Climate change deniers

I have no problem with the opinions of a prominent climate change denier being published, as The Australian did today. It is important that all arguments and views are discussed openly and scientifically. However, I am dismayed that the article didn’t offer anything persuasive to make a case that anthropogenic climate change is not true.

It referred to several claims made by Christopher Monckton: that reactions to global warming have diverted food into biofuels and prolonged starvation across the world, that action to halt global warming will be very costly and potentially ineffective, that there have been cycles of rapid warming and cooling over geological time, and that the IPCC is a “venal, corrupt and incompetent organisation.”

There may be truth in some of these statements. Yet even if they all were true, none of them provides either evidence or logical argument against the hypothesis that is considered most likely by a large majority climate scientists today: that emissions of greenhouse gases by humans are causing irreversible climate change.

Why can’t we have sensible debates on climate change that avoid resorting to logical fallacies, diversions and emotive language?

Republic

Royal visits often stimulate discussion about whether (or when) Australia should become a republic. It's time we did.

Interest seems to have waned greatly since the referendum 11 years ago. But that was a flawed proposal that involved undesirable changes to our political system. The current Australian political structure has served us well. It works. There is no reason why we can’t retain it when we become a republic.

Another referendum is needed. Let’s keep things just as they are, but rename the position of Governor-General to President and drop the Queen as our head of state. More fundamental changes can be made separately in later referendums.

Many Australians admire members of the Royal Family, but our affection or respect for them is no reason to retain them as our heads of state. After all, many of us also admire Queen Mary of Denmark—and she’s more Australian than Prince William will ever be.

Productivity

Kevin Rudd is undoubtedly right that an improvement in productivity growth will lead to larger increases in income per person over time. However, his vague statement that “working families” have an interest in Australia’s productivity demonstrates that perhaps he has not put much thought into the matter. It affects them for sure, but what can they do to change it?

In basic terms, productivity is the efficiency with which inputs in production (capital, labour, raw materials) are transformed into outputs (finished goods). It is largely dependent on technological advancement. Productivity growth grew so much after the Hawke-Keating reforms due to moves towards more efficient methods of organising production and allocating resources. However, the lowest hanging apples are picked first, and we reached a higher level of productivity, not a permanently higher growth rate.

Since then, productivity has been driven largely by technology. That is something that governments (or working families for that matter) have little control over. Unless, of course, they invest more in government-funded research and development so that the gains are ongoing over time.

If Kevin Rudd is serious about improving productivity, where is the extra funding for universities, CSIRO, ANSTO, etc?

(published under a pen name in The Age, 20 January 2010).

Religion

If only people put as much time, effort and resources into debating the important problems of our world as they do into nit-picking over religion, then we may find we no longer need faith or superstition or philosophy to make our world a better place.

It's a strange world indeed. Christmas time makes it perhaps more apparent than at other times of the year the silly things that people do, or believe in, in the name of religion. Admittedly, religions are quite clever, with a defining feature for many being faith--not questioning the evidence, the history, the conclusions.

Dogma reigns supreme in our world. For whatever reasons people choose to believe, there is no evidence at all that any religion is 'true.' And even if there was a God, which religion would (s)he/it belong to? The world's main religions aren't exactly peaceful and are fundamentally incompatible.

I'll stop now. This issue always generates more heat than light.

I'll just refer to my universal theory of humankind: people are stupid.

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Nevertheless, Happy Christmas (it may have started as a religious festival, but in modern Sydney it has turned into a secular orgy of over-consumption and monstrously ghastly flashing things).

Telstra, Telstra, Telstra

Thankfully the government is finally trying to separate the retail and wholesale divisions of Telstra. No doubt shareholders will complain loudly about this, having bought into a company that was somehow able to maintain many of its monopoly privileges after privatisation. However, many of Telstra’s profits came at the expense of consumers. Making Telstra retail compete fairly and on the same terms as other telecommunication companies is good for competition, innovation, customer service and prices. Around the world, countries with well regulated telecommunications markets that promote competition do well in these areas. Countries with big monopolies that have not embraced reform properly do not.

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Whatever happens with the national broadband network, it will always be desirable to split Telstra’s infrastructure-owning wholesale arm from its retrial division. Telstra’s monopoly power has harmed consumers in the telecommunications market for too long.

Allowing a monopoly over essential infrastructure to be privatised was inexplicably poor policy by the Howard Government, which should have known better. This makes me suspect that they had other reasons for selling off Telstra the way they did. Some of the funds raised were used to pay off the net government debt accrued under the previous Labor government. Perhaps Telstra was kept whole to help keep the share price high, and thus cut more of the debt, with the regulatory mess of fixing things up in telecommunications left to the next government.

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Phil Burgess reckons that a forced separation of Telstra’s wholesale and retail divisions is a form of “blackmail” that would “destroy Telstra’s future” and “delay innovation and investment.” There may be some truth in this, but if anything his comments provide further reasons for the government to go ahead with the break up. Telstra’s monopoly power has lasted too long and it must be forced to compete more fairly with other telecommunications companies. Of course this would erode Telstra’s market value and remove the company’s stranglehold over infrastructure and innovation in the industry. Telstra’s profits should be determined by its ability to meet consumers needs efficiently and cheaply, not on its ability to exploit market power.

It is also important to keep this matter somewhat separate from the government’s proposal to build a national broadband network. It will always be good policy to take monopoly ownership of infrastucture off Telstra, regardless of whether the NBN gets built. And if there is a NBN, far better that is is publicly owned and properly regulated than it is controlled by a single private sector company.

Award simplification

The debates over award modernisation are going to be long and protracted. It is inevitable that there will be many losers from award simplification in the short term (as well as many winners, who will be much less vocal). However, in the long run there are widespread benefits from having a system of simpler and nationally consistent awards.

So why is the Rudd Government pushing ahead with award modernisation in a time of economic uncertainty and rising unemployment? Arguably, the Government needs to be a lot tougher and decisive in making economic decisions and standing up to vested interests, but surely it could wait until the recovery is a bit firmer and confidence has fully recovered.

The best strategy would involve phasing in the new awards over time. The Government should announce a (fixed) future date for full implementation—say, 1 July 2010—to provide a period for workers and their employers to adjust.

NSW

The NSW Constitution was amended in 1992 to create fixed terms for governments which would prevent premiers from varying election dates to suit their own political ends. This is all well and good, but we can no longer assume (as some might have then) that voters will hold governments to account for their stuff-ups, or that there will always be sufficient and competent competition available at election time.

Has state government in NSW ever been in such a mess? The Labor government has been going downhill for nearly a decade, with the Coalition not far behind. If we held an election tomorrow and voted in the Opposition, would they really have the vision and courage to change anything? Where are the alternatives?

Surely we can find a better system of government and democracy in NSW. The major parties have failed us catastrophically.

Malcolm Turnbull

Malcolm Turnbull writes that “The Coalition left Rudd with a national balance sheet free of debt and with cash at the bank, not to mention sustained economic growth.”

What rubbish. The Coalition delivered these things not because of particularly strong or visionary economic policies, but because it was lucky. Earlier deregulation reforms and the floating of the currency made Australia rather resilient to the Asian Financial Crisis and US tech-bubble recession. The industrialisation of China and India ensured that revenues from resources would keep piling in. Funds were in such over-supply that the treasurer had to create a “Future Fund” and cut taxes annually to stop the budget surplus getting too big. These are all cyclical events in which Australia was lucky. The previous Coalition government did not tackle the choking infrastructure and skills shortages we faced; it did not leave Australia immune to the global financial crisis. The Rudd government has taken a large and proactive policy stance to offset some of the worst effects of the crisis.

Could Malcolm Turnbull, if he was Prime Minster, really have done anything different without making more Australians jobless? What is his alternative vision for dealing with these events, and for the future? His essay is glaringly silent on these.

The Chinese diaspora in Australia

The Chinese government’s demand for support by the Chinese diaspora is hardly unprecedented in historical terms. Many politicians in many countries have attempted to exploit the long-distance nationalism and ethnic sentiments of their diasporas as a means to obtain investment, foreign exchange or votes (for example, Israel, India, Italy, and that’s just the I-countries). This is nothing new.

We need not worry about such rhetoric. The Chinese diaspora in Australia poses no threat. Many of these people have migrated because they do not agree with the Chinese government, or because they seek better lives in a democracy. Many of those who subsequently send back money to their family or invest in China do so because they care about their relatives or because their background and connections provide them with a valuable understanding of business cultural and commercial opportunities in their homeland. It is rarely (if ever) because they have unwavering patriotic support for the government.

Many diasporic people yearn for a homeland that no longer exists, and many come to feel alienated when making return visits after a long time away. For most migrants, the material standard of living in the new country is often superior to that of the old. For these reasons, it is likely that Chinese immigrants, like millions of others, have a greater allegiance to democratic Australian society than they do to the repressive Chinese government. Migrants do not need their homeland to tell them to feel pride in their cultural background. The Chinese government may well find that a drive to enlist overseas Chinese as supporters by making silly-sounding statements about “blood lineage” could easily backfire.

Coorong wetlands

It is a tragedy that the Coorong wetlands have become so degraded they are almost beyond the point of recovery. The tragedy is compounded by the negligence of governments that could, and should, have seen this coming. State governments' stubbornness on buying back water allocations from farmers is destructive. How many more precious ecosystems and bird habitats must die before action is taken?

There are complex processes underlying the changes being observed in the Murray-Darling basin, but the basic causes are straightforward. There are too many farms using too much water, and often in an extraordinarily unsustainable way. The landscape simply cannot support this level of agricultural activity. When European farmers first saw Australia's wide open spaces, they assumed these lands had the same high levels of soil fertility and could grow the same types of crops as in Europe. To overcome the lack of water, the Snowy River was diverted into the Murray, causing immense shock and change to the ecosystems of both rivers.

Governments' inability to actually implement changes that will stop the Murray River degrading further continues this pattern, as if they think that one day more water will simply appear out of nowhere. Environmental determinism is never sustainable in the long-run. We need to respect the constraints of nature and farm our land more sustainably. That means fewer farms and lower water entitlements in the Murray-Darling basin.

The Australian book industry

Do not be fooled by the eloquence of Australian authors. They have been repeatedly arguing that Australian authors deserve a fair profit and that Australian literature has great cultural benefits for many of us. That’s difficult (and slippery) to dispute, but it’s an attempt to reframe the argument over book import laws in a way that stirs emotions.

Unfortunately, such emotions rarely lead to good public policy. The territorial copyright restrictions currently in place are a market distortion, a barrier to trade and the cause of over-inflated book prices paid by consumers. If an author (or their publisher) wants to boost their profits by printing different editions abroad and pricing them differently, why should Australian law permit them to prevent imports of the foreign-market version? If authors and publishers are too scared that cut-price books from abroad will threaten their royalties and profits in the Australian market, they should stop publishing in or supplying to foreign markets. They will continue to have control over this, and retain the copyright to their own work, regardless of any changes in book importation laws. Despite what they may say, the integrity of copyright itself is not at stake.

By restricting imports in such a way, laws against parallel imports cause the price of all books to be much higher than they otherwise would be. This seems to be mostly for the sake of supporting a few Australian authors who, judging by the shrillness of their recent complaints, would otherwise be unable to remain viable. I am sick of having to pay through the nose for books in Australia, or pay high freight costs to buy them online from America.

If consumers valued the work of Australian novelists more than that of other authors, they would be willing to pay more for their books. These writers should stop trying to stir up emotions through the media and focus on writing better books.

War on terror

I’m glad the government is dumping use of the preposterous term “war on terror.” The term never made any sense. The Australian government joined the US to invade Iraq and create an enormous sense of terror amongst many Iraqi civilians. Both countries made stellar efforts to make many of their own Muslim citizens feel terrified. These events inspired further violent attacks by extremist groups throughout the world. The way events were spoken about and reported created a further sense of terror amongst voters, which politicians repeatedly reinforced.

This was not really a war on terror, but a war in support of it.

Planning boards

It seems like the Planning Minister is trying to make the large projects approval system more democratic and transparent. Instead of approving such projects herself, the Planning Minister is now devolving that power to regional boards. Great. The only problem is that the minister will appoint a majority of members on each board. Instead of decisions being made by an elected politician, they will now be made by faceless bureaucrats, non-elected non-experts or, it is possible, Labor party donors and development industry supporters. The minister can then praise these regional boards when good decisions are made, yet distance herself when politically controversial developments are approved.

Training schemes for youth

Kevin Rudd's latest scheme to cut welfare payments to unemployed youth who do not take up education or training places when out of work may seem a clever way to massage youth unemployment figures, but it is fundamentally a good scheme. With the level of unemployment predicted to rise so high in this recession, it will be vital to ensure that the skills of those who are unemployed do not lapse behind what the labour market is likely to demand in a recovery, and that existing skills do not deteriorate from lack of use.

It will be vital, however, that the government ensures there are sufficient training places available for those who will have their youth allowance cut off, and in the areas where these youth live. It is also essential that general skills are taught alongside occupation-specific skills to ensure that the workforce remains flexible. Decisions will have to be made about which skills will be in demand in the future, but it workers must also be able to adapt should labour demand evolve if the predictions of skills demands are off.

Nevertheless, the strong focus on education and training is good for Australia in the long-term. More productive workers and a more highly educated workforce leads to more people being employed in 'good' jobs and higher wages once the economy is back to normal.

The labour market and the downturn

New OLO article: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8630