Monthly Archives: August 2011

The ABC’s Australian Story about David Hicks and he-said she-said journalism

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The ABC has made a documentary about David Hicks and screened it in an double episode of Australian Story. It’s still on iView and I suggest you go check it out if you’ve not seen it. It went to some lengths to be ‘balanced’ but somehow the balance seems to me to tilt too far towards Hick’s persecutors. Here are the basic facts as I understand them (Feel free to correct me on this). Hicks trained with the Taliban. He was a combatant for the Taliban for a short while. He was captured and no-one knew what to do with him because he hadn’t committed any crimes. He was detained without trial and without access to basic justice for five years. He was then returned after he pled guilty in a situation in which it is clear that his guilty plea was extracted for political face-saving reasons and the circumstances of the guilty admission are such that there is not a court in any civilised country that would regard it as properly obtained.

People like Howard, Ruddock and Downer are interviewed along with an anti-terrorist security analyst. They make it clear that there are some inconsistencies in Hick’s story concerning what he knew when and also the degree to which he supported Islam, although nothing very substantial emerges from this. Howard, Downer and Ruddock say things like that the Australian diplomat who went to see Hicks said he wasn’t being mistreated. In one extraordinary comment I think it is Downer says that terror suspects who have been detained by the Americans “always claim that they’ve been mistreated”. This is apparently evidence that they have not – or perhaps that some of them are lying – who knows?

Now I’ll admit to the fact that my own dim view of human nature is that people can do some seriously nasty things when encouraged to do so in groups, and when they’re away from the cleansing power of sunlight. Abu Ghraib didn’t surprise me in the slightest. However one doesn’t need to be suspicious.  One doesn’t need the pictures of the tortures at Abu Ghraib. One just has to look at the pictures the Americans circulated of hooded suspects, bound on stretchers, isolated in open cages in camps. And yet these kinds of statements  by Downer and co. to the effect that Hicks was not mistreated repeatedly went unchallenged. It illustrated the shabby depths to which ‘he said-she said’ journalism can descend when these spokespeople for the Howard Government were not held to account for the fact that, whether you think Hicks is a stupid and possibly dangerous kid who got himself in way too deep or think he was a horrible terrorist, what happened to him was a gross violation of the rule of law. I’d even be sympathetic to the idea that, in the right circumstances one might want to lock suspects up without being able to prove much against them. But why torture them for years and years?

And it’s true I’m just going on David Hicks’ assertions that he was treated the way he says he was, which I’d call torture. I’m also going on my commonsense all other things considered. And I’m outraged that the other side of this argument – was never really tested.  How do these guys think he spent his days?  Was he in solitary confinement? For how long?  What do the camp records tell us? What was the size of his cell.  Was he in an open cage for weeks? What did the Australian diplomat see? Why was he confident that Hicks wasn’t being mistreated?  How could he have known?

We didn’t get any accountability of that kind out of this program.

In the end the program wasn’t made by people who understood the real principles at stake. David Hicks suffered terribly I’m guessing. But there was a war on.  A lot of other people suffered much more, and were completely innocent of his stupidity. It shouldn’t have been a  he-said she-said drama in which one either sympathises with Hicks or his assailants. It should have been a program which, amongst other things sought to hold our officeholders to account on matters of principle that concern us all .

And good on former Liberal leader in NSW John Dowd for believing in something – like liberalism. Like he said, the disregard for basic principle, the preparedness to sit around while someone to whom you owe a basic duty of protection is tortured for five years, made you ashamed to be Australian.

Return of the prodigal Kev?

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What with the sheer number of journalistic political pundits churning out daily “footie commentary” columns to fill the voracious maw of the media cycle, you’d imagine that no possible play would be left unanalysed.  Instead we get a curious brand of groupthink where they all write pretty much the same thing, leavened by occasional tendentious leaks from inside sources.

There’s one angle in particular I would have thought was obvious but which hasn’t been explored AFAIK.  What is Richo up to? And why?  You remember Richo, the corpulent, oleaginous semi-retired ALP factional fixer and former senior Hawke-Keating government Minister.  Richo has been up to his oily neck in leaks and commentary on the Craig Thomson affair.  In fact he may even have leaked the information that restarted the focus on Thomson’s alleged commercial sex penchant in the first place.  You don’t have to be a genius to work out that Richo is almost certainly the “senior Sydney Labor source” referred to in this 17 August piece by Murdoch journos Andrew Clennell and Steve Lewis.  And here’s Richo keeping things on the boil by fearlessly predicting more leaks to come.  And of course there were.  Fortunately for Richo he’s not only a semi-retired political player but apparently accepted unquestioningly by a supine media as a credible disinterested pundit/analyst.  Thus there is no end of Richo punditry aimed at destabilising the Gillard government and pouring petrol on the Thomson fire.

Does Richo just have a grudge against Thomson?  Or an interest in Health Services Union affairs?  Somehow I doubt it.  Or is he just morally outraged by Thomson’s behaviour?  The latter seems especially unlikely, as acerbic Labor blogger Andrew Landeryou observes:

A victim of quite spectacular scandal sagas himself, one of them relating to the provision of sex workers at the Sea World Nara Resort back in the days when he was a federal minister. It was never suggested he’d paid for them though. It was – as we say in Vegas – “comped” in circumstances later deemed unrelated to the exercise of his public duties.

So when he called Craig Thomson stupid for using credit cards (union-paid ones at that), his criticism might have been more limited and specific than it appeared.

In fairness to Richo, however, I should point out that allegations about his cavorting on a “Love Boat” in the 1980s with a prostitute delightfully named Virginia Perger were probably false, although I’m not sure we can reach that conclusion about rather similar allegations in the 1990s which immediately preceded his sudden retirement from elected office.

It seems much more likely that Richo’s assiduous efforts are aimed at precipitating or accelerating Julia Gillard’s dumping as PM.  That suspicion is heightened by revelations this morning that the Glenn Milne column pulled from the Oz yesterday under threats of defamation action by Gillard had emanated from AWU leaks to Andrew Bolt and others including Milne:

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Getting movies onto my iPad: Bleg

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I am about to make a trans-Pacific flight. Moreover I am doing this on a third world American Airlines plane that I am reliably informed does not have individual movies on demand. This is a fairly serious problem but of course to any Troppodillian it is more of an opportunity in disguise.  Time to get out the trusty iPad and load it up with movies. Only to discover that this is easier said than done – at least for me.  iTunes selection is woeful. I presume this has something to do with Australia’s wise decision to cooperate with the IP Cartel’s parcelling up of the world into separate fiefdoms so that we can’t be given the variety that is available on other continents.

In any event I’d like to load onto my iPad some movies that I actually want to watch.  Renting would be fine, though I’ll probably purchase if necessary. I’d be happy with a good selection of old classics if necessary. Why the hell iTunes doesn’t have a good selection of those I don’t know. Does anyone? Or am I missing something?

Does anyone have any suggestions for me?

Meanwhile back in Government . . .

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I’m doing a few presentations in the next week or so and have been hit by an avalanche of bureaucracy. I try to minimise costs for my clients and book the cheapest airfares possible (usually booking them late in the piece to preserve some flexibility). One of my government clients isn’t happy with this – and wants to book the tickets. They’ll be fully flexible fares and so cost more but the bureaucratic routines dominate. I’ve pointed out that the talk they want me to give is on innovation in government as an encouragement to do something different this time. We’ll see how we go. [Update: This has been fixed and I'll be billing after the event. NG]

I’ve also been asked to speak at another annual conference. There was a time when an annual conference was not usually ‘themed’, so it could present a general survey of what people of interest in the field were up to. But that is long gone in today’s managerial world in which relevance is guaranteed with high level theming’. So I was invited to a conference on

  • delivering customer-centred services
  • innovation for good governance and public sector integrity
  • the tough task of improving social inclusion.

The letter went on. “In light of your current role as Executive Manager, Stakeholder Engagement and Communications at the Australian Communications and Media Authority, we are hoping you would be available to contribute to a plenary panel that will explore ‘delivering customer-centred services’.” This was fair enough except for the fact that I’m not the Executive Manager of Stakeholder Engagement and Communications at the ACMA. Anyway I got on the trusty phone to the organisation that sent me the invite and then got a recorded message. “Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and you will be attended to as soon as someone becomes available”. After a good wait I was informed that “owing to unusually heavy demand, it may be some time before you can be attended to.  You may wish to call back later.”  Anyway, at least if I end up at the conference I will be able to offer some practical tips on how they could have delivered a more customer-oriented service to me.

I also chaired a panel on Open Government at the Melbourne Writers Festival. The ABC is keen to cover this and so we were sent the consent forms.

Keep in mind that the Government 2.0 Taskforce recommended that the licence that should be used by government agencies and corporations is CC-BY (which is the most open licence practically available in the labyrinth that is copyright law) unless there are good reasons to adopt some other licence.

Anyway this is what we were asked to agree to.

I, the Speaker, grant to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC) the right to reproduce and edit the Speaker’s Material for the purpose of making an audio and/or visual recording (the Recording). I agree that the ABC owns all rights in all media throughout the world in the Recording. (my emphasis)

The ABC may use and authorise the use of the Recording, as it contains the Speaker’s Material, in whole or part in any manner the ABC considers appropriate, including for associated promotional purposes, in and in association with the Program. I warrant that there are no restrictions that prevent me from providing the ABC with the Speaker’s Material and agreeing to these terms, and that the consent of no other person is required to enable the ABC to make and exploit the Recording.

I release and indemnify the ABC, its assignees, and licensees from and against any claims arising from any breach of this warranty and the exercise of the rights granted herein.

I asked if we could agree to CC-BY and got a call from an EP at the ABC and we had an enjoyable chat. Do you know that the ABC’s iView and similar on demand vision from the ABC has now gone to geo-blocking by default so current affairs shows which used to receive live feedback from around the world during the program (for instance Q&A) cannot now do so. He doubts he can sell it to the behemoth’s lawyers, but asked me to send him the full text of the CC-BY licence. I’d not checked it over carefully previously but just one look at it – below the fold – shows you what a nightmare the whole thing is.

Here we are in public democratic deliberations in much the way they were undertaken in the Athenian agora (my spellchecker wants an “angora” here, but I digress) all those years ago (OK, sans togas and sans Plato, Socrates, Pedicles and like VIPs of the ancient world).  And yet this is the gobbledigook that has to be waded through just to render one’s words, deeds and vision thereof tolerably public property – or to speak more precisely how to enable one’s words as private property to circulate in a way resembling the way they’d circulate if they were public property.

(Note: lawyers advise that the existing law in Australia may not enable one to fully divest oneself of all rights to content – and so CC-BY requiring attribution for ever no matter how little of one’s work is used is the best one can do. Words fail me, but they do take me back to a strange interplanetary experience when Troppo debated the rule against hearsay and the doctrine of consideration)

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Making the most of women

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Women are "working fewer hours, in lower-paid industries and in lower-status jobs" than men, writes Jessica Irvine. Despite decades of feminism, women are still doing most of the unpaid cooking, cleaning and caring for children. They are still struggling to break into senior, highly paid jobs. In the Australian Financial Review Alan Mitchell suggested a way of dealing with the problem … but it’s not a solution most feminists or egalitarians will like.

As Irvine observes, there are two arguments for increasing women’s participation in paid work. The first is an argument for social justice. Society relies on women to bear children and it’s not fair that doing so makes it more difficult for those who are qualified to compete for high paid, high status work. And it is certainly not fair that women without children still find it more difficult to get ahead at work.

The second argument is economic. "Economists at Goldman Sachs estimate closing the gap between male and female participation rates would boost Australia’s annual economic production by 13 per cent", writes Irvine. This would "help cool inflation pressure, meaning lower interest rates than otherwise."

A 2009 report by Tim Toohey, David Colosimo and Andrew Boak at Goldman Sachs JBWere argues that women are source of highly educated labour just waiting to be unlocked. As Andrew Norton notes notes, women with university qualifications are far less likely to work full-time than men even when they don’t have children.

But according to Toohey, Colosimo, and Boak, another problem is that women with higher degrees tend to focus on just two industries: health care and social assistance, and education and training. Australia could achieve a significant boost to output if women could be persuaded to look beyond these two fields. By moving into traditionally male dominated fields, women would not only help to address skill shortages but would also improve their productivity.

In the Australian Financial Review (paywalled), Alan Mitchell argues that one way to encourage highly educated women to take on senior, highly paid jobs and work more hours is to allow more unskilled workers to migrate to Australia.

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Introducing: Raymond Weschler

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Since a recent visit to San Francisco catching up with a cousin of mine I’d last met forty years ago, I’ve been receiving an email once a week.  It is written by Raymond (using a French pronunciation of the word long before Stephen Colbert took to this trick). It is sent to anyone who subscribes. And it organises and, more importantly anatomises a local weekly game of softball in the San Francisco area, though it is read, nay studied, for the perspicacity of its speculations on matters which go beyond softball. Australians haven’t seen this kind of insight since the days of Dave Sorenson.

I’ve gradually grown dependent on this weekly missive. If you want to read a few you can read over ten years worth of these productions here.  In any event, a recent one is below. I’ve been into what is indecorously called the ‘back end’ of Troppo and given Raymond an ID and invited him to post.  He doesn’t want to post weekly but will post when he feels sufficiently inspired. In fact I’ll be in San Francisco next weekend, but I’m kicking myself that I’ll be arriving just after the game finishes.  Next time I’ll make sure I make it in time for the action.

Softball: Couch Potato (A Somewhat Convoluted Foray into the Intangibles)

Dear People,

Alan Brill’s team stunned my own in a spine-tingling athletic paragon of ontological ethics, 15-13. I refer you to the top of the 6th, when Frank’s blistering groundball up the middle was quickly turned into a dazzling force-out at 3rd. It was then and there that my textbook-like defense had every right to pause and savor, but instead, the Frankensteiner apparently fell into an untimely state of groggy pensivitude, and with Stephan’s searing throw to 1st, Frank suddenly found himself as the new and towering poster-child for gratuitous double plays. In all candor, it was the most pathetic post-bat sleepwalking in the history of this league, and yet there he was at game’s end, beaming with pride as part of the Brillopad’s victorious contingent. Really—how in God’s name does this happen?

Of course, the irony grows and the questions only multiply. Just three innings later with bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th, Mary approached the plate with two out and our side down by five, yet also with the raw and unbridled resolve of 1,000 infracaninophiles. That’s a fuckload of resolve, of course, and sure enough, she blasted a staggering three-RBI double into deep center right! It was a gorgeous and transcendent achievement by any standard, but my team still went down—and down hard—in the tragic flames of a follow-up fly out. Does this mean that in pondering the abstract merits of a triumph denied, Frank was somehow more “worthy” than MaryMary (Quite Contrary), or is it, as I suspect, a discomfiting reflection of the fact that true aerobic justice is as randomly scattered as the initial quanta of the universe itself? I think you see where I’m going with this.

The point is that a couple days ago I happened to be watching CNBC as the stock market reacted to news of the S&P downgrade of US Treasury bonds, and as I absorbed the cogent logic of selling off one’s equities in a panicked rush in order to buy into the safety of the very bonds whose downgrading had just caused the panic, it suddenly occurred to me that the ebbs and flows of capital are as inscrutably wacko as the inevitable and unjust placement of meritorious athletes. Indeed, later that night I saw Steven Hawking on the Discovery channel arguing that the physical essence of everything arises directly from “the unconditional probability of existing based on the functional laws of nature.” Yeah, somebody has to say it; What a moron!

In any case, and as best as I can tell from the empirical evidence gleaned by a single night of cable viewing (over a tall, inviting stein of rich, hot cocoa), we don’t really know why the universe just popped into being, or why markets do what they do, or why Frank ended up on the winning team while Mary was stuck on mine, or, for that matter, why, when Tom and Anne finally returned to England after two long years abroad, only a select few British cities decided to greet them with the traditional celebratory riots. No, my friends, we don’t know the answers to any of that and we most likely never will. Yet as a stout and hearty people who are willing to embrace the great aerobic cosmos for the mystery that it is, I think we all accept that the future is not only unwritten, but distressingly likely to baffle, disappoint and utterly annoy. And therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…Raymond

Weighting criteria bleg

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Steven Jobs is perhaps the best CEO of the last hundred years.  This may reflect my ignorance of other CEOs – which is bordering on the comprehensive – but my reasoning goes like this this: In identifying extraordinary talent, one has to guard against luck.  How do we decide between luck and extraordinary talent? Run the experiment again.  I don’t know of too many executives who, in addition to having about five huge wins running a corporation – in this case Apple II, Mac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad (not to mention Pixar) – (and OK that’s not five things but no-one expects the Spanish Inquisition).  And he got himself ousted in the middle of this performance his successful comeback providing the best possible test of whether his earlier successes were just luck.

In any event I often wonder how Steve would go in a CEO review. After all, he’d be ranked on all sorts of metrics, the weight of each metric would probably be fixed in advance so his skills of leadership and vision (surely where he excels) would be rated 10/10 if there’s any sense to the world, but there would be other criteria. Like “makes all staff feel involved and valued and provides them with confidence in the transparency and integrity of the organisation”. Criteria like “has a transparent, open and constructive relationship with the board”.  Now I expect that Steve would do badly on the first of these and who knows about the second. So if, together they account for say 30% of his score, he wouldn’t do particularly well.

In fact an organisation is an organic entity and what one really wants is people at senior levels who are very good at certain things and some effective division of labour – so there’s an effective spread of talents and expertise and people play to their strengths and cover others’ weakness.

I wonder if anyone can point me to literature which explores the fallacy of composition I’ve implied is going on above and what might be done about it in determining criteria and the weighting between criteria that should apply when deliberating on important decisions.

Immigration and the neoliberal imagination

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Why "shouldn’t we look forward to a freer, more egalitarian world of tomorrow in which people are allowed to live where they want?" asks Matt Yglesias. If neoliberalism is about removing all barriers to market transactions then removing restrictions to migration should be top of the list.

According to Michael Clemens, restrictions on emigration from poor countries to rich countries is one of the greatest distortions to the global economy. Clemson suggests that the gains from the emigration of less that five per cent of the population of poor countries would exceed those from removing all policy barriers to the movement of goods and capital.

In a recent piece for the Drum, Jeff Sparrow wrote about the tensions between neoliberalism and conservatism. In rich countries, immigration is one of the major sources of tension. Conservatives worry that immigration will undermine social norms. Migrants will bring their own moral codes and will demand that the host country’s laws and institutions respect them. Conservatives fear that the difference between right and wrong will increasingly be seen as a matter of opinion. And without a strong moral framework to keep unruly passions in check, social order will break down.

There’s also resistance from the left. As a commenter on Yglesias’ blog put it: "This call for free immigration only serves to lower the standard of living developed countries, increased immigration only serves to depress wages, dilute union membership and strain the social safety net."

But even if that is true, the comment expresses a shocking disregard for the welfare of some of the world’s most disadvantaged people. According to Clemens, migration is one of the most effective ways of improving the welfare of people in the world’s poorest nations. On the issue of Hati he writes:

… migration and remittances have been responsible for almost all of the poverty reduction that has happened in the island country over the past few decades. They have done enormously more good than any policy intended to reduce poverty inside Haiti during that time. Any poverty-reduction strategy for Haiti going forward that does not include what has been Haitians’ most successful poverty-reduction strategy to date is not a serious one.

It’s not just the left who see a tension between freer migration and the welfare state. In 2004 Britain’s Telegraph declared: "the fundamentals of the immigration issue are straightforward. Milton Friedman, as is his habit, summed the whole problem up years ago, in just 10 words: ‘You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state’."

The Telegraph’s solution is to allow migrants to come, but deny them access to welfare benefits. But carried to its logical conclusion, that might lead to a kind of welfare feudalism where migrants end up paying for the generous welfare entitlements of existing inhabitants of the host country. And that’s a debate we had here at Troppo a few years ago.