It’s time for the Monday Message Board, where readers are invited to post their thoughts on any topic (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). There will be plenty of posts from me on the election, and plenty of room for discussion, so I’d encourage Message Board comments on other issues.
Root causes
There is no excuse or justification for terrorism. But that doesn’t mean it is inexplicable, the product of purely irrational evil impulses. There will always be people willing, under certain circumstances, to resort to terrorism. If we want to fight terrorism effectively, we have to avoid creating those circumstances.
Successive Russian governments created the conditions in Chechnya that allow terrorists like those responsible for the Beslan atrocity to flourish. There was a long history of oppression, from Czarist times to mass deportation under Stalin. But the current outbreak can be traced most directly to the actions of Yeltsin and Putin. When Chechnya sought independence from Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin’s response was one of brutal and incompetent repression, eventually leading to an effective Russian withdrawal, and the creation of a failed state, in which warlords and militias flourished, and terrorism established itself.
After a series of Chechen terrorist attacks in Moscow and an attempted invasion of the neighbouring republic of Dagestan, Putin came to power with a policy of crushing Chechen resistance, which he implemented with high civilian casualties and the destruction of much of the capital city of Grozny[1].
Again, this history doesn’t justify, excuse or mitigate horrible crimes like the one we have just witnessed. But there is also no excuse for those who advocate policies that are bound to promote terrorism while rejecting any analysis of “root causes”.
fn1. Those interested in a more detailed history can find what seems to be a pretty good one at Global Issues. This is a leftwing site, but seems to give fairly objective coverage.
A terrible atrocity
As usual in relation to terrorist attacks, and in common with others, I find it difficult to say much in relation to the terrorist siege in Beslan, which has now ended with heavy loss of life. The terrorists, who have sunk to new lows in this crime (the hostages, mostly children, were apparently denied water) were mostly killed. No decent person will mourn their deaths. No provocation or historical wrong can justify such foul actions.
I feel for those who have lost loved ones, and especially for the parents of children murdered on this tragic day.
Election blogs
The election has stimulated an explosion of new and revived blogs, aggregators and other websites, and has brought others to my attention for the first time. Here are a few that have caught my eye, in no particular order.
The Daily Flute has excellent economic analysis, mostly serious, but currently looking at the continuous misfortunes of the Persian rug shop industry
Psephite is currently running an assessment of pollies’ websites, most of which are awful. Minor gripe: she uses the acryonym IA which I don’t recognise. As PH would say, “please explain”.
Hack Watch (Iain Lygo) criticises the media from a green perspective, and with an olive green background (quite similar to this, actually
The Poll Bludger (William Bowe) focuses mostly on polls, as you might expect.
Mumble (Peter Brent) also does polls and electorate analysis
I’ll extend this post as I get time, and maybe put up a special election blogroll.
Why you should vote against Wooldridge
Michael Wooldridge has a piece in today’s Age, giving some fairly standard arguments as to “Why you should vote for Howard”. As far as I’m concerned the mere fact that the story reminds readers of Wooldridge’s existence should be a good reason to vote against Howard. Although not the most incompetent Minister in the Howard government, he beat strong competition to be the one who has most lowered standards of public probity. Apart from his notorious extravagance, he regularly did favors to groups which then gave him financial or political returns. Most outrageously, he approved a public grant to a medical lobby group which hired him as a consultant as soon as he left office. It’s the accumulation of this kind of sleaze that brings down long-running governments.
No more years ?
A while ago, I discussed the idea that the forthcoming US election would be a good one for the Democrats to lose, eventually reaching the conclusion that the damage that would be caused by four more years of Bush would offset any political benefits from finally discrediting the Republicans.
Now Niall Ferguson looks at the same question from the other side. Like me[1], he thinks this would be a good election for either party to lose. But, since he’s taking the Republican side of the debate, the damage that a second Bush term would cause is an argument in favor of his case. He concludes
moderate Republicans today may justly wonder if a second Bush term is really in their best interests. Might four years of Kerry not be preferable to eight or more years of really effective Democratic leadership?
fn1. Though not for exactly the same reasons. He puts more weight on criticisms of Kerry than I think can be justified, and less on the extent to which painful economic adjustments are already inevitable.
Who prefers the Greens?
We’ve heard at length in the last few days how the Greens plan to ruin the economy, make vegetarianism compulsory, institute world government, and so on. Presumably, for those making such claims, the worst conceivable outcome from the forthcoming election would be a minority Labor government dependent on Green support (or maybe even forced to go into coalition with the Greens).
This is unlikely, but it could happen if the Greens win some inner-city seats, most held by Labor leftwingers. But the only way the Greens can win is on Liberal preferences. So I’d be interested to know who among those running the anti-Green scare campaign is advocating a policy of putting the Greens last, as Labor did in relation to One Nation[1]. I haven’t seen anything on the Liberals preferences yet, so this is a genuine question – if anyone has the answer, I’d be grateful.
fn1. Except, IIRC, in the 2001 Queensland State election, where, rather opportunistically, they exploited optional preferential voting by advocating a vote for Labor alone with no preferences.
Interest rates, part 2
As everybody knows, low interest rates are a mixed blessing for homebuyers. That’s because they have contributed (along with government policies like the reduction in capital gains tax rates) to the massive boom in house prices that has made houses just about as unaffordable now as they were in 1989 at the peak of the last interest rate cycle.
Everybody knows this except, apparently, John Howard. In his scare campaign against Labor, he calculated the impact of Labor’s peak interest rates applied to the average mortgage prevailing under the Liberals. Not surprisingly, the result is horrific. But Howard is as much to blame for this as anyone else.
Interest rates
Another silly feature of the election campaign is Howard’s claim to have delivered low interest rates (and, by implication more affordable housing). The variable home mortgage rate has barely moved over the eight years from 1996 to 2004, and (IIRC) it was lower in 1996 than when Howard handed over the Treasury in 1983.
It’s true of course that in between those dates, interest rates rose to stupendous levels, as high as 17 per cent. But to the extent that Labor made this mess, Labor cleaned it up. Howard had nothing to do with it (moreover, throughout Labor’s term in office, both Howard and Hewson were consistent monetary policy hawks),
This experience also showed that the link between budget deficits and interest rates (via crowding out) is not all that strong. It’s true that, if you move from large surpluses to chronic deficits, as Bush has done, you can expect an eventual interest rate response (though no such response has appeared as yet). But improving the budget balance by a few billion dollars will have no visible effect.
So, I’m disappointed to see Latham running with the government line and promising to keep interest rates low through fiscal policy. Given that world interest rates are likely to rise over the next few years, thanks to chronic deficits in the US, it’s doubtful he can deliver on this. And while it’s good to maintain surpluses on the cash balance over the course of the economic cycle, it’s silly to promise a surplus every year.
Sheridan on the Greens
The bizarre campaign of distortion against the Greens continues with an extraordinary piece by Greg Sheridan, though one that is something of an embarrassing reminder of Sheridan’s long-standing support for the Suharto military dictatorship and its occupation of East Timor.
As with previous pieces in this genre, the modus operandi is to misquote Greens policy, take an extreme interpretation of the misquote and run with the resulting scare. There’s only a marginal difference between Sheridan’s treatment and the full-blown black helicopter fantasies being peddled by Steve Edwards.
Sheridan’s first point of criticism reads
For example, they assert that Australia should force the Indonesian Government to bring all “war criminals in its ranks” to justice by withholding military co-operation, which wildly overestimates the importance of Australian military co-operation to Indonesia.
The actual policy reads
using (along with other governments) continued military cooperation with the Indonesian military as a bargaining counter to convince the Indonesian Government to bring all war criminals in its ranks to justice before an international tribunal instead of trying them before the Indonesian-controlled Jakarta Human Rights Court.
There’s certainly room for argument as to whether Indonesia can be convinced, but it’s clear that Sheridan has misrepresented a policy that most Australians would endorse. The Greens aren’t asserting that Indonesia can be forced to act at Australia’s behest, as Sheridan claims. The rest of the article is no better – for example, a policy on Israel-Palestine is criticised because, while condemning suicide bombings, it doesn’t specifically use the word ‘terrorism’.
The Oz editorial picks up the same line and the Fin has another, rather rambling. piece from Gary Johns.
I’m still puzzled by the politics of all this. Commenters have suggested that it’s aimed at the Greens’ Senate vote, but that would mainly help Labor. Besides, devoting the opening days of a tight election campaign to a strategy aimed at marginal improvements in the Senate outcome seems misguided.
It still seems to me that the results of all this will be, first, to reduce the flow of Green preferences to the Liberals and, second, to benefit Labor at the direct expense of the Liberals. After all, there are only so many buckets you can tip in an election, even with a long campaign. By the time Sheridan and others get around to attacking Labor, a lot of people will already have tuned out.
Update: More on this from my blogtwin , Tim Dunlop
