Australia

Well worth a read

Where are we goin’…….?

 

ALP has spread Europe's disease

·                                 GREG SHERIDAN, FOREIGN EDITOR The Australian March 21, 2013 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/alp-has-spread-europes-disease/story-e6frg76f-1226601945553

SIX years of Labor government, by this year's election in September, will result in a new Australia. We have contracted the European disease. Labor has taken us towards the most spectacularly unsuccessful model of government in the developed world today. We will have almost all the European pathologies but none of the European security of a big local market and a benign security environment.

Europe's present distress is our future. Everyone knows that part of Europe's problem is excessive welfare. As Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has remarked, Europe has 7 per cent of the world's population, 25 per cent of global gross domestic product and 50 per cent of the world's welfare payments.

Julia Gillard is taking us far down that road. The disability insurance and Gonski reforms combined will require more than $20 billion a year from Canberra.

But European dysfunction also involves a kind of corporate-state approach to government and culture best exemplified in Benito Mussolini's Italy. Before he was a fascist, Mussolini was a socialist. The corporate state envisaged government leadership of the economy and culture. InEurope, many of the biggest firms are state-owned or government linked, public broadcasters are powerful and universities are mainly state institutions.

Labor's astonishing attack on the free media, through its attempt to arm government with a sanction over what newspapers can publish, is European in spirit, though worse even than most European jurisdictions.

The corporate-state approach to ideology and culture has been a terrible failure in Europe.

We are copying that failure. Here, the ABC gets $1bn a year from government. It has a strong left-of-centre bias. That means it tends to favour more government regulation, especially of its competitors, and a narrow view of what is acceptable content in the media.

It was striking to see in the parliamentary committee this week Labor and Green politicians referring to particular columns or editorials they disagreed with. The context was meant to be an inquiry about the structural regulation of the media. Citing perfectly mainstream columns they simply didn't like suggested media regulation would be influenced by these dislikes. Manifestly, this is a terrible way to arrive at government regulation. It is a naked example of politics intimidating a free and independent institution.

In Australia, most culture-forming activity is ultimately funded by the state. As well as the ABC there are the government-funded universities and the countless journals, blogs, publishing houses and the like that the ABC and the universities run. The commercial media are perhaps the only really independent, big culture-forming institutions wholly beyond the endless, hydraulic ideological pressure that comes from government funding.

This is very similar to much of Europe. The US is different, with its rich tradition of commercial broadcasters, private universities and independent think tanks.

Social ideological orthodoxy has been prominent in Europe, and a terrible failure. It has led to revolts by alienated parts of the electorate, who often choose irresponsible vehicles for electoral protest, in part because they have been excluded from mainstream political discussion.

European political culture has typically seen the triumph of an urban, professional, symbol-wielding class, employed mostly by governments and government-funded bodies. Part of their ideological outlook is a contempt for traditional Christianity. Their trenchant inner-city values involve a desire to mock Christianity. We see the local version of this on ABC TV when Shaun Micallef is broadcast exclaiming: "Jesus H. Christ on a bike", or in the sitcom based on life at the Lodge in which a staff member bears the name Jesus, to facilitate lame jokes confusing profanity with the name of the founder of the Christian religion.

Ironically, if newspapers did this, under the government's regulatory proposals they would probably be censured, but in the ideological world view of the ABC this is cutting-edge satire and moral courage.

In countless specific policy areas, Labor has taken Australia down the failed European road, often outdoing even the Europeans, as with our uniquely costly carbon tax. Similarly, defence spending is savagely reduced, replicating European insouciance about national security without the benign strategic environment Europe enjoys. Since Labor changed policy, about 35,000 boatpeople have arrived in Australia. Most of them will stay permanently and bring two or three relatives under family reunion. The majority are unskilled Muslim immigrants never chosen by Australian policy. The vast majority of Muslims are law-abiding, good citizens but the minority who experience difficulties is substantial. The key difference between Australia and Europe is that we have emphasised skilled migrants while Europe's experience has been unskilled immigration, much of it asylum-seeker, and generous family reunion. As a result, immigration is a disaster in Europe.

Labor's economic management has been poor. It inherited a $20bn surplus and has delivered consistent deficits. Gross government debt is $270bn and rising. The economy looks good only because of John Howard's inheritance and because the minerals boom has made every resources-based economy temporarily look good. But Australia is making no preparation for lean years ahead.

The labour market is being reregulated at a frenetic pace, replicating one of the central failings of European economies.

In foreign policy we have moved towards the European consensus and away from the Australian tradition on issues such as Israel and become more affected by the UN mindset than our distinctive circumstances.

Above all, government has become a thing of electoral symbolism, short-term fixes, bribes to sectional interests. The fiscal rigour and micro-economic reform of the Hawke-Keating Labor Party is utterly gone.

The centre-left vote in Australia is permanently fractured and this contributes to Labor's inability to make decisions encompassing the whole national interest.

No Labor government in memory has been so dependent on a dwindling trade union base, which it is using coercive government power to resuscitate.

Europe's staggering failure is our new model.

MDB- The Top and the Bottom

There is something neat about focusing on the Snowy Scheme at the top of the predominant part, in water flow terms, of the MDB system on the one hand and the Lower Lakes and the Barrages at the bottom, on the other. 

I see better management of both as the most important issues in need of reform with the greatest opportunity for better outcomes both environmentally and productively. Yet the whole Plan process ruled out examination of the management of the Snowy Scheme and the Barrages.

The Big Issues

I recently attended my "umpteenth" Agricultural Outlook Conference in Canberra. I am very aware of the frailties of human memory, but did feel that it was one of the best I have attended.I was particularly interested in the FAO and OECD papers on food supply, population growth,etc.

The achievements of India and China,in lifting millions out of poverty seems to me to demonstrate what can be done and provides great hope for the future of the planet and mankind.

Two key principles give rise to my optimism-

• There seems to be a consensus that global population will increase from the present 6.6bn to 9.1bn by 2050. This surely must place pressure on the environment.
• It has been clearly demonstrated that as nations lift themselves out of poverty, with much improved education, particularly of women, population growth ceases. Meanwhile the very poor countries have the greatest population growth and population growth has effectively ceased in the developed world.

In any event, reducing disease and  poverty in the poorest nations seems to me to be the biggest challenge facing the world and is a great humanitarian endeavour.

I have great sympathy for the position of the "Skeptical Environmentalist", Bjorn Lomborg, who argues that rather than spending billions on attempting to change global temperatures we should simply adapt to what he believes is a warming reality and apply those billions to lifting living standards in the poorest nations.

This assumes that this can be done and that throwing money at the problem is the answer. It is, of course, much more complicated than that, with politics in sub-saharan Africa and elsewhere being a major stumbling block. However, the Indian achievements and the Chinese adoption of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (free market principles/capitalism) demonstrates what can be done. Two papers at the Outlook Conference relate. The first deals with population growth and food production prospects. The second deals with food security and the importance of trade issues.

Murray Darling Basin and the Lower Lakes

I have long contended that the human mind has great difficulty in dealing with the mass of data which surrounds us. Particularly if you are of a curious nature.The only way we can cope is to make generalisations and, as it were, file them for future use. This carries with it the seeds of its own destruction. First, there is the problem of new knowledge making the generalisations invalid. I think it was Einstein who said "when the facts change, I change my position. What do you do ,Sir." Second, there is the problem of dynamism, in the sense of constant change.

In the Lower Lakes debate it is the largely the second dilemma that comes in to play. Few people seem to get their mind around the massive variability of our rainfall and thus river flows. We see people generalising about whether the Lakes were fresh or salty. The fact is they were both at different times, and often a "bit of both".

Murray Darling Basin Plan-The Truth Dawns

Quotes from a recent MDBA report, as so often happens, demonstrate how as managers get closer to the practical implementation stage they realise the errors in their theoretical planning.
Quotes
"Natural flows in the Murray–Darling Basin are highly variable, with water-dependent ecosystems developing and evolving within this flow environment. The high degree of uncertainty over future inflows and the variable nature of environmental demands point to the importance of flexible and adaptive institutional arrangements."

AND

"The way in which environmental water is managed and how environmental water requirements are specified will influence the environmental benefits and socio-economic effects associated with holding a given portfolio of environmental water. Many of the opportunities to improve outcomes involve environmental water managers using available flexibility to manage their water holdings. Exercising flexibility is likely to require more comprehensive governance."

The reality is that anyone with a basic understanding of this variability would never have asked CSIRO to come up with Sustainable Diversion Limits without specifically relating them to ever changing flow levels. To argue that the diversion limits are averages doesn't help as the "spreads around the average" are so large that the averages are statistically meaningless. As a consequence the base plan, on these grounds as well as others, is deeply flawed.

As I have consistently argued when dealing with this massive variability,two words should dominate your vocabulary-conserve and flexibility. It seems that at least and at last, the latter word is emerging. However, given this point and all the problems arising from writing what is basically an environmental plan, as distinct from a socio-economic and environmental plan, it would be best to rescind the Water Act (2007) and start again. This would have the further benefit of distancing the planning from the Millenium Drought environment where many natural drought impacts were falsely attributed to "over-allocation".

Nigel Lawson and The Royal Society

I have long admired Nigel Lawson's (Nigela's Dad!) consistent, questioning position. He is big on adaptation (if necessary), which we humans have proved to be remarkably good at. I would particularly draw your attention to his fourth paragraph. 

LORD LAWSON’S LETTER TO SIR PAUL NURSE

·         Date: 27/02/13

·          

·         The Global Warming Policy Foundation

Sir Paul Nurse

President

The Royal Society

6-9 Carlton House Terrace

London SW1Y 5AG

February 25, 2013

Dear Sir Paul

My attention has been drawn to a speech you gave last month at Melbourne University, in which you chose to criticise me by name in terms which bear no relation to the truth. In the interests of accuracy, I have obtained a full transcript. I recognise that, as a distinguished geneticist, you are not a climate scientist, and may therefore feel ill at ease discussing the complex issue of climate policy. But that is no excuse for wanton misrepresentation both of the issues involved and of my own position.

So far as the latter is concerned, you claim that I “would choose two points and say ‘look, no warming’s taking place’, knowing that all the other points that you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case”. That is a lie. I have always made clear that there was a modest degree of recorded global warming during the 20^th century (see, for example, my book An Appeal to Reason, which you have clearly not taken the trouble to read). However, so far from choosing any arbitrary ‘two points’, I was drawing attention to the fact that this warming trend appears to have ceased, since – contrary to the predictions of what you describe as “consensus scientific opinion” – there has been no further recorded global warming at all for at least the past 15 years, as even the IPCC Chairman, Dr Pachauri, has now conceded. Whatever the precise reason for this, it cannot simply be dismissed or denied.

Again, you assert that the reason I do not share your position is that I am one of those “who have political or ideological views that lead them to be unhappy with the actions that would be necessary [sic] should global warming be due to human activity… Because these actions are likely to include measures which involve greater concerted world action, curtailing the freedom of individuals or companies and nations, and curbing some kinds of industrial activity, potentially risking economic growth.”

There is nothing ‘political or ideological’ about my dissent from your position. It is true that I value individual freedom, and consider it immoral to be recommending measures which would hold back growth in the developing world and condemn hundreds of millions to avoidable poverty. But my objection to the policy you favour (see, again, my book, where it is clearly set out) is that it is not cost-effective (even if it were globally attainable, which the recent collapse of the Kyoto process suggests is not the case); and that, should an active policy response prove necessary, the only rational course is adaptation.

On the wider issue, I cannot accept your contention that only ‘scientists’ should decide the appropriate policy response. The role of scientists (or, rather, climate scientists) is to try and understand the complex science and its implications, and to convey that understanding, with all its attendant uncertainties, to democratically elected policy makers, who are then responsible for framing policy, taking full account not merely of the science but also, crucially, of the economics – which, insofar as you consider it, you appear to dismiss as not being “as evidence-based or as rational as science”.

In conclusion, I hope that, on reflection, you will recognise that there should be a difference between the behaviour appropriate to a President of the Royal Society and acting as a shop steward for some kind of scientists’ closed shop. Not to do so can only bring the Royal Society into further disrepute, which cannot be in the public interest.

Yours sincerely,

The Rt Hon Lord Lawson

Chairman

The Global Warming Policy Foundation