Monthly Archives: November 2009

School league tables

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Julia Gillard has announced that the new national website for schools will include average NAPLAN scores. Principals hate the idea, as do some education academics. The Minister has responded to the criticisms by being uncharacteristically evasive. She invokes ‘transparency’, but always uses less controversial examples than the NAPLAN scores to illustrate the merits of transparency.

Much of the noise in the media has been generated by the political sideshow in New South Wales, where parliament passed legislation, introduced by the Greens, prohibiting the publication of school league tables; the Government then tried to revoke the new law but was blocked by the Opposition. In an act of phony bravado, the SMH last week defied the legislation by publishing NAPLAN scores for three government schools — enough to breach the letter of the law, but not really the spirit. No-one is likely to prosecute. It’s obviously not viable legislation, and will be overhauled one way or another eventually. George Williams thinks it may even violate the constitution. Continue reading →

A pretext to rave about Beethoven

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Richard Ronald Brautigam:’What’s really remarkable is not so much that he could compose something like this, but that he could play it.’

I’ve only just managed to see In Search of Beethoven, and it’s probably nearing the end of its inevitably short season. But it’s still showing in all capital cities as far as I can gather, so I feel duty bound to recommend it. In any case, I’ll grasp any excuse to talk about this topic.

It’s definitely for the fans. By which I mean, Beethoven enthusiasts will get immense pleasure from it. I thought it might be only for the fans, but Margaret Pomerantz gave it four and half stars, and anyone who thinks the Third Symphony is called Heroica probably isn’t an aficionado (David didn’t even flinch at this: score one for me, Nicholas).

A serious intent is signalled from the very opening (see the clip on At The Movies), where a foretaste of appraisals from the experts is backed by hands on a keyboard, playing not the Moonlight Sonata but the Fourth Piano Concerto, which is the most beautiful and profound of Beethoven’s concertos, and by implication the most beautiful and profound concerto ever written.

There are several really good things about the documentary. The first is that it’s a really well executed biography, weaving the threads together — Beethoven’s emotional life, his evolving artistic vision, and his response to the political upheavals of his day, centring on the French Revolution and Napoleon’s conquests — into a satisfying fabric.

Then there are the illuminating commentaries on individual pieces from a dazzling procession of eminent conductors and instrumentalists. Continue reading →

The future of joblessness

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Although labour demand is not quite keeping up with jobs, the labour market remains broadly stable. This is hardly surprising, given the strong fiscal and monetary stimulus. This is now expected to decrease gradually in the next few months.

Yet we are still left with very high rates of effective unemployment (which includes the under-employed and discouraged workers). For example, total unemployed has now reached about 11%, Newstart Allowance jobseekers are some 31.5% higher at 564,601, compared with last year, and young people (up to age 24) have hit almost 12 percent.

This is of concern to the Government, to people like Ross Gittins and Tim Colebatch and many of their readers but it is of no concern to the RBA (or people like Michael Stutchbury in the Australian) because they argue that the economy is not operating too far below capacity – and their forecasts of unemployment are very positive. In fact, the RBA is dead set to increase interest rates up a few notches (one of the tiny few central banks to do so).

This raises the issue which I discussed in a recent article (In Economic Papers March 2005). It is now raised by Mark Thoma: will there be a new normal for structural and frictional unemployment?

Should Australia expect an increase in structural unemployment (unemployment arising from technical change and changes in composition of output)?

The answer for Australia must be yes. If our exchange rate remains close to parity with the US dollar, there will surely require a big shift in resources required to assist the WA, Queensland, NT and SA mineral developments. Tourism, agriculture and manufacturing will have to stagnate.

This will require the Government to invest heavily in labour market programs such as in job training and encourage relocation geographically (further labour market deregulation is now largely dead). This will be a big challenge for the budget.

Major shift on legal responsibility of pubs

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The High Court has ruled that people serving alcohol are not at risk of of  massive claims for damages if a drinker comes to grief on the way home. One would hope that commonsense will prevail and folk will conform with responsible serving guidelines.  Some of the claims were a bit over the top so this can be seen as a reasonable move.

Without dissent, five judges overturned a decision of the full bench of Tasmania’s Supreme Court that found a publican who returned motorcycle keys to a drunken patron, who then died in a crash, had failed in a duty of care.

Three of the judges opted to make a more detailed explanation of their decision to “avoid repetition” of such cases and to warn against “interfering paternalism”.

They ruled that outside exceptional cases, hotel owners and licensees “owe no general duty of care at common law to customers … (requiring) them to monitor and minimise the service of alcohol or to protect customers from the consequences of the alcohol they choose to consume”.