Election Day (crossposted at CT)

John Quiggin20 Comments

If I’m not confused by timezone differences, today is election day in Britain and the outcome seems pretty much a foregone conclusion (I haven’t checked the omniscient betting markets, I must admit). So, I’ll look at a more trivial question. If the British government wants to increase voter turnout, why don’t they hold elections on Saturdays instead of Thursdays?

I looked into this question in the case of the US, and there’s a complicated historical explanation, but the central point that, at the time Tuesday was chosen as a polling day, the standard working week was six days, and Sunday was excluded for religious reasons. So it didn’t really matter which day was chosen.

But in an economy where, even with a 24-7 service sector, Saturday is a day off for most people, it seems like a much more convenient choice. For a bunch of reasons, I can’t see the US ever making a change like this[1]. But in Britain it would be easy, and presumably modestly beneficial to Labour, which could therefore push such a change through Parliament any time it wanted.

fn1. First, the US is very conservative in relation to traditions of this kind. Second, the Republican party routinely opposes measures to increase voter turnout.

Costello’s options

John Quiggin36 Comments

I was discussing Costello’s prospects of making it into the Lodge last night, and it struck me that they were not very good. The only way Howard is going to falter badly enough to be sackable is if the economy goes sour, but then Costello will share the blame.

The optimal strategy, and also the standard one, does not seem to have been discussed as an option (feel free to correct me). If he wants the top job, Costello should resign from Cabinet, head for the backbench, and deliver a dignified speech about Howard’s shortcomings. In this scenario, a downturn in the economy hits the trifecta for Costello: his reputation as a masterful economic manager would be enhanced, whichever of his rivals took on the Treasury portfolio would be discredited and Howard would get the blame for alienating the only man who could run the economy properly[1].

If you look at Australia’s political history over the past 25 years, this approach has been pursued with success quite a few times: Peacock, Keating, Latham and Beazley all retired to the backbench to await the call, and none did so in vain, though only Keating (so far) has gone all the way to the Lodge.

fn1. I don’t think the correlation between economic performance and the competence of the Treasurer is all that great, but my opinions on this matter aren’t really relevant.

Winning the unwinnable?

John Quiggin8 Comments

I was reading a fairly sensible analysis of the UK election in The Economist when I came across this

There are echoes in this of a campaign involving Lynton Crosby, Mr Howard’s chief strategist, in Australia in 1996. It looked as though the Labor prime minister, Paul Keating, could not lose the election—until his opponent, John Howard, suggested that the electorate use its voice to “send a messageâ€? to Mr Keating. The tactic worked, and John Howard won a surprise victory.

As i recall it, the only person at all surprised by the election outcome was Paul Keating. And the only catchphrase i can remember from the campaign was “relaxed and comfortable”.

Departure

John Quiggin1 Comment

James Russell has shuttered his blog. Hot Buttered Death It’s one of a handful that were around back in the Mesozoic Era of 2002, when I first started blogging, and I’ve always enjoyed his rather offbeat approach. Still, blogging takes its toll, and James has decided to pack it in. So long and thanks for all the fish!

Contracts and casualisation

John Quiggin46 Comments

It’s the May Day holiday in Queensland, which I’ve observed by starting my long-promised post on contract employment and casualisation. What I have so far is only a first attempt at tackling the issues.

The two big changes in working life in Australia over the past twenty-five years or so have been, first, the reversal of the long-standing trend towards shorter working hours under standard conditions of full-time full-year employment, and, second, the displacement of full-time full-year employment by various combinations of part-time, casual and contract employment.

I’ve written a bit about working hours and holidays in the past, and Jason Soon has more. So I’ll talk a bit about the other developments.
Read More »

Monday Message Board

John Quiggin60 Comments

It’s time for the regular Monday message board, where you are invited to post your thoughts on any topic. I’m still planning a May Day post on labour issues, but I’d be interested in your thoughts. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

Short-changing Iraq

John Quiggin21 Comments

While I was thinking about Iraq, I ran across this Washington Post story headlined Power Grid In Iraq Far From Fixed and with the front-page lead-in “After two years and $1.2 billion, U.S. effort to resuscitate electrical system is wide of its mark”.

Given the $1.2 billion figure, there’s no need to read the rest of the article. The electricity grid here in South-East Queensland (pop 2.5 million as against Iraq’s 20 million) experienced some blackouts last year, and the distributor, Energex is planning to spend over $A3 billion (about US$2.4 billion) over the next five years to fix the problems[1]. That’s to upgrade a network which has suffered from some underinvestment, but nothing remotely comparable to the two wars and decade of sanctions Iraq has had to deal with. Put simply, $1.2 billion is chickenfeed, and could not be expected to do more than prevent further deterioration.

And electricity grids need generation as well as distribution. $US 1.2 billion spent here in Australia would buy one decent sized power station, say 1500 Megawatts generating capacity. That’s not even enough to replace the capacity that was wrecked, neglected to the point of collapse or comprehensively looted for parts during the war and its aftermath. And of course, construction in a war zone is many times dearer than in Australia.

In this piece, written shortly after the war, I concluded

If there is to be a reasonable chance of establishing a stable democratic government, it will be necessary to spend at least $US25 billion and probably $US50 billion. Australia’s share would probably be at least $A1 billion. This is a large sum of money, but Bush, Blair and Howard had no trouble finding the same amount to fight the war. Regardless of whether individual Australians supported or opposed the war, we are stuck with the obligations we have collectively assumed.

In fact, as far as I can tell, the amount of money that has actually been spent on reconstruction so far is around $5 billion, and the amount left over from the US appropriation of $18 billion, after overheads and diversions to security is between $5 billion and $10 billion. The World Bak Trust Fund, set up in 2003 with pledges of around $10 billion, mostly from Japan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, currently contains about $300 million.

fn1. Disclosure and disclaimer: I’m on the board of the Queensland Competition Authority which regulates Energex. I’m not expressing any opinions about Energex, apart from the generally accepted point that there was underinvestment in the past. I’m just using it as an example with which I’m familiar.
Read More »

MayDay again

John Quiggin15 Comments

Another year, another May Day, reminding me that I still haven’t got round to my long-planned posts on the erosion of workers’ rights under the present (and for that matter the preceding) government.

In the short term, though, the most important historical fact about May 1 is that it’s the anniversary of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on Iraq in 2003. When I wrote about this anniversary last year, I observed

the anniversary of Bush declaration of victory looks as good a time as any to date what seems increasingly certain to be a defeat [at least for the policies that have been pursued for the last year] … The Administration seems to be inching towards the position I’ve been advocating for some time – dumping the policies of Bremer and Chalabi (though not, unfortunately Bremer and Chalabi themselves), and handing over real military power to Iraqis. If the interim (still inchoate) government has substantial real power, manages to hold early elections and can get enough support to permit a rapid US withdrawal, the outcome might not be too bad. But there’s very little time left, and this scenario assumes exceptionally skilful management of the situation from now on.

How do things look a year later? Bremer is gone, thankfully, and I doubt that there’s anyone left who would suggest that the Coalition Provisional Administration he ran was anything better than a set of incompetent bunglers who achieved less than nothing[1]. Chalabi, by contrast, seems to be the eternal survivor, . The Americans dumped him after all, but he promptly switched sides and has popped up as some sort of Deputy Prime Minister in the new Iraqi government and looks set to get the lucrative oil ministry he’s been after for so long..
Read More »

Back to DTP

John Quiggin10 Comments

When I first started using Macs, back in 1984, one of the big selling points was desktop publishing. The resulting explosion in amateur publishing produced some pretty awful results, but the net impact was a huge increase in the quality of computer-generated output, which went from being almost unreadably awful to quite pleasant to read. I produced a bunch of things in the 80s, including various newsletters and even a book of satirical songs, using long-dead packages like ReadySetGo and Deluxe Music Construction Set[1].

But once the real professionals started using packages like Quark and Pagemaker, the competition got a bit too hard, and I stopped worrying about page layout. Now however, I’ve started having some real fun with Apple’s iWork package, consisting of Keynote, a presentation package, and Pages, a page layout program. They produce really nice output, but are still easy and fun to use.

I’ve been working on the annual report for the Risk and Sustainable Management Group which is the little team I’ve set up to run my ARC Federation Fellowship and Discovery projects. If I can get the PDF file down to a manageable size, I’ll post the report here when it’s done. In the meantime, feel free to check out what we’ve been up to here and here.

fn1. Having picked the minority platform, I showed a fairly unerring instinct for minority software packages. I still use NisusWriter rather than the ubiquitous and awful MS Word for most of my word processing, and Bookends rather than Endnote for bibliographic stuff. Both well worth a look if you’re a Mac user unhappy with the usual offerings.