Also Inside Miriam Lyons: Pushing Our Luck Andrew Leigh: Equality and unions Australian Ian Lowe: Environment Hugh Saddler: Electricity Pricing Toner and Stilwell: Manufacturing Industry ODiscussionps for Sotcial Juisticeo and Polnitical Chasnge Music Review: Wagner Ring Cycle BEGINNING TO REBUILD IN ABBOTTLAND

$5 Summer 2013/2014 Quarterly no. 75 ISSN 1324-0749 print post approved 100000854 Australian Options Australian Options is a quarterly journal which aims to challenge the Articles 4 Editorial: Beginning to rebuild ideas dominating Australian mainstream debate. Articles of up to 1500 words are welcomed from Each edition includes major articles by activists and readers with knowledge or experience in particular FOCUS: Equality and Environment progressive thinkers on contemporary political, national or international political or social justice issues. social and cultural issues. Book, Film or DVD and Music reviews up to 500 words 5 'Pushing Our Luck' extract...... Miriam Lyons History are welcome. The editors reserve the right to decide what to print and to edit contributions to fit with the 8 'From Battlers and Billionaires' extract...... Andrew Leigh Australian Options was launched in May 1995 by a space or style ensuring the integrity of the contents is large number of people who expressed a wish for an preserved. 10 Why we need a 1:12 Campaign...... Howard Guille open discussion journal of the left. Email contributions to [email protected] with a copy to Jack Humphrys: [email protected]. Promotion of Australian Options 11 Environment...... Ian Lowe Contributors without email can post their We receive no external funding and rely entirely on contributions to: AO Editorial, 13 Why is electricity consumption decreasing in Australia?...... Hugh Saddler subscriptions and donations. Subscribers play an Attn: Jack Humphrys, important role in the journal’s promotion. Your help C /- 5/39 Phillip St, and suggestions on increasing circulation would be West Croydon, SA, 5008 15 Environment, equity, economy: Reflections on sustainability...... Joy Paton greatly appreciated. Leaflets and complimentary copies for this purpose Copyright 18 What's left: Building an agenda for social and environmental justice...... John Kaye can be obtained by contacting Don Jarrett. Copyright is retained by individual contributors. FEATURES Membership Deadlines Australian Options is published by a registered non st 21 Why does Australia need manufacturing industry?...... Phillip Toner and Frank Stilwell profit subscriber owned Association – Australian Autumn 2014 Issue: Tuesday, April 1 Options Publishing Inc. All subscribers are members 25 Borrow and build: Early relief possible for commuters...... Ian Spring of the Association and their involvement in the Subscriptions Journal is welcomed. The Annual General Meeting of See subscription form inside back cover members is held each October in Adelaide to review 27 Trans-Pacific Trade Deal...... Patricia Ranald policy and progress and to elect members of the Australian Options On-line Management Committee. www.australian-options.org.au 29 Keating: Interviews for the true believers...... Carol Johnson Subscribers can search and download material from Patron all editions of Australian Options. The on-line digest 31 VLAD is not a joke...... Howard Guille Hugh Stretton ‘What’s hot and what’s not’ is available on the site or by registering for email or social media. 33 Curriculum review: Where did ‘Judeo-Christian’ come from?...... Chloe Patton Management Committee Australian Options Contacts Adrian Shackley (Chairperson), Frank Barbaro, Glenn REVIEWS & REGULARS Giles, Howard Guille, Don Jarrett (Secretary/Treasurer), Editorial David Prendergast, Ian Steel, Sue Jervis Jack Humphrys: see above under ‘Articles” Online 34 ‘Pushing Our Luck: Ideas for Australian Progress’ by Miriam Lyons...... 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Printed by Print Lord 08 8258 0156; www.printlord.com.au Layout by Blue Eight Design www.blueeight.com.au 2 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 3 Editorial Focus: Equality and Environment profitable and channelling private sector capital into for example, prevent average household spending on renewables. art, culture and entertainment from increasing much 'Pushing Our Luck' faster than inflation over the six years to 2009-10. And The ALP record in government during 2007-13 is This is an edited extract from ‘Pushing Our no alternative. It failed to turn the tide on growing while it’s true that much of the astronomical increase in inequality while its climate change policies showed an Luck: Ideas for Australian progress’ – edited by house prices over recent decades can be explained by unwarranted faith in market mechanisms. Its planned Miriam Lyons * homebuyers bidding up the price of existing housing, emissions trading scheme to replace the fixed carbon the debt boom was also associated with a big expansion Christopher Pyne has torn up the ‘unity ticket’ on school price would have allowed half the emissions permits to in house sizes: the average floor area of new houses funding. Joe Hockey is blaming spiders in the Treasury be bought from overseas. Mining, gas and port approvals increased by around 40 per cent between 1984-85 and cupboards for his failure to make public debt disappear proceeded rapidly and key ALP Commonwealth and State 2002-03. There are other explanations, such as the fact overnight. Tony Abbott has discovered that his right Ministers are now lobbyists for resource development. that the prices that have been spiking - like electricity to swing his verbal fists ends where Indonesia’s nose bills - are easier to notice than whose prices have been Australian Options is beginning 2014 with two issues begins. It’s post-election season in Australia, a time declining or rising more slowly than inflation – like Beginning to rebuild on Rebuilding and Working Cooperatively on the Left. when inconvenient promises are broken, rookie mistakes clothing, cars, and other consumer goods. Our return to Particular themes in this issue are equality' and the are made by out-of-practice politicians, and the implied sanity on saving has also had an impact on the amount After four months some of the directions environment' and a 'new citizenship’. Australia is an omnipotence of campaign poetry is translated into the of spare change jingling in the pockets of Australian of the Abbott Government seem clear. unequal society in which the rich have much better lives dry and disappointing prose of government. consumers. The household saving rate declined during and much better natural and urban environments than Mining before the environment, no help for But the new Coalition government enters this summer of the debt-fuelled housing boom of the 80s through to the poor. We must urgently consider how this can be manufacturing, minimal action on climate discontent with particular challenges of its own making. the mid-2000s (going negative in 2003), and has since challenged. Language is crucial: words like ‘fairness’ and change, talk up an economic crisis, scapegoat Mr Abbott did his level best to turn the 2013 election recovered to over 10 per cent. ‘inclusiveness’ must be more than buzz-words used for into a referendum not just on electricity costs but costs and humiliate refugees, bluster about spying political spin. Even taking each of these factors into account, however, on the neighbours and blame everything else in general: ‘This election will be about trust. Who do you it’s hard to understand how Australians manage to feel on the unions and the ALP. We need a convincing account of a society and economy trust to reduce cost of living pressures?’ The message less ‘financially secure’ than Europeans, including people that is both more equal and ecologically sustainable. no doubt appealed to the 88 per cent of Australians who in Spain and Italy – according to a 2012 survey by Boston Political theatre and tomfoolery aside, the Government There are some hard questions. Can everyone be say that cost of living pressures are greater today than Consulting Group. is evidently very determined. It is unafraid of appointing materially 'rich' and carbon neutral? And how can they were five years ago. its own ideologues to positions of influence. In the 2009 'freedom of choice' be redefined so that the wealth Reading recent reflections on the issue, such as George Promising to solve a problem that doesn’t exist is always Alfred Deakin lecture, George Brandis said Tony Abbott of one group is not achieved at the expense of other Megalogenis’ The Australian Moment and Peter a little dangerous. For the majority of Australians cost had taken up the cause of making the Liberal Party more people, other species or the environment? Many Hartcher’s The Sweet Spot, it is tempting to conclude of living pressures actually decreased under the Labor conservative than even John Howard. At the time, Mr in the Coalition Government do not even recognise that the average voter has the memory of a goldfish – government - average incomes rose well ahead of Brandis seemed worried that this social conservatism the existence of such questions. They believe that and a depth of perception to match. Hartcher is worried inflation. On the other hand, the Coalition has no plans would limit the pursuit of 'freedom'. Now, as Attorney everything can be solved though market freedom and that Australians seem ‘ready to blame their government to assist those who have been genuinely squeezed General, he has appointed the stridently libertarian ‘small government’. The left has a harder task, since for any economic problems that might emerge, but by rising living costs: renters and people receiving Tim Wilson as ‘freedom commissioner’ to the Human we have to get such questions on the national political unwilling to give them any credit’. Megalogenis is, government benefits other than the age pension. Rights Commission. He clearly puts individualism and the agenda and then campaign for progressive solutions. rightly, concerned that ‘whatever we achieve can’t be culture of self at the heart of his pursuit of 'freedom of If the combination of rising incomes, low achieved if whingeing becomes the default answer of speech'. unemployment, low inflation and low interest rates public life.’ Fresh from a long stint as chief of staff to Wayne Swan, Jim Chalmers joined them with a book that The Government is also wasn’t enough to satisfy voters under Labor, its hard to see how Abbott will have a better time of it. Removing pinned the blame for our ‘lack of national swagger’ on a radically undermining public conversation in which ‘hyper-partisanship swamps environmental protection. As the carbon price certainly won’t do the trick, given that it has made up just a small fraction of the rise in the cost the facts, short-term priorities swamp the future, and Ian Lowe writes in this edition sectional interests swamp the national interest.’ of Options, 'All the most of electricity over the past six years, and electricity bills important environmental issues are themselves a small fraction of household expenses. These authors are right to draw attention to the need facing Australia are getting for our public conversation to focus on Australia’s real worse'. The Commonwealth's What are we complaining about? challenges rather than misplaced anxieties. Australia made some very smart moves when the Global Financial decision to partially shift Are we really ‘the world's most spoilt and ungrateful environmental responsibilities Crisis first came snapping at our door. If we now cry voters’, as James Campbell wrote in the Herald Sun, or is wolf in the face of relatively minor problems, will we be to the States is hardly likely there a deeper explanation of the disconnect between to improve this. Nor is the willing to do what it takes to deal with the much more glowing economic indicators and gloomy opinion significant global transformation currently underway abolition of the carbon price. indicators? The Clean Energy Finance due to climate change and the end of easy growth from Corporation also looks like Certainly there’s an element of expectation inflation. expanding credit bubbles? being scrapped, despite being Our perceived struggle to make ends meet did not,

4 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 5 Focus: Equality and Environment Focus: Equality and Environment But there’s something missing. Every time I read many anxious parents feel obliged to pay expensive benefits of government less visible. Australians may not an elegy to Australia’s economic performance I fees to secure a good education for their children. have noticed that we’re now living in low-tax country find myself thinking of ‘Saskia’, who responded • Australians pay for a high proportion of our health with low public debt, but we have certainly noticed the to an excellent, fact-filled article by Scott Steel on care costs through direct payments compared the underinvestment in public services that goes with it – ABC’s The Drum with the question: ‘How about citizens of most other rich countries. While universal especially transport infrastructure. The shift towards asking real people how they are doing? Actually health insurance through Medicare has helped private health insurance and private schooling is also getting off the ABS website and into the light deliver excellent health outcomes at a low overall a big pressure on many household budgets: increasing might blow your mind.’ cost, this achievement is being undermined: poorly voters’ confidence in public health and schooling could save them a great deal of money and improve equity People are much more likely to doubt the truth of designed co-payments, fee-for-service models at the same time. The alternative is to continue on our a statement that has failed to connect with them and underinvestment in public health encourage slow sleepwalk towards socially segregated services, with on an emotional level. Jim Chalmers shed light on overconsumption of higher-cost health services; high-income earners and lucky members of the middle this problem when he asked ‘How can a country while tax breaks for private health insurance opting out, and the rest squeezed into underfunded that’s grown for twenty-one consecutive years subsidise those who can afford it to jump the queue safety nets. This may well suit the die-hard free- be so pessimistic?’ Perhaps because it’s not ‘the to access scarce specialists. marketeers within the Coalition, but it is unlikely to suit country’ that has grown but the economy, and Put together, it makes for a stressed-out population, most people. The season of voters’ discontent shows no both the benefits of that growth and the growing afraid of falling behind and feeling like we have no signs of ending soon. pains that accompanied it have been unevenly choice but to fend for ourselves. Large parts of our social spread. Perhaps also because pessimism is about contract are being re-written with very little scrutiny or * Miriam Lyons was Executive Director of the the future, not the past, and we have good reason discussion. to be concerned about our preparedness for the Centre for Policy Development until the end of challenges ahead. It is illuminating to look at concerns about the cost of 2013. living through this lens. The shift from direct service provision to outsourced services, indirect subsidies Full citations for this article are on the web edition. Australia unsettled and tax breaks often increases costs while making the • Australians spend less time eating, sleeping and Australians are still divided on the transformation of the relaxing than the OECD average. Only six countries in public and private sectors that began when the Hawke- the OECD have a higher proportion of the workforce Keating government dismantled the ‘Great Australian working very long hours. Our welfare system has settlement’. At its best, the economic reform agenda failed to adjust to a world in which more women implemented from the eighties onwards shook up have jobs and the need to juggle paid and unpaid complacent and inefficient businesses and government work is growing. departments and helped deliver a more dynamic and prosperous economy. At its worst, it increased inequality, • Many Australians will go through their working lives distanced governments from communities, deskilled the as if WorkChoices were never repealed: an unusually public sector, offloaded too much risk from governments high proportion of our workforce are casual workers and businesses onto individuals, and replaced who have very few entitlements compared to their unresponsive public monopolies with unresponsive, counterparts in other developed countries. Around unaccountable and unaffordable private monopolies. 90 per cent of Australians report working intensively It also shrank the space in which we are free to act (at very high speed and to tight deadlines) for at as citizens and community members rather than as least a quarter of our time, compared to around 60 consumers: more megamalls, fewer public halls. per cent of Europeans. Both major parties are happy to claim credit for the • Our levels of inequality are higher than the OECD

economic benefits of a more open economy but average, and on the rise. After several rounds of reluctant to speak directly about its costs. This is a income tax cuts our tax system does less to reduce problem. We may spend more of our time than ever inequality than it did in past decades. The Howard before in the marketplace, but we do not live our entire government dampened rising inequality by spending lives as economic actors, nor do we want to. Wellbeing is up big on middle-class welfare, while the Rudd and shaped above all by our relationships with family, friends Gillard governments did the same by means-testing and co-workers. We value security as well as choice, at the top, but neither really tackled the issue head fairness as well as freedom, time as well as money. on. With this in mind, it’s worth considering a few areas • Australia’s unusual practice of publicly funding in which Australia’s world-beating performance is private schools based on historical precedent rather beginning to wane: than student need is not working out for students in middle-income and low-income areas, and makes

6 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 7 Focus: Equality and Environment Focus: Equality and Environment handicap systems. As any golfer can tell you, handi­caps and poor Australians are becoming more numerous and conference representing their union. Internationally, make the game more fun, because they allow people of that if the gap between them grows much wider, it may ‘labourist’ parties like the ALP tend to be more in favour 'From Battlers different abilities to compete with one another. well turn out to be unbridgeable. Such a prospect is so of redistribution than ‘social democratic’ parties like the disturbing to the Australian people – and so incompatible US Democratic Party. We don’t just handicap people. Australia’s favourite with their dreams – that they are reluctant to discuss it.’ and Billionaires: horse race, the Melbourne Cup, literally puts lead in the From as early as 1834, when the Tolpuddle Martyrs were saddlebags. Horses must carry at least forty-nine kilo­ We need to be careful that we do not unwittingly lose transported to New South Wales for trying to form a The Story of Inequality grams, and racing historians celebrate Carbine, who won something that past generations of Australians have held union, Australia had a strong association with collective the 1890 Cup with a whopping sixty-six kilograms. Extra sacred. bargaining. The oldest unions were formed in the 1830s. in Australia' weight is put on horses that have already performed well. * * * In 1856, Melbourne building workers won an eight-hour This is an edited extract of Battlers and By contrast, America’s most famous race, the Kentucky A powerful force for equality in Australia has been the day. Subsequent decades saw the formation of unions Billionaires: The Story of Inequality in Derby, does not add weight based on a horse’s past trade union movement. Unions increase equality in dif­ representing miners, seamen and tailoresses, and the Australia (Black Inc, $19.95), perfor­mance. The Melbourne Cup is a more egalitarian ferent ways. One is that they can tip the scales towards 1890s shearers’ strikes over wages and employment race than the Kentucky Derby. workers as a whole by increasing the wage bill and reduc­ rules. A universal forty-hour working week was finally by Andrew Leigh* won in 1947, and four weeks’ annual leave came in 1974. Australian beliefs about inequality­ even explain why Rugby ing profits. This applies particularly for firms that enjoy a League split from Rugby Union in the early twentieth monopoly position. To take an extreme example, imagine In Australia, there is a fairly strong inverse relationship century. Because Union refused to allow player payments, a one-company town. When employees have no choice between inequality and union membership. Around 1980, it was a fine game for private schoolboys, but no way for about where to work, the firm can pay them a pittance. the low point of Australian inequality, one in two workers a working-class man to make a living. For the remainder Forming a union means that workers have collective were members of a trade union. Today, fewer than one of the twentieth cen­tury, League dominated Union in power, because they can now threaten to stop work if in five are unionists, and Australia is more unequal. Male the key states of New South Wales and Queensland. In their pay demands aren’t met. inequality rose particularly in the 1990s, when unionisa­ the United Kingdom, a similar split occurred, but League Another way that unions reduce pay gaps is by push­ing tion fell sharply. The only difference is in the 2000s, when, never came to enjoy the same national success. harder to raise the earnings of the lowest paid. Unions despite continuing de-unionisation, male inequality did not rise much (although top income inequality did con­ In the 1850s, an English gold-digger wrote home that have typically done this by advocating fixed-dollar pay tinue to rise). ‘Rank and title have no charms in the Antipodes.’ In increases rather than percentage increases. For example, $50 a week is a 10 per cent wage rise for someone with In 2002, two bombs exploded in Bali night­clubs, killing the 1880s, an essayist opined that Australia ‘is the true The academic evidence on this point is quite clear. A fall weekly earnings of $500, but a mere 2 per cent wage and injuring hundreds of people. At the local hospital, republic – the truest, as I take it, in the world … In England in union membership has been shown to be responsible rise for someone on $2500. Unions have also sought to there was a shortage of painkillers. Graeme Southwick, the average man feels that he is an inferior, in America for a significant portion of the rise in US inequality in reduce wages at the top, for example by advocating curbs an Austral­ian doctor on duty, asked patients to assess that he is a superior; in Australia he feels that he is an the 1980s, and for most of the difference in inequality on executive pay. These redistributive wage demands are their own pain levels. He kept being told by patients in equal. That is indeed delightful.’ between the United States and United King­dom. One an expression of the democratic structure of unions. study for Australia suggested that up to one-third of the the ‘Australian’ ward that they were okay – the person The father of the Australian novel, Joseph Furphy, wrote change in inequality during the 1980s and 1990s was due next to them was suffering more. in 1903 that human equality was ‘self-evident … and Unions also attempt to influence redistribution through the political system. In Australia, the most signifi­cant to the collapse of unions. If you want a single institution Coming across this account, the historian John Hirst was impregnable as any mathematical axiom’. Legend had it manifestation of this was the creation in 1891 ofthe that will act as a bulwark against a rising gap between rich reminded of the description of injured Australians in that Australia was the nation where Jack was as good as Australian Labor Party, which formed government at the and poor, it’s hard to do better than a union. Gallipoli nearly a century earlier. He quotes the official his master – if not better. federal level just thirteen years later. Labor still retains a war historian Charles Bean, who describes the suffering Egalitarianism has characterised the Australian national strong union link, with half the delegates to its national *Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser and then says, ‘Yet the men never showed better than identity for well over 150 years – dating back to an era in these difficulties. The lightly hurt were full of thought when the country was quite unequal. Similar senti­ments for the severely wounded.’ Even in the midst of their own were being expressed in other settler societies, such as pain, the first instinct of many Australians was to think of Canada and the United States, but Australia’s powerful those worse off than themselves. labour movement did more to make them a reality. After A sceptic might suggest that Bean viewed our men’s becoming more unequal in the late nine­teenth and early suffering through patriotic glasses, or that the wounded twentieth centuries, Australia reached a turning point. soldiers of other nations behaved similarly. But Australia’s From the 1920s to the 1970s, we steadily became a more egalitarian spirit shows up in other places too. Writing equal society. But for the past thirty years, Australia has in a major daily newspaper last year, the entrepreneur become more unequal, with the income share of the top 1 Christopher Joye argued that the competitive nature of per cent doubling and that of the top 0.1 per cent tripling. sport proved Australians didn’t believe in inequality. ‘We We need to stir a debate about inequality. One ofmy do not handicap an athlete,’ Joye argued, ‘because they greatest fears is that we will sleep­walk into a more are abnormally fast.’ But it turns out that this is exactly unequal Australia without realising what is being lost. how our sports often operate. Many Australian team As the social researcher Hugh Mackay put it in the late sports have salary caps, while many individual sports have 1990s: ‘There is now a widespread belief … that both rich

8 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 9 Focus: Equality and Environment Focus: Equality and Environment the 'widening dispersion of hourly wages', increasing 99 per cent'. Adequately used it could crystallise overall one in Swiss politics would dare say that million (franc) proportion of part-time employment and 'capital income issues of inequality. salaries are justified'. Why we need a 1:12 growth amongst higher income households '. The Swiss Young Socialist Party (JUSO) and Swiss trade Moreover, in March 2013, Swiss voters endorsed Inequality is much more than a statistical calculation. unions ran the 1:12 Initiative for Fair Pay throughout the Minder initiative in a national referendum. This Campaign Widening inequality means the rich are getting 2013. The proposal is that the monthly income of the eliminated sign-on bonuses and severance packages by Howard Guille* absolutely richer and their incomes are even more highest earners would be limited to no more than the including “golden parachutes” for fired executives. multiples of those of the poor. Australia is still better yearly income of their lowest paid employees. It is The initiative also includes some significant teeth to Australia has become an unequal society and than the United Kingdom and the United States at intuitively simple - no one should earn more in a month enforce the law: executives who violate the terms can inequality needs to be made into a major providing a safety net for those with the lowest income. than others do in a full year. be punished with up to three years in jail. Notably even issue. OECD data shows income inequality However, it is also much worse at preventing inequality JUSO obtained the 100,000 signatures needed to have the Swiss Investment Exchange (SIX) supported curbs on in Australia has moved closer to that in the than almost all of Europe. As ACTU policy researcher the 1:12 Initiative put to a national referendum. This executive salaries! It is salutary lesson of just how timid Matt Cowgill says, the tax and welfare system is very the left has become in Australia. United Kingdom and the United States and was held in late November but two-thirds of voters were progressive but the low level of taxing means little is against the proposition. However, as JUSO President away from the Nordic and the north-central * Howard Guille is a member of the Editorial actually redistributed. David Roth told Reuters 'A year ago, opponents were European countries. The most glaring inequalities are between the top 1 per defending high salaries. Today's no-one is doing that. No- Committee of Australian Options Australia is also at the upper end of OECD countries cent of income earners and the rest. This is documented on the gap between the bottom ten per cent and the by Andrew Leigh top ten per cent. The top ten per cent of households in The income share of the richest one per cent (those Australia get 4.5 times the disposable income (after taxes earning more than $197,000 in 2007) declined from and transfers) of the bottom ten per cent. This compares 1921 to 1980, and has risen since then. In 1980 with 3.0 times in the Nordic countries and around 3.4 the top one per cent had five times their share of per cent in countries like France, Germany, Netherlands household income. Now, the same group has 10 times Environment and Switzerland. Only the United States is conspicuously their share of household income. worse than Australia with a ratio of 6.1. by Ian Lowe* This pattern is even starker among the top 0.1 per There is a long tradition of writing about how unequal cent (those earning more than $693,000 in 2007) All the most important environmental societies are less commodious. The Spirit Level by Kate whose share of household income has more than issues facing Australia are getting Pickett and Richard Wilkinson is perhaps the best known tripled since 1980. worse. In most cases, governments recent example. Their position is set out at the Equality are doing nothing effective to Trust Matt Cowgill writes, Our' top 1% has increased its share of income from around 5% to around 10% in the past 30 remedy the problems. In some People in more equal societies live longer, have better years'. According to Andrew Leigh, 'In 1993, the average instances, most obviously climate mental health and have better chances for a good earnings of CEOs in the top 100 Australian firms was change, they are acting to make education regardless of their background. Community about $1 million. By 2009, this had risen to around $3 life is stronger where the income gap is narrower, the situation worse. The fundamental million'. children do better at school and they are less likely to problem is the dominant mind-set, become teenage parents. When inequality is reduced As Marx said, The philosophers have only interpreted the obsession with growth and people trust each other more, there is less violence the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. The the fixation on short-term economic and rates of imprisonment are lower. most obvious way to change things is to return to what worked in the 1950s and 1960s. A progressive income tax indicators. As successive studies by Incomes became more equal in almost all countries in scale with high marginal rates; a super-tax on the highest the Australian Bureau of Statistics on the second half of the twentieth century. This was a incomes; remove exemptions for capital gains tax, measures of progress have shown, the The policies introduced by previous governments have result of deliberate and active government intervention. remove negative gearing and reintroduce estate duties. illusion of economic success is being slowed the decline of the Murray-Darling system, However, in some places inequality has reoccurred since but we are still allowing too much water to be taken However, these avoid doing anything about what might achieved by destroying our natural the 1980s; this is a result of deliberate government out of the system. Much of the irrigation water is still be called the 'raw' differences in incomes. There are resources. decisions to unleash the market. Much the same used wastefully in New South Wales and Victoria, with compelling grounds to properly use 'direct action' happened in Australia; inequality was reduced from the In 1996, the first national report on the state of the outdated practices like allowing water to flow through to control very high incomes and the expectations early 1950s to the mid 1970s but by 2001 increased back Australian environment said that many aspects were in narrow open channels rather than using pipes, and the of entitlements that appear to go with them. As an to the previous level. good condition by international standards. The report use of irrigation water for such low-value applications Australian example- 'An IBM sales executive on a salary also warned that we had very serious problems that as irrigating cattle pastures. In some areas, policies are A 2013 staff paper for the Productivity Commission of $295,000 is suing the company because it paid her a needed attention: the loss of our unique biodiversity, actually going backwards. The Newman government examines recent trends in income distribution and bonus of $543,000 – half a million dollars less than she the state of our inland rivers, degradation of productive in Queensland is proposing to repeal the “Wild Rivers” concludes that inequality increased in the 2000s with believes is owed to her'. high income households doing considerably better land, pressures on the coastal zone and increasing laws which have protected the rivers of the Lake Eyre than poor ones. It says 'key drivers' of inequality are A campaign to limit very high incomes could give the left production of greenhouse gases. Three subsequent basin, despite support for the laws from Channel Country a simple but potent message like Occupy's 'We are the reports show that all these problems remain serious. graziers. 10 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 11 Focus: Equality and Environment Focus: Equality and Environment Climate change is the most urgent environmental electricity in 2012-13 was only 68 TWh, and falling. It is a similar story issue. I was persuaded by the science more than 25 in other states. years ago that we need to reduce the rate of releasing Why is electricity While demand has been falling, the quantity of electricity supplied greenhouse gases. The Keating government signed the by new renewable generators – mainly wind farms – has been rising UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, making consumption steadily, supported by the Large Renewable Energy Target (LRET) Australia part of that important global pact to take program. Falling demand and rising new renewable generation has action. The Howard government’s term of office was been putting a double squeeze on established coal fired generators, marked by obstruction, demanding a uniquely generous decreasing in particularly the black coal generators in NSW and Queensland. target at the Kyoto conference and then refusing to ratify Since reaching a peak in 2008-09, total coal fired electricity supplied the agreement. Kevin Rudd was elected on a platform Australia? in the NEM has fallen by 18 per cent and coal’s market share has of taking action, ratified the Kyoto protocol and played by Hugh Saddler* fallen from 84 per cent to 74 per cent. This has resulted in a fall in a positive part at the following UN meetings until it all Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions for electricity generation fell apart at Copenhagen. He then lost the plot and was During the last three years Australia has been of 11 per cent, equal to over 4 per cent of total national emissions. persuaded by apparatchiks to back off, declining the species and chemical pollution. These forces are experiencing a completely unprecedented possibility of calling an election after Abbott replaced continuing and now being compounded by climate (though an experience being shared with the Unsurprisingly, many coal-fired generators are now barely profitable Turnbull and blocked his climate change legislation. change. Possingham calculates the interest from a capital and a number of the older ones have been partly or fully shut down. fund using 10 per cent of this year’s military budget USA and many European countries) steady fall The financial position of network (transmission and distribution) Julia Gillard introduced an initial fixed price on carbon would be enough to protect our remaining biodiversity. in the total quantity of electricity consumed businesses is also being undermined, because their business model dioxide releases but, more importantly, added a range Instead, what we usually see is what Sir Humphrey each year. This is severely eroding the depends on deriving most of their income from a variable (per of other measures like the Clean Energy Finance Appleby called “masterly inaction”. kWh) charge on consumption, so that falling demand means falling Corporation and the biodiversity fund to tackle the profitability of all electricity supply businesses revenue in the short term. Conversely, the majority of their costs problem. Tony Abbott got elected by talking out of Late last year, the Abbott government undid a policy – and in doing so making the NSW and are related to capital invested, and so are fixed. Up till now, this both sides of his mouth on the issue, claiming that he introduced by the previous administration to protect Queensland governments look silly as they disconnect has, as it were, been covered over by regulatory approval accepted the science while also promising to repeal all marine biodiversity, proclaiming the world’s largest try to sell the businesses they currently own. of sharply higher prices. But, as prices are increased network the measures that do something about it. Several of his network of marine protected areas. After Parliament It is also driving a large reduction in the level businesses run the risk that consumers will further reduce their back-benchers, and some Ministers, are still spreading rose for Christmas, the government sneakily revoked the of greenhouse gas emissions from electricity electricity consumption, thereby setting up a negative feedback loop, the dishonest denial rhetoric. No credible scientific management plan. To appease the fishing lobby, they which is sometimes rather colourfully described as a ‘death spiral’. advice backs the so-called “direct action plan”. It is removed the protection for marine species. generation. The reasons for this reduction have, up till now, not been well understood. In a lengthy paper recently published by the Australia Institute, difficult even to find economists who are sympathetic, The underlying problem is that our politicians have I examine and quantify the various factors that have and are since they generally support market mechanisms as the not yet recognised the conclusion of the first state of Until 2010, for well over a century, through two world wars and continuing to contribute to the decline in electricity consumption in most cost-effective way to tackle the problem. the environment report. The environmental problems the Great Depression, the quantity of electricity used in Australia Australia. The Abbott government has not only tried to repeal are the consequence of population growth, lifestyle each year was greater than the year before. No longer. In the three the modest and inadequate price on pollution, but is choices and the pattern of economic development. Our years since 2010, the quantity used each year has been less than The first factor, though not the largest, is the increasing supply of also trying to undo all the complementary measures. decision-makers promote levels of migration that give the year before, and there is no evidence of a reversal in this trend electricity from rooftop photovoltaic (PV) solar-power installations The stance is clearly ideological, because the chair of us the population growth rate of a very poor country, in the coming months. The electricity consumption decrease has on houses and, increasingly, on commercial buildings. Under the the CEFC, Jillian Broadbent, has pointed out that the misdirecting attention by demonising the relatively small been relatively large in the National Electricity Market (NEM), which rules governing the operation of the NEM, the Australian Energy corporation’s investments have catalysed three times as number of would-be migrants who arrive by boat. At the covers the five eastern states and the ACT (and about 85 per cent Market Operator (AEMO) reports continuously on output from much funding from other sources to drive the transition same time they encourage increasing consumption per of total national electricity consumption); in WA demand growth all generators larger than 30 MW, and also from some smaller to renewable energy technologies and efficient energy person. So all the important environmental problems will has slowed but is still occurring. Specifically, NEM demand in the generators that have elected to participate in the wholesale use. At the same time, Coalition governments in continue to get worse. 2013 financial year was almost 8 TWh (4.3 per cent) lower than electricity market. This reporting does not cover rooftop PV nor Queensland and NSW are pouring public funds into in the peak year of 2009. [1 terawatt hour, abbreviated as TWh, is does it include other small generators such as landfill gas plants. Most of the members of the Coalition government 9 equal to 1 billion (10 ) kWh, or 1 million MWh (megawatt hours) or Consequently, from a whole of NEM perspective, electricity support for expanding export of fossil fuels. Our exports are still locked into the old thinking that is causing the 1 thousand GWh (gigawatt hours).] If electricity consumption in the from these sources looks like a reduction in demand, rather than now produce as much carbon dioxide as all our domestic problem. The first report to the Club of Rome, Limits to NEM had continued to grow from 2005 onward at the same rate as additional supply. However, there is sufficient data to estimate energy use, with proposals to double or even treble our Growth, warned forty years ago that unlimited growth it did for the previous twenty years, consumption would have been annual output. AEMO has estimated that in 2012-13 PV supplied exports. This is irresponsibility in action. is impossible on a finite planet. CSIRO’s Dr Graeme about 37 TWh higher in 2013 than it actually was. 2.7 TWh and other small generators supplied 3.1 TWh. So, although While climate change is the most urgent environmental Turner has shown that we are right on track for the important and growing, these sources alone do not account for the issue we face, the most important is the continuing sort of collapse that the report projected to be the Why is this important? 37 TWh is equal to the output of almost whole of the 8 TWh reduction from the peak year, let alone the 37 loss of biodiversity. The damage to our climate could consequences of mindlessly pursuing growth. We have to 5,000 MW of coal fired generation capacity, which is just less than TWh reduction from the long-term trend. be repaired in a few centuries, at least in principle, change urgently. the combined capacity of Bayswater plus Eraring in NSW or, in by concerted international action. Professor Hugh Victoria, Loy Yang A plus Loy Yang B plus Hazelwood. In 2007 a major The three largest factors contributing to the recent dramatic changes Possingham has pointed out that there is no way even * Ian Lowe is emeritus professor of science, report commissioned by the then NSW government projected in demand for electricity are: in principle to restore lost species. The world is losing that the total requirement for electrical energy in the state in 2012- technology and society at Griffith University • the impact of (mainly regulatory) energy-efficiency species at a similar rate to previous great extinction and President of the Australian Conservation 13 would be 88 TWh, and stated that new base-load generating capacity would be needed by 2031-14. In fact, consumption of programs; episodes. The causes are loss of habitat, introduced Foundation 12 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 13 Focus: Equality and Environment Focus: Equality and Environment • structural change in the economy away from amounting to about 14 per cent of the 37 TWh “shortfall”. Declining subsequent years it increased by only 2.4 per cent, while the price Overall, although households use less than a third of total electricity electricity-intensive industries; and manufacturing output overall is not, in general, causing an absolute of electricity increased, on average, by 17 per cent in real terms. supplied, they have been responsible for well over half the total • since 2010, the response of electricity consumers, fall in demand. The limited data so far available for 2013 suggest that this trend reduction in demand. As a generalisation, businesses have less short- has continued and, indeed, may have strengthened. These data term flexibility to reduce electricity consumption. They also face especially residential consumers, to higher electricity When all the above contributions to reduced electricity demand demonstrate that, unlike some politicians, households realise that more organisational and institutional constraints than households prices. are added to actual demand, starting in 2006, it is found that total how much they have to spend each year on buying electricity when seeking to implement energy-efficiency measures. This notional demand resulting from this modelling closely tracks the Australia’s first mandatory regulatory energy-efficiency measures is more important than the price they pay for each kilowatt- analysis suggests that the greatest potential for further reduction in historical trend growth in electricity demand, up to 2010. Since then, were introduced in the late 1990s, in the form of Mandatory Energy hour. Assisted by improvements in appliance energy efficiency, electricity demand, and hence in greenhouse gas emissions, lies with however, there has been a marked departure from trend. From Performance Standards (MEPS) for refrigerators and freezers. Since households are responding in a sensible and considered way to business consumers of electricity. 2010 to 2013 a widening gap between the modelled demand for then, MEPS have been extended to a very wide range of residential higher electricity prices. electricity services and the historical projected demand emerges. and commercial appliances and equipment, and analogous energy- * Hugh Saddler has devoted his professional life to This gap can be completely accounted for by consumer response It seems apparent that sensible use of electricity round the home, efficiency requirements have been applied to new buildings. It is research and consultancy on energy and related estimated that the increased impact of these measures between to higher electricity prices. My report finds that the price response without the need to resort to excessive frugality, let alone “freezing environmental policy issues for four decades 2006 and 2013 has reduced annual demand for electricity by explains 19 per cent of the “shortfall” in 2013. in the dark”, is becoming a social norm shared by the majority of Australians, just as a similar approach to the use of water did in the 10.5 TWh, or 28 per cent of the total “shortfall”. Smaller demand The most interesting finding of this part of the modelling is the drought years prior to 2010. reductions have come from increased uptake of solar and heat- abrupt change in consumer responsiveness to higher prices after pump water heaters (supported by various government programs), 2010. It is surely not a coincidence that 2009-10 was the year in the Home Insulation Program (so-called “pink batts”), and the which the possible effect of a carbon price on electricity prices Victorian and NSW retailer energy-efficiency obligation schemes. became a major national political issue, and in which increasing All of these schemes together contribute another 8 per cent of the political attention was also paid to the rapid increases in electricity ”shortfall”. prices already occurring, mainly because of higher network costs. Between October 2011 and September 2012, three major industrial Electricity prices remain a major preoccupation of political debate. electricity users, all in NSW – the Port Kembla steelworks, the Kurri The hypothesis is that the political attention being paid to electricity Environment, equity, economy: Kurri aluminium smelter and the Clyde oil refinery – were partially prices led consumers to pay more attention than they had previously or totally shut down. These closures removed approximately 3.6 done to their expenditure on electricity. When they did, they Reflections on sustainability TWh of annual electricity consumption from the NEM, which is responded by reducing their consumption, so as to limit what they about 10 per cent of the 37 TWh “shortfall”. However, detailed were spending, and the outcome showed up strongly in the total by Joy Paton* analysis of annual public reports of National Greenhouse and Energy electricity demand figures from 2011 on. Policy debate about climate change seems to have been technical issue of price calculation. Yes, democratic Reporting System (NGERS) shows that, other than the companies Powerful evidence to support the latter contention is found in the reduced to discussing the pros and cons of ‘putting a politics may be value-laden and ‘imperfect’, but it is the linked to the above closures, electricity consumption over the three recently published ABS Energy Account data, from which it can price on carbon’. Biodiversity, forests, and endangered nexus of social debate about the ‘good life’ and the ‘good years from 2010 to 2012 was remarkably constant. While there was be calculated that real average annual household expenditure species too, have all been targeted for pricing in order society’, and therefore ‘sustainability’. negligible growth, there was no decline, let alone a “collapse”, of to ‘protect’ them. And, most bizarre of all, the interests on electricity grew strongly until 2009-10, but during the two No doubt the complexity of these matters has manufacturing as some more excitable of future generations are also being brought into this drawn policy makers to economic ‘solutions’. Market commentators have claimed. This is market logic. Sustainability has been reduced to this. It instruments promise efficient policy implementation consistent with sectoral value-added was once all about bequeathing a healthy world to the and outcomes. Neither is true. Furthermore, market data in the National Accounts. future. However, current government policy is informed efficiencies are not always just and economic solutions by an abstract economic theory that takes us away That said, the longer-term structural are not inherently democratic. By assuming economics from reality; away from the material and ecological shift in the economy away from can ‘fix everything’, we abandon the moral and political dimensions of human survival. Sustainability requires manufacturing to services (and mining) process of defining social justice and sustainability. that we think again about what an economy actually has accelerated in recent years. For Instead we accept the ideological position that says is; to embrace its role as a conduit between nature several decades, ending around market outcomes are natural and already just. Resisting and people for the purpose of meeting our needs on a 2006, there was steady growth in the current trends in environmental policy requires sustainable basis. output of primary metals and other challenging the co-option of sustainability as an electricity-intensive commodities, The dominance of economic theory in environmental ‘economic category’ and its re-instatement as a concept and this drove a steady increase in policy formulation has marginalised social, political and that speaks to social justice and ecosystem health. electricity consumption. This growth ecological processes. Yet, developing an understanding of ceased in 2006, which means that environmental problems, as well as creating frameworks over and above the absolute decline to address them, requires these be ‘front and centre’ Sustainability caused by the closures, lack of growth in our considerations. The movement for Ecologically ‘Sustainability’ is a normative concept. It signals the in output of electricity-intensive Sustainable Development (ESD) takes such an approach. need for an equitable society served by an economy commodities is contributing to lack It seeks to re-orient the environment back into the functioning within ecological limits. Sustainability draws of growth in demand for electricity, political domain and to reintroduce sustainability as attention to the way in which a community or society an ethical issue of social determination rather than a organises the systems of production and distribution

14 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 15 Focus: Equality and Environment Focus: Equality and Environment that ensure food, clothing and shelter for its members. Ecologically sustainable development deny any incompatibility between economic growth, Firms produce goods for sale not for need; they make This ‘provisioning’ process has been the fundamental The environment movement drew attention to quality corporate freedom, and environmental protection. what they think they can sell and this gives an immediate purpose of ‘economy’ throughout history and across of life issues associated with environmental damage. Indeed, they assert that environmental protection advantage to those with money. No money? Then, no requires cultures. Systematically organising the means by which Moreover, it highlighted the problem of continued economic growth, placing sustainable food, clothing or shelter either. Provisioning in such material needs and wants can be satisfied is a necessary economic expansion in a finite world which also had development firmly within a ‘free market’ system a system is met by earning an income, be that profit, element in the longevity of any human community. serious implications for the Third World’s development managed by economic instruments and facilitated by wages, interest, or rent. But the technological efficiency This view of economy as a channel between nature and aspirations. The global character of these concerns led ‘free trade’. of production in capitalism means that firms can produce human need puts it at the nexus of social justice and the United Nations to establish a ‘World Commission many more goods than they can provide jobs and ecological prudence. An imbalance in that triangular on Environment and Development’. The Commission income. Indeed, their own need for profit to survive relationship led to the realisation that mid-twentieth Limits of ‘the market’ means there is an in-built incentive to minimise the generated significant international support for the Current environmental governance century capitalism was unsustainable. notion of ‘sustainable development’, defined as ‘meeting amount they pay out in the form of rejects the language of ecological wages, interest and rent. This leaves These concerns became prominent as the post-war the needs of the present without compromising the limits that animated earlier capitalism prone to inequalities and boom in economic growth began to collapse. The 1950- ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. concern with sustainability. economic crises. 60s had been the heyday of the welfare state when In addressing economy, environment and equity, the Furthermore, it marginalises education, health care, housing, and mass consumption Commission tried to make growth consistent with social democratic ideas about In this we have the inner dynamic became accessible to the majority of citizens. However, environmental protection and international justice global redistribution between at the centre of sustainability the fruits of the boom were not shared equitably. while also signalling our ethical responsibility to future rich and poor countries and concerns. Capitalism is a powerful Women, indigenous peoples, and certain migrant groups peoples. regulatory action to protect the production system but a weak were systematically marginalised while, internationally, This implied ecologically ‘sustainable development’ environment or counter growing distribution system. Its failures the countries of the ‘Third World’ were caught in a where a synthesis between the policy objectives of inequality. Unsurprisingly, here are evident in the need for re poverty trap. Furthermore, the never-before-seen rates environmental protection and those of economic ‘government through the market’ welfare states and income - of economic growth fuelling the era of mass-production development would preserve bio-diversity and consider has failed ‘sustainability’ in terms distribution. But the production and mass-consumption correlated with never-before- future generations. However, in practice, ‘sustainable of equity and environment. of goods for profit, rather than seen rates of natural resource depletion. Indeed, more development’ has come to prioritise economic rather Using market instruments has the meeting of need, is the core fossil fuel reserves had been utilised in this period of than ecological or social goals. Under the influence of deepened global inequality and activity of capitalism. So, we blindly ‘growth mania’ than in the whole of prior human history. ‘neoliberalism’, international environmental agreements perpetuated environmental pursue economic growth which destruction. Species extinction and means increasing the production of deforestation persist while global goods and crafting a consumerist carbon emissions continue to climb. The ‘market turn’ culture to buy them! To fail in this would create what is has evidently perpetuated the inherent problems of a perceived as a recessed (sick) economy; but to succeed capitalist economy driven by profit, consumerism and means creating a degraded (sick) environment. The the pursuit of unending growth. production capacity of capitalism is fed like a hungry beast while many in the world go hungry. All the while, Despite these failings, economic instruments remain we have the technical and productive capacity to meet the policy prescription of choice, even though they global needs. are difficult to implement and less successful than anticipated; the troublesome EU carbon market is We are endlessly caught chasing our tails on a treadmill a salient example. The embrace of market theory of production and consumption which is merely has become so normalised as to preclude genuine entrenched by economic ‘solutions’ for sustainability. discussion of other policies. Instead, the ‘choice’ is Our capitulation to market instruments and confidence between economic instruments like green taxes or in economic theory abandons our responsibility to make pollution permit trading schemes. The reason for such informed moral judgements. The economic ‘colonisation’ persistence is the authoritative status held by economic of environmental issues and poverty resolution removes theory and the considerable faith we have placed in such questions from moral debate. It converts political the technical calculation of economic ‘experts’. Yet and ethical argument into economic certainties thereby even some economists think this unjustified because closing off any opportunity to explore alternatives. formal economic analysis represents a set of abstract Furthermore, it entrenches a short-term focus which is possibilities that should not be applied literally to real- incapable of dealing adequately with concerns about life capitalism. justice and the environment where inter-generational equity requires us to bequeath an equal or better world. Historically, the capitalist system is unique in its market A sustainable green future necessitates planning and structure of ‘economy’ which places the pursuit of profit, investment in the here and now. rather than human need, at the core of its activities.

16 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 17 Focus: Equality and Environment Focus: Equality and Environment Yet, in economic theory the future is valued less object to be satisfied. The ‘market trance’ has brought Left politics has become much more than just seats in What inevitably follows from this definition is the idea than today because it views us as hedonistic market us ‘carbon prices’ without consideration of potential parliaments or opposition to the powerful elites. of collective action to create a society that has the consumers who prefer to consume now rather than ecological tipping-points or appreciation of how the strength and wisdom to address inequality. This is why It must also become much more than a grab-bag of save for tomorrow. The intergenerational issue differential impacts of even moderate climate change will the Left is inextricably committed to public enterprise progressive causes, as important as they may be. involves ethical questions about responsibility for the create distinct winners and losers. Sustainability requires and ownership, a robust system of taxation and wealth world we leave to future generations, and economic ethical considerations and political debate based on Good people will always stand up for asylum seekers, redistribution and vibrant and democratic organised questions about trade-offs between investments that the realities of human existence not the abstract ideals public education, Indigenous Australians, the labour. generate incomes now and those that pay off later in of economic theory. It is necessary to reclaim ‘the environment, action on global warming, species loss From energy utilities to education, from workplace a more sustainable future. We need to consider the political’ and stimulate a more active public culture if and the oceans, same sex couples, abortion rights, justice to the environment, the eradication of unfairness policy changes that would follow from giving a greater the imperative of ‘ecological’ rather than ‘economic’ the Palestinians, working people, the ABC and global and the development of mechanisms to achieve it is the value to the interests of future generations and also sustainability is to provide the guiding principles of social distributive justice. collective responsibility of society. the capaicty of environmental and social systems organisation. These critical issues are excellent threshold tests of to make the necessary adjustments. These are not A second consequence of the definition is a commitment what qualifies as 'left' but they do not of themselves ‘economic’ questions alone, but are moral and political to empowerment but not in the neoliberal sense *Joy Paton is a lecturer in political economy at the constitute a worthwhile definition that will prepare the questions, too. They require collective consideration of individualistic greed. Democracy happens at the University of Sydney. progressive movement to confront a challenging and and a willingness to challenge market instruments and grassroots and should seek to provide the disadvantaged dynamic political environment. the priorities of capitalism defended so exquisitely by with the tools to neutralise the privileges of the elites, economic theory. Further Reading A better approach might be to define ourselves as those workers the ability to resist rapacious employers and Bill McKibben (2013) Oil and honey: the education of an unlikely who will not tolerate injustice and who comprehensively communities the ability to protect their environment activist, Black Inc: Collingwood, VIC. reject the notion that inequality is inevitable, irresistible against greedy developers. Concluding comments Sharon Beder, (2006) Environmental principles and policies: an or in any way desirable. There is something very wrong with an economic interdisciplinary introduction, UNSW Press: Sydney, NSW. Against this definition, the legacy of the Gillard and Rudd system that undermines its own conditions of survival Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE), Special Issue on John Rawls in his 1971 book 'A Theory of Justice' years of power can be assessed. Challenging Climate Change, No 66, Summer 2010/11, http:// proposed the veil-of-ignorance thought-experiment, in by creating a consumerist culture so that its capacity It is all too easy to fall into sectarianism, blaming the australianpe.wix.com/japehome which the rules of a society are written by hypothetical to produce can be satisfied. All this is a far cry from the Greens for blocking the Carbon Pollution Reduction individuals who would not know who or what they meaning of economy that signals human need as the Scheme in the Senate and, allegedly (but not in in my would be within that society. opinion), setting in train political events that ended Fairness can be defined by the societal structures that with the election of Abbott. Likewise Labor has been would be developed by these imaginary individuals accused of failing to leave Australia with a humanitarian who would face the uncertainty of being wealthy or consensus on asylum seekers (which some would see as disadvantaged, powerful or disempowered, abled or what it calls the "Left" and it feels like their shock troops equally unrealistic). disabled, gay or straight, black or white or Asian. What's left … are gaining some traction in community attitudes. None of this would be productive. This list should be augmented with "born now or in 50 or The aftermath of the federal election is a time for re- However, defining an agenda that will propel the Left 100 years' time" to capture the intergenerational equity building an agenda affirming our values and re-assessing the experience through the years of conservative governments requires impacts of environmental degradation and the rundown of the Gillard/Rudd governments, not as a blame game an honest examination of what worked and what failed. of resources. but as a platform for building an agenda for social and for social and It is clear that the Gillard and Rudd governments did not environmental justice. have a coherent narrative, possibly because they did not environmental justice Murdoch's attack commentators are busy defining the have a clear political objective beyond staying in power. left as a malignant pack of control freaks. Everyone from The absence of ideology in the politics of the Labor (Based on a speech delivered by John Kaye to Wayne Swan to the most activist union official are made government is nowhere more clear than in the out to be a cross between North Korean dictator Kim a Blue Mountains Union Council 'Politics in the field of education. Pub', Katoomba, NSW, Saturday 23 November Jong-un and Rebecca DeMornay in the Nanny from Hell. The Gonski reforms in as much as they There is a real risk that this deranged characterisation 2013) address three decades of underfunding will achieve wider acceptance unless it is countered by of public schools by state and federal our own assertion of our values. by John Kaye* governments will be the lasting legacy By any objective measure the outlook for progressive The term "left" has its origins in the seating that sets the standard for securing politics is a bit bleak. Coalition governments in Canberra arrangements in pre-Revolutionary France's legislative education for all Australians. assembly, the états généraux. Representatives who were and the states, emboldened by a suite of electoral However, that legacy is badly opposed to the Monarchy and the power of the Church victories, are increasingly looking to fundamentally shift tarnished by the Gillard government's sat on the left side of the chamber, as oppositions Australian attitudes and institutions to the right. The commitment to massive increases in generally do in most parliaments. Murdoch media is waging a full-on cultural war against funding to non-government schools,

18 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 19 Focus: Equality and Environment Features including those that are extremely wealthy. Billions of obligations to those who have no future in their own dollars will be squandered. The opportunity for public homes and who are forced into boats to find a new place schools to win back the confidence of the parents has to live. Why does Australia been sacrificed to neoliberal parental-choice ideology On education, all parties have to confront the failings and the political expediency of appeasing marginal seat of Gonski while vigorously and decisively defending the need manufacturing voters with their children in Catholic and fundamentalist lifeline it throws to public education. Christian schools. TAFE cannot be abandoned to the history books, industry? Former Education Minister and then Prime Minister Julia replaced by a market that treats training as a commodity Gillard's infatuation with the US competitive education by Phillip Toner and Frank Stilwell* and students as clients. models gave Australia performance-based pay, the Australian manufacturing is suffering from a school autonomy agenda, the My School website and It will be hard to admit that mistakes have been made the destructive league tables it facilitates. with the NDIS while protecting the money that is deep-seated and long-standing malaise. The essential to protect the dignity and human rights of high value of the Australian dollar in the last TAFE is being decimated by a National partnership people with disability and their carers. It is however few years has made it difficult for Australian agreement, driven in part from Canberra, that requires essential to separate self-determination from markets. and the nation’s manufacturing now accounts for smaller the states to hand over all their funding to a competitive producers to compete in world markets, so True empowerment comes from the quality of providers share of GDP than in most other high income economies: market. For the first time in a century, a future is exports have been struggling while domestic and the diversity of services they offer, not by destroying it is currently only around 8-9%. emerging without a public provider of skills training and markets have been eroded by cheaper the public sector. it happened on Labor's watch. imports. The dollar’s fall in recent months has The reasons for long-term decline of manufacturing Opportunities to respond to climate change have entered in Australia are many. Particularly significant is a long- Similarly in disability services, the NDIS provides a much reduced these stresses, but much damage a critical phase. It is time to draw on all our courage to standing policy indifference to the manufacturing needed $5 billion a year in NSW to some of the most to productive capacity has already been talk about a 100 percent renewable economy, where sector, bordering on hostility from central economic vulnerable. Yet even that breakthrough in human rights coal and gas power stations are closed but workers in done. Job losses are ongoing and are likely agencies such as the Treasury, the Reserve Bank and the has been sullied by the privatisation agenda that will see the industry and their communities are first in line for to intensify under an Australian government Productivity Commission. This flows from a colonial cringe, public sector provision completely dismantled in this the tens of thousands of new jobs. This can only happen that is disdainful of ‘interventionist’ industry the commitment to a neoliberal ‘free market’ ideology state by 2018. if Labor and the Greens work together with the rest of policies. These are circumstances requiring and continued adherence to the orthodox economic The zenith of achievement from the support of the the Left to push for massive public investment in new careful consideration of the nature of the doctrine of ‘comparative advantage’ – the belief that a nation should produce only those things for which it has a Greens for the Labor government was the price on technologies and demand industry policy that creates a manufacturing sector and its significance for carbon and the architecture around it. As much as the new Australian clean-tech manufacturing industry. ‘natural’ or innate advantage over other countries. conservatives despise it, emissions are falling and the the nation’s economic future. Too much of Labor's legacy, state and federal, has been This blinkered view of economic policy has resulted in economy has failed to enter the terminal tailspin so trashed by the pursuit of a ruthless neoliberal agenda of The current situation in the vehicle manufacturing Australian governments largely abandoning systematic enthusiastically predicted for it. privatisation and public sector job cuts. industry brings these concerns into sharp focus. In early industry policy, except for the sort of ad hoc interventions Yet even that signature agreement fails to go far enough December 2013, GMH announced that it would cease that have occurred as a result of the ‘cat and mouse’ Neoliberalism is a virus that spreads into every party and or sufficiently rapidly to address the scientific and making Holden cars in 2017. Ford had announced in May games played between multinational companies and if there is to be a believable narrative for the Left it must economic imperative of decarbonising the economy. its intention to shut down its two plants in 2016. Apart State and Federal governments. The central economic begin with a comprehensive alternative. Without greater action, the climate will become from the direct job losses among vehicle builders, many agencies seem to see the decline of manufacturing and catastrophic, Australia will become isolated and our In November 2013 Gough Whitlam claimed that he thousands more jobs are likely to disappear as vehicle non-resource export-oriented and import-competing standard of living will fall into terminal decline because had delivered his last epistle to the Australian people. component manufacturers scale back or close down. industries as acceptable, even a good thing, because of the failure to develop a clean industry base. My guess is that there is another overriding lesson From having five major corporations making cars in it ‘frees up’ labour and capital which can then ‘flow’ to that will outlast his letter: building a left movement on Australia there will be only one – and if Toyota eventually expanding sectors such as the mining industry. As Gary Labor and the Greens created a remarkable legacy of the relevant and inspirational vision of intolerance of closes it would be a clean sweep. Banks (2011: 12) the former head of the Productivity reform. The question remains: was it enough to make injustice. Of course, in any one industry there are always specific Commission argued, ‘while manufacturing is important our support base believe that there is a Rawlsian future to our economy...the reality is that... [its] relative decline where injustice is on the run? factors that determine resilience or vulnerability. But the * John Kaye is Greens NSW MP crisis in the vehicle manufacturing industry is symptomatic has been integral to the marked increase in the living It is time to confront some of the harder truths. Here is of broader problems. This article seeks to explore what standards of Australians over the last decade’. Meanwhile my view on how we should do it. has gone wrong and why it matters. other nations, such as China, have been pursuing mercantilist policies directed at accruing massive trade On asylum seekers, no player in politics was able to surpluses by supporting their manufacturing industries lead Australia to a better place in the way that Whitlam Why has manufacturing declined? and manipulating the value of their currency. did with multiculturalism forty years ago. Our future All economies experience structural change because of as a movement depends on our ability to find a vision changes in technology and consumer demand. In wealthy Why does the Australian failure to systematically support that overcomes the fear manufactured by the Right nations manufacturing industry has, in general, declined and promote manufacturing matter? There are two ways and inspires every Australian to fulfil our collective as a share of output and jobs for some decades. However, to think about this: first, by asking what manufacturing in Australia the decline has been larger than elsewhere, contributes to the economy, particularly in relation to

20 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 21 Features Features science and technology; and second, by considering the industries include metallurgy, industrial chemistry, manufacturing jobs would result in yet more ‘hollowing having generally lower productivity (as conventionally adverse implications of further decline in manufacturing. renewable energy products, aerospace, micro-electronics, out’ of the income distribution. measured) and low wages. It is in the latter industry advanced materials (such as carbon fibre), advanced The skills developed by manufacturing industries are also group that most of the job growth is occurring. Over the Contribution to science and technology casting, machining and robotics, nanotechnology and core skills upon which every modern economy depends. years from 2000 to 2011, around 80% of Australian net biotechnology. The most important contribution of manufacturing, The manufacturing sector trains engineers, technicians, employment increase (adjusted for hours worked) was in beyond the direct provision of jobs and incomes, is The Productivity Commission has already questioned why welders, maintenance fitters, CAD designers, and industries that have below average productivity. to the Australian science and technology base. The there should be public support for Australian science and machinists with the skills necessary to install and maintain link has become even closer as innovation is now the engineering when the benefits of the resulting knowledge our telecommunications, power stations, water plants key competitive strategy of manufacturing firms, and accrue increasingly to other nations. The transfer of and transport systems. Manufacturing is a net supplier of innovation is increasingly based on exploiting the Australian solar panel technology to China, from whom these skills to other industries, especially in the resources scientific frontier. we now mostly source these products, is a case in point. sector. Without it skill shortages would become more The knowledge and skills required to simply import and intense. Without a solid manufacturing base Australia will use these technologies, such as the installation of solar Macroeconomic stability is a further consideration. If lose scientific and engineering capacity that has taken panels on roofs, are much less than that needed to design mining is allowed to continue crowding out manufacturing, generations to nurture. Manufacturing directly employs and manufacture them. one in every five engineers and many more indirectly management of the national economy will be more as consultants (Institution of Engineers Australia, 2011). It is often suggested it is possible to keep the high- uncertain and volatile. Mining investment and commodity Australian manufacturing businesses allocate $4.5 billion value, high skilled jobs in design and technology while prices are by nature highly cyclical, causing the economy each year to research and development expenditure, relocating the routine manufacturing activity to countries to swing between boom and bust. With each future which is approximately one quarter of total private sector with lower production costs. But in the long-run this mining boom other trade-exposed sectors can be expenditure. This R&D employs scientists, engineers is a fallacy. Separating conception from execution in expected to be put under further pressure. In addition, and skilled technicians, directed mostly at developing production processes is inherently problematic because Australia will be locked into a risky carbon-intensive and adapting technologies to particular local needs. manufacturing production is an iterative process, involving export base, particularly exports of coal and liquid natural Even more is spent on ‘non-R&D’ innovation, such as constant design changes and continuous challenges of gas. These industries could face technological redundancy new business models, systems integration and high problem-solving. Second, there is the loss of intellectual as alternative energy sources are developed. These fuel performance work and management practices, all of property – a concern which is causing many western exports will threatened as other nations implement which have diffusion, or ‘spillover’, effects on other nations to reconsider their investments in China. policies to limit their carbon emissions. Food security is looming as a further problem, and here too the decline of manufacturing is a contributory factor. industries. Accelerating deindustrialisation will result in The nation’s trade balance and current account will also Historically, the food processing sector has supplied the nation going backwards technologically, resulting in tend towards bigger deficits if there are no domestically- domestic food needs and generated significant export diminished capacity for innovation. produced alternatives to imported manufactures. More revenues. But the overvalued Australian dollar and money would then need to be borrowed offshore to buy Australian manufacturing industry is currently classified the large grocery retailers are squeezing prices paid to the imported consumer and capital goods. Even with an by the OECD as being in the ‘medium-low and low suppliers and using imported house brands. Based on over-valued Australian dollar, high commodity prices, technology’ category of nations, based on its R&D current trends, in about three years time Australia is likely record mineral export volumes and price deflation in spending as a share of total value added. This places to be a net importer of processed foods. The economy many imported goods, trade surpluses have not been Australia in company with Estonia, Mexico and Portugal would then become even more dependent on its export consistently achieved in recent years. Spending on (OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard of unprocessed agricultural and mineral commodities. 2011: 68). The low ranking is despite a significant and imported manufactures tends to swamp export revenues sustained increase in investment in Australian R&D by – and this imbalance can be expected to intensify. Finally, we need to recognise the connection with manufacturing firms over the last two decades. It is also Payments for the imports of motor vehicles and parts - environmental stresses. People often think of despite the nation doing very well internationally in terms which is currently the nation’s second largest category of manufacturing as ‘dirty’ industries, and indeed there of academic research papers in science and technology imported goods - are already roughly equivalent to the is much that has to be done to reduce environmental (DIISR 2011: 3). Where Australia evidently scores poorly revenue obtained from the export of crude petroleum damage by specific industries that have caused problems is in converting knowledge into commercial products and and liquefied natural gas (DFAT 2011). of pollution. However, looked at more broadly, a continued decline of the manufacturing sector can be seen as services. With the decline of manufacturing, the shift to a dual creating other environmental hazards. Meanwhile, the economy is becoming more pronounced. The economy This long-standing problem will worsen as the Jobs, living standards and the nation’s future general decline of manufacturing in Australia would tend manufacturing base declines further. This will put even is splitting into two industry clusters. One relatively small Despite many job losses, the manufacturing sector still to lock us out as a producer of alternative energy products. more burden on public sector funding of R&D. But there group, mainly comprising the resource extraction and employs around 8% of the total Australian workforce. It Increased dependence on unprocessed agricultural and is doubt about how long taxpayers will be prepared finance sectors, has high productivity (measured in terms provides typically middle skill, middle wage, and full-time mineral products will increase pressure for further land to support billions of dollars being spent on university of the value of output per hours worked) and above average employment. Retaining these jobs, and seeking areas for clearing, opening of national parks to development, and science and engineering courses and government-funded wages. The other group comprises diverse activities like potential future growth, therefore plays an important environmental damage to water tables, rivers and oceans. R&D if industries that can use this high level knowledge aged care, child care, retail, cleaning, security guards, role in offsetting the dominant trend towards greater and skills have disappeared. Such research areas and transport, mechanical repair and education and training, income inequality in Australia. Conversely, losing more

22 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 23 Features Features What is to be done? global trade and Australian industry, direct negotiations Developing a systematic industry policy is imperative for with multinational corporations (MNCs) are critical. Borrow and build: the nation’s future. Policy makers need to abandon the Governments around the world typically make access to infantile dichotomy between free trade and protection, their local markets contingent on MNCs using a rising share Early relief possible for recognising that all governments support industries for a of locally produced products and services; transferring variety of economic, social and ideological reasons. advanced technologies to these local suppliers; and assisting these suppliers enter world markets. China commuters Consider, for example, the Australian superannuation developed its car industry by using these strategies with by Ian Spring* industry, the majority of which is based on private retail GM, Ford and VW (Chin 2010). funds. It benefits hugely from the compulsory nature of This short article puts the case for contributions and the annual $32bn in tax concessions The case for ‘free markets’ and ‘free trade’ trade (like the case for celibacy) has frequently been made, but has an ongoing 20 year federal ‘borrow on fund earnings and contributions. The private health and build’ program for road and industry benefits from the $1.6bn received each year rarely proved convincing. In reality governments globally by health fund members. Finally, the Australian banking are engaged in increasingly sophisticated industry policies, rail that would give Australian sector is effectively government guaranteed – ‘too big to designed to attract overseas investment, nurture hi-tech commuters worthwhile benefits fail’. The result of the government’s ‘four pillar’ banking ‘strategic’ industries, capture foreign intellectual property within a few years, transformative policy is that Australian banking is one of the most by either legal or illegal means, secure long run access to changes within a decade, and a resources, manipulate exchange rates in their country’s concentrated and profitable oligopolies in the developed complete transport infrastructure world. favour and use the quid pro quo of diplomacy to enter new markets. The importance of manufacturing to Australia’s solution by 2033. If sectors like superannuation, health insurance and future suggests that to continue to ignore these processes Transport policy has to be considered in banking warrant special support from government, why and opportunities would be at our collective peril. There relation to economic policy. The Federal shouldn’t the case for a comprehensive manufacturing is a public interest, not only private interests, at stake. Treasurer is evidently considering sale of industry policy also be considered legitimate? Even more long-term bonds to fund infrastructure. The program may take two or three years to become to the point, if governments consider ad hoc policies when *Phillip Toner is a Research Fellow in Political Here is a specific proposal which sets out in detail how fully established. After that the above figures would major manufacturing firms threaten to close or pull out, Economy at the University of Sydney and Frank federal borrowing could be used to give a fast-track grow year by year in proportion to the growth in as they have previously done in the car industry, wouldn’t Stilwell is Professor Emeritus in Political Economy comprehensive fix to our transport infrastructure G D P. it be better to have long-term industry plans in place at the University of Sydney problems. across-the-board? The choice should not be between ad Federal borrowing spreads the load to a surprising Such federal action would also stimulate the economy, degree. The annual debt servicing costs of the program hoc temporary bailouts or letting the market decide the Sources and Further Reading: outcome. Indeed, industry policy of some form is ever- strengthen employment, and, due to the extra tax at, say, 5% per annum would be $500 million. Across the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2013) Australian Industry 2011-12, population of 23 million, this would come to only $22 per present: it can either be intermittent and crisis-driven or Canberra revenue from the spending generated, would give it can be ongoing and systematic. The latter is better. substantial ongoing support to state and federal person in first year, $44 in second year, and so on. China's Automotive Modernization: The Party- Gregory T. Chin (2010) budgets. These budgets would gain further benefit by Recognising the industry policy imperative, the Hawke State and Multinational Corporations, Palgrave Macmillan By the end of the 20 year program, with our population governments not having to use precious tax dollars to government in the 1980’s, with John Button as Industry Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade (2011) Composition of Trade, then close to thirty million, the transport infrastructure fund major transport infrastructure. Minister, did at least try to systematically manage the Australia debt should be a low 8% of GDP: and debt servicing cost process of structural change. It developed industry plans Department of Industry, Innovation, Science and Research (2011) The proposed public borrowing per person would be under $600 per year - equivalent to for sectors that were major employers, like steelmaking, Australian Innovation System Report 2011, Canberra about $12 per week, both in 2013 dollars. vehicle manufacturing, heavy engineering, and textiles, Gary Banks (2011) Australia’s mining boom: what’s the problem? The program suggested here would involve off-budget clothing and footwear. It set up Manufacturing Industry Address to the Melbourne Institute and the Australian Economic and borrowing of 0.6% of GDP annually – $10 billion in the A shrinking debt Social Outlook Conference first year. Half of this would be used for 50% subsidies Councils on which representatives of trade unions and There is further good news. Debt is not really Institution of Engineers Australia (2011) The Engineering Profession: A to private projects. This would give new expenditure on business worked in conjunction with government to meet ‘permanent’ because it ‘shrinks’ as a proportion of GDP Statistical Overview, Eighth Edition, 2011, Canberra road and rail of $15 billion per year. the challenges faced by those industries. Job losses were over time. A seldom-mentioned piece of arithmetic is OECD (2011) Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard not avoided, but planned transitions were managed, so With this level of transport infrastructure spending, and that, with average money GDP growth of 5% per annum that the nation’s industry structure and employment Phillip Toner (2000) Manufacturing Industry in the Australian Economy: a likely fiscal multiplier of 1.5, total annual expenditure (say, 2.5% real growth and 2.5% inflation), any given debt Its Role and Significance, Journal of Australian Political Economy, No. 45, opportunities would not be left simply to the vagaries of June, 18-45 in the community would increase by $22.5 billion (1.3 % shrinks to half as a proportion of GDP in under 15 years. the market. of GDP). So much for the mistaken idea that debt burdens the (2012) Structural Change or ‘Crowding Out’. Why is Manufacturing next generation. A more vigorous and comprehensive approach for the Important? Federation of Automotive Products Manufacturers In round figures, this would generate extra annual tax future could embrace plans for fostering innovation (2013) Personal Submission to the Productivity Commission Inquiry revenue of $6 billion – comprising $4.5 billion to the Total spending from the program over the 20 years through public-private cooperation in R&D, selective into Assistance to the Australian Automotive Manufacturing Commonwealth, and $1.5 billion in GST to the states. would be around $400 billion in 2013 dollar terms. Industry public ownership, local content requirements, labour This would add to the sustainability of budgets across This should be sufficient to satisfy all our needs for an skilling and retraining, and planning for transitions Roy Green, Phillip Toner and Renu Agarwal (2013) Understanding the nation. up-to-date national system of urban and nonurban Productivity: Australia’s Choice, McKell Institute. to sustainable energy use. Given their dominance of road, rail, and light-rail by 2033. It should also leave

24 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 25 Features Features something over for a worthwhile start on the Brisbane- Looked at in the light of burgeoning population other Asia-Pacific governments to join after the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne high-speed rail link. numbers, current proposals for road and rail negotiations are completed. investment across the nation are laughably weak. Trans-Pacific Trade Growing benefits The US determined pursuit of its agenda has created its Commuters, now suffering rapidly worsening traffic own contradictions and has prolonged the negotiations. Benefits from the program would be widespread, congestion and ever-increasing overcrowding on trains, Deal: Community groups and unions in the US, Australia and long-lasting. There would be a much-needed are running out of patience. The political consequences and other countries have been able to mobilise strong boost to confidence and jobs in the short term. Up to of failing to act would be severe. Divisions over US agenda opposition to this agenda, based not only on the 100,000 new steady long term jobs could be created, substantive issues but also on the secretive nature of and businesses would quickly start to benefit from the Conclusion and social movement the process. Our knowledge of the negotiations comes direct and indirect spending the program would bring. With adoption of a federal borrow and build program mainly from leaked documents, industry submissions Thereafter the program would progressively improve leading to major new spending on both road and rail, opposition may frustrate and media reports. The negotiations are dealing, the cost-base, the employment base, and the general commuter dissatisfaction would start to ease, and the behind closed doors, with domestic policies which efficiency of the economy over the whole 20 year next-generation would inherit a winning combination end game would normally be decided by domestic public and period. of world-class transport infrastructure and low parliamentary debate. transport bond debt. by Patricia Ranald* In the very long term, the spending would pay for The pressure from civil society and perceptions of their itself through efficiency based higher tax revenue. This would help prepare the country for its next big Ministers of the 12 governments involved own national interest has led many other governments hurdle, the budgetary pressures of population ageing, in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPPA) to resist key US proposals. These include stronger Transport pricing and social needs anticipated to cut in just before 2033. negotiations met on December 7-10 in patents and higher prices for medicines, reduced rights of governments to regulate medicine prices, With federal borrowing, road tolls and rail ticket The collision between inadequate transport Singapore, with the aim of finalising the giving foreign investors the right to sue governments prices should be somewhat less than 50% of full infrastructure and very high population growth is our agreement by the end of the year. The good over health and environmental policies, (known as commercial rates, and there would be no need for the biggest national problem. It is robbing us of jobs and news is that they did not succeed in this Investor-State Dispute Settlement or ISDS) and reducing reintroduction of tolls on existing roads. progress, and the whole community is suffering. goal. The bad news is that the Australian the ability of state-owned enterprises to operate Tolls have the same economy dampening effects as Implementing this proposal for a federal ‘borrow government appears to be giving in to commercially. Detailed negotiations on market access taxation. They impact retail sales, business costs, and build’ program would fix transport, add some key US demands which would raise for goods and services have scarcely begun. These work participation, education opportunities, housing have been slowed in part by the historically predictable jobs, and strengthen budgets. It is too good an the price of medicines and allow foreign development, and family budgets. Keeping tolls lower opportunity to miss. reluctance of the US government to increase market would strengthen the economy. investors to sue governments for damages access to its own domestic markets, and by the relatively in an international tribunal over Australian recent addition of Japan, which has a similar history and Sources of transport infrastructure funding previously *Ian Spring is an independent economist and which only joined the negotiations in July this year. relied on - federal taxation, state taxation, federal GFC writer on infrastructure. domestic laws. The negotiations and borrowing, state borrowing, government asset sales, community campaigning will continue in Australia’s role in the negotiations has changed with the and stand-alone private investments - are now all, for Further Reading 2014. election of the Coalition government. While the previous A fuller version of this proposal can be viewed at www.borrowandbuild. ALP government participated in negotiations, they had various reasons, drying up. The TPPA is the economic side of the US pivot into the com.au responded to unions and civil society pressure and were Asia-Pacific, part of US strategic rivalry with China in the resisting US proposals on medicines, and on increased region. The negotiations involve 12 governments: the foreign investor rights though ISDS. US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Japan and Vietnam. Six of The Coalition policy is to negotiate on ISDS, and perhaps these have bilateral free trade agreements with the US. on medicines issues, if additional access is offered to US and Japanese agricultural markets. The government is The US objective is not mainly about trade in goods, now facing pressure from public health groups, unions, but to build on these bilateral agreements as a step environment groups, pensioners and others. They have to establish US style regional regulatory frameworks been joined recently by coal seam gas activists from which suit its major export industries and corporations. many rural areas, which are part of the National Party These industries include pharmaceuticals, media and constituency. Fifty-four of these groups recently wrote to information technology, agribusiness and financial the Trade Minister, urging him to oppose ISDS, based on services, all of which are demanding changes to other the example of a US mining company suing the Canadian governments’ domestic regulation. The agreement is Québec provincial government for $250 million because described as “building the architecture of a 21st century trade agreement in the Asia-Pacific”, but it is clear that it dared to conduct an environmental review of shale the details of the architecture are designed to meet gas mining. These groups have recently pressured the US economic interests. The negotiations have been New South Wales Coalition government to conduct a underway for three years, and the aim is to persuade similar environmental review and to introduce regulation of coal seam gas mining, and they fear that this would

26 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 27 Features Features be undermined if the Australian same Congress which shut down the US government in recommendations, but they are not binding on Cabinet. government agreed to ISDS in the October could unpick any deal. Parliament cannot change the text of the agreement TPPA or other trade agreements. We must maximise pressure on our government not to once it is signed, but it does vote on the implementing The Singapore talks were even make these trade-offs on medicine patents, the PBS and legislation, so there will be opportunities for further more secretive than usual and the right of foreign investors to sue governments, and to campaigning after April. there was no time set aside for release the TPP text well before it is signed. consultation with community *Dr.Patricia Ranald is Convenor, Australian Fair We are planning further activities in the New Year groups. Despite this, I and civil leading up to the meeting of TPP Ministers at the end Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET) and society representatives from of January and beyond. If agreement on major issues Research Associate in Political Economy, University Australia and other countries is reached at that meeting, the text of the agreement of Sydney. travelled to Singapore to monitor could be finalised in April to coincide with a visit by the negotiations and do media President Obama to the region. We are campaigning work. Further reading and action: for its release before it is signed. If it is signed, the See the AFTINET website for further details of actions and events: We organized media briefings agreement will be tabled in Parliament for 20 sitting days www.aftinet.org.au which were well attended and available for public discussion. The Joint Standing Jane Kelsey, No Ordinary Deal: Unmasking the Trans Pacific Partnership (partly because there was little Committee on Treaties will review the agreement, but Agreement, Wellington: Bridget Williams Books. information for the media from the is unable to change the text. The Committee can make official meeting) and resulted in good media coverage of our views in the ABC, the Sydney A specialised US trade journal, The Washington Trade Morning Herald, The Age, and online media like Crikey, Daily, also claimed during the talks that Australia, the Conversation and the Guardian. New Zealand and Canada have agreed to drop their objections to US proposals on longer and stronger The short Ministerial statement at the end of the talks patents on medicines, again contrary to Minister Robb’s only mentions “progress” with no details and that assurances. This would delay the availability of cheaper Ministers will meet again at the end of January. The generic medicines and mean higher prices for medicines. fact that no new deadline has been set for completing We must exert maximum pressure on the Australian Keating: interviews the deal means that the US heavy-handed pressure Government to oppose changes to the PBS and stronger to meet deadlines for agreement in Singapore met patents which would mean higher prices for medicines. some resistance, showing the influence of community for the true believers campaigns in many TPP countries. Trade Minister Robb announced before the talks that by Carol Johnson* Australia was prepared to agree to give investors the Leaked documents also had an influence on the talks. right to sue governments over Australian laws which Two internal documents from an unidentified country The ABC’s four-part series of interviews they claimed harm their investment, on the condition with Paul Keating, which finished airing in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations that there were exceptions for public welfare, health and were leaked to the Huffington Post on December 8. The environmental laws and that the US would give increased late November, displayed the former prime documents are a chart outlining the positions of each of market access in return. Such exceptions have not been minister and treasurer in all his complexity, the twelve countries on many issues being discussed in effective in agreements in which they have been included both at his best and at his worst. This is a man Singapore, and an account of the state of negotiations at like the Central American Free Trade Agreement, who could describe painting his big picture of the end of the Salt Lake City round in late November. under which governments have still been sued over the nation’s future while “high as a kite” from These revealed that there are still divisions over US environmental regulation. Many cases have also been listening to three or four symphonies. demands on investor rights to sue governments, higher won by investors over process rather than content. They prices for medicines and draconian copyright laws, have argued successfully that they have been denied In another moment, Keating would describe telling all of which would increase corporate rights at the “fair and equitable treatment” by government. a staffer what he (figuratively) planned to do to John Howard: I’m going to put an axe right in his chest and rip expense of consumers. There is still no agreement about Trade Minister Robb has fallen into the trap of making enforceable labour rights and environmental standards. his ribs apart. No wonder Keating continues to be such concessions in the vain hope of more market access for a polarising figure, although the interviews suggest that The documents also revealed that Australia has worked Australian agricultural products to US markets. But it is he seems singularly unconcerned about his detractors’ with Japan and the US on a revised version of the clear that the US is delaying making any market access opinions. Keating is convinced that he made a difference. controversial annex which deals with government offers precisely to extract such concessions. Nor has He used the interviews as a platform to make his case regulation of medicine prices, including Australia’s Japan made market access offers on key agricultural that he changed the course of Australian history for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, while most other products. better. countries are opposing it. This indicates possible Moreover, the US Congress has not even agreed to concessions on the PBS by Australia, despite Trade Love him or loathe him, the Keating interviews portray Trade Promotion Authority for the TPP, which means a highly accomplished political leader who still has the Minister Robb’s assurances to the contrary. the detail of the text can be amended by Congress. The 28 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 29 Features Features ability to cut through, even allowing for skilful editing. Therefore, Keating’s favoured tale is a heroic one of Keating’s embrace of free market policies also posed technology that Keating championed is facilitating this. Contemporary Labor voters will be wishing that Wayne how he created a model for Labor that would get labour problems for Labor’s larger narrative. After all, the more In short, it won’t just be workers in manufacturing or Swan had half the ability Keating still does to explain and capital in sync so that labour could become the social democratic governments rely on market-based clothing and footwear who will face competition from complex economic ideas simply, clearly and in language locomotive of an economic restructuring that would mechanisms, the more they undermine one of their Asian countries, but also in the broad service industries that grips. increase the size of the economic pie for all. It was an traditional rationales: ameliorating the inequities of that Labor sees as Australia’s salvation. economic narrative in which, according to Keating’s market capitalism. Similarly, as both he and subsequent Indeed, Keating suggests that the wheels partly came highly contentious account, Bob Hawke played at most a Labor prime ministers found, the more Labor justifies Nonetheless, Keating tells a compelling story. As he says off his government when subsequent treasurers were bit part. fiscal conservatism, the harder it then becomes to justify in the interviews, all contemporary political leaders unable to sell key economic policy ideas. Keating argues budget deficits in times of global capitalist downturn. eventually get “carried out”, but the issue is what trail that his achievement lay in not just implementing Having weathered the recession he claimed we “had you have blazed and with how much “elan”. economic changes, but in being able to sell them. to have”, and having got the economy ticking over “like Keating was well ahead of his time amongst Western Admittedly, Keating’s task was made easier than Swan’s a Swiss watch”, Keating says that he then moved on to leaders in recognising that the economics and geopolitics Keating certainly passes the “elan” test. Many would by the fact the Liberals supported many of his key fix Australia’s image of itself, to seize the initiative of of the world would shift to the Asian region. While he agree that he left an impressive trail for others to economic rationalist reforms. a leader and “paint” a “new horizon”. He argues that was absolutely correct to identify the potential benefits follow, with even Liberal politicians praising his Australia needed a different identity, one that was of that shift for Australia, he has always underestimated internationalisation of the Australian economy despite Keating appears to have no doubts that his economic efficient, competitive, open, cosmopolitan and signalling the potential challenges. criticising other aspects of his economic management. agenda was the correct one and set Australia up for a its desire to be better integrated into the Asian region. prosperous future. Interviewer Kerry O’Brien’s polite but For example, Keating, like his Labor successors as prime However, the full story of the Keating years – and skilful probing of any inconsistencies in this narrative This was also a postcolonial identity – one based on minister, has long emphasised the benefits that will their aftermath – is both far more complex and more failed to shake his certainty. becoming a republic and reconciling with its indigenous come from Australia being able to sell services to the contentious than Keating would have us believe. These people; and an identity that recognised Kokoda rather massively expanding Asian middle classes. were interviews for the “true believers” indeed. For example, faced with a question regarding the cost than the imperial war of Gallipoli. It was a brave vision of internationalisation policies to those workers in areas However, Keating tends to overlook the extent to which and one that, as Keating admits, burned political capital. * Carol Johnson is Professor of Politics at University such as manufacturing, clothing and footwear who lost highly skilled white-collar jobs, in areas ranging from Many still prefer Keating’s vision to Howard’s so-called their jobs through tariff cuts and other measures, Keating graphic design to architecture and accounting and legal of Adelaide history and culture wars, but it was Howard who has no hesitation in asserting that they found new jobs in work, are being outsourced to English-speaking Asian This article was first published in The Conversation won, and his influence is still apparent in the Abbott the services sector within weeks and were much better workers in countries such as India and the Philippines, http://theconversation.com/keating-interviews-for-the- government. off for doing so. where cost structures are cheaper. The very information true-believers-20129 Keating finishes the interviews with a call to engage with There is no recognition of those workers who failed Asia. He argues that the most important issue currently to be re-employed, who lost skilled employment and facing Australia is a “psychological” one of Australia’s long-standing work-based identities, or who ended up relationship with Asia. We are adjacent to the fastest- swapping full-time jobs in manufacturing for ones in the growing part of the world and we need to embrace being service sector where work was uncertain and casualised. “in it”. VLAD is not a joke Nor does Keating’s account of reorganising industrial The Keating interviews were absolutely riveting television relations by encouraging enterprise bargaining allow for by Howard Guille for political junkies. However, there was not much new the fact that many workers felt forced to make excessive in them. The economic narratives and narratives about Queensland Parliament passed the VLAD and is a complex need among some Queenslanders to have concessions in enterprise bargaining and that that legacy, Australia’s identity were well articulated in speeches two related Bills in a single session on the things that are the biggest in the world. coupled with a history of past real wage cuts in a time Keating gave during his time in office. of increasing profits, had cost Labor dearly at the 1996 15th October. Perhaps the full name of the Most certainly VLAD and the associated matters are far election (as at least one ALP report of the time made Similarly, his call to engage with Asia was made many legislation, theVicious Lawless Associates from a joke and are part of a long and disturbing history clear). times while prime minister and in a book that he wrote Disestablishment Act, was decided after the of executive government power in Queensland. The ALP after leaving office. The jousting with Bob Hawke over under Ned Hanlon acted against the Railways Union Yet, Keating also claims to have a “Labor heart”. He talks acronym. The other two were the Tattoo their respective contributions to reforming the Australian in 1948, the National Party Government under Bjelke- movingly of the role that his government’s Working Parlours Bill and the Criminal Law (Criminal economy is an old one. Petersen stopped street marches in the 1960s and 1970s Nation policy – with its introduction of individual case Organisations Disruption) Amendment Bill. and declared a state of emergency against Aboriginal management – played in getting some unemployed Nor is there any sustained reconsideration of the All are directed at bikies. The laws are being groups at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games. workers back into jobs. He rightly points out that this downsides as well as the benefits of his agenda. To applied with the most recent arrests on 10th The VLAD package prescribes 26 bikie gangs as “criminal was one Keating government policy (of many) that Tony put it delicately, Keating is not a self-reflective man. December of five people meeting for a drink Blair’s British Labour government took over. There are issues that could have been addressed in organisations”. It is an offence with a minimum six more depth. These include not only acknowledging the at Yandina. They were remanded in custody. months imprisonment for three or more 'participants' Keating depicts himself as being on the side of labour downsides for some workers of economic restructuring in these organisations to meet in a 'public place'. It is an rather than those with power and capital – as a leader Indeed, it is 'war against the bikies'; Premier Newman and of real wage cuts that have already been alluded offence for any participant to enter a place prescribed who wanted to lift the 95% and not the 5% – and said to Parliament, 'these are the toughest laws against to, they also include debates over just how much the under the Act or to take part in a prescribed event. 41 remained confident that his economic policies would these thugs this state has ever seen. Indeed, they are Keating government’s economic reforms contributed to places, including club houses, gyms and tattoo parlours, work. amongst the toughest in the world...They are designed to Australia’s subsequent prosperity. destroy them'. More cynical people might say that there have been prescribed. In all cases 'participant' is given

30 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 31 Features Features the widest possible meaning. Police will not need constitutional separation of powers between executive Even now, the term Judeo-Christian is used far more warrants to stop, detain and search people they suspect and judiciary. Curriculum review: commonly in the US. As Monash academic Sue Collins of being 'lawless associates'; the onus of proof in bail has found, the term appeared 6418 times in North The ALP Opposition of seven members voted against applications is also reversed. American newspapers between 2006 and 2013. By giving the executive such judicial power. On the other where did ‘Judeo-Christian’ contrast, it was used only 765 times in all European The VLAD Act has a list of 'declared offences' - including hand, it voted for the legislation against bikies. In my newspapers, including the British print media, and 304 assembly, affray, carnal knowledge, burglary, grievous opinion the ALP should have voted against both. The come from? times in major Australian newspapers. bodily harm and other violence, drug possession and VLAD Act reduces freedom of association in Queensland. On close analysis of Australian use of the term, Collins trafficking, weapons offences. These are already in It applies to who people are rather than what they have by Chloe Patton* finds that the “Judeo” element is merely tacked on for the criminal code and other legislation. A member done. The legislation is directed at bikies but permits the Christopher Pyne says students need to be taught ‘the political expedience: of a bikie gang (known as a vicious lawless associate) declaration of other criminal organisations by regulation significance of Judeo-Christian values’ to Australia, but The term has become a kind of shield for undeclared convicted of one of the declared offences will get an - that is by the executive government. where in the discourse did ‘Judeo-Christian’ come from? additional mandatory sentence of 15 years. There is conservative interests which really want to privilege, There is no legal framework of rights in Queensland. a further 10 years if the person is an office bearer. No Education minister Christopher Pyne has copped it and actually mean, the Christian tradition, but Proposals for one in 1988 did not find favour with either from the Left with both barrels for demanding that the parole is possible for the mandatory sentences. The only are conscious this would be politically counter- Labor or the Nationals. It is timely to readdress this Australian education curriculum teach students 'the reduction is if the police commissioner (not the court) productive. especially as Parliament seems so willing to give judicial significance of Judeo-Christian values to our institutions is satisfied that person cooperated in giving evidence and legislative powers to the Executive. In 1998, Justice and way of life'. He did this in announcing his review into Kevin Donnelly, the conservative commentator and against others. researcher appointed to review the national education Fitzgerald remarked on the failure to adopt a Bill of the national curriculum at the end of the first week in curriculum, is a man partial to the term Judeo-Christian. The Government has decreed that bikies will be held in Rights in Queensland and said 'There is absolutely no January. Tasmanian education minister Nick McKim went so far as to accuse Pyne of launching a “brainwashing He is a vocal critic of educational strategies designed to a new facility within Woodford Jail. They will be isolated reason for this State to maintain a redneck reputation and propaganda mission”. help students appreciate that there are multiple valid from other prisoners, subject to close surveillance and or why it cannot give a lead to the rest of Australia in worldviews and perspectives. searching, allowed out of their cells for only one hour the constitutional entrenchment of individual rights.' While admittedly I don’t teach high school students, if I per day and without access to television, phones or The failure to give a lead is now coming back to haunt did, I would get them to have a look at how Australia’s Donnelly makes no bones about which perspectives he deems invalid. In 2011, he argued that Christians and gyms and with only limited visiting time. The Premier progressive politics. national commitment to Judeo-Christian values has Muslims do not accept the same values and beliefs, has said 'we will create a unique prison experience for evolved over the years, shaping our institutions and The only light relief is that Russian President Vladimir way of life. The best place to start would surely be the and expressed concerns about a booklet written by criminal motorcycle gang members who are convicted Putin uses the services of the "Night Wolves" motorcycle Australian parliamentary library website. academics to help Australian teachers include Muslim in the courts'. Further, the Police Minister has asked gang 'to rescue the soul of holy Russia' and to promote perspectives in the classroom. He was upset that the Corrective Services to investigate dressing the convicted By simply typing “Judeo-Christian” into its wonderfully the Orthodox Church and Russian nationalism. Peter book did not convey: bikies, a la Arizona, in pink jumpsuits. simple search tool, Australia’s youngsters will be no Pomerantsev writing in London Review of Books says doubt regaled with stirring accounts of Australians …what some see as the inherently violent nature of Terry O'Gorman of the Australian Council for Civil 'Vladimir Putin has posed for photo-ops with them, founding a modern democracy on a shared commitment the Koran, where devout Muslims are called on to Liberties says the laws are most extreme eclipsing‘ some dressed in leathers and riding a tri-bike' and gives them to a Judeo-Christian heritage, or valiantly fighting to carry out Jihad and to convert non-believers, and of those passed during the era of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen’. 'several million rubles a year' for their work. Under defend Judeo-Christian values on the battlefield at the destructive nature of what is termed dhimmis Nicholas Cowdery, former NSW Public Prosecutor, says VLAD, Putin is 'associating' - the G20 in Brisbane could be Gallipoli. – where non-believers are forced to accept punitive 'there is serious interference with freedom of association, interesting! The only problem is that they won’t. The term doesn’t taxation laws. freedom of expression, the right to work, family even appear until 1974. Throughout the 1970s, 80s Christopher Pyne can dress it up in any way he likes, relationships,' Moreover, 'people are penalised, and 90s it is used in only a handful of contexts without but the only historical significance Judeo-Christian potentially criminally, not for what they've done any apparent consistency in its meaning. In fact, the values have in Australian public discourse is in post-9/11 but for who they associate with.' vast majority of the 855 results the search generates conservative rhetoric. are dated from late 2001 onwards. Until September Terry Goldsworthy, a former police officer and 11, it appears Australians didn’t give a fig about Judeo- now Assistant Professor at Bond University, says Christian values. * Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Muslim and that the laws do not match the scale of the crime non-Muslim Understanding at University of South threat and that 'much of the crime committed The notion of a Judeo-Christian tradition is, in fact, Australia borrowed from American public discourse. But even in by outlaw motorcycle gangs fails to satisfy the the US, it is still a relatively recent idea. According to US definition of organised crime activity as put researchers, the term only began to regularly appear This article was published in The Conversation forward by the Australian Crime Commission during and after World War Two, when progressives http://theconversation.com/curriculum-review- Act.' sought an inclusive term that naturalised the where-did-judeo-christian-come-from-21969 None of this seems to disturb Attorney-General incorporation of Jews into mainstream US society. Jarrod Bleijie. Two days after VLAD, he gave The political intent driving its use changed from one of himself power to direct that sex offenders are inclusion to one of exclusion in the post-September 11 kept in prison after the completion of their era, however, when it most often signified the perceived sentence even if a Court has decided they challenges of Islam and Muslims. could be released. This clearly conflicts with the

32 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 33 Reviews Reviews

subjected to in the recent Pushing Our Luck: past within the political A Letter from a Ring Nut arena but particularly in the The Melbourne Ring Cycle 2013, Opera Ideas for Australian Murdoch dominated media. These are by no means Australia radical proposals but they Progress marshall coherent evidence Reviewed by Michael Browne* Authored by Miriam Lyons ed (2013) . and rational argument to In November 2013 thanks to Artistic Director and mover Centre for Policy Development: Haymarket provide alternatives to and shaker-in-chief, Lyndon Terracini and a generous the dominant neoliberal NSW (186 pp). ISBN 978-0-9808356-2-5 donation from Maureen Wheeler, Opera Australia finally world view that is so achieved a very long held ambition to mount Richard (paperback) enthusiastically embraced Wagner's towering four-opera epic "The Ring of the by the new Coalition Nibelungs". The project was already a box office success Reviewed by Ray Broomhill* government (and often more than a year before the curtain rose on the first Over the past few years the Sydney based ‘think tank’, reluctantly by Labor as well). performance. All tickets were sold out within a week the Centre for Policy Development (CPD), has emerged Most of the essays have been given a last minute of them going on general sale. My little band of Ring as one of Australia’s leading sources for progressive revision to incorporate at least some analysis of the pilgrims were among the lucky ones to secure tickets. policy ideas and research. Pushing our Luck is a impact of the election of the Abbott government in The themes of the Ring are large and universal: collection of ten essays published by the CPD on some the latter part of 2013. Not surprisingly, the authors greed and sacrifice; love and lust; trust and betrayal; of our most important ‘big policy issues’ that Australia do not see the chances of any progress towards the power and powerlessness; fear and bravery; law and currently faces. adoption of these policy ideas being enhanced by this lawlessness; serial adultery and incest; forgiveness and The essays cover a range of policy topics. Chapters on change of government. However, as John Wiseman revenge; fratricide; fate and choice; regime change learns about love, finds her independence and loses her taxation policy, the Gonski education reforms, the health writes (quoting from Milton Friedman!), our function and gratuitous inhumane cruelty to dragons! The Ring father's protection in a series of intimate scenes. system, industrial relations, welfare policy and climate is to ‘develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep has it all. It is gloriously over the top. At its core, greed We are introduced to the young Siegfried as a kid change present critiques of some of the current policy them alive and available until the politically impossible corrupts everything and love promises redemption. In who rules the double-decker bunk from the top shelf; issues at the federal level. Other chapters attempt to becomes politically inevitable’. This was certainly true the end the stolen gold and the accursed ring is returned his defeat of the bear a game he plays in a child's focus on future directions including where growth will when neoliberal ideas that had remained unfashionable to the Rhine. The source of all corruption is exorcised imagination. At the beginning of the fourth opera, the come from in the future, how to build a more resilient during the long Keynesian era re-emerged in the era of and the old authoritarian order (the Gods? the state?) lovers Brünnhilde and Siegfried rise not from her rock economy and how to counteract the next outburst of re-invigorated globalized capitalism. Thankfully, the work destroyed and we are returned to a state of nature as in most traditional productions, but from a mattress. neoliberal ‘culture wars‘. Each chapter critiques current of the CPD and other progressive research organisations where, hopefully, love rules and peace is restored. There is a post-coital tenderness to the image - simple, debates on the topic and concludes with a discussion of continues to keep progressive alternative ideas alive Director Neil Armfield and his designer Robert Cousins commonplace and affecting. When Wotan consults Erda, ‘ideas we need now’ in which the authors attempt to lay during this current era of neoliberal policy hegemony. have clearly avoided the conservative traditions and the earth goddess (just one of his former lovers and out some progressive proposals that can easily be fed *Ray Broomhill is Adjunct Associate Professor, given us something very contemporary. The first of mother to his Valkyrie daughters), she is portrayed as a into current debates. They also attempt to identify and the operas "Das Rheingold" opens with a stunning Australian Workplace Innovation and Social wise elderly woman in a wheelchair. He is contrite and challenge the key obstacles to such ideas being adopted. scene. An enormous mirror hangs over the slowly Research Centre, University of Adelaide shows both affection and respect. And there is much, In my view, the outstanding chapter in the book is on revolving stage. In reflection, a sea of bodies hangs in much more. taxation policy. Here, Adrian March, Miriam Lyons, suspended animation like figures from Michelangelo's At first I thought that this production had a smart Adam Stebbing and Shaun Wilson provide an excellent Last Judgement. Slowly the figures revolve, stir to life contemporary style but added little of substance. Yet discussion of the case for increasing government and stand - a crowd on a beach. It could be Coolangatta, Armfield strips away the grand to show us the intimate revenue. With admirable clarity they debunk the myths Bondi or St Kilda. It was not immediately apparent, but drama at its core and in doing so gives us a reflection associated with neoliberal arguments in favour of tax Hardcopy and e-book versions of from that moment, this production was going to be of ourselves. Surely, that is substance enough; and no cuts. They demonstrate that Australia has a tax regime about us. ‘Pushing our Luck’ are available betrayal of Wagner's titanic gift. that not only falls short of raising the revenue required for purchase at the website: www. An early surprise for me in my initiation to the Ring but which is grossly unfair. They document tax breaks All this is set to some of the most glorious music ever cpd.org.au or by post: Centre for is that though the themes are large, the drama is (overwhelmingly favouring the wealthy) that cost surprisingly intimate, and often patently domestic. The written. It was sung and acted splendidly by a wonderful the government $111 billion in revenue in 2011-12. Policy Development, PO Box K3, curse of the Ring plays itself out in a series of small, cast. Conductor Pietari Inkinen stood at the helm for Superannuation concessions alone cost the budget $30 Haymarket, NSW,1240. human dramas. And it is this intimate human scale that the whole 16 hours as the orchestra massaged wave billion. Armfield's production emphasises and relates with after wave of sound into our tingling spines. The time just melted away. It is not often the men outshine One of the things that stands out in these analyses of surprising clarity and resonance. There is tenderness the women in opera, but that was my impression. current policy issues is the contrast they provide to to the images he creates. Brünnhilde, the warrior- The gleaming heldentenor voices of Australia's own the strident neoliberal discourse that we have been daughter, a tom-boy dressed in army fatigues grows up, Stuart Skelton (Sigmund) and Stefan Vinke (Siegfried)

34 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 35 Reviews Reviews were alone worth the price of the ticket. To get two immolation/self-sacrifice, the destruction of Valhalla international tenors in their prime is a rare treat. (In and the restoration of nature. I found the passivity of Queensland we usually get sopranos on their way up and the crowd a troublesome image. Should they not stand Penny Davies and tenors on their way down.) in silent respect, applaud, or even cheer the revolution? No they just sit and watch; passive and indifferent. It The beautiful baritone singing of Warwick Fyfe could be the six o'clock news. Civil war in Syria? Is the Roger Ilott, Big Water (Alberich) all but stole the show in Das Rheingold. beer cold? Was this Armfield's intention or is it just my Jud Arthur added an almost too beautiful baritone RM 100, 2006; Restless Music, PO Box 438 imagination? It doesn't matter of course. The relevance to the ugly character of Hunding in Die Walküre. In of any Ring cycle is as much the audience's job as the Stanthorpe,Qld,4380; E: restless@halenet. Götterdämmerung, Daniel Sumegi hammered home director's. com.au; W: www.restlessmusic.com.au the role of Hagen in his stentorian hot chilli chocolate bass-baritone. Terje Stensvold gave his last performances The action replay is scheduled for three years time. Reviewed by Jack Humphrys of Wotan with not only the authority of his experience I could say I can't wait except that I don't have to. but with such freshness and beauty of tone that his The images and music of this production are still Years ago when I first heard Penny Davies and Roger Ilott announced retirement from the role must surely be reverberating in my skull weeks after the event. they were singing the song Rain about the massive rainfall premature. that the northern Queensland town of Tully receives. * Michael Browne is a marina manager, amateur In the very first image Armfield showed us at the Big Water continues this important theme as they sing and beach. In the very last he shows us in the bleachers. musician and opera lover fast becoming a self- record from their studio in southeast Queensland. With a We are spectators at Siegfried's funeral, Brünnhilde 's confessed Wagner tragic belief that music can help change the world, they sing of Margret Australia’s great river system in the title track Big Water and When the Cooper’s Coming Down, the latter being Adelaide writer Max Fatchen’s poem put to music. They do RoadKnight, this creatively with another piece of Fatchen verse, Listen - he sings with joy the to the Wind. Similarly, Ilott’s reworking of Harry Robertson’s Decade: 75-84 song, Old New England The Humpback Whale works well. As songwriters Davies Gary Shearston, Range. and Ilott chart the changes in regional Australia in Pushing FEST 601015, Festival Records, it Down (about the tough life of orchardists) and the days 2013; W: membersiinet.net. He is beautifully Reverently... when rail was big in Werris Creek and The Once –Great au/~margretr/ supported by his Railway Family. RM 180, Restless Music, 2013; PO Box fellow musicians- Reviewed by Jack Humphrys multi instrumentalist Great harmonies and musicianship underlie this collection, 438 Stanthorpe, Qld, 4380; E: restless@ Roger Ilott, vocalist but it is the engagement with issues of the day that is Seeing Margret RoadKnight’s musical halenet.com.au; W: wwwrestlessmusic. Penny Davies, hopeful here, something that has driven Davies and presentation at the Australian Greens' Ilott, since early in their careers, as sung about in Ilott’s Green New Deal conference in Melbourne com.au; Gary Shearston back catalogue: percussionist Jordan Davies-Ilott and others. interesting autobiographical track,Rusty Dusty Days. in October, 2009 was a lively, thoughtful gary shearston.com and entertaining experience. This The song Turn the World Around and their fine version of Along with songs from Shearston’s four other compilation based on four albums from Pete Seeger’s Turn! Turn! Turn! provide the framework of Reviewed by Jack Humphrys original albums released this century, a number the mid-seventies to the early eighties optimism that permeates this eclectic album. could be musical accompaniments to the wise replicates that experience of enjoyment This work came out just after Gary Shearston died Hugh McKay’s insightful book The Good Life-What and insight. in early July last year. It shows Shearston’s gift of Makes a Life Worth Living? (Macmillan, 2013). writing and singing songs of significance, continued An interpreter rather than writer of songs until the end. In the album notes, Roger Ilott, who co-produced across folk, blues and jazz for over fifty the album with Gary Shearston, has the final years, RoadKnight delivers fine renditions The theme of ‘ love and other struggles’ shine word: of songs that include: Ross Wilson’s Living through fine songs - the title track Reverently, About “Gary believed in love, social justice and peace. in the Land Of Oz, Malvina Reynold’s Two Just Loving You, To The Soul Of Life, Voices in the Ways, Doug Ashdown and Jimmy Stewart’s Wilderness and In the Casino of Life. Women in the He believed the power of song could make the world a better place. I’ll miss him and his cheery, Winter in America, Mike Rudd’s I’ll Be Gone Moon is the most intriguing track with Waiting for and her superb take on Bob Hudson’s, Girls the Light, a powerful antiwar anthem. but sometimes world-weary ’Hello mate’- we’ll all miss him- but feel privileged to have been In Our Town. The Australian context, particularly that New England able to help him get him so many of his musical Other songs include compositions by region in northern NSW, has always been there with thoughts, hopes and dreams out into the world.” Ralph McTell, Taj Mahal, Dory Previn, Dave Gary Shearston, wherever he has been in the world Dallwitz, Donovan and Bernard Bolan.

36 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 37 Well Read Australian Options Subscription Form by Frank Barbaro Disquiet among the financial community is considerable Please tick appropriate boxes, enter details and return to: Australian Options, Reply Paid 431, Goodwood SA 5034 with more than 200 business groups and investors Fax 08 8212 7566 (credit card payments) Online www.australian-options.org.au(Membership Options button) Class immobility – the ultimate equality lodging complaints with a Senate inquiry that ASIC was “In just the same way that a glass ceiling may be failing to properly investigate allegations. preventing talented poor kids from rising, there may be Annual Subscription a glass floor preventing untalented rich kids from falling.” Foxy nature 1 year (4 issues) $20 $15 concession $10 student Overseas postage: add $8 The above is a comment by Richard Reeves, a policy A biography of Roger Ailes’ rise from boyhood in Ohio to director at the Brookings Institution’s Centre on Children chairman of Fox News Channel reveals un unsurprising 2 years (8 issues) $40 $30 concession $20 student Overseas postage: add $16 and Families, on what he describes as the ‘stickiness’ at affinity between the person and the network. the top of the income distribution. 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Among other revealing anecdotes is the one by TV Close to a half (42 per cent) of the children raised in the producer Randi Harrison who said that while negotiating TOTAL $...... bottom income quintile stayed in that socio-economic her salary at CNBC in the 1980s Ailes offered an extra class and a similar number (39 per cent) of those raised $100 a week “if you agree to have sex with me whenever in the top quintile as children were locked in their socio- I want”. Your Details economic class. Ailes pioneered conservative opinion in prime time Name (please print) ...... His research suggests that ‘opportunity hoarding’ limited shows and its cable news often rates better than its Address ...... upward mobility in the USA where educational costs and MSNBC and CNN rivals...... practices favoured the sons and daughters of the well- In defending his book Sherman said: “I consider Roger Postcode connected. Ailes to be one of the most fascinating, consequential Phone (B) ...... (H)...... Fax (B)...... (H)...... “There is comparatively little interest in this stickiness figures in contemporary American life. I wrote this book Mobile...... Email...... at the top, in part because the politics might be to shed light on the full scope of his talents and power, discomforting.” which have found their fullest expression at Fox News.” Gift to (if applicable) It pays to volunteer Poetic PM Name (please print) ...... Even the investing community was surprised at Governments are pulling out all stops to deal with evil the corporate regulator’s Christmas deal to drop household bills – except perhaps seriously investigating Address ...... the price gouging. Prime Minister PM is even using investigations of alleged sharemarket manipulation by ...... Postcode...... National Bank Australia and investment bank UBS. poetic licence in flagging changes to the Renewable Energy Target. On a Sydney radio station the PM argued Phone (B) ...... (H)...... Fax (B)...... (H)...... 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Industry forecasts are that mobile Please debit my Mastercard Visa $ revenues will rise by $500 million in 2014 and Bank still being investigated. Card number Expiry Date of America Merrill Lynch research analyst Sameer Chopra expects mobile Name on card (please print) ...... Signature...... revenue to go from $15.92 billion of total revenue in 2013 to $16.41 billion in 2014. New and Second Hand Books It may be time to argue that the enormous discrepancies in • radical classics • peace studies charges mask unjust gain and put • politics • culture and philosophy an end to increasing charges on • alternative opinions • biographies communication and information. • a progressive view on pressing • great fiction and crime novels world issues 10% Discount for Members & Students Gift Vouchers 38 Australian Options Summer 2013/2014 Non violent direct action will be integral to the Convergence. One such action will take place on 24 April at a military/security installation in or near Canberra and How may we create an independent and in a manner which the participants will decide during the peaceful Australia? gathering at Silver Wattle.

How may we promote a foreign policy which builds Participation will also be invited in the Anzac eve Peace peace and nonviolent resolutions to conflict in our region Vigil at the Australian War Memorial later that day. This and beyond. artful, lantern lit commemoration assembles at sunset on Mt Ainslie and sets out to re-imagine the Anzac If these questions are close to your heart, come to commemoration and re-dream our war history. Canberra and join in a national convergence of peace advocates and activists. Finally participants will be invited to support the fourth annual "Lest we forget the Frontier Killings" Anzac Day March at the Australian War Memorial on 25 April. This will be led by long time land rights activist and 21-26 April 2014 sovereignty spokesperson, Michael Anderson (Nyoongar Ghurradjong Murri Ghillar). The Canberra Peace Convergence will take form as a series of independent events such as conference, lectures, forums, direct actions and vigils at venues in and around Canberra, including the Silver Wattle Quaker Centre. Further Information and

Its aim will be to inform, discuss, strategise, network and Registration build the community of peace workers. For inquiries and registration for the IPAN National Its focus will be on the cost of the US alliance in terms of Meeting and Conference: foreign wars, military bases, and military spending. Also in Contact Annette Brownlie 0431 597 256 focus will be the economic, social, cultural and [email protected] | ipan.org.au environmental costs of militarism. For inquiries & registration for the Peace Activists’ The Convergence will begin with the first national Open Space: meeting of Independent and Peaceful Australia Network Contact Graeme Dunstan 0407 951 688 (IPAN) on Easter Monday 21 April and be followed by a [email protected] | peacebus.com one day conference of keynote speakers and panels hosted by IPAN on 22 April in a Canberra venue yet to be For inquiries about accommodation at the Silver Wattle confirmed. Quaker Centre: Contact Trish and David Johnson 02 6238 0588 From 23 - 26 April, Silver Wattle Quaker Centre near [email protected] | silverwattle.org.au Bungendore will be the host for a residential (plus camping) Peace Activists’ Open Space gathering in which Thanks to the assistance of Unions ACT, a Peace the program and process will be set by its participants Convergence information stall will operate at the National when they assemble. Folk Festival, 17-21 April, Exhibition Park, Canberra. Attendees can meet the Convergence organisers and join In this Open Space the ideas and challenges brought forth the peace and independence dialogue there. by the IPAN conference will be further explored and plans for future actions agreed. FaceBook event/group: Canberra Peace Convergence 2014