Kyoto: the empire strikes back

John Quiggin52 Comments

One of the nice things about being the resident opposition at the Financial Review is that, as well as lots of letters, my articles often attract full-length replies. Mostly these are from right-wing thinktanks, but on several occasions they’ve been from government ministers I’ve managed to prod into a response. This kind of thing tells me I’m doing my job (of course, I also welcome support in the form of letters to the Fin or directly to me).

Today’s Fin (Subscription required) has a piece from Ian Campbell, the new minister for the environment, responding to my piece on Kyoto, which I’ve placed over the fold. I’ve heard that my piece, which I thought was pretty mild, upset the government, and that the original draft was considerably hotter than the published version. I’m pleased to say that I agree with a substantial part (though not all) of Campbell’s intro which reads

Without intervention projected changes in global temperatures are expected to cause major environmental and economic impacts on agricultural industries, on human health, on businesses and through a greater number of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, drought, bushfires, storms and flooding.

Contrary to John Quiggin’s assessment (AFR, December 2), it’s precisely because Australia understands that climate change will not go away that we are working to meet our Kyoto target. However, we do not believe the protocol is an effective response to climate change.

At least on the science, this is a clear-cut rejection of the wishful thinking that still seems to have plenty of supporters.
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Bremer’s last gift

John Quiggin12 Comments

As the American ruler of Iraq, Paul Bremer had the amazing knack of being able to pick the worst possible decision on every occasion[1]. From the dissolution of the Iraqi army to his refusal to hold elections in 2003, when there was some chance they could have worked, he did everything wrong he possibly could. Now he’s gone, and most of his policies have been abandoned, but he’s left one last gift, which may turn out to be the most poisonous of the lot.

When Bremer set up the electoral system for the elections that are supposed to be held in January, he went for a single nationwide electorate, rather than having representatives of provinces or individual constituencies[2].

In any case, what this means is that, to the extent that fighting depresses the turnout in Sunni areas, Sunnis get less seats. Being a minority, they’re bound to lose most of the power they’ve traditionally held in any case, but under Bremer’s rules, they could be excluded almost completely. By contrast, under a constituency system, provided some sort of ballot could be held, Sunni candidates would be elected from Sunni areas.

To address this problem, Juan Cole is suggesting an emergency intervention, setting aside 25 per cent of the seats for Sunni candidates. It’s probably about the best that can be done in the circumstances, but the outlook is not that good.

Meanwhile, the onset of civil war has been announced, not by leftist opponents of the war, but by arch-hawk Charles Krauthammer who complains (haven’t we heard this before) about the unreliability of our native allies

People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side is fighting it. The other side, the Shiites and the Kurds, are largely watching as their part of the fight is borne primarily by the United States.

I don’t recall Krauthammer mentioning civil war as part of the plan in 2003. But maybe this is one of those four-war things.

fn1. I don’t think this was simple stupidity. His orders were, as far as I can see, to establish a secular free-market democracy that would be a reliable ally of the US and Israel. Any halfway realistic policy would have required him to abandon these objectives, and settle for a moderately theocratic, semi-socialist and imperfectly democratic state, on the “Iran-lite” model, because that’s what a majority of Iraqis want. Instead, he followed the dream.

fn2. My guess is that his motive was to allow votes for Iraqi exiles who could be presumed to be more favorable to the occupation than the people who were actually experiencing it.

Blogs meet the Harvard system

John Quiggin17 Comments

Martin Pike at Northcote Knob:

I just got back a masters essay in which I used a reference to a post on John Quiggin’s blog. I got a distinction, and despite there being a rather large swathe of pedantic comments scrawled on the pages the blogref got through unscathed.

For nerds; I was using Harvard system (eg Pike, 2004) but added a footnote disclosing that it was a blog, and who Quiggin is (or claims to be!).

Anyone heard of this being done, or am I breaking ground here?

Straws in the wind

John Quiggin8 Comments

In the discussion of the current account deficit, commenter Homer Paxton has emphasised the importance of terms of trade, a point I’ve tended to neglect. As Barry Hughes points out in today’s Fin (subscription required) terms of trade (the ratio of world prices for the things we export to prices for the things we import) have improved steadily throughout the life of the Howard government, making their job a lot easier and meaning that the trade deficit is much smaller than it would be otherwise. Hughes thinks the terms of trade will turn down within the next year.

Meanwhile, the US bond market bubble may be just about to burst. Ever since Bush was re-elected, people have been losing faith in the assumption that somehow everything will come right. The people who really matter are the Chinese and Japanese central bankers who hold about a trillion in US government debt. The headline on this Observer story Japan threatens huge dollar sell-off is slightly alarmist, since the threats are being made by an LDP official, but the explicit reference to the need for higher US interest rates is the first I’ve seen coming out of Japan.

Monday Message Board

John Quiggin21 Comments

It’s time, once again, for the Monday message board, where you are invited to post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please. My suggested discussion starter is that hardy perennial: What does Christmas mean to you ?

The R-word

John Quiggin197 Comments

My post on Keith Windschuttle’s statements defending the White Australia policy drew an interesting response. No-one, as far I can see, was prepared to defend Windschuttle outright, but there was a sudden and startling outbreak of caution. Maybe Windschuttle had been misquoted. Maybe the interview gave a misleading picture of his book and we should all wait to read it. Maybe the term “White Australia policy” was never used officially. Maybe the dictation test was administered so as to admit educated Indians. Maybe my links were inaccurate.

All of this is very uncharacteristic of the blogosphere. The nature of blogging lends itself to summary judgements based on limited evidence, not waiting for years until all the evidence is in. You read the papers, make a judgement and (at least among the better class of bloggers) if you turn out to be wrong, you admit it with good grace. Why has the response in this case been so different ?

I think it’s because of the R-word racism. There is only one real instance of political correctness in Australia today and that is that you are never, ever allowed to call anyone a racist. It’s OK to say that Adolf Hitler was a racist, and that apartheid was racist, but the idea that any actual Australian could be a racist is utterly taboo. Even I can’t resist the Zeitgeist on this one. In my post, I called Windschuttle “a consistent apologist for racism, happy to use racist arguments in support of his cause”.

It’s obvious why this taboo has emerged. Racism is an evil, bloodstained ideology and no one wants to admit association with it. Hence, almost no-one is silly enough to come out with a clear-cut statement like “white people are inherently superior to black people, and should be able to use them as they see fit”.

In this respect, racism is very similar to Communism. But while few people were willing to endorse Soviet Communism openly, particularly after the purges and the exposures of Kruschchev’s secret speech, there were plenty who were always willing to make excuses for the communists along the lines of “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” and so on. With his characteristic turn of phrase, Lenin called people of this type “fellow travellers” to their faces and “useful idiots” behind their backs.

Since his (still unexplained) swing from far left to far right about a decade ago, Windschuttle has consistently sought to excuse racist actions by whites (or, more precisely, British whites) by the usual range of strategies including denial of the facts, quibbling about irrelevant details, denunciation of witnesses and attacks on the victims as subhumans responsible for their own demise[1]. But, in politically correct Australia, that’s not enough reason to call him a racist. So, I’ll just call him a fellow-traveller.

fn1. There’s an obvious model for this kind of thing in the recent historical literature, but I’ll leave the identification as an exercise for readers.
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US Social Security

John Quiggin8 Comments

I’ve read lots of pieces on proposals to reform the US Social Security system, both positive and critical. Unfortunately, most of them include claims that are at best half-true and most of the rest assume a high level of knowledge of the issues. Over the fold, I’ve added a lengthy piece trying to explain the issues. Although I’m actively involved in debate on some of them, I’ve done my best to give a neutral presentation, at least until the final assessment of the proposals currently being discussed by the Administration and Congressional Republicans. This is primarily a matter of political judgement and can be summed up fairly quickly.

The Republican proposals involve accounting transfers amounting to trillions of dollars between different government accounts and newly created individual accounts. These transfers will almost certainly be packaged up with substantive changes to the Social Security system. Whether you support them depends on which you think is more likely:

* The transfers will be used to facilitate tough but necessary increases in contributions relative to benefits, eliminating the funding deficit. In doing this, the President and Congress will demonstrate their commitment to promoting the long term interests of the American people, even at the expense of short-term political pain

* The transfers will provide an ideal opportunity for all manner of pork-barrelling, from handouts to existing retirees to cosy deals for Wall Street investment banks, with accounting tricks being used to provide cover for a claim that the system has been restored to solvency

You may be able to guess which of these I think more likely, but you’ll have to read (or scroll) to the end to find out.
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Windschuttle on White Australia

John Quiggin110 Comments

I see that Keith Windschuttle has turned his attention to the White Australia policy which, not surprisingly, he defends as a “rational and, in a number of ways, progressive, product of its times”. Although the story is somewhat garbled, it seems likely that WIndschuttle’s defence is that White Australia was not premised on racial superiority, but on the doctrine of “separate but equal” treatment used in the case of Plessy vs Ferguson to defend the Jim Crow laws of the American South and, in its Afrikaans form, as the theoretical basis for apartheid (separate development).

I feel sorry for anyone who defended Windschuttle’s earlier campaign defending the treatment of Tasmanian Aborigines on the assumption that he was an honest seeker after historical truth, rather than, as is now clear, a consistent apologist for racism, happy to use racist arguments in support of his cause. I’d welcome comments from anyone honest enough to retract their previous support for Windschuttle.

I’ll also be happy to publish comments from anyone seeking to use quibbles about the definition of “racism” to claim that a policy that openly defined itself in terms of skin colour was, in some sense, not racist. However, if you want to make such a claim, be aware that it has previously been made by the defenders of Jim Crow and apartheid, and don’t whinge when you get lumped in with them.

A public job application

John Quiggin9 Comments

So Ziggy Switkowski is out as CEO of Telstra with a golden handshake of only $2.1 million. This seems a little unfair – executives with far worse records have got much more – but executive compensation remains a mystery to me. Perhaps the new book Pay without Performance will help me here.

Ziggy was a mate of Richard Alston (whose admiring assessment is currently enjoying top billing under my photo) but it seems that Peter Costello is less impressed. Since most of the internal candidates are implicated in Switkowski’s bad decisions, his replacement seems to be a bit of a problem.

On reflection, I’ve decided that I would be a great choice for this job. On almost every issue Switkowski and Alston got wrong, I was on the public record pointing this out and advocating something more sensible. For example:

* I said in 1996 that partial privatisation was ‘the worst of all possible worlds‘, as Costello now agrees[1]

* I opposed the great cable race between Telstra and Optus in 1996 and 1997

* I condemned Switkowski’s offshore ventures which were later closed down with huge losses

* I proposed selling off the dotcom part of the business in March 2000, just before the crash

* I attacked the idea of buying newspapers and TV stations, which ultimately sank both Switkowski and his CEO Bob Mansfield.

Based on this track record, I ought to do pretty well as CEO. But wait, there’s more! If I stuff up, I promise to leave with a token payment of $999, 999.99. That’s right! Less than a million dollars!

Please write to the shareholding ministers, Coonan and Minchin to support my candidacy.
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