Guy Beres

For the past week, one could be forgiven for thinking that the most pressing issue on the Australian socio-political agenda was not parental leave, the outcomes of the Henry tax review, or climate change. The Michael Clarke/Lara Bingle saga has been blown up by the local media out of all reasonable proportion. It seems that one can not pick up a supposedly serious newspaper, or tune into a supposedly serious news service at the moment without having the latest third-hand gossip about the story thrust in one’s face.

I don’t want to speculate on the status of the relationship between Clarke and Bingle, because, let’s face it, we’ve had enough vacuous speculation already. What is clear, however, is that the two should be given some privacy and some respect, and not treated like two pieces of meat for the milking by the media. So-called journalists are no doubt, even as I type, still parked outside the couple Bondi’s residence, hoping for a glimpse, an angry gesture, or a sign of some kind, like vultures swooping on a bleeding animal. Federal Minister for Sport Kate Ellis probably did not go far enough in her condemnation of the media’s handling of the saga, in my view, but in general I think her comments are on the money:

The minister said she found it ”really interesting” to have watched the public debate about the Test cricketer’s decision because “in any other job in the nation you want people out there when they’re focused, when they’re at their best and when they can deliver, and if they’re not going to be at that point, then it’s probably a responsible thing for them to say, ‘I need to sort myself out. I need to deal with my priority issues at the moment and then get back and give them my all.’ ”

Insisting there had been too much public focus on the relationship, Ms Ellis said she hoped ”we can see Michael Clarke happy, on the cricket field, representing Australia and doing very well, and … frankly, that I can read a little less about their love life.”

Frankly, I would like to hear a lot less about their love life. I suspect I’m not alone.

It seems as though the entire Opposition has managed to get itself lost near Fossil Creek. At the end of last week, they were riding high on the home insulation scandal, delighting in the prospect of blaming the Environment Minister and the Prime Minister for deaths caused by dodgy insulation start-ups. The “oppose everything” routine was going great guns. The poll numbers for Tony Abbott were looking bad for Labor, and the Prime Minister felt the need to indulge in some extraordinary self-flagellation on Insiders last Sunday.

What a difference a week makes. This week, the Rudd Government has come out playing ball in election mode, announcing major initiatives in education and health. It is looking like Labor’s health reform plan will form the cornerstone of its re-election campaign. Despite some general public reservations about whether this plan was a process that should have already been well underway, people know that big changes need to be made to the way in which health services are provided in this country. When push comes to shove, health as an issue trumps most other issues out there, and the government’s plan is going to prove difficult to counter; unless, of course, the states and territories don’t play nice.

The timing of Tony Abbott’s barmy disappearance into Central Australia could not really have been worse. I’m not sure if his trip was planned significantly in advance or not, but it should have been gently postponed given the political developments of last week. In his absence, the government has had a free-hit, launching policies and looking positive, while Abbott scratches about in the outback, looking unkempt and managing to make an arse of himself by getting lost. His “oppose everything” schtick is starting to wear a bit thin, especially when it is phoned in from no-man’s land and he is offering no serious policy alternative.

I don’t doubt that the Opposition Leader could learn a lot from engaging more closely with Aboriginal communities, but it was very, very questionable politics to do so while he had the government looking like it might collapse on the canvas after a tough week. Federal Labor has now regained control of the news cycle, and I would not be surprised if the polls in the next couple of weeks reflect that.

When I was in school, the laziest, dumbest sort of poem we were ever asked to write was an acrostic poem - a poem in which each line starts with a new letter. Paul Sheehan must not have felt like writing about anything in any detail for his SMH column today, because he decided to unearth the trusty acrostic and scribble an errant line or two about the Rudd Government’s performance for each letter of the alphabet. There are no pretensions of balance or fairness detectable in the piece - it is , to be clear, nothing but a one-eyed hatchet job, and an amateurish one at that.

As such, I think it only fair to offer a point or two in reply to Sheehan’s 26 extremely brief points:

Asylum Seekers
According to Sheehan:

Unless the government can show otherwise, it appears that about 98 per cent of asylum-seekers are getting Australian residency.

There’s nothing like a bit of “innocent until proven guilty” to get the ball rolling. No attempt is being made to provide an accurate figure or to describe how the author has arrived at the 98% figure. Sheehan also neglects to mention the significant push factors at play for the asylum seeker issue during the last couple of years - in particular - the Sri Lankan civil war, and an increase in Coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Beijing

Does anybody seriously believe that Australia’s relationship with China has “deteriorated badly”? Rudd has been one of the few foreign leaders to have the fortitude to express some home truths to China - for this he should be given kudos, not brickbats. Strong relationships call for straight talking - not the acquiescent hand-wringing of the Downer years.

Computers in schools

290,000 computers funded, 180,000 computers delivered, in an ongoing program. Yes, there have been logistical problems, but in a program of this magnitude, logistical problems happen.

Debt and deficit

Sheehan:

It took the previous government 10 years to dismantle the $96 billion debt mountain that it inherited. It took Rudd one year to build it back up again.

Rudd… and a global financial crisis.

The Rudd Government would have been heading into deficit courtesy of the GFC regardless of whether or not it embarked on its economic stimulus program, which saved thousands of jobs, put money in the pockets of millions of people across the country when they most needed it, and kept the budget in surplus. It is undeniable that the measures undertaken by the government played a central role in ensuring that Australia is amongst the best performing economies in the world and technically stayed out of recession.

ETS

56% of people still support the Rudd Government’s ETS - and I sincerely doubt that any polls conducted have concluded that 80% of people both don’t understand and don’t trust the scheme. A slogan on the t-shirt of someone with an obvious vested interest in not reducing carbon emissions does not a coherent argument make.

Fuelwatch

Was blocked by the Senate - and hardly a “big” promise in any case.

Grocerywatcb

Not all of the major retailers came to the party for the government in committing to provide accurate and timely information of grocery prices, and the scheme was dumped in June 2009. This was an unfortunate result, but the public outlay was relatively small.

Hospitals

Ongoing - negotiations with Australia’s state and territory governments and the possible reform of the Constitution is hardly something that can be done overnight. I think we’ll see the Rudd Government put health at the forefront of its re-election campaign, with pressure now mounting for some action.

India Disaster

Sheehan does not bother to explain what he is talking about here. Perhaps he is suggesting that Kevin Rudd was somehow responsible for the Mumbai bombings?

Juvenile justice

It is a nonsense to argue that the plight of young Aborigines is worse than ever - this is hyperbole on a grand scale. The Rudd Government has, thus far, maintained the “intervention” policies of the previous government to a significant extent. The current situation is not a good situation by any means, but it is in no way, shape or form, as catastrophic as Sheehan implies. Here’s hoping that the Rudd Government lifts their game in this very sensitive and challenging portfolio.

Kaiser

In defence of the appointment; the Rudd Government is actually trying to move things along with the broadband network (rather than wait several months while the job is formally advertised, candidates interviewed, and so on) and Mike Kaiser certainly has the pedigree for the job. It was, however, a somewhat sloppy and silly piece of work, and NBN Co executive Mike Quigley should probably have known better.

This was Quigley’s mistake - not Conroy’s or Rudd’s.

League tables

The publication of comparative school information was arguably one of the bravest steps undertaken by a Labor Minister for Education in decades. The indicators are not bulletproof, but the publication was still a step in the right direction, and one that has been broadly welcomed by parents across the country. Parents deserve the facts. The world has not ended for principals, school teachers or anybody else.

Sheehan’s labelling of the scheme as “centralised” is a clear misrepresentation.

Migration

Sheehan takes the novel approach of attacking Australia’s permanent migration figures in recent years by arguing that this is increasing Australia’s carbon footprint. It’s interesting - because he doesn’t seem to give a flip for Australia’s carbon footprint when it comes to, say, environment policy. A strange dog whistle if ever I heard one.

National broadband network

$17 million, when all is said and done in the world of government policy, is not a lot of money. The tender process fell down and that is unfortunate, but the rollout of the network is now underway in both Tasmania and mainland Australia.

Opposition theft

He must have really struggled with “O”. I don’t think that anybody really believes that the Rudd Government’s stimulus package is the sole reason why Australia pulled through the financial crisis so well. Incidentally - it’s not as if the Howard Government didn’t claim all the credit it possibly could for the state of the economy during its decade in power - despite engaging in a negligible amount of investment or meaningful reform.

Power (and Roof insulation)

There have been some unfortunate consequences of the Rudd Government’s solar power and home insulation schemes, but to a large extent, these problems stem from inadequacies within the existing legislation regulating the relevant industries, and questionable or immoral behavior by opportunistic business operators. Its simply disingenuous to imply that these problems can all be laid at the feet of the government. Should Peter Garrett go? From where I am sitting, its 50-50.

Question time

Question Time has been abused by both sides of parliament for as long as anyone can remember. The Rudd Government’s performance in this area is disappointing, particularly given its rhetoric around cleaning up behaviour in parliament prior to the 2007 election, but it is not demonstratively worse than recent previous governments.

School spending

The Building the Education Revolution scheme is improving the amenities of schools across the country, keeping thousands of people in work. There are probably a few good arguments one could raise regarding just how this money could be better spent in the education sector. Sheehan doesn’t volunteer any.

Tax increases

From my recollection, the Rudd Government is committed to not increasing the level of taxation as a proportion of GDP - which means that any new spending measures will need to be funded by associated budget cuts in other areas. Until the government actually breaks that promise - its nothing but hearsay and slander to suggest that the forthcoming Budget is going to be chockers with new taxes.

Union Power

Nonsense. As many union members will tell you, the Rudd Government has been a bit on the conservative side in their destruction of WorkChoices. A substantive proportion of the provisions of the Howard Government’s industrial relations scheme remain, with some softening around the edges. Many concessions have been made to business and industry by the government. The unions do not pull the strings in Labor Governments anymore.

Vanity

Lazy. Must have had too many words eh? Maybe you should have done a column per letter Sheehan - your arguments might then have been just a little more coherent and less simplistic to boot.

X Y Z

Cute. But lazy. It is probably worth remembering that these are of course the same said generations who benefitted from the government’s stimulus payments.

After managing to miss this film at the cinemas, I finally got around to hiring it on DVD yesterday evening. Based on the book of the same name, by journalist Jill Joliffe, the film elegantly traces what is held to be a more factual description of the fate of the “Balibo Five” than the official version of events, which is that the five men died in crossfire in East Timor in late 1975. According to Joliffe’s book and the film, the Balibo Five - journalists Greg Shackleton and Malcolm Rennie, and crew Gary Cunningham, Tony Stewart, and Brian Peters, were not merely unlucky casualties of war – but were ruthlessly and intentionally executed by invading Indonesian forces. Joliffe’s history of the incident has been corroborated by the testimony of Colonel Gatot Purwanto, who was reportedly present when the Australians were captured.

The film centres around grizzled Darwin-based journalist, Roger East (Anthony LaPaglia), who is convinced by a young, sprightly Jose Ramos-Horta (Oscar Isaac) to journey with him to East Timor to cover what he fears to be an impending invasion by Indonesia. Despite some obvious reservations, East indeed agrees to go, but the fate of the Balibo Five (at the time, missing for several weeks) soon consumes his focus. The juxtaposition of the magnitude of the hundreds of thousands of deaths amongst the East Timorese population with the popular import and weight attributed to the lives of the five Australians swiftly becomes a powerful narrative thread.

LaPaglia and Isaac do a sterling job – LaPaglia as the lumbering, world-weary newcomer, and Isaac the slick, lithe local, not a little channelling Gael García Bernal’s Che Guevara. Nathan Phillips (Rennie), Damon Gameau (Shackleton), Gyton Grantley (Cunningham), Mark Leonard Winter (Stewart) and Tom Wright (Peters) give sturdy performances as the Balibo Five, and Director/Writer Robert Connolly does a wonderful job in guiding the story in such a way that the viewer really feels for all the characters, despite the succinct, workmanlike manner in which their personalities are conveyed.

It has become popular to trash Australian cinema (“why can’t we make happy films?”) in recent years, but films like this one and Samson and Delilah are undeniably world class productions. They are films with beauty, and films with meaning. In this instance, Balibo raises several prickly questions that continue to challenge the relationship between the Australian and Indonesian Governments. The Indonesian Government has affirmed frequently for its part that it does not wish to dig into old wounds that have long since healed, or more accurately, that it hopes have been forgotten. Successive Australian federal governments, fearful of the potential backlash that could ensue if they force the issue and embarrass their powerful, somewhat volatile neighbour, have tried to stay out of the debate.

It’s a shame, in this day and age, that the cold, hard truth is still so hard to come by. It’s also a shame that our relationship with Indonesia is evidently still not robust enough to prevent us from stooping to the kowtow when the going gets tough. Three cheers for Australian cinema, and Jill Joliffe, for reminding us of these painful facts.

Despite the resumption of parliament, political debate has been muted this week; with the news dominated by a few unfortunate seconds of video footage of a Macquarie Bank worker and a legal case featuring one (or is that two?) of Australia’s favourite national songs. Such is the flippant, transitory and ultimately tabloid nature of modern news.

One intervention into the headlines worthy of debate was made by Shadow Finance Minister Barnaby Joyce. Appearing at the National Press Club for the first time as a seriously senior member of the Opposition, Joyce delivered a performance that undoubtedly left Liberal Party members across the country scratching their heads and squirming in their seats. Michelle Grattan reports on Joyce’s most questionable comments in The Age:

”We are giving $150 million to the World Bank. Fair enough. $50 million of that is to deal with the food inflationary aspects in the Third World. Well, why doesn’t Kevin Rudd deal with the food inflationary aspects in this world, you know? That would be handy,” he said.

…
Senator Joyce said: ”We’ve got to be cautious when we’re borrowing money from overseas to send back to overseas … because we’ve got to pay the money back.”

Putting our Macquarie Bank staffer to shame, in a matter of seconds, Tony Abbott’s right-hand man dropped a whole swag full of clunkers right there. For starters – Joyce’s rant rode roughshod over official Coalition policy on foreign aid, forcing the Opposition Leader and his Deputy to issue terse “corrections” on his behalf. It also raised serious questions about his ability to be the senior spokesperson for such a broad, sensitive policy portfolio. To compare the problems that Australia has with access to food to the problems that countries in the Third World have with access to food is quite simply, outrageous. That Joyce saw fit to raise the prospect of abandoning or reducing Australia’s small obligations to the international needy smacks of narrow, parochial self-interest, reflecting quite poorly indeed upon his character.

The Shadow Finance Minister’s financial credentials also warrant some serious questioning. Particularly in the wake of the financial crisis experienced over the last couple of years, national governments across the world have surged into debt. Some national governments are worse off than others, but what is readily apparent is that Australia’s net financial position, considering our projected ability to repay outstanding debt, is superior to just about any other nation out there. It is not strange, wrong or inadvisable for Australia to be in debt; certainly not any more the case than it is for Harvey Norman or Woolworths to borrow money, or for you or I to take out a mortgage to purchase property, at home or abroad.

Joyce seems to be suggesting that it may be inadvisable to borrow money “overseas” if the money is to be spent “overseas”, ostensibly on people who are not Australians. What sort of short-sighted, hermit kingdom mentality does that betray? What miniscule price does Joyce put on the lives of people that Australia’s aid assists, let alone Australia’s international reputation and renown as the land of the “fair go”?

Frankly, it was a Sarah Palin-esque moment, with a dash of Pauline on the side. As this year’s federal election looms large, Tony Abbott is likely going to come to rue the day that he decided that he wanted Barnaby Joyce to serve as one of his right-hand men. If, as Palin famously suggested, she can see Russia from Alaska, then this week’s events have proven (for any still in doubt) that Barnaby Joyce can really, truly, indubitably see the Third World from rural Queensland.

Evidently, if Australia is in debt, it can all rot.

ELSEWHERE: It’s hard to go past Damien Kingsbury’s surgical dissection of Joyce’s folly folly, also in The Age. To summarise:

Without any prompting, Joyce appears to have wandered off into policy whacko-land.

The newly launched MySchool website looks set to prompt a lot of interest, speculation, and controversy. Per-school indicators such as the number of enrolments, the number of teachers, the number of indigenous students, together with comparative reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy rankings, are all available online to anybody interested. Although the website does not explicitly present the information in a “league table” format, the government may as well have done so. The major newspapers have wasted no time scraping data down from the website and compiling their own league tables [PDF].

Although there are still some question marks around the reliability and fairness of the data presented in some cases, the commotion seems to be centred on a few broad but intriguing conclusions:

1) Selective public schools are outperforming even the best private schools.

2) In some communities, local public schools are considerably outperformed by local private schools.

3) In some communities, local private schools are considerably outperformed by or performing equivalently to local public schools.

The first and third conclusions raise some interesting conundrums for families about the real worth of private schools (particularly when one factors in the often expensive fees payable). The second conclusion will certainly result in some pressure being brought to bear on some public schools whose students are struggling. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, with some teachers and school officials no doubt feeling boosted by the release of the results, and others feeling somewhat deflated and betrayed. I’ve been on the fence on this issue a bit in the past, but I think on the whole that allowing this information to be publicly available is a step in the right direction. Parents, whose taxes fund both public and private schools, have a right to know if students in their local schools are performing poorly. They have a right to know (for example) if the attendance rate in little Jimmy’s school is markedly below the national average, or to know that kids in little Jane’s school seem to be rubbish spellers, by and large. School administrators will clearly need to begin explaining the performance of their school and working harder to address issues that the data suggests exist.

The value of the website seems set to increase further in the future as more data sets becomes available (allowing parents and the general public to see whether their local schools are improving or not), and more comparative indicators, such as financial information (promised for later this year). It will be particularly interesting to learn which schools appear to be doing the most for their students with least, and which schools in particular should be receiving much more funding than they are receiving under the current schools funding formula, preserved by Labor from the Howard Government years.

The Rudd Government’s “Education Revolution” has been underwhelming so far, but there is certainly at least a faint scent of progress in the air thanks to the launch of this simple little website.

He came. He saw. He kissed some kids and made some clucky old dames blush. He went home.

Apart from the predictable lashings of sound and colour emanating from our (mostly tabloid) press and current affairs programs over the last few days, there have also been a few rumblings about the lately neutered republican debate in Australia in the wake of Prince William’s brief visit. Earlier this week, Julia Gillard re-iterated the Rudd Government’s new, contradictory approach to the republic; supporting the change in principle, but curiously declining to nominate when it would put the matter to a referendum once again. The government admittedly has a lot on its plate, but there is only so long it can promise change while doggedly refusing to instigate it.

Even Malcolm Turnbull, arch-republican in chief, in a piece for The Times Online, has admitted that Australia’s shift towards a republic is now being guided primarily by the Queen’s mortality:

Changing the Constitution is extremely difficult and that is why I believe that the next republic referendum has the best chance of success after the Queen’s reign. That moment will be an historic and political watershed.

What is deeply ironic is the general view on this troublesome debate of ours from Prince William’s grey shores, exemplified by this contribution from Stephen Bates in The Guardian. Many in the United Kingdom view the monarchy as anachronistic and somewhat redundant, and in the trying economic times that we still find ourselves in, a drain on the public purse that is difficult to justify. To be perfectly blunt, the very concept of a monarchy – even an essentially symbolic one – is a throwback to a bygone era when blood trumped merit. It is antithetical to the Australian ethos.

Generally, British people just don’t seem to comprehend why Australia is holding itself back from declaring itself a republic, from finally cutting itself loose officially from its mother’s teat. The British are intimately familiar with the fierce love that Australians have for their country, their sense of superiority (particularly on the sporting field). This chest-thumping pride in the greatness of Australia is contradicted by the frustrating vacillation that has swallowed up the republican debate.

Do we live in such a timid and uncertain nation that we must wait for a lovely old lady on the other side of the world to die before we can chart a course for ourselves? It certainly appears so.

The Attorney-General’s Department is currently undertaking a public consultation process in relation to the lack of an R18+ classification rating for computer games. A discussion paper [PDF] has been released, and the government is also inviting public submissions until 28th February 2010. Unfortunately in some ways it would seem the government is conducting more of a survey than an public consultation; the submission template provided provides for a series of multiple choice questions, with limited scope provided for people to actually tell the government what they think about the issue and why.

It is nevertheless a good thing that the government is undertaking the consultation process; in my view, the lack of an R18+ classification rating for computer games does not make much sense. Currently, if a game is classified by the National Classification Board as R18+, it is refused classification and effectively banned from the country. In this situation, game developers are either forced not to release their product in Australia, or to revise the product so that it is receives an MA15+ classification. Someone who wishes to purchase the game is forced to (illegally) purchase the game online or to obtain a pirated version, with neither outcome being particularly favorable for the local software industry.

The substance of my submission to the consultation is over the fold.

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Damn - can’t believe Christmas and the end of another year is upon us already! As you may have already guessed, my already fairly itinerant blogging pipeline has been clogged by numerous other life-type things for the past few weeks. This situation will indeed continue into about mid-January, after which point I will return from a jaunt around New Zealand’s South Island and (presumably) much holiday season merry-making.

2010 promises to be a very interesting and challenging year for the broader left. The Obama Administration, if it hasn’t already, is about to hit the big, hard, cold brick wall of reality in a nation dominated by conservative politics. The Rudd Government has a challenge on its hands convincing the electorate that it has lived up to people’s expectations in an election year, and actually delivered on a reasonable proportion of its promises. It is a nice change for a government to be so supremely consultative, but people want more than a chance to have their say; they want to see runs on the board. Federal Labor also has an interesting and potentially dangerous new adversary to deal with in the form of Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, and their brand of backwards-brained populism.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what happens. Best wishes to all - read you next year!