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tcpipThere have been only two elections in the past ten years that I have guessed wrong. The 1999 Victorian state election and this Federal election. And in this election I must admit, that Howard's cunning and sheer capacity to strip himself of any veneer of moral integrity in the mindless pursuit of power surprised me.
Interest rates. What a plan of evil genius that was.
See, this is how it worked: Over the past eight and a half years, with massive government cutbacks in services and such enormous increases in household taxation that we now have the highest taxing government ever, our previous public debt has been shifted to a much larger private debt. Not for the big-end of town of course, but rather the private debt of ordinary Australians, who now have the biggest household debt (mortgage, credit card etc) in history. It was an act of little economic dexterity and of course, allowed the opportunity for John Howard's masters to skim a little more cash.
Consider it a market relationship. Certain members of society have a pathological desire more money. Other members of society have a pathological desire for more power. A mutually succesful contractual obligation is derived and lo! we have the ruling class, or at least nearly all of them. Ahh, yes... Class. Not allowed to mentioned that word anymore are we? No, we're all one big happy family in this country all pulling together for one another. But I digress...
Howard put ordinary Australian households in a situation of the worse debt they've ever been in. And then what? He threatens them! "Oh, look out! It's the high interest rate bogeyman!". Indeed, that struck a chord. After all, if interest rates do go up for many households already at the edge of their debt limit it's curtains. And not just metaphorically. Situations like this do lead to those awful suicide-murders with alarming regularity.
And, like the "Never ever GST", the "children overboard" events, or the "weapons of mass destruction" and that enormous list of prior deceptions, it was A BIG LIE. I swear, Howard is so brilliant at this. With his lust for power (rather sad and pathetic at his age, I think), he not only hinges the election campaign on the issue of trust, with no sense of irony, he actually distracts everyone from the possibility that once again he's going to deceive the public again!
Interest rates. Determined by the Reserve Bank of Australia, independent of the edicts of the Government. Primarily influenced by interest rates in economies of size and influence far greater than ours. Howard knows this, after all, he was Treasurer of the country when interest rates were over 20% and he certainly doesn't blame himself for that! The best any government can do is to position our little economy so that any dramatic international changes don't affect us as badly. If you're in doubt of this, do some international comparisons of interest rates of OECD countries over time. When the big economies move, we move with them. And as an export-orientated country, there's not very much we can do about it.
I don't blame the electorate for not knowing this. The overwhelming majority haven't done high school economics, let alone university economics and are completely oblivious to the behaviour of international money markets and the institutional machinations of how interest rates actually work (in a sentence: when the economy is healthy there is usually a demand for more investment which puts pressure on the money supply causing an interest rates increase). Heck, they're battling to work out the family budget each fortnight. And, I must confess, I underestimated it as in election issue as well. After all, I live like a Scottish Calvinist and actually have net savings. Things like massive improvements to public schools, a substantial tax cut for nearly all those earning less than $50,000, protection of old-growth forests, ending dangerous military adventures etc seemed more substantial.
No, I blame the pathetic campaign of the Labor Party which, with all their positives, forgot something that Beazley never did - that there are people out there who are really funding it hard and the prospect of 17.5% interest rates was just a nightmare. So what did Labor do? Did Labor go on a furious angry attack and point out in bold stark terms that this is yet another weapon of mass deception? Of course not, they played right into Howard's hands. Mark Latham signs a big piece of cardboard that endorses the point of view that somehow the Australian government could exert real influence over the flow of capital in the international economy. And as one Liberal commentator pointed out, stunts like that don't change people's minds. But it did put into people's minds that somehow the Australian government could substantially influence international trends. And on the election day, that high number of undecideds came out and played it safe. After all, under Howard, interest rates couldn't possibly rise, could they?
Fear. Uncertainity. Doubt. The essence of John Howards marketing. Like I said, brilliant. And when the next election comes around, when this lie has been exposed, rest assured there will a new one and, perhaps once again, Labor will dither.
Anyway. Richard O'Brien and I got to the Blackburn Primary polling booth at 5.45am. We set up, worked all day and achieved a 3.5% swing to Labor when the rest of the seat went 3.8% to the Liberals. A fairly typical performance from us, but not as good at the 11% gain on primaries we achieved at the Parkville polling booth in the 1999 state election. I reckon a couple of Labor strategists - including Bob McMullin ("Labor's master strategist") -who's losing more elections that Arthur Calwell - needs to be replaced and Rich and I can move in their stead.
However, New Zealand does beckon more (again) as a viable option. And I am a citizen after all..
The election result has underscored my feelings from the last one - which convinced me to move to East Timor - that I can have no pride in being an Australian. We have become a country where "the fair go" is no longer part of the national ethos, we where we lock refugee children up behind razor wire, a country of wowser puritans which is economically myopic, racist to both our indigenous people and migrants and utterly subservient to American foreign policy. And under such circumstances, one has to be a realist and work out whether it is a more efficient use of my energies to try to turn the situation around here, or further the progressive reforms already started in a place like New Zealand.
There are negatives of course. New Zealand, being more isolated from its major trading partners, has a lower purchasing power per capita $21,600 USD (NZ) versus $29,000 USD (NZ), making NZ wages roughly 75% of their Australian equivalent - and no, that's purchasing power, so don't think "but rents are cheaper". Unemployment is lower (4.7% versus 6%) but there's a poor distribution of income, especially at the more extreme points (bottom 10%, top 10%). Infrastructure isn't quite as good on most issues (rail, roads, pipelines) on a per capita basis but in telecommunications they're almost equal ('phones per capita, Internet users per capita) and in some cases they even far surpass Australia (e.g., radio). The electricity production is comparable and less than 1/3 of it comes from fossil fuels (compared to Australia's 91%). The current account deficit and foreign debt is somewhat better than Australia's although at some stage it'd probably be a really good idea to diversify their exports a bit more.
What I find most appealing however is the political system. A unicameral parliament made up of single-member constitutuencies and proportional representation seats with special seats for Maori constitutencies. In the last election (2002) Labor received 41%, Nationals 21%, New Zealand First 10%, ACT 7%, Greens 7%, United Future 7%, Others 7%. From what I can tell, ACT are moderate capitalist libertarians, NZ First are old conservatives, anti-immigration, anti-indigenous rights (and to think my mother is a personal friend of their leader, Winston Peters *shakes head*), United Future is a "family values" party, moderate conservatives with a god-awful website as well.
So whilst NZ isn't some sort of Labor utopia the fact that the nominally "conservative" parties have fragmented into "modern", "traditional" and "reactionary" wings means that I find that I could at least deal with the ACT and the Greens (cf., "geolibertarianism") under a general social democratic orientation. I could live with that. In fact, I think some real mileage can be gained from it, especially given New Zealand's propensity to engage in brave acts of independent foreign and domestic policy. All of this is very encouraging compared to the Australian political landscape.
And besides... There's this little town called Dunedin...
All other events in the past week went well in comparison. Clinton's launch of "Reluctant Saviour" on Australia's foreign policy on East Timor was positive and, having now finished the book, I can recommend it even higher. As I expected, this is a book of disturbing (well, not disturbing to me) facts, and strong theory based on rather common-sense elucidations.
Richard Stallman's presentation on the danger of software patents at the Uni of Melbourne was extremely well attended - at least five hundred people. The straggly haired programmer from the seventies, picked his nose, kicked off his shoes and utterly destroyed the idea that patents are good for software development - remember you, and your users, can be sued for software that you wrote. Want to protect yourself? Well, read the tens of thousands of software patents in Americo-legalese.
Wednesday is Deb's opening for East Timor Women Australia at 6pm Ross House, 247 Flinders lane, Melbourne with East Timorese music, coffee, and nibbles
Finally, on Friday![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
severina_242 is having her exhibition "Domos Monstrous" with Kerri Michael at the Intrude Gallery, 114 Gertrude St, 6.30 - 8.30 pm. I had a little to do with this, writing the original proposal for the exhibition which, contrary to most art critics who claim the Australian suburban landscape is plain, safe and boring, presents the suburban dream as a disturbing nightmare that is unsettling and dangerous. Come along and support great art.
Update
Where to for workers and the left? forum at 7pm Thursday 14 October, Upstairs, Mac's Hotel 34 Franklin St CITY (Between Swanston and Elizabeth sts). My (paula_angela) fellow speakers are: Fraser Brindley, Greens Councilor, Moreland and Tessa Theocharous, Socialist Alliance candidate, Moreland Council
and I've just applied to join the New Zealand Labour Party.
Interest rates. What a plan of evil genius that was.
See, this is how it worked: Over the past eight and a half years, with massive government cutbacks in services and such enormous increases in household taxation that we now have the highest taxing government ever, our previous public debt has been shifted to a much larger private debt. Not for the big-end of town of course, but rather the private debt of ordinary Australians, who now have the biggest household debt (mortgage, credit card etc) in history. It was an act of little economic dexterity and of course, allowed the opportunity for John Howard's masters to skim a little more cash.
Consider it a market relationship. Certain members of society have a pathological desire more money. Other members of society have a pathological desire for more power. A mutually succesful contractual obligation is derived and lo! we have the ruling class, or at least nearly all of them. Ahh, yes... Class. Not allowed to mentioned that word anymore are we? No, we're all one big happy family in this country all pulling together for one another. But I digress...
Howard put ordinary Australian households in a situation of the worse debt they've ever been in. And then what? He threatens them! "Oh, look out! It's the high interest rate bogeyman!". Indeed, that struck a chord. After all, if interest rates do go up for many households already at the edge of their debt limit it's curtains. And not just metaphorically. Situations like this do lead to those awful suicide-murders with alarming regularity.
And, like the "Never ever GST", the "children overboard" events, or the "weapons of mass destruction" and that enormous list of prior deceptions, it was A BIG LIE. I swear, Howard is so brilliant at this. With his lust for power (rather sad and pathetic at his age, I think), he not only hinges the election campaign on the issue of trust, with no sense of irony, he actually distracts everyone from the possibility that once again he's going to deceive the public again!
Interest rates. Determined by the Reserve Bank of Australia, independent of the edicts of the Government. Primarily influenced by interest rates in economies of size and influence far greater than ours. Howard knows this, after all, he was Treasurer of the country when interest rates were over 20% and he certainly doesn't blame himself for that! The best any government can do is to position our little economy so that any dramatic international changes don't affect us as badly. If you're in doubt of this, do some international comparisons of interest rates of OECD countries over time. When the big economies move, we move with them. And as an export-orientated country, there's not very much we can do about it.
I don't blame the electorate for not knowing this. The overwhelming majority haven't done high school economics, let alone university economics and are completely oblivious to the behaviour of international money markets and the institutional machinations of how interest rates actually work (in a sentence: when the economy is healthy there is usually a demand for more investment which puts pressure on the money supply causing an interest rates increase). Heck, they're battling to work out the family budget each fortnight. And, I must confess, I underestimated it as in election issue as well. After all, I live like a Scottish Calvinist and actually have net savings. Things like massive improvements to public schools, a substantial tax cut for nearly all those earning less than $50,000, protection of old-growth forests, ending dangerous military adventures etc seemed more substantial.
No, I blame the pathetic campaign of the Labor Party which, with all their positives, forgot something that Beazley never did - that there are people out there who are really funding it hard and the prospect of 17.5% interest rates was just a nightmare. So what did Labor do? Did Labor go on a furious angry attack and point out in bold stark terms that this is yet another weapon of mass deception? Of course not, they played right into Howard's hands. Mark Latham signs a big piece of cardboard that endorses the point of view that somehow the Australian government could exert real influence over the flow of capital in the international economy. And as one Liberal commentator pointed out, stunts like that don't change people's minds. But it did put into people's minds that somehow the Australian government could substantially influence international trends. And on the election day, that high number of undecideds came out and played it safe. After all, under Howard, interest rates couldn't possibly rise, could they?
Fear. Uncertainity. Doubt. The essence of John Howards marketing. Like I said, brilliant. And when the next election comes around, when this lie has been exposed, rest assured there will a new one and, perhaps once again, Labor will dither.
Anyway. Richard O'Brien and I got to the Blackburn Primary polling booth at 5.45am. We set up, worked all day and achieved a 3.5% swing to Labor when the rest of the seat went 3.8% to the Liberals. A fairly typical performance from us, but not as good at the 11% gain on primaries we achieved at the Parkville polling booth in the 1999 state election. I reckon a couple of Labor strategists - including Bob McMullin ("Labor's master strategist") -who's losing more elections that Arthur Calwell - needs to be replaced and Rich and I can move in their stead.
However, New Zealand does beckon more (again) as a viable option. And I am a citizen after all..
The election result has underscored my feelings from the last one - which convinced me to move to East Timor - that I can have no pride in being an Australian. We have become a country where "the fair go" is no longer part of the national ethos, we where we lock refugee children up behind razor wire, a country of wowser puritans which is economically myopic, racist to both our indigenous people and migrants and utterly subservient to American foreign policy. And under such circumstances, one has to be a realist and work out whether it is a more efficient use of my energies to try to turn the situation around here, or further the progressive reforms already started in a place like New Zealand.
There are negatives of course. New Zealand, being more isolated from its major trading partners, has a lower purchasing power per capita $21,600 USD (NZ) versus $29,000 USD (NZ), making NZ wages roughly 75% of their Australian equivalent - and no, that's purchasing power, so don't think "but rents are cheaper". Unemployment is lower (4.7% versus 6%) but there's a poor distribution of income, especially at the more extreme points (bottom 10%, top 10%). Infrastructure isn't quite as good on most issues (rail, roads, pipelines) on a per capita basis but in telecommunications they're almost equal ('phones per capita, Internet users per capita) and in some cases they even far surpass Australia (e.g., radio). The electricity production is comparable and less than 1/3 of it comes from fossil fuels (compared to Australia's 91%). The current account deficit and foreign debt is somewhat better than Australia's although at some stage it'd probably be a really good idea to diversify their exports a bit more.
What I find most appealing however is the political system. A unicameral parliament made up of single-member constitutuencies and proportional representation seats with special seats for Maori constitutencies. In the last election (2002) Labor received 41%, Nationals 21%, New Zealand First 10%, ACT 7%, Greens 7%, United Future 7%, Others 7%. From what I can tell, ACT are moderate capitalist libertarians, NZ First are old conservatives, anti-immigration, anti-indigenous rights (and to think my mother is a personal friend of their leader, Winston Peters *shakes head*), United Future is a "family values" party, moderate conservatives with a god-awful website as well.
So whilst NZ isn't some sort of Labor utopia the fact that the nominally "conservative" parties have fragmented into "modern", "traditional" and "reactionary" wings means that I find that I could at least deal with the ACT and the Greens (cf., "geolibertarianism") under a general social democratic orientation. I could live with that. In fact, I think some real mileage can be gained from it, especially given New Zealand's propensity to engage in brave acts of independent foreign and domestic policy. All of this is very encouraging compared to the Australian political landscape.
And besides... There's this little town called Dunedin...
All other events in the past week went well in comparison. Clinton's launch of "Reluctant Saviour" on Australia's foreign policy on East Timor was positive and, having now finished the book, I can recommend it even higher. As I expected, this is a book of disturbing (well, not disturbing to me) facts, and strong theory based on rather common-sense elucidations.
Richard Stallman's presentation on the danger of software patents at the Uni of Melbourne was extremely well attended - at least five hundred people. The straggly haired programmer from the seventies, picked his nose, kicked off his shoes and utterly destroyed the idea that patents are good for software development - remember you, and your users, can be sued for software that you wrote. Want to protect yourself? Well, read the tens of thousands of software patents in Americo-legalese.
Wednesday is Deb's opening for East Timor Women Australia at 6pm Ross House, 247 Flinders lane, Melbourne with East Timorese music, coffee, and nibbles
Finally, on Friday
severina_242 is having her exhibition "Domos Monstrous" with Kerri Michael at the Intrude Gallery, 114 Gertrude St, 6.30 - 8.30 pm. I had a little to do with this, writing the original proposal for the exhibition which, contrary to most art critics who claim the Australian suburban landscape is plain, safe and boring, presents the suburban dream as a disturbing nightmare that is unsettling and dangerous. Come along and support great art.Update
Where to for workers and the left? forum at 7pm Thursday 14 October, Upstairs, Mac's Hotel 34 Franklin St CITY (Between Swanston and Elizabeth sts). My (
paula_angela) fellow speakers are: Fraser Brindley, Greens Councilor, Moreland and Tessa Theocharous, Socialist Alliance candidate, Moreland Counciland I've just applied to join the New Zealand Labour Party.
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manipulated small powers
Date: 2004-10-10 10:51 pm (UTC)Re: manipulated small powers
Date: 2004-10-10 11:58 pm (UTC)I can't honestly say, but I'd think it would be a reduced role following the fracturing of the ANZUS alliance... Australia and New Zealans still engage in a great deal of joint operations, but that's usually stuff on the ground.
Re: manipulated small powers
Date: 2004-10-11 12:08 am (UTC)Re: manipulated small powers
Date: 2004-10-11 12:30 am (UTC)I don't think it's broken per se, hence the term fractured, but since NZ said "no nuclear warships in our harbours" and the US said "we're not telling you whether they are nuclear or not", there haven't been too many joint operations.