I mused the other day about the fact that the large increase in Australia’s newly-discovered projected consolidated revenue surplus, along with Howard’s cynical spending promises in its wake, created a real opportunity for Mark Latham to “promise some really meaningful major reforms in tertiary education, health, industry policy or public infrastructure.”

So what has he actually done? Spent $2.9 billion on non-means tested free hospital care for old codgers over 75 years of age, and a grandparenting allowance of $20 a week per child for codgers providing primary care. (read the campaign launch speech here). What a goose! The Medicare Gold scheme wastes $2.9 billion of taxpayers’ funds on an economically regressive, socially wasteful program that probably won’t be sustainable in the long term anyway given intergenerational changes over the next couple of decades. The grandparenting allowance might make more sense, depending on the definition of “primary care”. But Labor’s got Buckley’s of persuading codgers to desert the Tories in big numbers anyway, however much Latham tries to bribe them.

This was a heaven-sent chance for Labor to implement major social and economic reforms that could have made a real positive difference to Australia’s future. Instead, like John Howard, Latham has squandered billions of taxpayers’ dollars on cynical and probably futile vote-buying bribes. If that’s the best he can do, Labor deserves to lose.

Update - Professor Bunyip shares my view (which will probably be enough for most lefties to dismiss it out of hand). However, the RWDB echo chamber brigade aren’t saying anything much, probably because Howard hasn’t distributed their hymn sheets yet. Howard himself has been remarkably reticent in his response to Medicare Gold, no doubt realising that dissing the codgers is a bad political move even in relation to a policy proposal as stupid as this one.

The God-botherers have entered the federal election campaign in a big way, with Catholic and Anglican leaders expressing public concern about the ALP’s schools funding policy.

Why the Catholics should do so, given that their schools are clear beneficiaries of the policy, is beyond me. It’s probably a combination of the extreme social conservatism of appalling Archbishop George Pell, along with a large dose of woolly thinking:

The Catholic Education Office’s executive director of Schools, Brother Kelvin Canavan, said it was regrettable that government funding for particular non-government schools had to be taken from other schools.

Canavan seemingly didn’t explain how it could be any other way, unless he believes in the Magic Pudding theory of fiscal administration. But in fact much of Labor’s funding doesn’t come from withdrawal of existing grants to other schools; it’s additional to existing funding.
Continue reading →

A few days ago I noticed a comment from Mark Bahnisch that indicated he had some experience in the industrial relations field, and had been a consultant to the Queensland government. Given that I have no particular expertise in the area myself and that the Howard government is trying to beat up a scare campaign against Labor’s IR policy, I thought it would be worthwhile asking Mark to contribute a guest post on the subject. Fortunately he agreed, and here it is.

Mark is employed at QUT as a Sociologist, has a first class honours degree in Industrial Relations from Griffith and a Graduate Diploma in Industrial Relations (with Distinction) from QUT. He has published on union strategy, the politics of IR policy, and structural aspects of the sociology of work organisation. He has consulted to the Queensland Department of Industrial Relations on IR policy, and regularly does consultancy for private sector clients on IR and HRM issues. He currently teaches Industrial Relations at postgraduate coursework level, and has 8 years’ experience lecturing at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in IR and Employment Law. His article follows overleaf:
Continue reading →

JOHN Howard yesterday doubled his campaign spending promises in one unprecedented wallop, with a $6 billion package aimed primarily at young families and small business.

Both John Quiggin and The Australian editorial today describe it as profligate and spending money “like drunken sailors”, while Christopher Sheil has a more extensive analysis.

This surely spells the end of any credibility for Howard’s interest rate scare against Labor, because if anything is bound to put major upward pressure on interest rates and inflation it’s Howard’s new $6 billion package.

This naked (and seemingly desperate) bribe to the voters also poses an intriguing question. Can Australians be successfully conned by the same trick for a second time? In 1993 Australians accepted Paul Keating’s promise that it was possible to have big tax cuts without a GST, only to discover that it was a lie. In 2004 John Howard is telling them that they can have smaller tax cuts, low inflation and interest rates and a very large increase in government spending all at the same time. If the majority accept this, then they’ll get the government they deserve.

What will probably happen thereafter is that Howard will retire, Costello will become PM and disown Howard’s promises as corrupt and irresponsible (as they are), and hope that he escapes the blame and odium that were Keating’s fate at the election following his Great Lie. If I were Costello, I’d become the invisible man between now and the election, and continue to keep a low profile until Howard retired, so I could have some chance of credibly disassociating myself from his policies.

PS - That theory lasted all of 25 minutes. As this SMH story reports: “Treasurer Peter Costello today defended the government’s $6 billion spending promises, saying they would not push up interest rates.”

PPS - Howard’s splurge also gives Latham the chance to promise some really meaningful major reforms in tertiary education, health, industry policy or public infrastructure, and contrast that with Howard’s cynical, wasteful vote-buying exercise. Latham could substantially underbid Howard on spending the newly-discovered projected surplus, and thereby demonstrate Labor’s fiscal prudence, but still offer a major reform package. Three-four billion of the newly-discovered surplus, plus a similar amount from the uncommitted balance of the $8 billion in savings that Labor had apparently identified, adds up to an awful lot of money.

Just as the polls early this week showed Labor clearly ahead (supposedly to an extent exceeding margin of error), so the ones released at the end of the week show the Coalition ahead by similar decisive margins. Bryan Palmer covers the latest polls here.

Does public voting sentiment really oscillate this rapidly and decisively? I severely doubt it, especially when nothing obvious had happened last week to cause people to move strongly towards Labor, and nothing has occurred this week to make them decisively choose Howard. Of course, it’s conceivable that the latest polls reveal some undecided voters making up their minds a bit earlier than expected and opting for the devil they know. But that doesn’t seem likely unless they’re AFL-phobics who’ve been forced to think about politics to avoid ubiquitous discussion of the aerial ping pong grand final.

It’s more likely that these wild polling fluctuations reflect a public that not only hasn’t made up its mind but is massively uninspired and isn’t paying attention to the politicians’ messages in the slightest. They merely respond to the pollsters’ questions with the first thought that pops into their heads, so they can get the irritating turd off the phone and go back to dinner or the tele or the DVD they just rented.
Continue reading →

The RWDBs seem to automatically dismiss The Age’s Ken Davidson as a communard dolt. So posting an item agreeing with him isn’t likely to endear me to the anti-luvvies. But we centrists call it as we see it without fear or favour.

Davidson raises a critical issue in his column today, that neither major party seems prepared to face: industry, infrastructure and skills training policies and the consequences of the current lack of them:
Continue reading →