Progressive Direction

September 26, 2016

• Club Troppo Health care in pets and humans: the more things change …

  Looks quite interesting

  Is American Pet Health Care (Also) Uniquely Inefficient?
  by Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, Atul Gupta – #22669 (AG HC PE)

  Abstract:

  We document four similarities between American human healthcare and
  American pet care: (i) rapid growth in spending as a share of GDP
  over the last two decades; (ii) strong income-spending gradient;
  (iii) rapid growth in the employment of healthcare providers; and
  (iv) similar propensity for high spending at the end of life. We
  speculate about possible implications of these similar patterns in
  two sectors that share many common features but differ markedly in
  institutional features, such as the prevalence of insurance and of
  public sector involvement.

• Daniel Bowen Charity and money

  Years ago I decided I wanted to donate at least 0.7% of my income towards charity.

  Over the weekend I was doing my tax, and calculated it: for 2015-16 it’s 1.32%. Cool.

  About half the annual total is Oxfam. Other regulars include Greenpeace, The Salvos (though I mean to check their latest position on homosexuality, as for a while there it was looking pretty medieval), Amnesty. The regulars, of course, have been set up as direct debits – though note I refuse to deal with chuggers.

  The rest is ad hoc stuff like sponsoring friends for charity events, Royal Children’s Hospital (Good Friday), Public Transport Not Traffic etc.

  Meanwhile in the high finance stakes, I’m being urged by some family members to refinance my home loan and get an investment property.

  Refinancing is easy thanks to a friendly local mortgage broker. But investment property? It all seems very adult… and time consuming, though probably worthwhile. Do I really want to contribute to the stupidly high appreciation of home prices?

September 25, 2016

• The Northern Myth ‘Pig Iron’ Bob Menzies. From the other side of the cultural divide

  

  For those of us of a certain age, watching John Howard’s particularly rosey-glassed take over at the ABC on the career/legacy of former PM Bob Menzies raised more than a few uncomfortable memories, few of which at least appeared to be explored in the first episode of the series.

  By chance I came across this 1978 poster by Chips Mackinolty made while he was working at the Earthworks Poster Collective, one of three similar groups based at the Tin Sheds Art Workshops at Sydney University and made on the occasion Menzies’ passing in May 1978.

  I’ll have another look at the show tonight, unless I have something more important to do–doing the dishes or folding the washing come to mind–and see if it improves.

  Chips is living and working in Palermo so I sent him a note about the show and finding the poster and see if he had any thoughts he’d care to share about Howard’s show and the times.

  Here is his response.

  Frankly I couldn’t be bothered wasting my broadband monthly allowance on this, though may have watched bits of it if I were back in Darwin. Interesting that Howard, only the second PM to lose an election along with his seat now clings to Menzies as if to wipe out that historic defeat.

  Growing up under Menzies was an enervating experience: no wonder so many urban Australians got out, from Patrick White to Richard Neville and beyond.

  We printed hundreds of these in time to be driven to Melbourne to line the route of his state funeral.

  Right up until the late 70s there were still graffiti in the dockland areas of Sydney with Pig Iron Bob across the walls. That, and Free Zarb, the name of an early conscientious objector, the result of his introduction of conscription.

  I spent a fair bit of time at the Tin Sheds  Art Workshop but unlike Chips and others doing the hard graft I was concentrating more on getting pissed, stoned, laid or all of the above at the same time, usually at an Uncle Bobs Band gig.

  The Powerhouse Museum website says of Chips Mackinolty’s work at the Tin Sheds Art Workshops that he:

  … was an early member of the Earthworks Poster Collective established in 1972 which worked out of the Tin Sheds Art Workshop at Sydney University. With a variety of other members holding strong political views he created posters related to university politics and wider political, social and economic issues. The climate of the seventies, political activism and debate and opposition to established authority and government structures, was mirrored in the work of Chips and his colleagues.

  The important role that the late Di Holdway had in the documenting and preserving many posters of the era is recognised in this tribute by the Powerhouse Museum.

  The Di Holdway collection of posters accumulated over 20 years in Sydney, Alice Springs and Darwin and largely focuses on the work of print makers who first worked with the Earthworks Poster Collective at the Tin Sheds, University of Sydney. Di’s involvement with the Tin Sheds began in 1974 when she was working at the Students Representative Council–initially as a secretary and later as its CEO. Dianne Margaret Holdway (died 2001) was close to a number of ‘Earthworkers’, and during 1974-76, volunteered as a printer and ‘racker’. After finishing work at the Students Representative Council, Di worked at the South Sydney Women’s Centre and worked closely with the Sydney University Settlement, both located in Chippendale. In the 1980s, Di worked for Aboriginal organisations in the Northern Territory. Throughout this period, Di kept in touch in particular with Michael Callaghan of Redback Graphix, originally from Earthworks Poster Collective, who was at that stage commissioned to produce posters for a number of Central Australian Aboriginal organisations.

  The posters in the Di Holdway Collection reflect their times, of course, but also represent Di’s wide political and social interests over a period of two decades from the 1970s to 1990s. They very much represent her friends and work mates from the period. Some of the posters are represented in public collections such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Australia.

  If you have your own memories of life under Pig Iron Bob please feel free to share them here. You know you want to …

  The post ‘Pig Iron’ Bob Menzies. From the other side of the cultural divide appeared first on The Northern Myth.

• The Northern Myth Blacks in the back cunts in the front. New work by Therese Ritchie

  

  This is the show-opening speech by Therese Ritchie for her recent show of new work Blacks in the back cunts in the front at the Outstation Gallery in Darwin in mid-August 2016

  I have had a lot of response to the title of this show, from all sides. When I first told a friend of mine that I was having a show and thinking of calling it Blacks in the back, cunts in the front, she told me a story in which typifies the Territory’s many uses of the ‘C’ word. It goes like this:

  A woman was walking her dog along Casuarina Beach. They happened past another woman who was building a morning fire. The dog took a dislike to this woman and began barking at her and the woman met the dog’s hostility with her own version of a growl, telling it to ‘fuck off’. The dog owner took great offense and yelled something like “Don’t you dare talk to my dog like that!” The other woman answered, “Aww and you fuck off too, you white cunt,” and the dog owner responded, “Don’t you call me a white cunt ….. you, you black cunt.”

  Apparently this exchange went back and forth quite a few times before the woman realized that her dog had moved on, and so did she.

  

  I then asked a man who used to be a bus driver in Katherine what he thought of the idea of using it as a title for an exhibition. He told me it was common for the kids to separate themselves on the bus by calling out ‘blacks in the back, cunts in the front.’

  And when I handed the invitation to a local Darwin woman; she waved it at me saying, “This is true! This happens.” “Yep I know,” I said. “No,” she returned, “I mean it really happens. I got on the bus the other day and joked ‘blacks in the back’ as I walked to the back of the bus and sat down”.

  

  A speaker at a rally held in Darwin on July 30 (in response to 4 Corners ‘Australia’s Shame’) used the term ‘blacks in the back’ as a way of describing how aboriginal people are perceived and placed in Australian society.

  The phrase Blacks in the back, cunts in the front attracts and repels, confronts but connects, exposes and yet hides. It is a perfect description of how schizoid non-indigenous Australians can be when it comes to thinking about aboriginal people and it describes the work in this show very well.

  When it came to advertising the show, ‘Off the Leash’—Darwin’s entertainment guide—would not run my ad. It was too tricky for them to handle, and even though I was granted development money by the NT government—which led to the creation of most of this body of work—they decided to reserved their right to withdraw their logo from any publicity regarding the exhibition and its content. This happened a couple of days short of ‘Australia’s Shame’, ABC’s 4 Corners report about treatment of children behind bars.

  

  And here we have the stumper. How is it acceptable for successive NT governments to neglect the most disadvantaged people in their care whilst ignoring the consequences, culminating in grown men gassing and stripping kids or strapping them into restraint chairs and yet it’s not acceptable to say blacks in the back cunts in the front?

  Blacks in the back, cunts in the front and the response to it, is emblematic of how non-indigenous Australia embraces and yet looks away from aboriginal people at the same time. This ruptured thinking process is the stringy bond with our earlier task of occupying, claiming and settling Australia, in particular the ‘wilderness consciousness’ that in its day encouraged mate-ship, an easy going attitude, and above all, manners (you could not swear at the dinner table or in front of your mother) whilst allowing rape and killing to be seen as pragmatic.

  Today, when you apply for an arts grant there are many boxes you have to tick—and there is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ box with the question “Does your work include aboriginal people?”

  

  It’s as if there is some unspecified space out there—an obvious line, and if you get to it, somehow aboriginal people will not exist—at all—past present or future, and that’s where I need to go to make work that does not include them?

  I don’t know where that line is?

  Of course I see the reason why bureaucracy would say that question should exist, and why we should abide by it, but I refuse to engage with it.

  I don’t ever see or feel that line because when I walk out my door, I see what I see. Aboriginal people are intrinsic, they are not in a box that I tick, or not.

  

  There is a book ‘Forgetting Aborigines’ by Chris Healy. Healy argues that it has been all too easy for modern non-Indigenous Australians to forget Aborigines, and to forget the fact of their forgetting.

  He describes this act of forgetting as pervasive and entrenched within our Anglo cultural mindset, our rituals and processes such as our ceremonies of owning and possessing through the creation of history; determining public holidays; memorials; how we educate; what we celebrate; how we incorporate Indigenous art into non-Indigenous cultural spaces; our bureaucratic demands and assimilationist political policies.

  

  The phenomena of ‘forgetting’ is played out in the fiscal racism of the NT government, seeing them, over decades, spend big in Darwin, where most of the white population lives, and spend less in the more remote parts of the territory, where 80 per cent of the Indigenous population lives. The 2015–16 financial year, for example, saw the NT government take $500 million dollars away from areas of indigenous disadvantage.

  This amnesia, accompanied by willing deafness, is the reasoning behind the regressive Northern Territory National Emergency Response even though there had been numerous reports and recommendations on incidence of abuse and neglect, violence, suicides, incarceration rates, health and housing statistics, unemployment rates, poor educational achievement delivered to successive governments for twenty years prior to The little children are sacred report.

  

  And just as The little children are sacred was not new information, the treatment of children in the Don Dale Detention Centre was also not new information, as many people in the NT who have been dealing with it and trying to bring it to light for years will tell you, and yet the national outcry is one of “Why wasn’t I told?” when the question to ask is “Why don’t we care enough to remember?”

  Every now and then the real experiences of indigenous Australians disrupts our idea of things; contradicts our well-designed recall of aboriginal people, and overwhelmed by what we see and hear, we react and bemoan, “How could this be?”

  

  But this sudden remembering will continue to be part of the continuum of forgetting if we are not willing to be diligent, or do not even understand that we need to be diligent, how will we ever begin to see that we are part of the problem?

  We do not question ourselves enough, our attachment to our own cultural practices as being the ‘norm’ makes us comfortable and ignorant enough to get by, but it means we soon forget that Indigenous Australians were here first and are an invaluable part of a modern Australian society.

  

  This split of forgetting and then remembering is why aboriginal people can have Land Rights from 1976 and yet today over 90% of NT land is under mineral exploration or petroleum license. Or why Article 14.1 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People can state: “Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.”

  And yet the last one hundred indigenous languages that live on the 500 homelands in the NT are threatened by the Stronger Futures Policy, which seeks to abolish homelands and move 10,000 people into already overcrowded communities; bilingual education has been suspended without consultation; students are punished for speaking their languages and no bilingual resources are being created.

  

  So when it comes to ticking the boxes ‘yes’ or ‘no’, I cannot tick either, so I tick the space in between the boxes. And this is what Blacks in the back cunts in the front is about—the space between the boxes.

  And as residents of Darwin and the NT we know with a vengeance, that we inhabit this space all the time and that is not transient, it is very, very real. It’s uncomfortable because our sense of ourselves as ‘good people’ is shattered when we see that it is founded upon a nagging truth that the land belongs to someone else.

  How can we be truly interested in aboriginal people’s culture when we are scheming ways to keep and take their land? And we have to face it because when we don’t face it, we hide from the past in our flurry to create an acceptable ‘present’ and we make people—in this case—aboriginal people disappear.
  Thankyou, and welcome to Blacks in the back cunts in the front.

  ==========================================

  Blacks in the back cunts in the front is available for exhibition following the brief run in Darwin. You can contact Therese Ritchie directly via her website here to discuss logistics. For mine it deserves a much wider audience.

  Based in Darwin Ritchie is a photographer and graphic designer of twenty-five years standing whose work is born of all she has witnessed and experienced in the “paradise of sadness” that is the Northern Territory. Her work is described as going “beyond photo-journalism or biographical documentary. She goes where other image-makers of the Northern Territory frontier have rarely dared to venture: into a heart of darkness of our own making.” She is represented in the Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, Supreme Court of the Northern Territory Art Collection, Artbank, National Gallery of Australia, Flinders University Art Museum, Araluen Collections and private collections in Australia and abroad.

  You can see more of Therese Ritchie’s work here.

  The post Blacks in the back cunts in the front. New work by Therese Ritchie appeared first on The Northern Myth.

September 22, 2016

• Club Troppo Would the High Court uphold sections 18C and 18D of the RDA on constitutional grounds?

  Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (Cth) is a perennial favourite topic for right wing politicians, and conservative pundit Andrew Bolt has never stopped moaning about it ever since he ended up on the wrong side of a Federal Court decision Eatock v Bolt in 2011.

  But there is also some respectable legal opinion questioning the constitutionality of section 18C. The most recent is an article by barrister Louise Clegg in the Australian Financial Review a couple of days ago.  She fearlessly asserts that the High Court is likely to strike it down when or if a suitable case comes before it.  She claims that High Court Chief Justice Robert French gave a thinly veiled warning to that effect in a speech late last year.

  I’m nowhere near that certain, but I certainly have some doubts about the constitutionality of section 18C. I mused about them in a long and rather rambling post about 5 years ago, shortly after the Eatock v Bolt decision.   The occasion was a speech given at CDU  by then Federal Court Chief Justice Patrick Keane, who like French CJ also expressed some careful concerns about proscribing political speech which was merely “offensive” or “insulting”. Keane too is now a Justice of the High Court. His speech was titled “Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones but Names Will Never Hurt Me”. Despite that title and his expressed concerns, Keane CJ (as he then was) suggested that perhaps prohibiting free speech which undermined “human dignity” might be democratically (and presumably constitutionally) acceptable. He drew inspiration from American jurisprudential scholar Jeremy Waldron, who advocates human dignity as a suitable constitutional touchstone for courts to employ in reconciling and prioritising competing rights.

  The problem with the notion of “human dignity” and its infringement as a determinant of whether political speech can properly be prohibited in a democratic society where political communication is constitutionally protected (e.g. Australia and the US)  is that it is potentially just as indeterminate as section 18C in its current terms.  In one sense it is a classic example of what Julius Stone called a “category of illusory reference”. A judge who disagrees subjectively with a particular exercise of free speech rights may have no more difficulty in labelling it a breach of “human dignity” than labelling it an act which “is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people”.

  In any event, I thought it might be worth reproducing my musings about the constitutionality of section 18C over the fold:

  Bolt deservedly lost [in Eatock v Bolt] as a result of his reckless disregard for factual accuracy. He would probably have lost in defamation proceedings as well, and for similar reasons.  However, had he got his facts closer to correct, engaged in some rudimentary fact-checking beyond a quick Google search, and given his targets an opportunity to respond before publication, he would have had a good defence to defamation proceedings on the so-called Lange extended defence of qualified privilege.  And yet, at least on Bromberg J’s reasoning, which held that Bolt’s nasty and aggressive tone was also an element in denying his words exemption under s 18D,  Bolt may well still have been held in breach of s 18C in those circumstances.  That strikes me as both constitutionally and democratically problematic.  As the High Court’s unanimous judgment in Lange v ABC explained:

  In Theophanous, the Court held that, once the publisher proved it was unaware of the falsity of the material, had not acted recklessly, and had acted reasonably, malice could not defeat the constitutional defence. But once the concept of actuating malice is understood in its application to government and political communications, in the sense indicated, we see no reason why a publisher who has used the occasion to give vent to its ill will or other improper motive should escape liability for the publication of false and defamatory statements. As we have explained, the existence of ill will or other improper motive will not itself defeat the privilege. The plaintiff must prove that the publication of the defamatory matter was actuated by that ill will or other improper motive. Furthermore, having regard to the subject matter of government and politics, the motive of causing political damage to the plaintiff or his or her party cannot be regarded as improper. Nor can the vigour of an attack or the pungency of a defamatory statement, without more, discharge the plaintiff’s onus of proof of this issue.

  The constitutionality of sections 18C and 18D have only been considered in a couple of decisions, namely Jones v Scully and Toben v Jones.  Neither decision contains any real analysis of the question.  The High Court has not ruled on it.

  Bromberg J appears to have set a higher bar for a defendant in RDA proceedings than that which the High Court regarded as constitutionally appropriate for defamation proceedings in Lange. Given that both are civil causes of action and both constrain political communication, this seems a somewhat peculiar result  In that sense at least it’s a pity that News Ltd has decided not to appeal in Eatock v Bolt.  Would the High Court regard ss 18C and 18D as reasonably “appropriate and adapted” to a purpose within Commonwealth power (the validity test the Court sets for laws which incidentally burden constitutionally-protected speech)? On the one hand the provisions render a successful defence more difficult than in defamation, at least when the communication is not for a “genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose”.  On the other hand the available remedies (retraction or apology, injunction etc) are more restrained and restorative in nature than the punitive damages-based approach of the common law. Certainly Waldron regards Australia’s regime as appropriate and adapted:

  The most generous such provision I have seen is in the Australian Racial Discrimination Act, which says that its basic ban on actions that insult, humiliate, or intimidate a group of people done because of their race, color, or national or ethnic origin “does not render unlawful anything said or done reasonably and in good faith: . . . in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest.” The purpose of these qualifications is precisely to limit the application of the restriction to the bottom end [of the spectrum of hate speech].

  I’m not at all sure that can still be said in light of Bromberg J’s reasoning. Despite the High Court’s warning in Lange that “the vigour of an attack or the pungency of a defamatory statement, without more” is not enough for a plaintiff to succeed, Bromberg J appears to have take just such an approach in finding a breach of the RDA:

  The tone and gratuitous nature of both the specific and general comments made contributed to the disrespectful manner in which the people in the ‘trend’ were dealt with and contributed to the intimidatory effect of the articles.

  The extent of mockery and inflammatory language utilised by Mr Bolt to disparage many of the individuals which the Newspaper Articles deal with, far exceeded that which was necessary to make Mr Bolt’s point.

  PS Katy Barnett’s excellent and extensive analysis of broader issues surrounding Eatock v Bolt at Skepticlawyer also repays careful reading. Also see Russell Blackford’s excellent post.

• Links International Ideas for the struggle #5 - Minorities can be right

   

  

   

  By Marta Harnecker, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

   

  1. Democratic centralism implies not only the subordination of the minority to the majority, but also the respect of the majority towards the minority.

   

  read more

• Links International South African workers mobilize to challenge neoliberal policies

   

  

   

  By Irvin Jim

   

  September 25 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project — The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) Special National Congress in December 2013 resolved: “There is no chance of winning back the Alliance to what it was originally formed for, which was to drive a revolutionary programme for fundamental transformation of the country, with the Freedom Charter as the minimum platform to transform the South African economy.”

   

  Recent events have fully vindicated this view.

  read more

• Links International Being a Kurdish-Turkish mistake

   

  

   

  Portrait of Saladin the Great

   

  September 24, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Open Democracy — Saladdin Ahmed, an assistant professor of Philosophy at Mardin Artuklu University in Turkey, interviewed by Robert Leonard Rope

   

  Robert Leonard Rope(RLR): Please briefly describe your background. Were you named after Saladin the Great? And what was it like to teach at a university in Turkey?

   

  Saladdin Ahmed (SA): I never know how to answer questions about my background mainly because my identity has always been shaped around negations rather than the promotion of a certain upbringing. I wouldn’t say I have an identity crisis, but I would say identity, at least in today’s world, is itself a crisis.

   

  read more

• Links International The voice for change – On Hong Kong’s 2016 Legislative Council election results

   

  

   

  Nathan Law was one of five candidates who ran for election advocating self-determination and were elected on this basis. By Au Loong-Yu

   

  September 23 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières — The 2016 LegCo election results show a strong call for change. Although politically and socially divided among themselves, it was the first time in Hong Kong history that five candidates ran for election advocating self-determination and were elected on this basis. If we take into consideration that a further two elected legislators proposed a weaker version of self-determination, then we must recognize that there is a sea change in Hong Kong’s political landscape. In total the candidates who ran on the platform of demanding for self-determination garnered 22.2% of the vote (including those who lost the election) – the vote here only means the regional direct election votes; it excludes the functional constituency vote and the super district board vote.

   

  read more

September 21, 2016

• Daniel Bowen What can council elections teach us about aspect ratio?

  One of the things you start noticing a lot more when you have two tertiary-level film and television students in the house is aspect ratio.

  Local council elections are in October, and posters have started going up for candidates.

  In some wards you see full-sized billboards, but in ours — so far — the most prominent posters are small, displayed in shop windows.

  

  Not that it’s important, but I can’t help noticing that Oscar Lobo’s picture is the wrong aspect ratio.

  I’ve met the guy; he’s often in Centre Road talking to constituents. His head isn’t that spherical, and his torso isn’t that bulky. (Some of his posters have his picture in the correct aspect ratio.)

  Some others have been seen out and about.

  Local election time – candidates have started handing out fliers at the station. pic.twitter.com/gYgTS98yFv

  — Daniel Bowen (@danielbowen) September 14, 2016

  So, who to vote for?

  In many cases, council candidates are relatively uncontroversial. And in our area (Tucker Ward), most candidates are not strongly (publicly) aligned with the major political parties. There are three vacancies, and 14 candidates.

  As far as who to vote for, all I can say is:

  I’m overall pretty happy with my local council. Most services seem to be run efficiently, facilities are good, and rates are lower than in a lot of other areas. They’ve also tried to do some education on keeping footpaths clear of vehicles and trees, though this could be stepped up with more, and enforcement.

  As the Dandenong line skyrail project now seems inevitable, it would be nice to see the council proactively working on how the freed up land beneath the tracks will be used.

  I would single out Jamie Hyams (loosely Liberal-aligned). I met him years ago, when he was originally standing for council. He asked what City of Glen Eira could do to help the cause of public transport. One thing I suggested was to join the Metropolitan Transport Forum — at the time, Glen Eira was one of the few councils that were not a member. He said he’d look into it if elected. He was elected, and subsequently they joined. More recently he was mayor when the council unanimously passed a motion accurately pointing out that East West Link will bring little benefit to our area. I’ll vote for him again.

  I’m not sure about my other preferences; I’ll consider them closer to voting time as candidates make their views on issues known.

  A few days ago, the local newspaper reported stormy council meeting in Glen Eira, Kingston and Frankston. Locals should have a read and judge for themselves how their councillors fared: Glen Eira, Kingston and Frankston council meetings end in chaos

  Voting in October

  I haven’t checked other areas, but in Glen Eira electoral rolls have already closed, as have nominations. Ballot packs are sent through the mail in early October, and are due back in the mail by the 21st — I assume most council areas are the same.

  • VEC: 2016 council elections
  • Previous time around: 2012 election notes
• The Northern Myth The NT electoral system is a joke. But can Hare-Clark fix it?

  

  There is much to like about living in the Northern Territory. I wouldn’t have hung around here for 30 and more years if not. But there is much that is seriously wrong about this place as well.

  Not least, as my colleague Ken Parish pointed out here last week, in the way we govern ourselves. It is difficult to fault Ken’s assessment that the blame lies with the Territory’s foundational structures:

  … the Commonwealth imposed an inappropriate model of self-government in 1978 (the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act for a polity of the Territory’s size and stage of development, a model that entrenches single member electorates, prohibits the co-opting of ministerial talent from outside the Parliament, lacks inbuilt accountability checks and balances, and largely ignores the key fact that Aboriginal people constitute one-third of the population, own half of the land and have a culture and material needs and aspirations that differ radically from those of the majority non-Aboriginal population.

  Evidence of the systemic failures in the NT electoral system can be found–as Ken Parish usefully sets out in his piece–in the skewed results of what elsewhere in the country (and beyond) might be viewed as election outcomes within a normal range. Explicit in Ken’s analysis is our failure to provide an equitable and appropriate electoral system for the NT.

  Drawing on the examples of the other two small Australian jurisdictions–Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory–Ken notes the value and suitability of the “multi-member electorates with MLAs elected by Hare-Clark proportional representation” that both have adopted, noting the electoral system applied in those jurisdictions:

  … not only enhances diversity of political representation and encourages mature deliberation and constructive compromise, it also ensures significant continuity and stability of representation for the major parties (albeit at the price of seldom achieving the sort of complete single party domination aka elected dictatorship that the NT ALP will now enjoy for the next four years).

  Four NT election results–skewed in terms of seats won against proportion of votes received–suffice to illustrate the argument for proportional representation in the NT.

  In the NT general election of 1974–the first for a 19 seat Legislative Assembly but prior to “full” self-government in 1978–the Country Liberal Party (a recent shotgun marriage of the local Country and Liberal parties) won 49.01% of the vote, the Australian Labor Party won 30.46% and independent candidates won 20.54%. The CLP took 17 seats, the ALP none and two Independents won seats.

  In the 2001 election, which Labor won after 27 years in the wilderness of opposition, Labor–now in a 25 seat Assembly–won 13 seats to the CLP’s 10 with Independents taking the remaining two seats. But the CLP led Labor on both first preference votes (45.38 to 40.60%) and two-party preferences (51.9 to 48.1%).

  It is useful to see how the application of a different electoral system would–or could–have changed this result. The good folks at the Proportional Representation Society of Australia (the PRSA) conducted an analysis of the 2001 election, noting that:

  To simulate what might have happened under quota-preferential proportional representation, the PRSA grouped the twenty-five single-member electorates into five, with each returning five members. The CLP and Labor would both definitely have won eleven seats. The election of three Independents would have been quite likely, though in one case it is possible the vote away from the major parties would not have adhered, and Labor would then have picked up a twelfth seat.

  The PRSA produced this useful table illustrating the difference that the application of proportional representation would have had on the 2001 result.

  

  Table source: PRSA, 2001.

  The results in the 2005 NT general election were even more stark and distorted. Labor, winning 19 seats out of 25 in the Assembly, took a very heavy toll on a dysfunctional CLP very much unused to life in opposition, gaining only 4 seats with the remaining seats going to Independents. Clare Martin’s Labor Government increased its vote by over 11 percent to 51.9% while the Country Liberal Party fell from 45.4% to 35.7%.

  Again, application of a proportional representation analysis would have provided a very different result, as shown with this PRSA table, with Labor taking 14 seats, the CLP 10 and Independents one.

  

  Table source: PRSA, 2005.

  All of the election results examined above reveal the truth of the “extraordinary volatility” in NT electorates that Ken Parish says “regularly results in an Opposition too weak numerically to provide effective opposition and therefore hold the government to account” and result in an “artificially attenuated” opposition.

  But none of those election results hold this as true as does the August 2016 NT general election. That the CLP as led by Adam Giles deserved a thrashing is without doubt–Giles lost his own seat of Braitling in suburban Alice Springs–and the CLP’s Parliamentary wing was reduced to a rump of 2 seats, with Independents taking the remainder. In a cruel twist of electoral and legal fate, the remaining CLP MLAs–Gary Higgins from the rural seat of Daly and Lia Finocchiaro in the newly-created Darwin suburban seat of Spillett–were obliged to form the Labor government’s loyal opposition.

  Higgins, as opposition leader, has taken on the portfolios of  Treasury, Aboriginal affairs, Infrastructure, Housing, Tourism, Environment, Public employment and Corporate and information services. Finocchiaro, as deputy opposition leader, takes on the role of shadow attorney-general (she is a trained lawyer), opposition whip (that will be a breeze), Justice, Police, Fire and Emergency Services, Trade and business, Health, Education, Primary industries and resources, Northern Australia, Essential services, Territory families and Children.

  Welcome to politics as farce.

  I’ll leave discussion about the relative merits–or not–of proportional representation as a model for future NT elections for your comments and the much-needed and inevitable debate that  will occur–or we’ll be damned to repeat past failures if it doesn’t–about how the NT governs itself. There is little doubt that the NT electoral system is broken.

  The bigger question is how we fix it.

  Discuss.

  The post The NT electoral system is a joke. But can Hare-Clark fix it? appeared first on The Northern Myth.

• Links International Catalonia and Spanish state: million-strong rally brings showdown closer

   

  

   

  By Dick Nichols

   

  September 22, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — On September 11, Catalonia’s national day (the Diada), between 870,000 and a million-plus came out to show their support for Catalan sovereignty and—for the majority of those present—for Catalan independence from the Spanish state.

   

  The fifth annual mass mobilisation for Catalan statehood since 2012, again organised by the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and the Catalan cultural association Òmnium Cultural, confirmed that this social movement remains by far the largest in Europe.

   

  It continues to pose a threat to the Spanish state and will also become an increasingly critical issue for a European Union that continues to reel under the blows of Brexit, its brutal handling of refugees and economic stagnation in many major regions.

   

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• Club Troppo Politics and solving problems

  Here’s a skilful pitch for government dollars. Why shouldn’t online appointments with medical health people be funded under Medicare. Why indeed? It’s all slickly done as you’d expect from Change.org. These guys have optimised social campaigns to a high art.

  Anyway, it got me thinking along the lines of my recent essay on human services and evidence-based policy that this is all pretty crude. Right now we have a ‘market’ in primary medical services and that market is very heavily subsidised by Medicare. And that subsidy then leads to a situation in which lines are drawn as to what will and won’t be subsidised. Yet the subsidy should be a subsidy with a brain. That is the funding creates a lever by which one should be setting up an evidence base around what works and what doesn’t.

  It would be a bad idea to imagine that this could be rolled out in any large way any time very soon. Because the skills don’t exist to convert a market into something richer in generating evidence of efficacy. If you pushed it, you’d get role play. The bureaucrats would try to implement something, but it would all be pretend and would be unlikely to be of much help.

  My understanding is that some counselling services work and some don’t. My understanding is also that this is irrelevant to existing funding of counselling through Medicare. So rather than upset the apple cart and change any of this, wouldn’t it be good to identify how much money would fund what the campaign is seeking and then make some similar amount of money available for primary health care services predicated on the idea that a ‘brain’ would be part of the program which would help the system discover what worked, what could be improved and what should not be continued.

September 20, 2016

• Links International 1916: Use workers’ power to end the war

   

  

   

  By Käte Duncker, introduction by John Riddell

   

  September 21, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/John Riddell: Marxist Essays and Commentaries — 100 years ago today, a leading antiwar socialist in Germany explained the need for revolution to end the First World War. Her audience was delegates to the last unified national conference of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), held in Berlin on September 21-23, 1916.

   

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• Links International Pakistan: Awami Workers Party second congress finance appeal

   

  

   

  September 20, 2016 — Awami Workers Party — Dear friends, well-wishers and all those who struggle for a better world!

   

  In less than four years, the Awami Workers Party (AWP) has emerged as Pakistan's preeminent left-wing political force, reinvigorating the progressive political tradition after many years in the wilderness.

   

  As many of you will know, to run a leftist organization in Pakistan is as challenging a task as any in the world. This is a country that has long been a 'frontline state' of imperialism, run by a venal elite including a praetorian army, and overwhelmed by a brand of right-wing religious militancy that has eroded an already fragile social fabric.

   

  The AWP represents an attempt to bring together the best traditions of left politics in the 20th century with a new generation of activists politicized by the anti-globalization and anti-war movements of the early 21st century.

   

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• Links International Trotsky and Gramsci on revolutionary strategy

   

  

   

  Gramsci and Trotsky: Strategy for the Revolution in the West
  Emilio Albamonte and Matías Maiello
  Argentina: Left Voice, 2016
  158 pages

   

  Review by Doug Enaa Greene

   

  read more

September 19, 2016

• Club Troppo Open government: Such, such were the joys

  A quick placeholder for something more substantial hopefully soon.

  Have a look at this ridiculous letter in response to a request to see a copy of the independent scoping study into future ownership options for the ASIC Registry. Judging by other experiences I’m aware of – at the State level in NSW – this is becoming fairly standard. Lucky we’ve finally got a Prime Minister who cares about these things. …

   

• Club Troppo Could sortition help against corruption, part II

  In part 1, I looked at whether it made sense to have random individuals inserted into parliament, or to let policies be decided by juries full of randomly chosen individuals. Both were argued to be unworkable and likely to lead to more corruption, rather than less: policies that favour the special interests are so entwined with large legislative programs that it is not feasible or desirable to have them judged by juries of amateurs. And random members of the public spending years in parliament have even less incentive to be honest than members of long-standing political parties with brand-names to protect.

  Here I want to mull over the possibility of using random members of the jury for appointments and for generating signals about corruption. The end result of my deliberations is that I can see use for random juries in major appointments within the public sector, but that I cannot see them working as a means of generating information.

  For those who missed the earlier discussion on why having parliaments made up of random members of the public is not a good idea: a good example of problems you get with excessive diversity in parliament is Brazil, which has dozens of political parties and as such without long-established major players who have some incentive to care about reputations for honesty. Their parliaments are pretty close to random groups of populists, a diversity that has been strongly argued to make their politicians sitting ducks for special interest groups. Their parliamentarians have been argued to sell out to the highest bidder.

  The fundamental problem, which is that without big players no-one has enough incentive to care about corruption, is an old argument you also see in other arenas: to keep big companies honest you need large shareholders with enough skin in the game to monitor and punish; to keep rogue countries in line and do something about international crises, you need large countries big enough to worry about and organise an answer to these problems.

  For sure, there are some policy-areas where citizen juries might be useful, such as when it comes to decisions about politics itself, such as electoral boundaries, but there too the West has plenty of examples of well-functioning institutions that do the same job without citizen juries.

  The post drew some knowledgeable commenters though who have been wedded to the idea of sortition for quite a while, and the proposals they brought up did make me wonder whether sortition could help with other decisions in our democratic systems. Mainly they pointed out the use of randomly selected groups of citizens who got to decide on appointments rather than policies. Sortition systems in Florence and Venice operating for many centuries were examples of how randomly chosen people voted in the ultimate leaders, though in those cases the ‘randomly’ chosen people were all members of the elite themselves.

  The hope is that random members of the public would be pretty good at judging the bias and character of people. After all, that is pretty much what criminal-trial juries already do and in which random members of the public are arguably better than specialist insiders who cannot see beyond their own little corners.

  So let us come from the problem from the other end and look at whether having the wrong people in charge is indeed a problem within our democratic system, then see how sortition would be applied to hire the right people, and then try and think through whether sortition would truly help if we consider the counter-moves of special interests.

  One could describe our current Western democratic system as having a strong executive that is heavily aligned with special interests, feeding slanted proposals to parliament, dominating the civil service that has lost its independence. The reason this system has gone off the rails in recent decades are varied, but I see three mayor stylised problems:

  1. The political executive has managed to politicise the civil service, and as a result the ministries lack the independent power to resist special-interest initiatives that get the backing of the minister.
  2. The media no longer has the ability and the interest to hold the government to account such that corruption and misconduct are uncovered and kept in the public’s eye until the problems are sorted out. Rather, a lot of the media is co-opted or is indifferent: stories are still being unearthed, but only a small minority of the population gets exposed to them. One suspects that in the background, newspaper owners are selling silence to those major interests willing to pay (ie you can pay to not have your corruption exposed! Probably more lucrative than chasing the advertisement dollar).
  3. The executive and the top of politics has got locked into a material status-race such that former politicians and top ministerial staffers are obsessed with getting their slice of the pie. They then become co-opted by special interests to lobby the current executive and thus to defraud the population.

  How can sortition help with this? I think the third problem is somewhat out of the hands of the sortitioners as the influence of the old party members is an inevitable by-product of the party system wherein the old party heroes still have influence on the new members. The material status-race is also a general trait of our culture and though I do have theories on how to reduce it (see here), for all intents and purposes, it’s not something we can do much about. You get status races with every elite.

  The second and first problem though do seem to lend themselves to an appointment-via-sortition intervention. The role of providing believable signals to the population about corruption and misconduct can be taken up by citizen juries; and one can think of citizen juries as means of selecting top bureaucrats so as to give them an independent mandate versus the politicians. Let us think through both in turn.

                  Citizen juries selecting bureaucrats.

  Currently, appointments of senior civil servants, like Deputy Secretaries of major departments, are partly political and partly driven by the bureaucracies themselves. We could mandate that the top civil servants just below the minister get appointed via a citizen jury that selects candidates and chooses one amongst them in open hearings. This would be akin to the top appointments in the US that have to go through the US Senate (such as for the Supreme Court), but I would envisage both the short-listing of candidates and the selection of a single one to be outside of the political and bureaucratic system.

  There are many ways to do this, but the essential idea is that one takes 20 or so random members of the public, let’s them sift through thousands of candidates for top-bureaucrat jobs to come up with a short-list for each position, and then select another 20 random members of the public to make the actual decision of who gets what job by means of open hearings and open verdicts. By separating the short-listing from the actual decision, one takes away most of the opportunities for gaming the system, and by having the hearings in the open, one gets accountability of the jury process.

  Using such a sortition process for appointments to jobs is similar to what was done historically in Venice and Florence, where random sets of important people decided on who got the top political jobs. Yet, I don’t think that we have an undemocratic or bad way to select our top politicians and that we should hence fully copy those historical, elitist, examples (in Venice and Florence only the insiders got to vote): the current problem is more that the whole layer of executive politicians has too much power to pervert the bureaucracy and that the bureaucracy has too little incentive to resist. So the obvious solution would be to use citizen juries to select the ‘inbetween’ layer that links the executive with the bureaucracy.

  The purpose would thus be to empower the top civil servants and hence to make the whole bureaucracy more independent of the designs of the politicians, but still beholden to the population that is then involved in choosing them.

  Let us think how such a system could be gamed if it were institutionalised.

  Ideally, one would probably want to get honest public-oriented civil servants winning most of the top-posts: people who have the insider knowledge and expertise needed, but who are not part of the political tribes or special interest groups. You would want them to float to the top of a citizen-jury selection system. But would they?

  How would the special interest groups react to such an appointment system? They would certainly push some of their cronies to apply, but they would find it hard to bribe the juries, particularly if it takes more than 1 jury to actually appoint someone. And anyone obviously partisan or in the pockets of special interests would be easily unmasked, even by a jury of amateurs (members of the public may not be able to judge complicated policies, but they can spot a fraud when they pay attention, I think).

  The special interest groups could try and harm the reputation of particular candidates they really don’t like, feeding the media information on their supposed incompetency. Citizen juries would find that hard to ignore. But then, the current politicians and civil servants also find smear campaigns hard to ignore. And citizen juries in principle could make the effort to unearth the truth about candidates, if given enough powers to investigate, such as having people giving evidence under oath.

  When it comes to positions that are worth billions of dollars to special interest groups (like tops of mayor procurement ministries such as Defence), one should expect the lobbyists to professionalise the way they try to game citizen jury appointment, running slick marketing campaigns that try to prevent people from applying whom they don’t like, including vindictive campaigns against people within the ministries who applied in the past, just in order to set an example.

  What the system would evolve to under that kind of pressure is not easy to see, but I do think it would be hard for special interests to really dictate who gets the top jobs. They will probably be able to scare off any identifiable group (like their enemies inside the ministries), but not the whole population of competent potential candidates, particularly not the ones outside of the state system.

  So, I would expect that the people who survive the smearing by the interest groups and the independent scrutiny of the citizen juries to be relatively dull but competent independent characters. Perhaps not the ideal outcome, but likely an improvement on what we have now.

  As a system of appointments, it would probably not be all that costly to set these juries up: currently the costs involve headhunters and god-knows-what for each individual appointment, so juries that appoint a whole lot of them in different areas after open hearings might be relatively cheap. The appointments decided upon this way could include lots of positions currently decided by politics, including semi-public positions like Vice-Chancellors and the executives of public hospitals.

  In short, I can see it work in practise, though the political opposition to it might be immense, both from ministries and from politicians who, rightly, would fear loss of influence.

   

                  Citizen juries judging previous policies, decisions, and politicians.

  Currently, the systems of oversight on politicians and top civil servants seem ineffectual. A good example is the former Crime and Misconduct Commission in Queensland, which got into the habit of asking the very people accused of wrong-doing whether there was any merit to the accusation, and where the previous government tried to appoint one of their cronies at the top to make sure no investigations happened on their watch. In economic parlance, the supposedly independent monitoring institutions became captured by special interests.

  The oversight by the media is also severely wanting. Perchance this is because one cannot effectively charge for expensive investigative pieces. Perchance this is because there is more money to be made by newspapers and TV-channels when they sell out on particular topics to local vested interests (just think of the infomercial on medicines!). Perchance this is because the internet allows everyone to exclusively nurse their tribal biases, immunising them from real information. Whatever the reason though, the media is not very successful in holding politicians and special interest groups to account. This aggravates the problem of capture by independent agencies.

  How can citizen juries help with this, apart from directly appoint the tops of independent scrutinising agencies?

  Citizen juries in principle can become an institutionalised means of generating the strong and open signals we want from the media: they could decide after-the-fact on whether decisions have been corrupt or not and openly communicate their findings. Like courts currently, they would be able to decide on what evidence they gather and to have hearings under oath.

  I am here not thinking of deciding that something is corrupt in a legal sense, but more in a public-morality sense: whether the random members of the public honestly think upon reflection that a decision has been made against the public interest, and whether the motives of key decision makers have been good or bad. Whether there is individual criminal culpability is a different question, and more naturally one that one wants the criminal justice system to deal with.

  One would want to have a fairly high barrier to these citizen jury courts, such that they are not used willy-nilly: one should perhaps only instigate them once a reasonable percentage of the citizens has signed a petition for them. Yet, one does want the verdict they reach to be made publicly available and broadly advertised via the national media channels, so that their verdicts become an unmistakable public signal of what the citizenry on reflection thing about previous decisions and politicians.

  Let us think how this might work out if the citizen juries would be able to look at current politicians and current policies. The worry is that it would turn into a witch-hunt or a white-wash, the hope that it holds decisions and groups accountable who would otherwise remain out of sight because they are so strongly inter-woven with the state-system.

  The stakes for individual politicians or interest groups would now be very high, much higher even than in the case of appointments because the citizen juries are now threatening their existing positions. Hence one should expect intense gaming and attempted manipulation of these citizen juries, even if they start out with a clear mandate from a set of concerned citizens who have gathered enough signatures to make the hearings happen.

  Politicians and interest groups would pull out all the stops, including trying to prevent the juries from getting information by saying it would violate privacy and national security. Vilification of jury members and their families who veer towards ‘guilty of corruption’ verdicts should be expected. And accusations of incompetence and of biased intentions would be commonplace: all the effort that politicians, interest groups, and bureaucracies now put into keeping their dealings secret and unnoticed, would then go into preventing and disrupting citizen juries. One can just imagine what worried politicians might do to distract the population!

  Whilst the vilification would be less if we’d restrict the citizen juries to judging former politicians, the important cases would by design always be those that are still highly relevant today. Hence, reducing the applicability of citizen juries to generate signals wouldn’t help: if their judgment matters, they will give rise to vendettas.

  Would citizen juries be able to function properly with a full vendetta against them? Unlike judges, who are appointed for life and have spent decades toughening up and getting the support of their whole profession for their roles, we’d be talking about random members of the public with vulnerable families and impressionable communities. The pressures to exonerate powerful interest groups and politicians from any hint of malfeasance would be huge, and the individual benefits to reaching the right conclusions would be small.

  By and large, it would seem doubtful that citizen juries would dare to do a proper job when it comes to judging politicians and interest groups. They would much more likely give everyone in power the benefit of the doubt rather than risk their wrath, encouraged to do so by the information fed them by the state bureaucracy.

  In short, whilst I do think citizen juries would have the ability to judge who has been corrupt and what previous policies have served special interests rather than the general public, I am sceptical that they would have the guts to do so because the risks to them personally are one-sided. I would expect them to go with the flow of public opinion and state propaganda, which is not useful.

   

                  Summarising

  In can see citizen juries as a useful means of making appointments in the ministries and semi-public institutions, strengthening the independence of the state bureaucracy versus the politicians and special interests. But I cannot see citizen juries being useful in uncovering corruption or denouncing bad previous policies. That will need something else.

• Links International Ideas for the struggle #4 - Should we reject bureaucratic centralism and simply use consensus?

   

  

   

  By Marta Harnecker, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

   

  1. For a long time, left-wing parties operated along authoritarian lines. The usual practice was that of bureaucratic centralism, influenced by the practice of Soviet socialism. Most decisions regarding principles, tasks, initiatives, and the course of political action to take were restricted to the party elite, without the participation or debate of the membership who were limited to following orders that they never got to discuss and in many cases did not understand. For most people, these practices are every day becoming increasingly more intolerable.

   

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September 18, 2016

• Daniel Bowen Is Australia in danger of being swamped by 24-hour time?

  24-hour time is common in Europe, and in the airline industry, and the military.

  Internally, many industries use 24-hour time, but publicly 12-hour time is dominant in Australia.

  I have seen 24-hour time used at cafes. Perhaps they were run by Europeans; perhaps it was an attempt to seem more European.

  V/Line uses 24-hour time in most cases, including on their public timetables — they switched back in 2000. Other public transport operators in Victoria use 12-hour time in public.

  Except… at the brand new Metro stations… where somehow, they’ve used both on the handy new screens.

  As you can see, train departure times are in 12-hour time. But the current time is in 24-hour time. Ingenious!

  

  (Note that in the background, there’s a standalone LED clock showing… 12-hour time.)

  Both formats have their advantages. 12-hour is more commonly known, though 24-hour is less ambiguous. But wouldn’t it be better to choose one or the other?

  I’d love to know how this happened. Is it some devious plan to get people gradually used to 24-hour time?

  Or did someone just not think about how gloriously inconsistent this is?

  Update: I’m told it was an error, and the displays will be updated shortly to consistently show 12-hour time.

  Update 7pm:

  Fast work by #MetroTrains. If only everything was this quick and easy to fix. pic.twitter.com/B7kqZqfJfk

  — Daniel Bowen (@danielbowen) September 19, 2016

• Club Troppo Truth-telling in the epistemic quagmire of the politico-infotainment complex: Donald Trump Edition

  Pilate said unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and said unto them, I find in him no fault at all.

  The Gospel according to John 18:38

  Picasso once famously opined on art and truth-telling. “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” Today something very similar could be said of politics.

  In politics as it’s practiced in the age of vox pop democracy lying is built right in. That’s not lying as in “I didn’t see Cardinal Pell” when you did. It’s lying in a deeper sense. At the very least it’s presenting a view that’s internally agreed upon – a view you may have argued against – as your own sincere position. It’s lying as in repackaging previously agreed policy as new policy. It’s lying as in saying that you think your colleague is doing a wonderful job, when you know he’s not. It’s lying when you come up with a slogan like “jobs and growth” and then you just grab whatever you cobbled into your latest budget and call it “A plan for jobs and growth”. It’s lying when you say Australia will be a second rate economy if it doesn’t have a GST and it’s lying when you say eight years later that a GST would be a monster tax that will ruin working families. It’s lying when you say that you’re going to the people early because speculation about an early election is destabilising government when not only did you start the speculation, but if you didn’t think it was in your interest you wouldn’t be calling an early election. It’s lying when you say you’re trying to strike a balance in industrial relations law between efficiency and fairness when your legislation is whatever you could get away with with the interest groups you had to deal with. The whole thing is put on and it’s increasingly obvious to all the punters.

  And so when the post-reality politician Donald Trump is challenged about having said that his opponent Hillary Clinton would have made a “great” president a few years ago, instead of spinning and coming up with some lie about how he believed that then, but has had a change of heart (like Kevin Rudd’s about face on gay marriage), he just says stuff along the lines of “I was just lining my own pockets then. I was trying to get Hilary to do stuff for me, and that was part of the schtick”.  Should we be outraged by that? Well I’m not particularly outraged. Not that I wouldn’t like my politicians to be more truthful, but that horse bolted a good while ago.

  I can’t see the difference between Trump saying that Hillary would be great one minute (when that suits his self-interest and political interest at the time) and then reversing those words in a different situation and the ALP opposing the Libs’ superannuation changes on the grounds that they were retrospective (which they weren’t). In that sense I think I prefer Trump’s transparency regarding his own motives to the usual duplicity. Likewise Trump’s son shows a refreshing honesty when he says that his father is not releasing his tax returns because it would just stir up scrutiny that he doesn’t want.

  Of course that doesn’t mean I support Trump. The possibility of his presidency, indeed how far he’s already come fills me with dread for our civilisation (Sorry for the grandiosity of this claim, but there you go). Like the Russian show trials of the 1930s, this is a time when people with an emotional commitment to one side of politics need to work out whose side they’re on. In the 1930s it was the left sleepwalking into the darkness. Now it’s the right. If their hostility to the left extends to supporting a narcissistic stream of consciousness rather than a competent professional politician, then they’re not making even a basic effort to integrate their thinking with their feeling selves.

  Still there’s some merit in pointing to these things to understand people’s reactions to Trump’s post-truth politics. The enthusiasm towards him of at least 40% of the American voting public certainly illustrates many of the dangers of democracy sliding into mob-rule of which we were constantly warned by the political theorists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. That question should be at the top of the in-tray for anyone trying to think about contemporary politics.

  And one, perhaps small, but by no means insignificant part of the story is that political discourse has been utterly debased by the politico-infotainment complex, the relentless drive for eyeballs and clicks on links, the nihilistic vortex of journalists spinning their role as ‘gotcha’ guardians of the truth and politicians resorting to political spin either enthusiastically or reluctantly to prevent misrepresentation (“have you stopped beating your wife?”). In that context it can be quite a relief, like coming upon an oasis in the desert, to hear Donald Trump give an answer that doesn’t play by those rules and that in its narcissistic insouciance is the very model of sincerity.

  

  A picture the Drudge Report claimed was released by Clinton staffers as their 2008 campaign faltered

   

   

   

   

September 17, 2016

• Links International Oppose little Brexit Britain – Defend free movement

   

  

   

  We need to campaign actively against little Brexit Britain and the stripping away of our rights, and chief among those campaigns must be to defend the right to free movement.

   

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• Sea Shepherd Sea Shepherd Turtle Protection Campaign Ordered to Immediately Cease Operations in Costa Rica

  Sea Shepherd Turtle Protection Campaign Ordered to Immediately Cease Operations in Costa Rica

  Volunteers given warnings; fate of turtle hatcheries in danger

  Baby sea turtle trying to make it to the seaThe Costa Rican Government is forcing Sea Shepherd to shut down Operation Jairo II, a campaign to protect endangered sea turtles.

  Any Sea Shepherd volunteer found patrolling beaches or engaging in sea turtle conservation work will be detained and deported.

  In Costa Rica, the Jaco Police teamed with Sea Shepherd on the campaign to protect nesting females and nests from poachers. Nests were being relocated to a hatchery run by the Jaco police force.

  Sea Shepherd was informed on Friday that the Jaco police is no longer authorized to work with the non-profit organization. Captain Osvaldo Rodriguez, Chief of Garabito Police Department in Jaco, was ordered not to work with Sea Shepherd because they are “known criminals.”

  Presumably the “criminal” reference stems from the Red Notice issued by Interpol on Sea Shepherd Founder Captain Paul Watson back in 2012 for the Costa Rican charge of interfering with a Costa Rican shark fining operation.

  “This is a very difficult moment for us volunteers here in Costa Rica,” said Operation Jairo II Ground Leader Cristina Cely. “In less than 2 weeks we have saved almost 2000 eggs from the beaches of Hermosa, Claritas and Jaco that most likely would have been poached, and 63 very disoriented hatchlings that didn't stand a chance to survive if we weren't here. Our presence has made a difference for these eggs and hatchlings, but now, thanks to mediocre minds we have to stop and the only ones who have everything to lose are the turtles.

  Added COO David Hance: “I’m disgusted that the Government of Costa Rica is willing to sacrifice the lives of 1000’s of turtles, simply because they are motivated by international politics.”

  “No good conservation deed goes unpunished in Costa Rica,” noted Sea Shepherd President and CEO Paul Watson. “If you stop shark finning or rescue baby turtles you are considered a criminal by the Costa Rican government. Costa Rica is a country where rescuing turtles can literally get you killed. This government can always be dependent upon to side with the poachers."

  The Costa Rican Red Notice: A Fourteen Year Saga

  Prior to his return to the U.S. last month, Captain Watson had been living in France under the protection of the French government for two years. He is wanted by Costa Rica where he is accused of intervening to stop a Costa Rican shipping vessel, the Varadero I, that was illegally finning sharks in Guatemalan waters in 2002.

  After obtaining permission from Guatemalan authorities to bring the vessel in for breaking the law, Captain Watson attempted to arrest the vessel, but the poachers broke free and fled toward Costa Rica.

  Later that month the Costa Rican authorities filed a criminal complaint alleging that Captain Watson and his crew threatened and attempted to murder the seven crew members of the Varadero I, as well as damaging their vessel. This complaint was based on testimony supplied by the Varadero I crew. A local foundation offered Captain Watson counsel, yet neither he nor his appointed counsel were provided timely notification about a preliminary hearing on the matter in December 2002.

  Sea Shepherd filmed the entire incident that occurred at sea, while the Varadero did not provide any documentation.

  Although the allegations of attempted murder were later dropped when the court viewed Sea Shepherd’s footage, new charges were added. However, Captain Watson was never informed of this development or given a summons to appear.

  When Captain Watson did not appear for trial, the Costa Rican court declared him a “rebel” and issued a warrant for his arrest on the charge of “violation of ship traffic.” This charge came a decade after the incident!

  The matter escalated on May 13, 2012, when German authorities detained Captain Watson in Frankfurt. Six weeks later, Costa Rica submitted a modified extradition request alleging “shipwreck endangerment and aerial disaster,” a far more serious offense typically associated with terrorism.

  In August 2012, Interpol issued a Red Notice on Watson for the Costa Rican charge of “shipwreck endangerment.” Captain Watson fled Germany after some 70 days of house arrest and eventually ended up in France.

  Operation Jairo History

  Operation Jairo II, which began in August of this year, spanned three locations beginning with Florida before moving on to Honduras and Costa Rica. The campaign continues to be active in Honduras.

  Sea Shepherd first came to Costa Rica in 2014 for Operation Pacuare, which saved the lives of nearly 3,000 sea turtles. Upon return to the country a year later, the campaign was renamed Operation Jairo, after Jairo Mora Sandoval, a Costa Rican turtle defender who was brutally murdered on May 31, 2013 while attempting to protect leatherback turtle nests.

  There are seven species of sea turtles in the world. Four have been identified as "endangered" or "critically endangered,” and two are classed as "vulnerable,” by the IUCN Red List of Endangered species. Sea turtles are some of the oldest living creatures, one of the few who’ve watched dinosaurs evolve and become extinct. They are now facing the same fate as their predecessors.

September 16, 2016

• Links International US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on why "lesser evilism" is a loser
  
  

   

  

   

  September 17, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Against the Current — Against the Current interviews Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president in 2016.

   

  read more

• Club Troppo Italian Film Festival
  Festival Website | Films | Schedule

  Top Picks

  ---

  Perfect Strangers (Opening Night)

  Fueled by a fiendishly clever screenplay and an all-star cast, Perfect Strangers gathers a group of good friends around the dining table-three thirty something couples and a bachelor-where one suggests they make all SMSs and phone calls public across the course of the night. The reason: to prove they have nothing to hide. What seems like an innocent experiment results in some eyeopening disclosures-even a swapping of phones in a desperate concealment attempt-that shows how performance dominates our public lives.
  As Genovese says, “Smartphones have become a fundamental object, perhaps the only one that we always carry with us-our ‘black box’.” Never has the time been so ripe to offer such a cinematic take on a classic morality conundrum.

  ☆☆☆☆☆ Film Dude

  ☆☆☆☆☆ IMDB

  ---

  Like Crazy

  An excellent ‘dramedy’ about two very different women who go on a road-trip of Thelma and Louise proportions. Beatrice and Donatella meet in a psychiatric institution. While Beatrice is a brash, unhinged chatterbox; the institute’s newcomer, Donatella, is fragile and withdrawn. Still, Beatrice seeks out friendship with this punkish introvert and, during day release at a nursery, they board a bus and commence their girls-only adventure.

  ☆☆☆☆☆ IMDB

  ---

  Fiore

  A prison drama that follows the story of young and conflicted Daphne who, after being criminally convicted for robbery, must adapt to a new lifestyle in a juvenile prison. In prison Daphne is mainly ostracised by the other girls but she soon finds comfort through her secret relationship with Josh, whom she meets across a fence in the separate male ward. Their relationship is not allowed in the prison so they exchange clandestine letters, brief glances and conversations through the fence that separates them. Through her romantic relationship with Josh and her new life in prison Daphne is finally able to discover herself, but can her relationship with Josh survive beyond prison life?

  ☆☆☆☆☆ IMDB

  ---

  Italian Race

  Giulia De Martino is 17 years old and already carries the weight of her family on her shoulders. Her mother has left, and when her father dies, it is up to her to look after her little brother, and the family garage, which has been turning out rally champions for generations. Overwhelmed with debt, Giulia, who is a promising racing driver herself, must win the GT championships at any cost. She reaches out to her older brother Loris, a former champion driver who has fallen into the spiral of drugs. Based on a true story, Italian Race portrays talent and deterioration, competition and toxic love in a way that is both accurate and realistic.

  ☆☆☆☆☆ IMDB

  ---

  Don’t Be Bad

  It’s 1995 in Ostia, on the Roman seaside. Twenty something Vittorio and Cesare are lifelong friends, almost brothers. They take drugs, drink and get into fights with other misfits like them. At home Cesare has a prematurely aged mother. Vittorio instead seems to have no one in the world, and when he meets Linda he sees in her a chance to build a normal life. He decides to find work and tries to enlist Cesare, who in the meantime has fallen in love with Vivian, a loner like him but full of desire to build a future.

  ☆☆☆☆☆ IMDB

  ---

  The Worldly Girl

  Giulia’s world is an ancient one, suspended in time and built on rigour and sacred texts, which fiercely excludes anyone who doesn’t belong to it. Libero’s world is that which is inhabited by everyone else: by those who make mistakes, those who make do as they seek other prospects, and those who love unconditionally. When Giulia meets Libero, she discovers there may be another destiny awaiting her, one she can choose for herself. Theirs is a pure and inevitable love story, as the two young people embark on an intense period in their lives together, a choice that leads to Giulia being completely cut off from the religious world she belongs to.

  ☆☆☆☆☆ IMDB

  ---

  Rocco and His Brothers

  One of the Big Three of Italian film releases from 1960, Rocco and His Brothers is a cataclysmic family saga charting the desperate attempts of impoverished Southerners to seek a better future in the Industrial North of Milan. The stories of the five fratelli as they fall victim to corrupt forces are elegantly steered to an explosive finale that is sure to still leave audiences reeling.

  ☆☆☆☆☆ Eye For Film

  ☆☆☆☆☆ IMDB

  ☆☆☆☆☆ Slant Magazine

  ---

  The Ploy

  Set in the heady summer of 1975, with the Communist Party seemingly on the verge of taking power through the upcoming general election, controversial Italian director, poet and intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini is editing his most audacious film yet, the now notorious “Salò, or the 120 days of Sodom” when the negative is stolen from the film laboratory. Pasolini, a well-known communist who is openly gay, is also in the midst of writing a book condemning Italy’s political elite; and he is seeing a young man, Pino Pelosi, from the working class suburbs of Rome that are renown for organised crime. When Pasolini arranges a meeting to retrieve the negative, little does he know that he is walking into a trap that has many authors.
  One of the most mysterious and controversial crimes in Italian history, the murder of Pasolini is treated as a thriller, highlighting the monstrosity of those who physically murdered Pasolini, those who ordered the crime, and those who covered it up.

  ☆☆☆☆☆ IMDB

  ---

  Roman Holiday (Closing Night)

  Living a life of privilege and boredom, Princess Ann skips out on her royal duties to enjoy some time as an everyday girl. As luck would have it, she falls into the arms of journalist Joe Bradley who, upon learning her identity, sees an opportunity for an exclusive. But he doesn’t bet on romance. Amid the laughs and screwball antics, Ann and Joe take in all the sights of Rome-from the Trevi Fountain to the Colosseum-in “a regal and highly illegal scoot-around” on the back of a Vespa.

  ☆☆☆☆☆ BBC

  ☆☆☆☆☆ IMDB

  ---

• Club Troppo Deliberative democracy: A sad story
  

  What do we want? Deliberative democracy! When do we want it? NOW!!

  This story from this larger study speaks for itself, but is illustrative of some of the themes of my previous post on deliberative democracy.

  In the spring of 2004 we began work on a citizens’ jury
  process that we co-designed with the residents of a town in northern England. One third of its population is minority
  ethno-cultural heritage communities. The subject of this ‘doit-yourself jury’ was to be decided by the twenty volunteers, drawn at random from community organisations and the electoral roll.

  At the end of a day-long workshop, the jurors settled on
  the role of the police relating to drink and illegal drug use
  among young people. This topic made local politicians
  nervous, they asked that we postpone the jury until after the
  local elections in a few months’ time. They refused to provide
  information to the process or cooperate with it.

  Having heard a wide range of perspectives from a diverse
  set of ‘witnesses’ the jury sought to recommend a number of
  solutions to the problems highlighted during the process. The
  jury at no point divided along ethnic lines. The following is an
  extract from our 2004 report about the process:

  We observed that white residents living in areas of diverse ethno-heritage often feel patronised by conventional anti-racism campaigns. Such messages are promoted by the
  same authorities who seem to have failed to address some
  of the most urgent problems facing their communities.

  Our final report suggested that some Asian and other minority communities might welcome a re-direction of resources towards initiatives that allow them to join together with white community members and bring pressure for change, especially since many of the most pressing social and economic problems affect all the local population regardless of their background.

  We suggest that the re-building of democratic engagement
  in northern England, as in many other parts of the
  UK, will be greatly enhanced by an increase of face-toface
  meetings such as those that form the essence of a
  do-it-yourself citizens’ jury. However, such exercises are
  only likely to be successful when they involve a broad
  range of local community groups and are not controlled
  by any one stakeholder or funder.

  Though the jury presented their report in person to the
  council leader, a member of the European Parliament and
  opposition politicians, the council studiously ignored the
  process, both before and after the election. As organisers and
  facilitators we and the jurors fundraised for ongoing activities
  by ourselves, including a stall at the local market. But without
  the backing of a strong campaigning organisation, our impact
  on the way in which the local council consulted its
  population was minimal.

  The funder of the jury, a well known UK grant-making
  foundation, was extremely sympathetic to the jury’s desire to
  make their local council more accountable. They even
  attended meetings at which council officials expressed interest
  in working with the jurors. But four years later, jurors have
  had no contact from the council and have become sceptical
  that the council has any intention of working with them.

  On reflection, we as organisers recognise at least two
  mistakes we made that allowed the council to domesticate
  the jury process, even though it was independent of them.
  Firstly, we underestimated the power of the local council to
  marginalise the process. By parachuting into a complex local
  community and organising a process without it being jointly
  owned and planned by accountable community organisations
  that had legitimacy with the council, it was easy for
  senior local policy makers to portray the jury as troublemakers.

  Secondly, we wrongly expected that the multi-racial
  group of individuals that emerged from the jury process
  would be empowered enough to become activists in their
  own right, supported by an infrastructure that could easily
  be organised remotely from outside the region. In reality, the
  community empowerment our project envisaged required
  long-term investment in grassroots community work. Despite
  modest ongoing support from an extremely patient funder
  we have not yet found a formula that allows us to overcome
  the suppression of our alternative to the ‘pork barrel’ politics
  that dominates the dysfunctional government of an economically
  deprived town.

September 15, 2016

• Links International The Communist Manifesto: A weapon of war

   

  

   

  By Doug Enaa Greene

   

  September 16, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — With the exception of the Bible, no other work in history has been more praised and denounced, analyzed and criticized, both seriously and superficially, than the Communist Manifesto.

  read more

September 14, 2016

• Daniel Bowen You can judge a station by its cover

  Yesterday’s horrific accident at Surrey Hills is a reminder of the many benefits of level crossing removal (though that one is not on the list).

  With our local crossing at Bentleigh gone, it’s rather wonderful that the angst of further accidents is gone, and crowds no longer get stuck at the railway gates every second day…

  Another benefit is that train users get a brand new shiny station.

  But with the wet weather this week we’re able to judge how well that new station deals with the rain.

  

  The entrance is pretty good – shelter along the street is reasonably well aligned with the nearby shops. In fact it’s very pleasing to have the station as an integrated part of the streetscape, rather than breaking it up as it used to.

  While before there was a long uncovered walkway into the station, now you walk straight into the concourse, and there’s continuous cover down the steps (or in the lift) down to the platform.

  And then it falls down.

  

  

  At McKinnon and Ormond the sections of platform closest to the entrance are under the road, providing a fair degree of cover. There’s more shelter down the platform, though it’s not continuous; there are substantial gaps.

  However at Bentleigh, the only cover close to the stairs/lift is fairly small.

  There’s a lot more cover at the northern end of the platform, but the only way to get there is to brave a long section of uncovered platform, or the even longer uncovered ramp from the concourse — which in dry conditions is very useful for spreading people along the platform, by the way, far more useful than at the other stations where the ramp doubles back.

  So you have the old effect of many people huddling near the entrance from the rain, and thus concentrating on just one or two carriages of a six carriage train — not much better than the old station.

  

  

  (All this applies to platforms 1 and 2, which are the most commonly used. Platform 3 seems to have slightly less cover, but nowhere near as many people use it.)

  

  Coverage

  Even where the platforms are covered, modern designs mean there’s a gap between the edge of the roof and the train when it arrives. If it’s pouring with rain at the time, you’re still going to get wet.

  

  Why not cover the platforms completely?

  If you’re rebuilding the station anyway, it would only be an incremental cost to have rain cover right along the platform.

  The benefits are obvious — by providing shelter and shade all the way along, it encourages crowds to spread along the platform, decreasing boarding times, and more evenly distributing people along the train.

  It may also help with PM peak alighting times, as in heavy rain, people don’t pause in the train doorway to find their umbrella. It would also reduce the instances of people running on slippery surfaces to avoid the rain.

  It’s helped at Richmond, where full platform shelters were retrofitted (at a cost of $7.28 million), and is provided at our busiest stations Southern Cross and Flinders Street.

  Granted, no suburban station is that busy, but if the benefits are numerous and the cost is minimal, then why not?

  • PTUA called for all-over platform cover on the Dandenong line “sky rail” stations — as well as for all to be upgraded to Premium status
• Links International Northern nastiness: Far right becomes second party in German chancellor Merkel's home state

   

  

   

  By Victor Grossman

   

  September 15, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from The Left Berlin — Old German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said – or so goes the legend: “If the world ever perishes I’d want to be in Mecklenburg where everything happens fifty years late.” The alarm bells are now loudly ringing, warning that this once feudally most backward part of Germany between Berlin and the Baltic Sea may prove something like the opposite!

   

  The elections on Sunday (Sept. 4) were an unmitigated disaster! The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), running for the first time, rang up an amazing 21.9 % of the vote, putting it in second place behind the Social Democrats and beating out Angela Merkel in her own home state!

  read more

• Club Troppo Gay marriage: Some thoughts about the politics

  I haven’t read any columns on the gay marriage imbroglio so maybe people have already said all this but … it seems to me that the circumstances now provide the left of centre parties with an opportunity to humiliate their opponents. There’s no bigger kill in politics than to be on the right side of the polls and of history and to force, and be seen to force your opponents to heel.

  It’s a little hard to know whose schtick is cutting through. To me the ALPs emotionalism – with the 13 year old kid and his two Mums in Question Time – seems to be cutting through to me. On the other hand people seem to want the plebiscite. Perhaps that gives the CLP some cut-through in arguing that it’s Bill Shorten who’s standing in the way of gay marriage. But the inability to get the plebiscite up will surely weigh further on the PM’s authority. He can blame the ALP all he wants, but there are those pesky randos and someone from his own side jacking up – so it’s not just a Labor/Greens thing. It’s not even a left wing thing. It’s a fairness thing. It’s a “I don’t want people campaigning against homosexuality” thing.

  If there’s no plebiscite then the ALP just sits there saying that there’s only one way to get gay marriage in Australia and that’s to elect a government with enough courage to support legislation. Tick, tick tick. If 65 odd percent of Australians support gay marriage, and if 5% of the electorate are gay and another 5% have relatives etc and so they care strongly about the issue, that seems quite a liability for the CLP to take to the election.

  And the other thing I would do if I were the ALP/Greens would be to draft a bill for an act and pass it through the Senate. It would not have the force of law, but it would have a section in it that would declare that any civil union that went ahead with some formal election by the parties from the date of the passage of the bill through the Senate should be treated as a marriage and would be legitimated as a marriage upon final passage of the legislation.

  People would go ahead having ‘marriage services’ every weekend continuing to normalise the practice and hosting community level political activism in every suburb of the nation. Tick, tick tick.

  I’m hoping those in favour of gay marriage recognise the immense political power that’s within their grasp. I can’t believe that, as time passed, the CLP wouldn’t be forced into a humiliating backdown. Tick, tick, tick.

• Links International The best homage we can pay Fidel: look outward together in the same direction

   

  

   

  By Marta Harnecker

   

  September 14, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Over half a century ago, as Latin American households were celebrating the start of a new year, some good news arrived from Cuba: a guerrilla army with a social base among the peasantry triumphed on the Caribbean island, liberating the country from the tyrannical Batista regime. A political process began that not only aimed to overthrow a dictator, but sought to follow a consistently revolutionary line: genuinely transform society for the benefit of the great majority.

   

  read more

September 13, 2016

• Links International A Tate Gallery for the New Left: Portraits, Landscapes, and Abstracts in the Revolutionary Activism of the 1950s and 1960s

   

  

  Revolutionary Workers Party national secretary Ross Dowson,
  campaigning to become Mayor of Toronto, Canada, 1948.

   

  Ernest Tate, Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s and 60s: A Memoir – Volume 1, Canada 1955–1965 (London: Resistance Books, 2014)

   

  Ernest Tate, Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s and 60s: A Memoir – Volume 2, Britain 1965–1970 (London: Resistance Books, 2014)

   

  By Bryan D. Palmer

   

  read more

• The Northern Myth Northern Territory – a tale of systemic dysfunctional governance

  

  This is a guest post by Ken Parish* that was originally posted at Club Troppo on September 13, 2016

  Like quite a few other despairing commentators, I have on occasions referred to the Northern Territory as a “failed state”, most recently here:

  Until now, although holding grave fears about the quality of Northern Territory political governance under both the previous Labor government and the current CLP one, I have taken the optimistic view that things are bound to improve as the Territory grows and matures, and that therefore the self-government experiment is worth preserving. I have also felt that many of the deficiencies about which people complain also exist to a significant extent in other Australian States, it’s just that they are much more exposed and visible here because the population is so small. In a very real sense, the Northern Territory means the tiny city-state of Darwin whose population is around 140,000 people.

  Unfortunately, at the end of the day that is also the reason why self-government is an unsustainable failed experiment. Not only are there not enough people to provide a revenue base to support either the full bureaucratic apparatus of a State government or the necessary relatively sophisticated political establishment to make it efficient and accountable, but there aren’t even enough people to provide a sufficient number of talented politicians, apparatchiks or bureaucrats …

  When I raised the point again very recently in the wake of the CLP’s crushing election defeat by Labor, commenter Marks observed:

  I am not sure I buy into this Territory exceptionalism theme. I don’t see, for example, that the NT has worse governance than NSW. Or Queensland in the not so distant past.

  In one sense you can’t really argue with that, given Queensland’s political history especially under Sir Joh, and NSW’s two hundred year history of Tammany Hall-style politics. But in recent years both those states seem to have lifted their games in terms of their quality of governance and accountability.  New South Wales, for example, has an active and effective anti-corruption commission, rigorous political donations disclosure and regulation regime, and an Upper House of Parliament.  The Northern Territory has none of those mechanisms.  The NT’s deficiencies in governance are longstanding and systemic, but capable of change for the better.

  In my considered view the Commonwealth imposed an inappropriate model of self-government in 1978 (the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act for a polity of the Territory’s size and stage of development, a model that entrenches single member electorates, prohibits the co-opting of ministerial talent from outside the Parliament, lacks inbuilt accountability checks and balances, and largely ignores the key fact that Aboriginal people constitute one-third of the population, own half of the land and have a culture and material needs and aspirations that differ radically from those of the majority non-Aboriginal population.

  By contrast, the other two tiny Australian polities, the ACT and Tasmania, do not exhibit the stark racial divide that is the most prominent feature of the Territory’s political culture and have both opted for multi-member electorates with MLAs elected by Hare-Clark proportional representation.  That sort of system not only enhances diversity of political representation and encourages mature deliberation and constructive compromise, it also ensures significant continuity and stability of representation for the major parties (albeit at the price of  seldom achieving the sort of complete single party domination aka elected dictatorship that the NT ALP will now enjoy for the next four years).

  According to the NT Electoral Commission’s Two Candidate Preferred statistics, the ALP ended up with about 44.8% of the vote, CLP 30.9%, Independents 15.7% and “Exhausted” (essentially the Greens, 1Territory and unsuccessful Independents) 5.9%. Yet, because of the vagaries of the current system of single member electorates combined with optional preferential voting, we have ended up with the ALP holding 18 of 25 seats, the CLP just 2 seats and the Independents 5 seats.  Clearly the election has not resulted in political representation reflecting anything remotely like the expressed preferences of voters.

  Moreover, this sort of drastically lopsided election outcome is quite common in NT political history.  Here are the results of each NT election since 1974 (pre-self-government) when the current voting system was introduced (except for optional preferential voting, which was unwisely enacted by the Giles government earlier this year) :

  • 1974– 19 seats – CLP 17, ALP 0, Independents 2.
  • 1977– 19 seats – CLP 12, ALP 6, Independents 1.
  • 1980– 19 seats – CLP 11, ALP 7, Independents 1.
  • 1983– 25 seats – CLP 19, ALP 6, Independents 0.
  • 1987– 25 seats – CLP 16, ALP 6, NT Nationals 1 (former CLP Chief Minister Ian Tuxworth), Independents 2 (both CLP defectors).
  • 1990– 25 seats – CLP 14, ALP 9, Independents 2.
  • 1994– 25 seats – CLP 17, ALP 7, Independents 1.
  • 1997– 25 seats – CLP 18, ALP 7, Independents 0.
  • 2001– 25 seats – ALP 13, CLP 10, Independents 2.
  • 2005 – 25 seats – ALP 19, CLP 4, Independents 2.
  • 2008– 25 seats – ALP 13, CLP 11, Independents 1.
  • 2012– 25 seats – CLP 16, ALP 8, Independents 1.
  • 2016– 25 seats – ALP 18, CLP 2, Independents 5.

  Labor’s two party preferred vote for the decade before it finally won government for the first time in 2001 sat between 42 and 44%, and yet it typically managed to win only 7 of the 25 seats in the Legislative Assembly.  Conversely, in 2005 the CLP was reduced to just 4 out of 25 seats despite still achieving 40.19% 2PP, and in the 2016  was reduced to just 2 out of 25 seats despite a 2PP vote of 41.5% (to the extent that figure remains meaningful).

  The key point for present purposes is that NT political history tells us that the current voting system regularly delivers very large disparities between votes cast and seats actually won, and regularly results in an Opposition too weak numerically to provide effective opposition and therefore hold the government to account.

  Moreover, the last 15 years have also produced extraordinary volatility with many seats (comparatively speaking) changing hands at each election.  For the first 20 years after self-government in 1978 the accepted wisdom among pundits was that the tiny size of NT electorates (until recently well under 5000 voters) meant that political representation was remarkably stable because incumbency was critically important.  MLAs could develop personal relationships with a high proportion of voters in their electorate and therefore were much more difficult to displace than in large states with much larger numbers of voters per electorate.

  That truism is clearly no longer true. With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that it never was.  MLAs retained their seats not because they were much more chummy with local voters than “down south” politicians, but predominantly because of a polarised public attitude towards Aboriginal land rights. White voters in Darwin, Alice Springs and Katherine mostly voted CLP because the party vehemently opposed all Aboriginal land claims, while Aboriginal voters in remote/bush seats mostly voted ALP for essentially the same reason.

  However, that stable if inherently racist system changed radically when a sunset clause was inserted into the Land Rights Act, effectively preventing lodgment of any new claims after 5 June 1997. Once the era of big land claims ended the electoral polarisation and race-based stability of political representation ended too.   NT electoral volatility dates from that time.  The notion that small electorates were underpinning stable incumbency ignored the fact that the small voter numbers of those electorates were largely counteracted by high population mobility.  Population turnover was (and remains) somewhere around one-third of each electorate during every four year term. An individual MLA might develop a personal relationship with quite a few voters, but a lot of them would have moved away by the date of the next election.

  An unintended but partially desirable side-effect of the interplay between Aboriginal land rights and the Territory’s electoral system was that the incumbent CLP government enjoyed great stability of parliamentary representation over the first 20 years of self-government.  It could always count on a stable core of experienced Ministers, and almost equally experienced backbenchers were always available to replace a retiring Minister.

  That advantage no longer exists for either major party. By definition Labor had no MLAs with any experience in government when it won for the first time in 2001.  The CLP also had no MLAs with any ministerial experience when it won back government in 2012, although Terry Mills and John Elferink had been backbenchers during the ill-fated Burke government which lost the 2001 election.

  Similarly, the new ALP government that has just taken office has only one MLA with any ministerial experience, and indeed only two who have been in Parliament for any more than four years.  New Chief Minister Michael Gunner was a ministerial adviser during both Clare Martin and Paul Henderson’s chief ministerships between 2001 and 2008 and then a government backbencher from 2008 until 2012, while Gerry McCarthy was a Minister in the Henderson government between 2009 and 2012.

  Because of this high level of “churn” among MLAs over the last decade or so, both major parties have tended to rely heavily on very experienced ministerial advisers to  underpin a quite inexperienced team of elected politicians.  To what extent that is desirable either in a democratic or practical sense is debatable.  The Martin and Henderson regimes tended to supplement the ranks of  home-grown political advisers with more than a few Labor apparatchiks from “down south”.

  However, not only was their lack of local knowledge a handicap but NT Labor increasingly suffered because they were recruiting from a talent pool of advisers that was under some strain because Australia had wall-to-wall state and territory Labor governments through much of the decade after 2000. A job with the NT government wasn’t exactly a plum appointment for an ambitious Labor apparatchik.

  The CLP adopted a somewhat different strategy to supplement its elected politicians’ inexperience when it returned to government in 2012. It began enthusiastically appointing local political cronies, not only to ministerial adviser positions but as heads of government departments and agencies, often irrespective of qualifications and without anything resembling due process.  Departmental and agency CEOs in that category have included:

  • Denis Burke (former CLP Chief Minister appointed as Chairperson of the Development Consent Authorityin 2014 despite no evident qualifications for the role;
  • Gary Nairn (former CLP President and federal Liberal MHR for Eden-Monaro appointed to head the Planning Commision, which has no town planners among its members, although Nairn is a at least a surveyor);
  • Jodeen Carney (former CLP MLA and for a short time Opposition Leader, appointed as CEO of Children and Families – had been shadow minister for that portfolio for a time in Opposition);
  • Dr Len Notaras (former CLP President, appointed as CEO Department of Health in 2014 – in fairness an appropriate appointment as a doctor and longstanding senior health administrator);
  • Ron Kelly (former Chief of Staff for Chief Minister Adam Giles, appointed as CEO Department of Mines and Energy);
  • Stephen Dunham (former chief of staff to Health Minister John Elferink and former CLP Health Minister in the Burke government, appointed as Health Complaints Commissioner– arguably a reasonable appointment on merit but appointed with flagrant disregard to due process);
  • Dr Bill Freeland (former Executive Director of Parks and Wildlife under the Burke government, appointed in 2012 to chair the newly constituted Environment Protection Authority – again arguably a reasonable appointment on merit but also appointed with flagrant disregard to due process).

  Of course, political cronyism is hardly unheard of in other states, but its sheer extent and audacity in the Northern Territory over the last four years is deeply troubling. The higher levels of the public sector have been utterly politicised and any semblance of a professional public service able to advise government without fear or favour no longer exists.  This is a much larger problem in the Territory than in larger jurisdictions, given the lack of other democratic checks and balances and the inexperienced “shoot from the hip” propensities of some politicians, most notably Chief Minister Adam Giles and his best political mate Treasurer and Lands and Planning Minister Dave Tollner.

  Hopefully the new Labor government will be able and willing to restore at least some integrity to the Territory’s public sector, although I won’t be holding by breath. All these considerations are among the factors that led me to label the Northern Territory a “failed state”, badly in need of radical reform of its electoral and governance systems.

  Just what those reforms might involve is a topic I intend exploring in a later post

  ==============================================

  * About Ken Parish: Ken Parish is a legal academic at Charles Darwin University, with research areas in public law (constitutional and administrative law) and teaching & learning theory and practice. He has been a legal academic for almost 12 years. Before that he ran a legal practice in Darwin for 15 years and was a Member of the NT Legislative Assembly for almost 4 years in he early 1990s.

  The post Northern Territory – a tale of systemic dysfunctional governance appeared first on The Northern Myth.

• The Northern Myth The right to drink? Wrong

  

   

  This is a guest post by Russell Goldflam that was originally published at Drink Tank, an initiative of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE).

  Back in 1972, when I was 19, after my first day of work in a little Western Australian country town I went to the pub with a friendly bloke I’d just met, for a beer. Even though I was underage, I had no trouble getting served, but my new mate did: he was a blackfella.

  I learnt a big lesson that day, in the year Gough Whitlam came to power promising land rights and self-determination: Indigenous people have rights, but racism stops them exercising those rights.

  Ten years later, by now living in Alice Springs, I was taught another lesson by a group of old ladies. At the time I had no idea they were senior leaders of some of the most important families in Central Australia. Anyway, they sat me down and told me that things used to be all right, until everything changed when drinking rights came in, along with citizenship, and land rights and all the rest of it.

  Of course, with my university education and vast life experience – I was almost 30 – I knew better. I knew that Indigenous Aboriginal people were heading in the right direction – fighting to end racism, for the right to be served in pubs, to end the paternalism of missions and reserves. I didn’t blame those old ladies for not understanding this. After all, they were uneducated.

  It took me another 15 years living in Alice for their lesson to sink in. They had been right all along, and no one was listening.

  Grog is ruining families, particularly Indigenous families, in the Northern Territory. And yes, everyone has the right to equal treatment, but there’s something deeply wrong with this idea of ‘the right to drink’.

  In Alice Springs the offender in 90 per cent of assaults committed against an intimate partner is drunk. And the victim in 90 per cent of those assaults is an Indigenous woman. In most of those cases, she is drunk too.

  So, about 20 years ago we formed the Alice Springs People’s Alcohol Action Coalition (PAAC). We have two guiding principles: firstly, a whole of community approach – everyone is entitled to the same service – everyone in a community should be subject to the same rules. And secondly, we support what works, whether it’s popular or not. Look at the evidence, and be guided by it.

  Two of our successes which follow these principles – they apply to everyone, and they work – have been raising the price of cheap grog, and the Banned Drinkers Register (or BDR).

  Alice Springs became notorious as the stabbing capital of the world: by 2005, we were admitting more than 200 stab injury victims to hospital annually. The following year, supply restrictions were imposed that effectively increased the price of a standard drink by 30 per cent, which in turn reduced alcohol consumption by 18 per cent. Over the next four years, Alice Springs Hospital alcohol-attributable admissions, which had been on track to double, levelled out. Stabbings dropped sharply, in both number and severity.

  The second measure, which started in Alice Springs in 2008, was the requirement to show photo identification in order to buy takeaway alcohol. For the first year or so people whinged about the inconvenience of having to bring their ID with them when they went down to the bottle shop. Then they got used to it.

  This scheme was rolled out across the whole of the Territory in 2011, because it worked. It meant that when a problem drinker was banned from drinking, for good reason, there was a way of enforcing that ban without turning that person into a criminal. Tragically, it was abolished by a new lot of politicians who thought there’d be votes in getting rid of it. When they did so, monthly alcohol-attributable presentations to the Alice Springs Hospital shot up from 160 to 360 in six months.

  We’ve just had another change of government in the Northern Territory, and they’ve promised to bring the BDR back in, thank goodness. We now have a golden opportunity to make it stronger, smarter and more effective. Let’s put people on Domestic Violence Orders on the BDR, and refer them for assessment and treatment. The BDR should also apply to the parents of kids who are placed in care; and drink drivers; and anyone who chooses to drink with mates who they know are banned from drinking.

  Once the new system is in place, we won’t need to keep police on patrol outside our bottle shops. This policing measure has reduced drunken violence, but it is expensive, discriminatory, and divisive.

  The reformed BDR will be another step along the road to burying that old, very dangerous myth of ‘the right to drink’, the lesson those far-sighted wise women were trying to teach me 35 years ago.

  Drinking isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. Abuse it, and you lose it.

  ==============================================

  Drink Tank aims to generate meaningful commentary and debate about alcohol policy, and to provide a platform for all members of the Australian community to share their views and concerns.

  Our goal is for the Drink Tank community to engage in robust discussion about alcohol, highlighting a broad spectrum of views and voices, and ultimately to raise the profile of alcohol as an issue national of importance.

  ==============================================

  Russell Goldflam is the President of the Criminal Lawyers Association of the Northern Territory (CLANT) and tweets from @Crim_Lawyers_NT

  The post The right to drink? Wrong appeared first on The Northern Myth.

• Club Troppo Northern Territory – a tale of systemic dysfunctional governance

  Like quite a few other despairing commentators, I have on occasions referred to the Northern Territory as a “failed state”, most recently here:

  Until now, although holding grave fears about the quality of Northern Territory political governance under both the previous Labor government and the current CLP one, I have taken the optimistic view that things are bound to improve as the Territory grows and matures, and that therefore the self-government experiment is worth preserving. I have also felt that many of the deficiencies about which people complain also exist to a significant extent in other Australian States, it’s just that they are much more exposed and visible here because the population is so small. In a very real sense, the Northern Territory means the tiny city-state of Darwin whose population is around 140,000 people.

  Unfortunately, at the end of the day that is also the reason why self-government is an unsustainable failed experiment. Not only are there not enough people to provide a revenue base to support either the full bureaucratic apparatus of a State government or the necessary relatively sophisticated political establishment to make it efficient and accountable, but there aren’t even enough people to provide a sufficient number of talented politicians, apparatchiks or bureaucrats …

  When I raised the point again very recently in the wake of the CLP’s crushing election defeat by Labor, commenter Marks observed:

  I am not sure I buy into this Territory exceptionalism theme. I don’t see, for example, that the NT has worse governance than NSW. Or Queensland in the not so distant past.

  In one sense you can’t really argue with that, given Queensland’s political history especially under Sir Joh, and NSW’s two hundred year history of Tammany Hall-style politics. But in recent years both those states seem to have lifted their games in terms of their quality of governance and accountability.  New South Wales, for example, has an active and effective anti-corruption commission, rigorous political donations disclosure and regulation regime, and an Upper House of Parliament.  The Northern Territory has none of those mechanisms.  The NT’s deficiencies in governance are longstanding and systemic, but capable of change for the better.

  In my considered view the Commonwealth imposed an inappropriate model of self-government in 1978 (the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act for a polity of the Territory’s size and stage of development, a model that entrenches single member electorates, prohibits the co-opting of ministerial talent from outside the Parliament, lacks inbuilt accountability checks and balances, and largely ignores the key fact that Aboriginal people constitute one-third of the population, own half of the land and have a culture and material needs and aspirations that differ radically from those of the majority non-Aboriginal population.

  By contrast, the other two tiny Australian polities, the ACT and Tasmania, do not exhibit the stark racial divide that is the most prominent feature of the Territory’s political culture and have both opted for multi-member electorates with MLAs elected by Hare-Clark proportional representation.  That sort of system not only enhances diversity of political representation and encourages mature deliberation and constructive compromise, it also ensures significant continuity and stability of representation for the major parties (albeit at the price of  seldom achieving the sort of complete single party domination aka elected dictatorship that the NT ALP will now enjoy for the next four years).

  According to the NT Electoral Commission’s Two Candidate Preferred statistics, the ALP ended up with about 44.8% of the vote, CLP 30.9%, Independents 15.7% and “Exhausted” (essentially the Greens, 1Territory and unsuccessful Independents) 5.9%. Yet, because of the vagaries of the current system of single member electorates combined with optional preferential voting, we have ended up with the ALP holding 18 of 25 seats, the CLP just 2 seats and the Independents 5 seats.  Clearly the election has not resulted in political representation reflecting anything remotely like the expressed preferences of voters.

  Moreover, this sort of drastically lopsided election outcome is quite common in NT political history.  Here are the results of each NT election since 1974 (pre-self-government) when the current voting system was introduced (except for optional preferential voting, which was unwisely enacted by the Giles government earlier this year) :

  • 1974– 19 seats – CLP 17, ALP 0, Independents 2.
  • 1977– 19 seats – CLP 12, ALP 6, Independents 1.
  • 1980– 19 seats – CLP 11, ALP 7, Independents 1.
  • 1983– 25 seats – CLP 19, ALP 6, Independents 0.
  • 1987– 25 seats – CLP 16, ALP 6, NT Nationals 1 (former CLP Chief Minister Ian Tuxworth), Independents 2 (both CLP defectors).
  • 1990– 25 seats – CLP 14, ALP 9, Independents 2.
  • 1994– 25 seats – CLP 17, ALP 7, Independents 1.
  • 1997– 25 seats – CLP 18, ALP 7, Independents 0.
  • 2001– 25 seats – ALP 13, CLP 10, Independents 2.
  • 2005 – 25 seats – ALP 19, CLP 4, Independents 2.
  • 2008– 25 seats – ALP 13, CLP 11, Independents 1.
  • 2012– 25 seats – CLP 16, ALP 8, Independents 1.
  • 2016– 25 seats – ALP 18, CLP 2, Independents 5.

  Labor’s two party preferred vote for the decade before it finally won government for the first time in 2001 sat between 42 and 44%, and yet it typically managed to win only 7 of the 25 seats in the Legislative Assembly.  Conversely, in 2005 the CLP was reduced to just 4 out of 25 seats despite still achieving 40.19% 2PP, and in 2016  has been reduced to just 2 out of 25 seats despite a 2PP vote of 41.5% (to the extent that figure remains meaningful).

  The key point for present purposes is that NT political history tells us that the current voting system regularly delivers very large disparities between votes cast and seats actually won, and regularly results in an Opposition too weak numerically to provide effective opposition and therefore hold the government to account.

  Moreover, the last 15 years have also produced extraordinary volatility with many seats (comparatively speaking) changing hands at each election.  For the first 20 years after self-government in 1978 the accepted wisdom among pundits was that the tiny size of NT electorates (until recently well under 5000 voters) meant that political representation was remarkably stable because incumbency was critically important.  MLAs could develop personal relationships with a high proportion of voters in their electorate and therefore were much more difficult to displace than in large states with much larger numbers of voters per electorate.

  That truism is clearly no longer true. With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that it never was.  MLAs retained their seats not because they were much more chummy with local voters than “down south” politicians, but predominantly because of a polarised public attitude towards Aboriginal land rights. White voters in Darwin, Alice Springs and Katherine mostly voted CLP because the party vehemently opposed all Aboriginal land claims, while Aboriginal voters in remote/bush seats mostly voted ALP because it supported land rights.

  However, that stable if inherently racist system changed radically when a sunset clause was inserted into the Land Rights Act, effectively preventing lodgment of any new claims after 5 June 1997. Once the era of big land claims ended, the stark electoral polarisation and the racially-underpinned stability of political representation ended too.   NT electoral volatility dates from that time.  The notion that small electorates were the dominant cause of stable incumbency ignored the fact that the small voter numbers of those electorates were largely counteracted by high population mobility.  Population turnover was (and remains) somewhere around one-third of each electorate during every four year term. An individual MLA might develop a personal relationship with quite a few voters, but a lot of them would have moved away by the date of the next election.

  An unintended but partially desirable side-effect of the interplay between Aboriginal land rights and the Territory’s electoral system was that the incumbent CLP government enjoyed great stability of parliamentary representation over the first 20 years of self-government.  It could always count on a stable core of experienced Ministers, and almost equally experienced backbenchers were always available to replace a retiring Minister.

  That advantage no longer exists for either major party. By definition Labor had no MLAs with any experience in government when it won for the first time in 2001.  The CLP also had no MLAs with any ministerial experience when it won back government in 2012, although Terry Mills and John Elferink had been backbenchers during the ill-fated Burke government which lost the 2001 election.

  Similarly, the new ALP government that has just taken office has only one MLA with any ministerial experience, and indeed only two who have been in Parliament for any more than four years.  New Chief Minister Michael Gunner was a ministerial adviser during both Clare Martin and Paul Henderson’s chief ministerships between 2001 and 2008 and then a government backbencher from 2008 until 2012, while Gerry McCarthy was a Minister in the Henderson government between 2009 and 2012.

  Because of this high level of “churn” among MLAs over the last decade or so, both major parties have tended to rely heavily on very experienced ministerial advisers to  underpin a quite inexperienced team of elected politicians.  To what extent that is desirable either in a democratic or practical sense is debatable.  The Martin and Henderson regimes tended to supplement the ranks of  home-grown political advisers with more than a few Labor apparatchiks from “down south”.  However, not only was their lack of local knowledge a handicap but NT Labor increasingly suffered because they were recruiting from a talent pool of advisers that was under some strain because Australia had wall-to-wall state and territory Labor governments through much of the decade after 2000. A job with the NT government wasn’t exactly a plum appointment for an ambitious Labor apparatchik.

  The CLP adopted a somewhat different strategy to supplement its elected politicians’ inexperience when it returned to government in 2012. It began enthusiastically appointing local political cronies, not only to ministerial adviser positions but as heads of government departments and agencies, often irrespective of qualifications and without anything resembling due process.  Departmental and agency CEOs in that category have included:

  • Denis Burke (former CLP Chief Minister appointed as Chairperson of the Development Consent Authority in 2014 despite no evident qualifications for the role;
  • Gary Nairn (former CLP President and federal Liberal MHR for Eden-Monaro appointed to head the Planning Commision, which has no town planners among its members, although Nairn is a at least a surveyor);
  • Jodeen Carney (former CLP MLA and for a short time Opposition Leader, appointed as CEO of Children and Families– had been shadow minister for that portfolio for a time in Opposition);
  • Dr Len Notaras (former CLP President, appointed as CEO Department of Health in 2014 – in fairness an appropriate appointment as a doctor and longstanding senior health administrator);
  • Ron Kelly (former Chief of Staff for Chief Minister Adam Giles, appointed as CEO Department of Mines and Energy);
  • Stephen Dunham  (former chief of staff to Health Minister John Elferink and former CLP Health Minister in the Burke government, appointed as Health Complaints Commissioner– arguably a reasonable appointment on merit but appointed with flagrant disregard to due process);
  • Dr Bill Freeland (former Executive Director of Parks and Wildlife under the Burke government, appointed in 2012 to chair the newly constituted Environment Protection Authority – again arguably a reasonable appointment on merit but also appointed with flagrant disregard to due process).

  Of course, political cronyism is hardly unheard of in other states, but its sheer extent and audacity in the Northern Territory over the last four years is deeply troubling. The higher levels of the public sector have been utterly politicised and any semblance of a professional public service able to advise government without fear or favour no longer exists.  This is a much larger problem in the Territory than in larger jurisdictions, given the lack of other democratic checks and balances and the inexperienced “shoot from the hip” propensities of some politicians, most notably Chief Minister Adam Giles and his best political mate Treasurer and Lands and Planning Minister Dave Tollner.

  Hopefully the new Labor government will be able and willing to restore at least some integrity to the Territory’s public sector, although I won’t be holding my breath. All these considerations are among the factors that led me to label the Northern Territory a “failed state”, badly in need of radical reform of its electoral and governance systems . Just what those reforms might involve is a topic I intend exploring in a later post.

• Club Troppo Northern Territory – a tale of systemic dysfunctional governance

  Like quite a few other despairing commentators, I have on occasions referred to the Northern Territory as a “failed state”, most recently here:

  Until now, although holding grave fears about the quality of Northern Territory political governance under both the previous Labor government and the current CLP one, I have taken the optimistic view that things are bound to improve as the Territory grows and matures, and that therefore the self-government experiment is worth preserving. I have also felt that many of the deficiencies about which people complain also exist to a significant extent in other Australian States, it’s just that they are much more exposed and visible here because the population is so small. In a very real sense, the Northern Territory means the tiny city-state of Darwin whose population is around 140,000 people.

  Unfortunately, at the end of the day that is also the reason why self-government is an unsustainable failed experiment. Not only are there not enough people to provide a revenue base to support either the full bureaucratic apparatus of a State government or the necessary relatively sophisticated political establishment to make it efficient and accountable, but there aren’t even enough people to provide a sufficient number of talented politicians, apparatchiks or bureaucrats …

  When I raised the point again very recently in the wake of the CLP’s crushing election defeat by Labor, commenter Marks observed:

  I am not sure I buy into this Territory exceptionalism theme. I don’t see, for example, that the NT has worse governance than NSW. Or Queensland in the not so distant past.

  In one sense you can’t really argue with that, given Queensland’s political history especially under Sir Joh, and NSW’s two hundred year history of Tammany Hall-style politics. But in recent years both those states seem to have lifted their games in terms of their quality of governance and accountability.  New South Wales, for example, has an active and effective anti-corruption commission, rigorous political donations disclosure and regulation regime, and an Upper House of Parliament.  The Northern Territory has none of those mechanisms.  The NT’s deficiencies in governance are longstanding and systemic, but capable of change for the better.

  In my considered view the Commonwealth imposed an inappropriate model of self-government in 1978 (the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act for a polity of the Territory’s size and stage of development, a model that entrenches single member electorates, prohibits the co-opting of ministerial talent from outside the Parliament, lacks inbuilt accountability checks and balances, and largely ignores the key fact that Aboriginal people constitute one-third of the population, own half of the land and have a culture and material needs and aspirations that differ radically from those of the majority non-Aboriginal population.

  By contrast, the other two tiny Australian polities, the ACT and Tasmania, do not exhibit the stark racial divide that is the most prominent feature of the Territory’s political culture, and have both opted for multi-member electorates with MLAs elected by Hare-Clark proportional representation.  That sort of system not only enhances diversity of political representation and encourages mature deliberation and constructive compromise, it also ensures significant continuity and stability of representation for the major parties (albeit at the price of  seldom achieving the sort of complete single party domination aka elected dictatorship that the NT ALP will now enjoy for the next four years).

  According to the NT Electoral Commission’s Two Candidate Preferred statistics, the ALP ended up with about 44.8% of the vote, CLP 30.9%, Independents 15.7% and “Exhausted” (essentially the Greens, 1Territory and unsuccessful Independents) 5.9%. Yet, because of the vagaries of the current system of single member electorates combined with optional preferential voting, we have ended up with the ALP holding 18 of 25 seats, the CLP just 2 seats and the Independents 5 seats.  Clearly the election has not resulted in political representation reflecting anything remotely like the expressed preferences of voters.

  Moreover, this sort of drastically lopsided election outcome is quite common in NT political history.  Here are the results of each NT election since 1974 (pre-self-government) when the current voting system was introduced (except for optional preferential voting, which was unwisely enacted by the Giles government earlier this year) :

  • 1974– 19 seats – CLP 17, ALP 0, Independents 2.
  • 1977– 19 seats – CLP 12, ALP 6, Independents 1.
  • 1980– 19 seats – CLP 11, ALP 7, Independents 1.
  • 1983– 25 seats – CLP 19, ALP 6, Independents 0.
  • 1987– 25 seats – CLP 16, ALP 6, NT Nationals 1 (former CLP Chief Minister Ian Tuxworth), Independents 2 (both CLP defectors).
  • 1990– 25 seats – CLP 14, ALP 9, Independents 2.
  • 1994– 25 seats – CLP 17, ALP 7, Independents 1.
  • 1997– 25 seats – CLP 18, ALP 7, Independents 0.
  • 2001– 25 seats – ALP 13, CLP 10, Independents 2.
  • 2005 – 25 seats – ALP 19, CLP 4, Independents 2.
  • 2008– 25 seats – ALP 13, CLP 11, Independents 1.
  • 2012– 25 seats – CLP 16, ALP 8, Independents 1.
  • 2016– 25 seats – ALP 18, CLP 2, Independents 5.

  Labor’s two party preferred vote for the decade before it finally won government for the first time in 2001 sat between 42 and 44%, and yet it typically managed to win only 7 of the 25 seats in the Legislative Assembly.  Conversely, in 2005 the CLP was reduced to just 4 out of 25 seats despite still achieving 40.19% 2PP, and in the 2016  was reduced to just 2 out of 25 seats despite a 2PP vote of 41.5% (to the extent that figure remains meaningful).

  The key point for present purposes is that NT political history tells us that the current voting system regularly delivers very large disparities between votes cast and seats actually won, and regularly results in an Opposition too weak numerically to provide effective opposition and therefore hold the government to account.

  Moreover, the last 15 years have also produced extraordinary volatility with many seats (comparatively speaking) changing hands at each election.  For the first 20 years after self-government in 1978 the accepted wisdom among pundits was that the tiny size of NT electorates (until recently well under 5000 voters) meant that political representation was remarkably stable because incumbency was critically important.  MLAs could develop personal relationships with a high proportion of voters in their electorate and therefore were much more difficult to displace than in large states with much larger numbers of voters per electorate.

  That truism is clearly no longer true. With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that it never was.  MLAs retained their seats not because they were much more chummy with local voters than “down south” politicians, but predominantly because of a polarised public attitude towards Aboriginal land rights. White voters in Darwin, Alice Springs and Katherine mostly voted CLP because the party vehemently opposed all Aboriginal land claims, while Aboriginal voters in remote/bush seats mostly voted ALP for essentially the same reason.

  However, that stable if inherently racist system changed radically when a sunset clause was inserted into the Land Rights Act, effectively preventing lodgment of any new claims after 5 June 1997. Once the era of big land claims ended the electoral polarisation and race-based stability of political representation ended too.   NT electoral volatility dates from that time.  The notion that small electorates were underpinning stable incumbency ignored the fact that the small voter numbers of those electorates was largely counteracted by high population mobility.  Population turnover was (and remains) somewhere around one-third of each electorate during every four year term. An individual MLA might develop a personal relationship with quite a few voters, but a lot of them would have moved away by the date of the next election.

  An unintended but partially desirable side-effect of the interplay between Aboriginal land rights and the Territory’s electoral system was that the incumbent CLP government enjoyed great stability of parliamentary representation over the first 20 years of self-government.  It could always count on a stable core of experienced Ministers, and almost equally experienced backbenchers were always available to replace a retiring Minister.

  That advantage no longer exists for either major party. By definition Labor had no MLAs with any experience in government when it won for the first time in 2001.  The CLP also had no MLAs with any ministerial experience when it won back government in 2012, although Terry Mills and John Elferink had been backbenchers during the ill-fated Burke government which lost the 2001 election.

  Similarly, the new ALP government that has just taken office has only one MLA with any ministerial experience, and indeed only two who have been in Parliament for any more than four years.  New Chief Minister Michael Gunner was a ministerial adviser during both Clare Martin and Paul Henderson’s chief ministerships between 2001 and 2008 and then a government backbencher from 2008 until 2012, while Gerry McCarthy was a Minister in the Henderson government between 2009 and 2012.

  Because of this high level of “churn” among MLAs over the last decade or so, both major parties have tended to rely heavily on very experienced ministerial advisers to  underpin a quite inexperienced team of elected politicians.  To what extent that is desirable either in a democratic or practical sense is debatable.  The Martin and Henderson regimes tended to supplement the ranks of  home-grown political advisers with more than a few Labor apparatchiks from “down south”.  However, not only was their lack of local knowledge a handicap but NT Labor increasingly suffered because they were recruiting from a talent pool of advisers that was under some strain because Australia had wall-to-wall state and territory Labor governments through much of the decade after 2000. A job with the NT government wasn’t exactly a plumb appointment for an ambitious Labor apparatchik.

  The CLP adopted a somewhat different strategy to supplement its elected politicians’ inexperience when it returned to government in 2012. It began enthusiastically appointing local political cronies, not only to ministerial adviser positions but as heads of government departments and agencies, often irrespective of qualifications and without anything resembling due process.  Departmental and agency CEOs in that category have included:

  • Denis Burke (former CLP Chief Minister appointed as Chairperson of the Development Consent Authorityin 2014 despite no evident qualifications for the role;
  • Gary Nairn (former CLP President and federal Liberal MHR for Eden-Monaro appointed to head the Planning Commision, which has no town planners among its members, although Nairn is a at least a surveyor);
  • Jodeen Carney (former CLP MLA and for a short time Opposition Leader, appointed as CEO of Children and Families– had been shadow minister for that portfolio for a time in Opposition);
  • Dr Len Notaras (former CLP President, appointed as CEO Department of Healthin 2914 – in fairness an appropriate appointment as a doctor and longstanding senior health administrator);
  • Ron Kelly (former Chief of Staff for Chief Minister Adam Giles, appointed as CEO Department of Mines and Energy);
  • Stephen Dunham  (former chief of staff to Health Minister John Elferink and former CLP Health Minister in the Burke government, appointed as Health Complaints Commissioner– arguably a reasonable appointment on merit but appointed with flagrant disregard to due process);
  • Dr Bill Freeland (former Executive Director of Parks and Wildlife under the Burke government, appointed in 2012 to chair the newly constituted Environment Protection Authority – again arguably a reasonable appointment on merit but also appointed with flagrant disregard to due process).

  Of course, political cronyism is hardly unheard of in other states, but its sheer extent and audacity in the Northern Territory over the last four years is deeply troubling. The higher levels of the public sector have been utterly politicised and any semblance of a professional public service able to advise government without fear or favour no longer exists.  This is a much larger problem in the Territory than in larger jurisdictions, given the lack of other democratic checks and balances and the inexperienced “shoot from the hip” propensities of some politicians, most notably Chief Minister Adam Giles and his best political mate Treasurer and Lands and Planning Minister Dave Tollner.

  These are among the factors that led me to label the Northern Territory a “failed state”, badly in need of radical reform of its electoral and governance systems . Just what those reforms might involve is a topic I intend exploring in a later post.

• Club Troppo Why is our faith in democratic politics collapsing?
  

  Q: How satisfied are you with the way democracy works in Australia?

  I

  With democracy now serving the interests of the 1%, the public are disenchanted and finally sending the elites packing – courtesy of the Brexit vote and the (relative) popularity of Donald Trump and in Australia the rising vote of minor parties. That’s the narrative anyway, as supported for instance by Moz in a recent comment in the thread on elite tribalism:

  [T]he problem we have is capture of the political system by an apparently unreachable elite whose interests the democracy serves.

  I think this is pretty much wrong. This is a democracy. If there are systematic problems with it – and there are – the buck stops with us. We decide who gets the top office. We decided to vote for John Howard when he told us  that reffos were chucking their kids into the sea for a great photo-op. We voted for Paul Keating when he told us that the GST was vital to our economic interests when he was peddling it, and that it was a monster tax designed to cripple working Australians a few years later when his opponent was.

  Certainly the public says that its interests are being ignored and of course the elites do give their own perspectives and interests disproportionate attention. But is this particularly worse than it ever was? Schools, hospitals, dole payments, garbage services all run as efficiently as they have in the past. In principle they could probably be run a little better. But politicians probably don’t know how to do much better and in so far as the public vote for such things, they’ll often vote for the wrong things – like smaller class sizes and keeping smaller, lower quality, regional hospitals open.

  What wishes of ‘the people’, exactly are being ignored?

  You can say that inequality has grown. Certainly in the US it has, and some of it has been driven by aggressive tax cuts for the wealthy and ingrained crony capitalism, particularly in the ‘asymmetric information economy’ – America’s bloated health and finance sectors. In Australia it’s much less clear and to the extent that it’s the case, it’s been driven largely by market outcomes, with policy leaning against the wind, beginning with the world’s most targeted tax and transfer system and then strengthening it over the ‘reform period’ from 1983 to 2001 and probably since.

  It’s easy to see why we fall for a narrative that our politicians have let us down. It sentimentalises us by demonising them. I think what’s happening is this: Political combat is in words (by definition) and the culture of modern democratic politics requires those words to have a particular (dumbed down) form and implicit emotional content. The form is concrete – and very basically so at that. Don’t promise a more efficient electricity market. Promise to put a lid on electricity prices. The emotional content is the assertion by the politician that they’re really motivated by service to us – and it must be delivered  with sincerity. Politicians follow this formula to succeed in winning our votes, but expressing oneself like this is disingenuous and, as the deals pile up, is rapidly exposed as such. Apart from the disingenuous style of speech, this situation leads almost immediately to endless contradictions between words used in political combat and the words and deeds coming afterwards with which they must be reconciled.

  II

  Here’s a very simplified, model of the way I  think the world works. It’s worked up a little from Schumpeter’s ideas.

  The world of markets is characterised by:

  • ‘is’ questions (What’s the price of bread and which is best – tasting, nutritionally etc?)
  • matters of which people have some practical experience
  • prudence in the pursuit of self-interest
  • the exercise of reason to make choices. (Though that reason may be very summary and informal).

  The world of political action on the other hand is characterised by:

  • ‘ought’ questions (Should we reintroduce capital punishment? Should we leave the GST at 10%?)
  • matters where abstract reasoning is usually necessary to appreciate the merits of alternative possibilities
  • self-interest may or may not dominate motives for engagement, but the discourse is one directed to the persuasion of others and so other regarding language and thinking is heavily represented.
  • Affect and expression (rather than reason) have a large influence on both the extent and the nature of individuals political engagement.

  Tim Harford documents a similar point:

  Dan Kahan is a Yale law professor who studies the way we debate controversial political issues such as climate change and gun control. He points out that our reasoning about such issues is often bound up with passionately held emotions and values. For example, people who oppose government regulations are often instinctively sceptical about climate change, fearing that it is a Trojan horse for state control; alternatively, people who distrust large corporations instinctively embrace the scientific evidence on climate change, yet tend to dismiss scientists who say that genetically-modified food is safe.

  Modern democratic institutions reflect some awareness of these issues. Thus the dominant value in the bureaucracy is reason (don’t laugh – I’m referring to bureaucracy’s ‘self-talk’ – the standards of persuasion within legitimate discourse) whereas the language of politics is about justice and right. This is a good division of labour with the bureaucracy holding fast to ‘is’ kinds of questions “if you do this then that will happen” with the political layer on top dealing with the ‘ought’.

  Schumpeter likens political campaigning to”the ways of commercial advertising”:

  We find the same attempts to contact the subconscious … the same technique of creating favorable and unfavorable associations which are the more effective the less rational they are … the same evasions and reticences and the same trick of producing opinion by reiterated assertion that is successful precisely to the extent to which it avoids rational argument and the danger of awakening the critical faculties of the people. [Who knew advertising had so embraced the irrational by 1943?]

  So for me this is the basic template of modern democracy though we can add 70 years of cultural and technological evolution – an eon at the pace set by modern liberal capitalism where the relentless forces of competition melt all that is solid into air. Indeed, Schumpeter’s analysis of politics as a ‘market’ with purchasers being the voters and providers being the politicians – a radical thought at the time and one made principally for the sake of analysis – has arguably become the way voters see democracy. In many ways voters see themselves as the consumers of a product and they’re not happy with the product. (The ‘complaints’ department just waste your time, so you have to go to another store, but you know in advance that you’re just letting off some steam. The new store will treat you in the same way.)

  III

  As politicians compete for the consent of the governed, they ply their media management and modern marketing methods. The first rule is keep your claims and promises concrete rather than abstract. Simon Wren Lewis explains:

  Suppose we had a referendum on taxes. A simple question: should taxes be reduced or not? Polling evidence suggests that the resounding answer would be yes. But polling evidence also suggests that most voters would also say yes to more money for schools and the NHS. They might also say yes to reducing the deficit. Referenda do not need to respect constraints, which in this case is a simple budget constraint.

  In fact political promises have occasionally been made in an abstract form. Inspired (I think) by Ross Garnaut, around 1984-5 Bob Hawke offered his ‘trilogy‘ of commitments including the commitment not to increase the tax take as a share of GDP. But that doesn’t get anyone’s blood racing and so doesn’t travel through the media-tainment complex as well as “Read my lips – no new taxes” or “Axe the tax”. Likewise in the election just past the ALP stuck its head in the lion’s jaws again with its promise to return the budget to surplus by a specific year, when, as we saw in the ALP years, that ends up getting us to the worst of all worlds – bad policy making for bad politics.

  You can blame ‘the media’ for all this, but it’s just responding to the nature of human cognition and motivation – as outlined in my four points above. Given our natures, we trained the media with our reading, watching, listening and clicking. We could complain about the parties not presenting all their policies at the beginning of the campaign so they can be debated throughout the campaign as used to occur. But any party doing that would sorely cruel its news coverage. And some savvy journalist would write articles full of contempt for the relevant party’s lousy media (manipulation) skills.

  On top of these tensions between the manner by which abstract policy ideas are presented as concrete ones, in following the rules of marketing and media management, political discourse invites its audience deceive itself in a thousand small ways. Sound bites are tested on focus groups and then used in battle. And the deception begins right there. But it goes on and on. The need for authenticity and sincerity requires politicians to present the positions to which they’re committed by party loyalty as their own personal commitments.

  In the face of all this, the media then goes into a dumbed down ‘watchdog’ mode, exposing contradictions, a process which traps the discourse ever more tightly into ‘gotcha’ scripting. And this in turn intensifies the problems. Politicians wriggle from the ‘gotcha’ questions trying not to make ‘concessions’ because if they do, the concessions become the story. Can you guarantee that no Australian will be taxed more under your government? The correct political answer here is ‘yes’ or better still a confident sounding emphatic ‘yes(ish)’ answer which offers some wriggle room (though sometimes the journalist will press on insisting on a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.) In fact the actual answer is ‘”No, I haven’t stopped beating my wife”. If you answer “no” and explain that you don’t propose to freeze the entire tax code, then expect trouble – like Gareth Evans for doing just that in around 1998. The headline? (From memory) “Gareth Gaffe”.

  Indeed, this whole thing can be made up for you. As it was for Stephen Conroy when he was asked how Labor would pay for an initiative. He responded unremarkably, that, like all initiatives, it could be funded either by diverting funds from other programs, or by raising taxes. Conroy’s Opposition then beat that up into a story about Labor’s “secret tax agenda”. They were of course just doing their job – and nothing that Conroy wouldn’t have done in their position. And then it gained ‘traction’ (what a marvellously revealing word about the linguistic bog the medium for politics has become) because the media were just doing their job on what was presumably a slow news day – just reporting what he said and she said.

  IV

  So I think much of the disenchantment with modern politics comes from the endless contradictions between words as they must be spoken in campaigning and political combat and the subsequent words and deeds with which they must be reconciled. The recent brouhaha over Sam Dastyari offers a timely illustration. Sam gets up to some unappetising behaviour. He’s naïve enough to post it on his declaration of interests and then the issue gains ‘traction’. Then a week goes by in which each side rolls out its representatives to spin their side. George Brandis uses his position as Attorney General to make dark (but indefensible) comments about possible illegality. So his shadow – Mark Dreyfus who appears to be a person of considerable integrity – takes the opportunity to demonstrate he’s a team player by defending, or be seen to defend, Dastyari. He’s presumably hating being associated with behaviour that he thinks is deplorable, but that’s the gig.

  None of those reporting on the matter do so from any other perspective than one of expediency. Has Brandis got away with his innuendo or has he gone ‘too far’ (ie too far to get away with it)? Did Dreyfus look convincing? Here an ethical matter important enough to determine the fate of a political career is debated by people all of whose publicly expressed views are governed entirely by which party they’re in, rather than by the merits of the case and reported on by journalists similarly careless of the merits of the case. After Dastyari resigned, we went into another brief flurry. The Government said how badly this reflected on Shorten and the Opposition said Sam had “done the right thing” (that is resign for doing the wrong thing) and we now needed to “move on”. As we could say for every single person commenting on the issue since it arose, they would say that wouldn’t they?

  And of course all this is bog-standard business-as-usual and has been for some time. As I put it in another essay a while back talking about the last days of the Howard Government:

  With the recent AWB scandal leaving the Government’s distain for … ministerial responsibility fresh in the mind, the Minister for Environment got tangled up in the Government’s attack on Kevin Rudd. With the Government in high dudgeon about Rudd meeting persona non grata Brian Burke, the Minister turned out to have done the same thing quite appropriately in his ministerial duties. At this point the principles of Westminster Government appeared, like some digitised folkloric creature in a Harry Potter movie with nothing but its uncanny weightlessness to give away its essential unreality. The minister resigned. His Prime Minister said he’d done nothing morally wrong. Others in his party said that in resigning he’d done the right thing. The minister, smiling and magnanimous, was transparent about his party’s motivation – which was to clear the decks for intensified attacks on the Opposition Leader. And so the once grave principle of ministerial responsibility reasserted itself one last time under Howard, this time transformed into an ironic simulacrum of its former self – a walk-on walk-off cameo, the tactical feint du jour in the news cycle.

  V

  As the philosopher Harry Frankfurter explained, the difference between lying and bullshit is that the liar cares for the truth – if only to enable him to deceive. The bullshitter is indifferent to the truth. Bullshit generates plausibility without content. That’s its purpose. And something similar is going on here. Hypocrisy, it is said, is a tribute vice pays to virtue. But in today’s kind of politics, there’s no virtue, only the hypocrisy of the endless musical chairs in which politicians rotate roles to defend (or attack) the indefensible – or to attack (or defend) the eminently defensible. We’re all aware of people talking their own book, but when they’re doing so there’s some point in trying to catch them out – as one might a liar. But what’s the point of doing this when everyone’s working to the same bullshit script. There’s no ‘there’ there!

  We look on and see the vacuity of it all. But politics is at heart an ethical practice and debates about the limits of acceptable conduct go to the heart of political culture. This isn’t a call for politicians to be goodie-goodies. In debates about the conduct of a politician, opinions will often divide down party lines. But politics is a fight for the good life as one sees it. And whether you’re Richard Nixon or Abraham Lincoln, the currency of political action generally involves trading off ends and means. I think Paul Keating meant something like this when he said that, in politics, you’ve got to know when to “nick through the fence”.

  But not only does the ‘gotcha’ culture of political reporting encourage a completely naïve view of these trade-offs – in which politics becomes to serious ethical debate what panto is to drama. It forces the combatants into such simple reflex spinning for their own side on the issue du jour that after they get over any early career revulsion, their sensibilities as to what ends might justify what means and what might not, must surely become pretty debauched. I know they would if I were trying to play that game. I guess there’s still the private corridors of power where they can share what misgivings they have and perhaps even reach across the isle in solidarity. Has there ever been a time in which politicians’ public views on what does and does not constitute conduct unbecoming so lacked all conviction?

  I could have focused here on the ultimate content of politics – policy rather than its ‘manners’. Isn’t that more important? Perhaps it is – though its manners are its operating system as a means of deliberation, legitimation and accountability. But to some extent people ‘get’ the distinction. (As the chart below shows, most Australians think politics is corrupt as a practice in the sense that I’ve portrayed it, but far fewer think Australian politicians are corrupt as in taking bribes.)

  But then the things that are going wrong with national decisions of grave consequence are driven by the kind of corrosion of meaning I’m talking about. Probably the most important thing the incoming government did was to abolish carbon pricing and replace it with subsidies to emitters to reduce their emissions (you know the way in which, in a drought we lower water consumption not by penalising overconsumption, but by subsidising the biggest water consumers to lower their consumption?) That was a policy to get through several media interviews, not several terms in government. So we have a decision made by the Parliament that a vast majority of members would have known was bad policy and which wasn’t in the interests of any major block of political power. You can say it was driven by business, but only a small minority of business interests stood to gain – really only coal and trade exposed energy intensive producers the new policy favoured.  Political systems are supposed to protect us from that kind of madness.

  Today in the US Donald Trump’s entire platform looks like that – and it keeps changing – which is fair enough since to require it to be consistent through time is to misunderstand the nature of what it was in the first place. It’s some policy bullshit tacked onto the feeling The Donald is selling. Elites used to protect us from this kind of derangement – which is indeed the kind of thing that anti-democrats warned us against in the 19th century. And we need, we desperately need, to work out how we can protect ourselves from it.

  

  Q: Please indicate how common you feel the following activities are in Australian politics today.

   

   

• Club Troppo Anton Smirnov: Year 9 Australian kid currently playing better than all but 36 other human beings

  Anton Smirnov, who turned 15 this year even if he looks a fair bit younger than that, has been playing in the Australian team in the Chess Olympiad. He’s been playing at a rating strength of 2710 which places him 37th in the world given current live rankings. After 10 rounds he’s undefeated, drawing against everyone with a rating strength of over 2570 or so and beating everyone else (these stats have been poured over by a team of data scientists in India and personally checked at Deputy Secretary level within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet).

  Here are all Smirnov’s Olympiad games and some others. And here’s one of the better ones. Uncharacteristically for kids of his age who show a lot of promise, he doesn’t think he’s good enough to be the world champ. Who knows if he is or not, but unlike lots of sports which are pretty healthy and fun, chess is a pretty punishing game to go into professionally so it seems like a pretty sensible attitude to have to me. I can’t think of too many Australian chess players I’ve seen who’ve taken the game seriously enough to become professionals who look like they’re getting a lot out of life by the time they’re in their 40s.

September 12, 2016

• Daniel Bowen Old photos from September 2006

  Another in my series of ten year old photos… September 2006.

  Most of my photos this month were snapped with my phone camera of the time, the Nokia 6230i. Not bad for 2006, but a bit grainy by today’s standards.

  Richmond station, before we got the all-over platform cover. Other than that in some ways it hasn’t changed a great deal.
  

  A sighting of the Myki truck, at Birrarung Marr near the Tennis Centre. The smartcard project had been running for a couple of years, but this was when they unveiled the name “Myki”.
  

  Here are a couple of grabs from Channel 9 (7/9/2006), with then Transport Minister Peter Batchelor launching Myki. It was said to be planned for operation in 2007 (this actually occurred in 2009), with full implementation in 2008 (actually 2013).
  

  And who’s this youthful looking bloke rambling on about the importance of staff alongside automated tickets? He looks a bit like me, but with less grey hair.
  

  The Manchester Unity Building, with Burke and Wills looking on. This view has barely changed.
  

  Before there were tram platform superstops across the CBD, there were just “safety” zones. This is Flinders Street, eastbound at Elizabeth Street.
  

  Nearby, the Flinders Street Station centre entrance. Unstaffed and one gate left open, as was common in those days (and is still common at suburban stations).
  

  An old (even then) 404 bus timetable in Footscray, in one of those ancient “The Met” timetable cases. I’d assume this was from the 1980s. Note the bus was every 20 minutes on Saturday mornings back then. Now it’s every 40 minutes.
  

• Links International Working class power & feminism: An interview with Alia Amirali (Awami Workers Party, Pakistan)

   

  

   

  Alia Amirali speaking at a Awami Workers Party rally in Hunza in support of jailed activist Baba Jan.

   

  September 13, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Tanqeed — Writer and labor organizer, Sara Jaffri, and left-wing political worker and the Punjab Deputy General Secretary of the Awami Workers Party, Alia Amirali talk organizing, feminism and class in Pakistan.

   

  read more

• Links International Struggle over the Cuban press intensifies

   

  

   

  By Marce Cameron[1]

   

  September 12, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Cuba's Socialist Renewal -- On June 28, 37-year-old Karina Marron, the deputy editor of Granma, the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) daily, made some candid remarks at a closed-door meeting of the Cuban Journalists Union (UPEC). The Cuban media reported on the event, but airbrushed out of their coverage Marron’s more incendiary and newsworthy comments. That selectivity was a case of either actual censorship or self-censorship on the part of Cuban journalists and editors.

   

  read more

• Links International Ideas for the struggle #3 - To be at the service of popular movements, not replace them

   

  

   

  By Marta Harnecker, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

   

  1. We have previously stated that politics is the art of constructing a social and political force capable of changing the balance of forces in order to make possible tomorrow that which today appears to be impossible. But to be able to construct a social force political organizations must demonstrate a great respect for grassroots movements, and contribute to their autonomous development, leaving behind all attempts at manipulation. They must take as their starting point the fact that they are not the only ones with ideas and proposals; on the contrary, grassroots movements have much to offer us, because through their daily struggles they have also learned things, discovered new paths, found solutions and invented methods which can be of great value.

   

  read more

September 11, 2016

• Club Troppo Regulatory responsiveness and industry policy

  I’ve been arguing that our current approach to efficient regulation is blockheaded for as long as I can remember. I’ve even pointed out how one might possibly do quite a lot better with a less ideologically Manichean approach in which regulatory policy is a battle between Good (markets) and Evil (governments). I sketched out an alternative and tried to sell it as pro-innovation on the grounds that it’s easier to sell ideas through popular buzzwords – or to put it more charitably – when one can answer that difficult question that good business negotiators know they have to answer: “What’s in it for them?”

  That meant that I could get funding to develop the ideas, but, it was all a bit abstract for innovation departments who mostly want to get those binoculars out and look around until they see some innovation and then ask how they could get more of it, their imaginations and the political economy of the exercise then turning to doling out money.

  But it’s becoming possible to articulate lots of very concrete prospects for an approach to industry policy in which regulatory responsiveness becomes an important aspect of policy as the march of technology reconfigures one industry after another. Thus Jay Weatherill, the South Australian Premier has sought to promote investment in R&D in driverless cars South Australia by promising responsive regulation in the area. Just this afternoon I picked my son up from Paintball who, I discovered on speaking to them, had spent a few years with Victorian regulators to get their game suitable for over-16 year olds instead of over 18 year olds and to develop a slightly milder game for much younger age-groups.

  That’s a drop in the ocean, but as I was sitting around I read this story in the Economist. Timber buildings are becoming much more viable, with an 18 story wooden building going up in Canada and a 40 story one in Stockholm on the drawing boards. There’s an 80 story concept building for London which, as you know has buildings named after household objects – as with the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater, the Can of Ham, the Walkie-Talkie and the Shard. The Economist suggests that the 80 footer wood building could be called the Toothpick. Be that as it may, as the Economist notes “One big obstacle to this wooden renaissance is regulation”.

  I sketched out a similar idea – over a canvass that comprehended both service provision and regulation in my “Innovation without Money” agenda thinking particularly of health and education when I was Chair of Innovation Australia. But so far no dice.

  After thirty years of its own and its progenitors’ existence, Australia’s Office of Best Practice Regulation shows no sign of thinking of this kind of thing. It has no ‘mission’ or ‘vision’ or other simple assertion of corporate religiosity. It is defined, not by its aspirations but by its functions which are focused inward towards government and are more or less exclusively reactive. It’s functions are outlined here and summarised on the PM&C website as:

  assist[ing] policymakers to comply with the Government’s regulatory impact analysis requirements. It assesses Regulation Impact Statements and Post-Implementation Reviews and prepares regular compliance reports. It also publishes Regulation Impact Statements and Post-implementation reviews on the Best Practice Regulation Updates website”.

  Anyway, there must be lots of other examples. Indeed I expect I’ve thought of some of them, and even documented some previously on this blog. In any event, I’d appreciate any commenters adding to the list.

September 10, 2016

• Links International Bolivia’s government sides with workers in conflict with bosses in mining cooperatives

   

  

   

  Introduction by Richard Fidler

   

  September 10, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — The articles below describe and analyze a major confrontation in Bolivia in recent months that ended tragically in several deaths and blew up an uneasy alliance between the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) government headed by Evo Morales and an incipient bourgeoisie in the mining industry. The government responded to the crisis by strengthening its alliance with the proletarian forces in the mining industry and taking further steps to regain state control over the industry.

  read more

September 09, 2016

• Sea Shepherd Sea Shepherd Crew’s Life Threatened by Mexican ‘Cartels’ in The Gulf of California

  Sea Shepherd Crew’s Life Threatened by Mexican ‘Cartels’ in The Gulf of California

  Campaign leader targeted while on operation to save the endangered totoaba bass

  M/V Farley MowatA crew member aboard the Sea Shepherd vessel M/V Farley Mowat received anonymous death threats this week while on campaign in the Sea of Cortez.

  The Mowat is currently in Mexico’s Gulf of California for Operation Angel de la Guarda, a campaign to protect the imperiled totoaba bass.

  The vessel was patrolling the south part of the sea, near Isla Angel de la Guarda (aka Guardian Angel Island), a section that is notorious for drug and totoaba trafficking.

  Totoaba is hunted by poachers solely for its swim bladder, which is sold on the black market in China in excess of $20,000 per kilo. Due to its high street value, the totoaba bladder is frequently referred to as “aquatic cocaine.”

  On September 7, while the Mowat had returned to the northern area to refuel, campaign leader JP Geoffroy – a native of Chile – reported that he received a phone call at approximately 7 p.m. warning him not to let the boat travel back south.

  “They knew my name, my mother’s and daughter’s names, what I looked like, a home address in Chile…” said Geoffroy. “They knew the boat’s name, its movements and said if we go back south my daughter and I will be dead.”

  Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson said he is not taking the threat lightly.

  “Sea Shepherd takes threats of violence very seriously, especially in high risk areas, but we will not be deterred by them. What we do is dangerous, we know it’s dangerous, but the stakes are too high to back down in the face of threats from criminals attempting to endanger the lives and the survival of our clients in the sea.”

  “When we receive threats, it simply corroborates the fact that our campaigns are successful,” said COO David Hance. “While we will take steps to protect our crew, we will not run away. Threats will never deter us from our mission of protecting the oceans and the animals that live in them.

  We Are the Cartel

  According to Geoffroy, the callers did not ask for money. Their only demand was that the Mowat not return to the southern area of the Sea of Cortez.

  “They said, ‘We are the Cartel,’” although they did not specify which cartel, Geoffroy recalled.

  The threat was reported to Mexican authorities and additional security measures are now being taken by Sea Shepherd, in light of the incident.

  “This is not going to stop our work in the south,” said Geoffroy of the threat. “Our job is to be here to retrieve illegal nets and work with the Mexican authorities to prevent the extinction of species such as totoaba, along with other animals at risk.”

  Fortunately, since the launch of Operation Angel de la Guarda last month, no totoaba were found trapped in the nets removed by Sea Shepherd. However, the crew recently found the body of a sea lion that perished when it was caught in those illegal gillnets.

  When Sea Shepherd arrived at the scene, a male sea lion swam nearby, refusing to leave the floating corpse. He watched as Sea Shepherd worked to cut the carcass from the nets and properly dispose of it.

  Gillnets are banned in Mexico, although they continue to be used illegally. View Sea Shepherd’s video (below) about what it takes for the crew to locate, retrieve and dispose of illegal gillnets in the Gulf of California.
• Links International How Spain and Portugal dodged EU sanctions (for now)

   

  

   

  Sign at anti-austerity rally in Portugal reads "Their fortune, my crisis" and "Without food, there will be no peace"

   

  By Dick Nichols

   

  September 10, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — A month ago, on August 8, it became official—the high school governors agreed that the headmaster had acted correctly in not caning the two miscreant schoolkids.

   

  The schoolkids are Spain and Portugal; their misdemeanour was to keep missing the public sector deficit reduction targets that are set under the European Union’s “excessive deficit procedure”; the headmaster is the European Commission, headed by president Jean-Claude Juncker; and the school governors are the finance and economy ministers of the EU’s 27 member states (who meet as the Ecofin committee).

   

  read more

• Links International Bolivia VP Alvaro Garcia Linera on the ebbing Latin American tide

   

  

   

  Extracts of vive-president Garcia Linera's address at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (May, 27, 2016).

   

  September 9, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Open Democracy — We are facing a historical turning point in Latin America. Some are talking about a throwback, about restorers moving forward. The truth is that in the last twelve months, after ten years of intense progress, of territorial diffusion of the progressive and revolutionary governments in the continent, this progress has stalled, in some cases it has given ground, and in some other cases its continuity is in doubt. Wherever conservative forces have succeeded, an accelerated process of reconstitution of the old elites of the 80s and 90s, which seek to take control of the management of the state, is under way.

   

  read more

September 08, 2016

• Links International “Dialectical materialism,” ideology and revisionism

   

  

   

  By Jason Devine

  September 9, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — As I have extensively argued elsewhere, “dialectical materialism” as the philosophy of Marxism does not exist.[1] Indeed, when Marx listed in his famous letter to Joseph Weydemeyer what he felt and understood to be his scientific contributions, dialectical materialism as a name, concept, and system was conspicuously missing.[2] Further, when Engels spoke at Marx’s graveside he mentioned Marx’s scientific discoveries, but at no point did he mention dialectical materialism as a name, concept, or system.[3] This is no surprise as the phrase “dialectical materialism” was never used by Marx or Engels and hence appears nowhere in their entire oeuvre, either published or unpublished. Indeed, Marx developed a new scientific method, not a system.[4]

   

  read more

• Club Troppo Judges have bad days: SHOCK!

  Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles
  by Ozkan Eren, Naci Mocan – #22611 (CH HE LE LS)

  Abstract:

  Employing the universe of juvenile court decisions in a U.S. state
  between 1996 and 2012, we analyze the effects of emotional shocks
  associated with unexpected outcomes of football games played by a
  prominent college team in the state. We investigate the behavior of
  judges, the conduct of whom should, by law, be free of personal
  biases and emotions. We find that unexpected losses increase
  disposition (sentence) lengths assigned by judges during the week
  following the game. Unexpected wins, or losses that were expected to
  be close contests ex-ante, have no impact. The effects of these
  emotional shocks are asymmetrically borne by black defendants. We
  present evidence that the results are not influenced by defendant or
  attorney behavior or by defendants’ economic background.
  Importantly, the results are driven by judges who have received their
  bachelor’s degrees from the university with which the football team
  is affiliated. Different falsification tests and a number of
  auxiliary analyses demonstrate the robustness of the findings. These
  results provide evidence for the impact of emotions in one domain on
  a behavior in a completely unrelated domain among a uniformly
  highly-educated group of individuals (judges), with decisions
  involving high stakes (sentence lengths). They also point to the
  existence of a subtle and previously-unnoticed capricious application
  of sentencing.

• Club Troppo Drug Treatment Centers and Local Crime

  by Samuel R. Bondurant, Jason M. Lindo, Isaac D. Swensen – #22610 (HC HE PE)

  Abstract:

  In this paper we estimate the effects of expanding access to
  substance-abuse treatment on local crime. We do so using an
  identification strategy that leverages variation driven by
  substance-abuse-treatment facility openings and closings measured at
  the county level. The results indicate that
  substance-abuse-treatment facilities reduce both violent and
  financially motivated crimes in an area, and that the effects are
  particularly pronounced for relatively serious crimes. The effects
  on homicides are documented across three sources of homicide data.

• Club Troppo Smerdon v Carlsen 1/2-1/2

  
  Australian Chess Grandmaster and one time Treasury economist David Smerdon is at the Chess Olympiad in Baku and managed to get Magnus Carlsen into a fair bit of trouble, before settling for an easy draw. Here’s the game if you want to look at it. Why 21. Bxh7+ wasn’t played is a bit of a mystery not only to me, which would be unsurprising, but also to the engine.

  Well done David!

• The Northern Myth The Stars, Baby. The Stars*. One night at Longreach Waterhole, NT.

  

  Earlier this week I spent a night at the Longreach Waterhole on the massive Newcastle Waters station.

  I took some pictures. The photo above is the sunset … looking east over the water.

  I hope you like them.

  

  These are caravans over the way. Inside, people are watching television and having small but intense arguments that I can hear as the wind drops. What they miss they’ll never know.

  

  At this time of year the Southern Cross is low in the sky. Managed to catch this just before it dropped below the horizon and caught a reflection in the water.

  

  This is just before the moon dropped below the horizon … another beer and the calls of the Owlet Nightjars beckon for bed from all around but not before I snap a quick shot of the Milky Way overhead.

  

  • Thanks to Dave Graney for these words and continued inspiration. From “The Stars, Baby, The Stars“, from Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Where I Hide, Dave Graney & The Coral Snakes, 1993.

  The post The Stars, Baby. The Stars*. One night at Longreach Waterhole, NT. appeared first on The Northern Myth.

• Daniel Bowen Roller coaster rail?

  On Tuesday the Level Crossing Removal Authority put out a whole raft of information on options for removal of crossings on the southern end of the Frankston line. If you have any interest at all, particularly if you’re a local, they’re definitely worth a look.

  The Opposition’s withering response:

  “The controversial ‘Sky Rail’ monstrosity on the Pakenham line has been dumped by Daniel Andrews for a ‘Roller Coaster Rail’ on the Frankston line.

  “The Big Dipper belongs at Luna Park, not on the Frankston line.”

  — David Davis reported in the Herald Sun.

  Three things on this:

  1. The Big Dipper at Luna Park closed and was demolished in 1988. (The remaining original wooden roller coaster is the Scenic Railway.)

  2. Unless there’s an extended section of elevated rail or trench, you do end up with rail lines going up and down like a roller coaster. It’s inevitable.

  Extended sections of elevated rail between crossings are clearly not what the Opposition want, because that’s “sky rail”, which they’ve decided is evil (or at least, a chink in the Andrews Government’s political armour).

  Extended sections of trench are impossibly complex and expensive and disruptive to build. The longer the trench, the more underground services have to be moved, and this takes a lot of time and money to do properly.

  The three level crossings recently grade separated at Ormond-Mckinnon-Bentleigh are in relatively close proximity to each other, but between each, the rail line comes back up to ground level because it wasn’t practical to do it any other way. For instance between Ormond and Mckinnon there’s a massive storm water pipe (at Murray Road) just below ground level, so the rail line goes over it.

  As shown in this video, and the top photo (snapped from Bentleigh, looking towards McKinnon), the ups and downs are very visible.

  But — despite suspicions from myself and others that it would feel like a roller coaster, it really doesn’t when you’re on the train, thanks to only very slight grades (typically no more than 2%) and the natural topography of the area.

  (Heading north out of Ormond is slightly steeper, and is more noticeable. This was done to preserve the Dorothy Avenue underpass, which is also part of the old Rosstown Railway line.)

  This sort of thing happens all over the place without anybody noticing — except perhaps the train drivers.

  Riding the trains, you might think it’s flat from Caulfield to Malvern… but it’s not:

  

  If this is “roller coaster rail”, then we’ve already got it, lots of it.

  …

  Finally, something to always keep in mind whenever a politician opens their mouth:

  3. This is the Opposition doing what Oppositions do; criticising government no matter what.

  In this case the options documents that have been published are a really good step to help locals understand the design decisions to be made, and the trade-offs of each method.

  In fact, it’s not hard to argue that this sort of information should have been provided on all the crossings before designs were finalised.

• The Northern Myth Bat of the Week: Little Red Flying Foxes and the invasion of Elliott, NT

  

  I’ve driven through the (very) small Northern Territory town of Elliott–equidistant between Alice Springs and Darwin–a few times this year.

  Two weeks ago I noticed that the modest human population of around 400 or so had been multiplied many times over by an invasion of Little Red Flying Foxes Pteropus scapulatus.

  Little Reds are, as the NT government’s Flying fox (bat) management in the Northern Territory information factsheet advises, is one of two (the other is the Black Flying Fox Pteropus alecto species in the NT and both provide valuable ecological services:

  The Little Red Flying Fox forms very large colonies – in some cases, colonies have been reported to contain up to five hundred thousand animals! Black Flying Foxes, on the other hand, are the largest flying foxes (in terms of body size) in Australia, but the number of animals in each colony tends to be much smaller.

  Flying foxes are very important pollinators and seed dispersers of many native plants including Eucalypts, figs, bush apples (Syzygium spp.), bush plums (Terminalia spp.), paperbarks, grevillas, and fruits of many palm species. The seeds of some plant species (particularly those with white and green fruits) may only be dispersed by flying foxes, meaning that these plants rely on flying foxes in order to successfully reproduce. It has been estimated that a single flying fox can dispense up to 60,000 seeds in a single night!

  Flying foxes are also important for nutrient regeneration and nutrient cycling within the ecosystem. Not only do they provide large quantities of fertiliser to the system, but they create gaps in the canopy which enables other plants to compete more effectively.

  As with other native wildlife in the Northern Territory, the Little Red Flying Fox and the Black Flying Fox are protected under section 43 of the Territory Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act. This means that people cannot interfere with (shoot, touch, feed, take, move, injure, manage) flying foxes without a permit.

  

  The Little Reds have taken over a number of large trees at the northern end of the town and hang in clusters from many trees in the local park and around the Police Station.

  Locals I’ve talked to are bereft as to what to do. The larger town of Katherine, 400 kilometres north of Elliott, regularly suffers under similar invasions and locals have tried everything from shooting, scare guns, smoky fires among other strategies.

  The bats remain blithely resistant to such efforts.

  

  Little Reds–and the other Flying Foxes–are natural hosts for both the Hendra virus and the Australian Bat Lyssavirus (ABL). The NT government factsheet notes that:

   

  On very rare occasions, Hendra virus may be spread to horses through faeces, urine or saliva, which causes respiratory and neurological disease. This can be fatal.

  Hendra virus may subsequently also be transmitted to people through very close contact with secretions or body fluids of infected horses. There is no evidence of spread between flying foxes and humans or human to human spread.

  On the Australian Bat Lyssavirus (ABL) the NT government factsheet says that:

  The virus can be transmitted from flying fox saliva to humans via bites and scratches. ABL is not spread in flying fox urine, blood or faeces and cannot survive outside of the animal’s body for more than a few hours. ABL is not thought to live long in dead flying-foxes.

  If you are scratched or bitten by a flying fox, wash the wound thoroughly with soap under running water. Cover the wound and seek medical advice at your nearest hospital or clinic immediately.

  Fruit soiled by flying fox urine or faeces should be washed before consumption. For more information contact Disease Control on 08 8973 9049.

  ==============================================

  The post Bat of the Week: Little Red Flying Foxes and the invasion of Elliott, NT appeared first on The Northern Myth.

• Club Troppo Ian Marsh: Australia’s gridlocked Parliament

  A friend of mine Ian Marsh sent me this op ed which one of the papers said it would publish last week. Personally, I’m not surprised that they didn’t. They’re waiting for it to be validated by being put through its paces here at the Troppo Grinder first. No change there.

  Over to Ian …

  There is a structural contradiction at the heart of the new parliament. Two diametrically different political systems co-exist. Incentives and expectations are at cross purposes. Until this contradiction is addressed the prospects for major legislative change must be judged slight.

  On one side, the formal rules and procedures of Parliament remain in the two party mould. These tacitly frame the expectations of Ministers, advisors, the public service and just about everyone closely involved. The government proposes and the Opposition opposes. And an election determines whose legislative agenda will prevail. What could be clearer?

  On the other side, we have an unacknowledged multi-party system. This is what the voters have endorsed. Look at the results of the last election: The Coalition: 42% in the House and 35% in the Senate. Labor: 34% in the House and 29% in the Senate. Only 75% of Australians voted for one or other of the major parties in the House and 10% of these switched their votes in the Senate. Regional differences also figured. One Nation polled 10% in Queensland, the NXT nearly 22% in South Australia. Moreover, around 20% did not vote, did not enrol to vote, or voted informal.

  So this election was hardly a ringing award of legitimacy to anyone.

  Here’s another fact. There is absolutely no sign that voters will ever restore either of the major parties to a dominant role. The voting system for the House sustains an illusion.

  Compounding their loss of support, the major parties are both divided internally. The Coalition is visibly torn between its conservative and liberal wings. For the moment Labor looks united. But should it win it will have its own problems.

  These internal fault lines can be as destructive of effective legislation as any divided Senate. The only solution is more free votes – in fact a hallmark of the liberal tradition.

  So how do multi-party systems work? It is not that we are short of examples. Almost every European parliamentary state presents one or another version of this form of government.

  But the best one is close to home. New Zealand has been operating a very successful multi-party system since 1996. Indeed, since this time, both Helen Clark (Labour) and John Key (National) have run successful minority governments. They have deliberately turned away from majority coalition. Instead, they work with confidence and supply agreements. They then assemble majority coalitions in the parliament depending on the issue at hand.

  Working to this formula, New Zealand has raised its GST, tackled tax avoidance, withdrawn unseemly tax rorts and introduced social reform. But New Zealand is unicameral. So only in an indirect sense does it present a model for Australia. Moreover, the trigger for New Zealand’s regime change, the switch to a proportional voting system, attracts no serious proponent in Australia.

  Australia’s parliamentary challenge is quite different. Because we have a bicameral system and a very strong (by international standards) Senate, any legislation must attract majorities in both Houses.

  The conventions that now govern parliamentary practice tacitly assume that the electorate more or less divides in two. The rules of the game sustain the illusion that the winner has sufficient electoral authority to alone determine the legislative agenda. This is out of place in a multi-party context.

  In a more plural political world, the forms and procedures and the incentive system in the House and Senate need to shift much more towards transparency. Most of all new issues need to be exposed before the executive decides what to do. This is an absolutely fundamental step. This way the protagonists can explore where common ground might lie and where trade-offs might be possible without loss of face.

  In parallel, these inquiries need to be more accessible to key interest groups and the media. This way the prospects for coalition building can be explored and the process of public engagement can commence.

  We are in thrall to opinion polls. But these are wholly misleading as a reflection of the way public opinion forms. It does not spring into life ready-made. It is the outcome of a serial process. A snow ball is a more accurate image. Opinion should gather weight and momentum as the issue cycle unfolds. Parliamentary procedures need to be congruent with this fact.

  For example, in a multi-party system, both the parliamentary majority and the extra-parliamentary coalition that supports gay marriage will not likely be the same as the one that supports tax change. And the construction of tax change may take diverse forms – some elements from the government’s agenda and some from Labor and/or other parties.

  Until the major parties come to see that the forms, procedures and incentives of the two party world are no longer fit for purpose, the country as a whole will pay the cost.

  On the other hand, the political leader who first recognises that the political landscape has shifted will have an assured historic place. Alfred Deakin is rightly celebrated as one of our greatest leaders not only because he was a gifted policy innovator but also because he saw that social change required new rules for the political game.

  If we return to the pre-two party period, we find that the parliamentary committee system played a key role in mediating policy action. This was the primary setting where proposals and remedies were first aired. This was where ad hoc cross-party deals were explored. This took place before the executive decided what to do. The late Liberal Senator David Hamer proposed a roughly similar role for the modern Senate. In recent years, the House of Commons committee system has gained substantially in stature and authority. Is it time now for a parliamentary inquiry into how this might work in Australia?

  The two-party system has passed its use by date. Until we get a leader with sufficient wisdom and guile to exploit this fact, gridlock seems assured.

• The Northern Myth Bird of the Week: Straw-necked Ibis, Longreach Waterhole, NT

  

  Who’s a pretty boy then?

  I spent Tuesday night this week camped at Longreach Waterhole on Newcastle Waters Station just west of the small NT town of Elliott.

  After a long week-and-a-half out bush it was good to sit back, have a few cold beers and take in the local wildlife.

  This Straw-necked Ibis Threskiornis spinicollis was strutting about in all his breeding-seasonal glory looking for a mate.

  Here are a few of the other birds that passed by my lens while I was camped  at one end of the waterhole.

  

  This Australasian Darter Anhinga novaehollandiae would swim out for fifteen minutes or so, often swimming along just under the surface, popping up for breath and a look around or to swallow any prey.

  Then–because their wings absorb water–it would waddle out to the waters edge and spread its wings out to dry, occasionally letting out its characteristically deep-throated chuckle.

  

  This Little Black Cormorant Phalacrocorax sulcirostris has none of those problems with their feathers and can often be seen hunting alongside Australian Pelicans Pelecanus conspicillatus, sometimes in long rafts of up to 100 Cormorants stretched out in a line alongside those birds.

  

  

  This adult Caspian Tern Hydroprogne cassia was one of a mixed group of older birds and juveniles that circulated above my campsite all day, occasionally propping to dive down after small fish in the cloudy waters.

  

  This Whistling Kite Haliastur sphenurus was one of many that were nesting along the waterhole–indeed this bird and its mate were nesting in the tree that I was camped under.

  If ever a picture was good for a thousand words, this is one I’m happy with.

  Here are two Whistling Kites doing what all adult birds do …

  

   

  The post Bird of the Week: Straw-necked Ibis, Longreach Waterhole, NT appeared first on The Northern Myth.

• Links International Bolivia’s ‘process of change’ needs a change in course – Pablo Solón

   

  

   

  Introduction and translation by Richard Fidler

   

  September 8, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left with permission — The global drop in commodity prices has been detrimental to the development strategy of many Latin American governments, some of which had used the new income from increased exports of largely unprocessed resources, accompanied by higher royalties and taxes, during the last decade to reduce poverty levels and reinforce and institute new social programs, while attempting to create new industries oriented to the domestic market or adding value to their exports.

   

  read more

September 07, 2016

• Links International Agricultural expropriation: Making money from farmers

   

  

   

  By Alan Broughton

   

  September 7, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Soil Alliance — There is money to be made in farming, but not by the farmers. This paper examines the reasons why farmers around the world are poor and there are a billion hungry people. The terms of trade for farmers continually declines and farmers are forced off the land. Governments and international bodies advocate further deregulation and trade liberalisation and greater use of technology, yet these policies have undoubtedly failed in their stated aims of increasing food security and rural prosperity. The beneficiaries have only been the agribusiness corporations which have been instrumental in the design of the new order of agricultural production.

   

  read more

• Links International Bargaining over corporate investment: innovation or trap?

   

  

   

  By Sam Gindin and Herman Rosenfeld

   

  September 7, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project — Ever since the sit-down strikes of the 1930s, the cycle of ‘Big Three’ auto bargaining has been a major economic and political event, an indicator of the progress of the class struggle in North America. If such interest has sagged of late, it charged back into the news with the aggressive declaration of Unifor's president, Jerry Dias, that winning new investments for Canada is at the top of the union's agenda in its current bargaining round with General Motors (GM), Ford and Chrysler. Dias followed up this challenge to management's right to unilaterally decide investments with the audacious warning that if these U.S.-based corporations don't deliver on bringing a fair share of investments to Canada, they can expect a strike.

   

  read more

September 06, 2016

• Club Troppo Damien Shen

  I went to this opening because I know the artist’s sister from The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI). Like sister like brother, some pretty interesting, reflective and classy stuff. If you’re in Melbourne go check them out for yourself.

  More here.