Andrew Bolt's Blog, page 1888
January 28, 2011
Gillard pays for her levy
Julia Gillard is betting that voters will forget the pain of her flood levy by the time of the election, and praise instead the Government which by then has balanced the Budget again.
Trouble is, there will be quite some forgetting to do:
According to early polls, most Australians are against the levy, with The Australian's online poll recording more than 81 per cent of the 12,700 respondents opposed to it. Fairfax's online poll of 50,000 people had 74 per cent giving it the thumbs-down…
Ms Gillard was forced to slap down Kristina Keneally after the NSW Premier demanded changes to the proposed $1.8bn levy, claiming it was unfair to Sydneysiders because they faced higher living costs than other Australians…
"The commonwealth, before they lock this levy in stone, may do well to consider some fine tuning," Ms Keneally said…
"Families really are doing it tough . . . many in NSW have already given so much in charitable giving and will have to pay more through rising food and other costs as a result of the floods."
Some of Gillard's own colleagues are even angrier with her, astonished also by her Rudd-like lack of consultation:
As Ms Gillard embarked on a publicity offensive to sell the $5.6 billion flood rescue package, senior Labor figures were shaking their heads at the lack of consultation with Cabinet.
It is understood ministers only received a full briefing on the rescue package a few hours before they met in Canberra on Wednesday morning…
Labor MPs said they were being "belted" by the public reaction to the levy.
"This is one of the dumbest decisions I have ever seen - the feedback is we have made an atrocious decision," one Labor MP said.
Tony Abbott meanwhile goes very personal:
Tony Abbott will today accuse Julia Gillard of ripping off flood victims, donors and volunteers with her levy, arguing that invoking a disaster to justify a tax "compounds the wooden demeanour" the Prime Minister showed during the floods.
The Opposition Leader, addressing a Young Liberals conference on the Gold Coast, will claim Ms Gillard is out of her depth.... Mr Abbott will argue that the problem is not the government's spending on flood relief but its unwillingness to take spending restraint seriously, coupled with "its instinctive resort to a new tax to meet new challenges".
True. Gillard has so far delivered or promised not just this flood levy, but a new mining tax and a new "carbon tax" or equivalent, and consumers will next week be hit with this, too:
The increase for so-called "sin taxes" will add 19c to a pack of 50 cigarettes… It is the third tax rise for smokers in the past 12 months, including a 25 per cent rise last April to pay for the hospital reform plan.
Beer drinkers face a 16c tax rise on a full-strength slab of 24 cans - taking the total excise on the carton to $14.44.
In jus seven months, Gillard has cemented for herself the image of a tax-and-spend Labor spendthrift.
Then there is the problem of actually getting the levy through Parliament - although I doubt it will ultimately be blocked:
The Prime Minister needs the support of independents and the Greens in both houses of parliament to push the levy through but she is yet to secure the votes of Greens MP Adam Bandt, Queensland MP Bob Katter, NSW MP Tony Windsor, WA National Tony Crook and South Australian senator Nick Xenophon, who are in favour of a broader rethink of national disaster funding and insurance schemes.
The upside for Gillard is if she hangs tough and wins she'll have done a John Howard - she'll be seen as having stood for something. But the key to that is actually winning, and winning with something that doesn't go pear-shaped.
But pear-shaped is what so many of her plans have gone. There wasn't just the rorting and waste of the $16.2 billion Building the Education Revolution that she personally has responsibility for when Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister.
Consider the fate of the promises she made after succeeding Rudd:
- The new mining tax? Faces Greens and Coalition objections in Parliament, and tipped to raise far less than the Government hoped.
- the East Timor detention centre? No support from East Timor, and almost certain not to be built.
- an emissions trading scheme or "carbon tax"? Still no decision on either, and becoming less likely now that Gillard is threatening a flood levy as well.
- the "cash for clunkers" scheme? Scrapped this week before it even started.
- the $2.6 billion Parramatta to Epping rail link promised at the last minute during the election? To be deferred by the NSW Liberals if - or when - they win the March election.
Is there anything Gillard has actually achieved yet? You can see why standing firm on this levy is absolutely crucial to her.
The apartheid of the radical chic
Once it was the height of shame to like apartheid, and now it's considered the height of fashion:
FEDERAL Liberal MP Ken Wyatt says a recognition of indigenous Australians in the constitution may be considered by a parliamentary committee, despite his party's view that it should be confined to the preamble.
I'd say more about Wyatt, but I've been advised that to best preserve my right to free speech I should say nothing of the kind at the moment. Blame our fashionable laws.
(No comments until moderators are on deck.)
Not quite so unprecedented a disaster
Julia Gillard explains why we should pay her $1.8 billion flood levy:
I think Australians around the country realise this is a time where we need to pull together. We are seeing a natural disaster of unprecedented economic proportions still unfolding in our country.
Again:
Now there is a difference with this event. There is a difference with the scale of it. There is a difference with the economic effect.
Again:
The great floods of this summer have destroyed billions of dollars of wealth and robbed us of billions of dollars of income. In time they may prove to be the most expensive disaster in Australian history.
But wait.
Ryan Crompton is from Risk Frontiers, an independent research centre at Macquarie University devoted to the understanding and pricing of catastrophe risks for the insurance and emergency management sectors. He compares the insurance losses to date from these floods with those of previous years in Australia:
Not even close - yet.
Crompton's explanation, sent to Professor Roger Pielke Jr (who had an extensive post here on this):
The figure shows the Crompton and McAneney (2008) Figure 2(b) adjusted to include the seasons 2006/07 - 2009/10 and the loss from the recent Queensland floods (the only loss included in the current 2010/11 season). The losses in the four complete seasons added to the time series have been normalised to 2005/06 values as per Crompton and McAneney (2008) so that losses have been reduced from their original values for consistency with the other data. The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) has released updated figures (PDF) on the insurable losses in Queensland as a result of flooding, with the current estimate at $1.2 billion. With the final loss from this event not yet known and likely to increase, the original loss of $1.2 billion has been included in the above figure rather than the equivalent 2005/06 normalised value (which would be a bit lower).
(A summary of the Crompton and McAneney papers here.}
So what were the biggest insurance losses from natural disasters in our past? From Crompton and McAneney:
Compare this to the Insurance Council of Australia's preliminary report on insurance losses from the Queensland floods - which, note well, should go up as more claims are processed:
The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) today released updated figures on the insurable losses in Queensland as a result of flooding.
"The general insurance industry has now received 31,300 claims with an estimated insurable value of $1.2 billion," said Mr Rob Whelan, CEO of the ICA.
These figures include claims from regional QLD, Lockyer Valley, Toowoomba and Brisbane.
They do not include large industrial and mining claims.
(My bold,)
Some estimates say the insurable losses will be closer to $3 billion. This will also not include a lot of government-owned infrastructure.
Gillard may yet be right, but for now the media should be slower to repeat the claim, so useful for the Government, that the floods are already the worst natural disaster we've ever faced.
UPDATE
Two other Risk Frontiers researchers tackle another popular media meme - that the floods are not only unprecedented, but caused by global warming:
A study by MacQuarie University professors John McAneney and Kevin Rochie points to societal changes, increase in population, wealth and inflation as the reason the cost of destruction brought about the the flooding in Queensland rose and not climate change. Across different natural hazards and jurisdictions, some 22 separate peer-reviewed studies of weather-related natural disaster events now attest to this fact…
They note that the city of Brisbane, like many other towns in Queensland, is built on a floodplain.
They add:
Compared with the current disaster, there have been even bigger floods in the past: in 1841 and 1893 when flood waters topped 8.35 meters, some 3.9 m above the latest peak.
(Via Roger Pielke Jr. Thanks to reader Professor A.)
How the Internet may overthrow Egypt's strongman
This could go anywhere - and note how the Internet is now a threat to authoritarian regimes:
Egyptians woke Friday morning to find their Internet access shut down in much of the country and to the sight of heavy deployments of black-clad, truncheon-wielding riot police, as the country braced for massive antigovernment protests on ascale unseen in decades.
Opposition activists said the popular turnout on this traditional day of prayer and rest could prove to be decisive in determining whether the historic four-day-old protest movement gains momentum in its calls for the end of President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule, or fizzles beneath the weight of a violent government crackdown.
Egyptian demonstrators tore a portrait of President Hosni Mubarak during a protest against his rule in the northern port city of Alexandria.
At least five people have died in the unrest so far, news agencies reported.
The killing of an Alexandrina businessman last year has particularly infuriated the crowd (CAUTION: GRAPHIC FOOTAGE):
The Globe and Mail explains:
Khaled Said was a shy, soft-spoken 28-year-old who ran a small business in Alexandria.
A few hours later, two plainclothes officers emerged from a nearby police station to pay Mr. Said a visit.... Twenty minutes later, Mr. Said was dead…
An autopsy conducted by the Interior Ministry claimed Mr. Said suffocated after swallowing a bag of drugs he tried to hide from police.
A gruesome photograph, however, started circulating online, showing Mr. Said's battered face, with missing teeth, a ripped lower lip, a broken jaw and bloody head. Mr. Said's family has confirmed the photograph is of their son.
Mr. Said's case was not the first of alleged torture at the hands of Egypt's notorious police, nor was it the worst. However, it captured the imagination of young Egyptians who decided to turn to social media as a tool of protest.
A Facebook page appeared under the name "We Are All Khaled Said," which is run by an anonymous administrator who uses the moniker "Khaled Said…
Users post photos and video, and list the names of allegedly abusive police officers, the group organized a series of demonstrations in memory of Mr. Said after his death and, with a membership topping 500,000, it has become Egypt's most popular online human rights group.
In the immediate wake of protests in Tunisia, the page issued a rallying call for a massive demonstration to take place in Cairo on Jan. 25, national police day.
The video which might have got Khalid killed:
One of the videos that his murder prompted to be circulated about the police:
Another Arabic video whipping up the anger here - and, again, do not watch if graphic images of torture disturb you.
You can see how only the Internet could have got these images out to an educated public, as the "old media" of newspaper and television could not.
It seems that Rupert Murdoch was right - and his critics wrong - when he famously said, in one of his most prescient and costly speeches:
"Advances in the technology of telecommunications have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere"
Raining on the Bureau's warmism
Warwick Hughes asks whether the warming-evangelist Bureau of Meteorology is smudging evidence that Queensland had heavier rain in 1893 than it's had this summer.
(No comments until moderators are on deck.)
If this is "humanity", Doucet has got rocks in her head, too
And once again, the Taliban challenges us to remember the words of BBC presenter Lyse Doucet: A BBC presenter has attacked coverage of Afghanistan's ongoing war, claiming TV reporters are not covering the 'humanity of the Taliban'.
Lyse Doucet, a presenter and correspondent on BBC World News, was speaking at a discussion of TV reporting of the war in the country…
Asked what was missing in British coverage, she added: 'It may sound odd but the humanity of the Taliban, because the Taliban are a wide, very diverse group of people."
The latest example of humanity Taliban-style is here. Please don't click if scenes of a couple being stoned to death will disturb you.
(Thanks to reader Elizabeth.)
Goodbye, George
Then most will have missed Negus's interviewing of Tony Abbott, as pointlessly hostile as his interview of Julia Gillard was nauseatingly fawning:
Ten's revamped News at Five attracted 765,000 viewers in all people rankings before more than 330,000 people switched off as 6PM with George Negus went to air.
However, 300,000 viewers returned to the station for the 7PM Project.
Earlier this week the show ran a ludicrous piece insisting the Queensland floods proved the global warming alarmists right, neglecting these were the same people who earlier had warned us of "permanent drought", empty dams and dry rivers.
The problem with putting Leftist pap to air is not just that it puts you on the wrong side of the key debates, but that it makes you so damn boring. In journalism, that's an even worse crime, I'm afraid.
Howes may have to go hungry while Cuba prepares his order
A nice letter from Australian Workers Union boss Paul Howes to the Cuban Ambassador, Pedro Monzon:
Read on for Howes' indictment.
But what's the jailing of dissidents to the far Left when it's in the name of building a socialist paradise? And so Tim Anderson, senior lecturer in political economy at Sydney University (but of course!), is outraged by Howes' impertinence. Doesn't Howes know that Cuban dissidents are just paid lackeys of the US hegemony, conspiring against the Revolution?
Cubans understand very well that these groups—like the "Ladies in White", the "independent journalists" and the "independent human rights monitors"—are business operations. A Cuban friend of mine who works in one of the European Embassies in Havana is asked to hand out $50 to each of the "Ladies in White", and $30 each to their companions, for each event or action in which they participate. The money comes to this embassy from the US Interests Section in Havana…
The CUTC (United Council of Cuban Workers), which the AWU claims to support, is run by Pedro Pablo Alvarez Ramos from Miami. He is cited by Paul Howes as an ex-political prisoner who was jailed for his union activities. This is quite false. Alvarez Ramos was jailed in 2003 for paid collaboration with the US government in programs specifically designed to overthrow the constitutional order in Cuba.
Oh, that's all right, then. The unelected Cuban regime must be right and Amnesty International wrong.
Amazing, this casual smearing of Cubans jailed for their views - by an Australian academic who is paid for his own. Of course, Anderson realises there is one point he should concede - but excuse by pretending that Cuba's government-controlled union movement is just like our own ACTU:
It is true that the CTC (Cuba's trade union federation) works very closely with the Cuban state and the Cuban Communist Party. This is what is expected of a socialist system. Even in capitalist Australia most of the trade unions are embedded in the Labor Party, forcing them to back wars, privatisations and the interests of giant corporations. In Cuba the state-union link has meant the CTC, along with the Federation of Cuban Women, is deeply involved in policy development and has achieved some substantial gains.
How strange. The (democratic) ACTU's (loose) links to the Government are sneered at by Anderson; the (undemocratic) Cuban trade union federation's control by the Government is applauded. Anderson can even cheer the Cuban regime's mass sackings of workers, when he'd never forgive sackings by, say, an elected Coalition Government here:
Paul Howes makes an off-hand remark about the CTC supposedly collaborating in mass "sackings" in public enterprises.... Almost all current lay-offs are for productivity reasons...
Oh, that's all right, then, too. Not like layoffs in Australia, inevitably done just because our bosses are bastards.
Finally, Anderson then lists all the splendors that Cuba's socialists masters have showered on their masses:
All Cubans maintain rent-free and mortgage-free housing, free health care, free education for life and subsidised basic foods. Social security, paid maternity leave (for one year) and free child care (from when the child can walk) is guaranteed for all. Have any Australian unions achieved this?
Hmm. Maybe not, and for obvious good reasons that explain why our own workers live incomparably richer lives, and don't feel the need to flee their country in boats.
But here's a few free things Australian workers do enjoy that Anderson unaccountably fails to mention:
Free speech
Free enterprise
Free movement
A free vote
Freedom from arbitrary arrest
Freedom
Have the Cuban unions achieved this, Tim?
January 27, 2011
Even Gillard's friends aren't buying
Julia Gillard is having trouble selling her levy even to a Left-of-centre David Koch, and gets cranky at the scepticism on 3AW, too.
I don't think this is going well, yet Gillard may yet have the last laugh. The levy is designed to save Gillard, not Queensland, and could do it if it helps her meet her real objective - to return the Budget to surplus by 2012-13, just before the election. This will help her to fool voters into thinking she's a good economic manager, after all, By then, she hopes, they'll have forgotten the pain of the levy, which is largely felt by the more affluent Liberal-leaning anyway. And the many marginal seats of Queensland will be reminded of the big spend. Win, win, win, despite the waste, waste, waste.
Truly, voters deserve the governments they elect.
(Thanks to reader Joel.)
Save the planet! Burn people for heat
The obvious analogy is to people who followed another creed that appealed to their totalitarian instincts:
"Redditch Borough Council, with a commitment to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, is considering proposals to re-use energy at its crematorium to heat a nearby leisure centre," a spokesman said.
(Thanks to many readers.)
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