had time to digest the details of Labor’s Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, and of course it’s somewhat academic given that there’s a long period of opposition ahead and no sign of a serious attempt at policy and organisational renewal.

Still, I’m glad that Lindsay Tanner is back on the frontbench. He’s probably the best single candidate for future leadership Labor has at present. And I’m even more pleased to see the dumping of Laurie Ferguson. As far as I know, his sole achievement in politics has been to make a good choice of parents, and he has been an absolute disgrace on refugees, making even Vanstone (may she freeze in hell) look good.

Update Less sensible (in fact, very silly) is the (reported) continued omission of Bob McMullan and Craig Emerson. I have no idea what the rationale was for this, given that the shadow ministry is apparently being expanded.

Was the Pacific solution necessary ?

John Quiggin60 Comments

As the cruel policy of mandatory detention is gradually relaxed (though we should remember that Nauru is still holding prisoners on our behalf), it’s worth considering the claim that the policy was necessary in the crisis situation of 2001, and can be relaxed now because of the Howard government’s border protection measures. To respond to this, it’s necessary to consider what would have happened if we had pursued a different policy, without reliance on mandatory detention or exploiting our neighbours as prison camps.

As an alternative, I’ll consider the option of seeking to discourage boat arrivals through negotiation with Indonesia, and using a system akin to bail, in which only asylum-seekers judged to be at risk of absconding would be subject to detention.

What can we say about this policy? First, the large flow of refugees that caused the crisis in 2001 would have ended anyway, because the fall of the Taliban regime greatly reduced both the flow of refugees from Afghanistan (in fact, many went back) and the chance of making a successful claim. Similarly, although it appears that there is still a net flow out of Iraq, the fall of Saddam has made it very difficult for Iraqis to claim political asylum. It seems reasonable to suppose that we could have obtained the co-operation of the Indonesian authorities with a commitment of diplomatic and financial resources no greater than that required for the Pacific solution, though of course without the kind of instant compliance available from a dependent client like Nauru.

Overall, I’d guess that an alternative policy would have resulted in perhaps 10 000 more boat arrivals, and maybe a similar number of people arriving in other ways. Given that the direct cost of the Pacific solution has been estimated at $500 million, that means that the cost of deterrence is about $25 000 per person, or $100 000 for a family of four. Of course the moral cost of the crimes committed in our name, and with our electoral endorsement is far greater.