Centre for Policy Development's Blog, page 115
June 27, 2011
Ben Eltham | When the Wild West Whinges
The Republic of WA? Come off it. It's time to let go of the notion that Western Australia is being dudded on GST revenue and look at the reality of how states pay their bills, writes Ben Eltham.
Originally published at New Matilda.
Julia Gillard was in Perth on the weekend, speaking at the State Conference of the Western Australian Labor Party.
Our increasingly beleaguered Prime Minister was in an emollient mood.
"Australians, together — I can't imagine us apart," she told the assembled unionists andALP members.
"I can't imagine the Australian economy without the great firms and workers of the West," she continued, in the characteristically stilted prose Australians are becoming sadly familiar with. "I can't imagine my own footy club without Brad Hardie's Brownlow. I can't imagine my own party without John Curtin's courage, my own bookshelf without Tim Winton's Cloudstreet, or our effort in Afghanistan without Ben Roberts-Smith."
If the Prime Minister was in soft-sell mode, explaining at length how much she values Western Australia, it might be because Labor is quickly becoming a toxic brand in the west.
Relations between Canberra and the west have been more than a little fractious of late, and the WA branch of the party is unpopular with voters — nearly as unpopular, it might be said, as the federal party. At last year's federal election, the state that has produced Labor luminaries of the calibre of Bob Hawke and John Curtin returned only three Labor members in the lower house. Defence Minister Stephen Smith, one of the cabinet's best performers, held the formerly seat of Perth with Green preferences.
Endorsing the state ALP's underwhelming leader Eric Ripper, Gillard told Fairfax Radio that "It is tough days for Labor in WA, there's no point glossing over that, but I think Eric is showing a great deal of fighting spirit." There is indeed no point in glossing over it: Eric Ripper is struggling. WA Premier Colin Barnett, in contrast, is currently favoured in the opinion polls, and is attacking the Gillard government in Canberra with an enthusiasm that recalls the hey-day of hardline western conservatives such as Richard Court.
Matters have not been helped by the mining tax debate, which has naturally been as its most intense in the west. The original version of the mining tax, known as the Resource Super Profits Tax, was dumped in the days after Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, and the current incarnation, known as the Minerals Resource Rent Tax, has yet to be introduced to federal parliament.
That hasn't stopped Fortescue mining magnate Andrew Forrest from threatening to lead a High court challenge to the tax, apparently supported by the Western Australian government. Earlier his month, Barnett told the ABC's Chris Uhlmann that "if there is a High Court challenge from the mining industry, the West Australian Government will most likely intervene in support of that."
"This mineral resource rent tax is the most clumsy, inept example of public policy I have seen in twenty years," he added, which is quite a statement from a Premier who has already raised mining royalties twice in twelve months.
A consistent theme of Barnett's anti-Canberra rhetoric has been the state's allocation ofGST revenue. Western Australians are constantly told that they are being dudded by Canberra when it comes to the GST. The result, they are told, is that billions of rightfully Western Australian tax dollars are sent "over east" to Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne in the form of mining royalties and reductions in their "fair" share of the GST.
On the face of it, the numbers support the assertion. Compare the 2011 budget papers of Western Australia to a state like Victoria, which has the lowest level of mining in the country, and you can see the disparity. While Victoria receives nearly half its state budget revenue in the form of GST and other Commonwealth grants, for Western Australia the figure is only 38 per cent.
But there's a reason for this. Commonwealth GST revenue is split up amongst the states in a complex process called "equalisation" by a special body called the Commonwealth Grants Commission. And the Grants Commission takes into account far more than just the population of each state when it allocates the GST. One of the key factors is the ability of each state and territory to raise its own revenue, through the relatively narrow set of taxes, levies and royalties available to them.
As the Grants Commission explains, in a special box in the issue in its 2011 Update Report, "Equalisation seeks to offset intrinsic differences between the States. In the case of mining royalties the intrinsic difference is their mineral endowment, measured by the per capita value of production."
And when it comes to mining royalties, the difference is enormous. Thanks to the mining boom, WA is swimming in revenue. This year the state will levy nearly $5 billion in mining royalties.
As the state's 2011 budget papers explain, "the major driver of growth in the State's revenue is mining royalties. Following exceptional growth of 79% in 2010-11, royalties are forecast to rise by a further $635 million or 15.3% in 2011-12 (to $4.8 billion), mainly on the back of rising iron ore prices."
Another reason Western Australia's Treasury is raking in so many mining dollars is that the Western Australian government has been increasing the royalty rate. And yet, in contrast the explosion of public anger in the west over the RSPT, the reaction to Colin Barnett's two royalty rises has been muted. This may be because Barnett's government has shown a deft touch in negotiations. It may also be because opposition to Labor's mining tax was politically motivated.
Other states have to make do with far less mining revenue. In contrast to Western Australia, Victoria earns the princely sum of $47 million from royalties — or less than 1 per cent of Western Australia's take. To put it in perspective, Victoria earns five times more from traffic camera fines than it makes in mining royalties.
And because of this, the Commonwealth Grants Commission adjusts the amount of GSTrevenue it gives to WA — downwards.
Not surprisingly, the Western Australian government doesn't like this. But it's hard to argue with the Grants Commission's logic. Economically speaking, this is precisely the point of a federal system like Australia's.
If Western Australia was an independent nation, it wouldn't have to send any money to Canberra. But it would face a different and much tougher set of challenges. The sovereign nation of WA would have to maintain its own defence force, its own currency and its own central bank. But, driven by booming commodity prices, a "Western Australian dollar" would likely be worth far more than the Aussie dollar is now. The result would be a super-charged version of the current excesses.
The pressures currently faced by all those parts of the WA economy not linked to mining right would be even tougher: an independent WA would almost certainly face a huge inflation challenge, for instance, necessitating very high interest rates. Yes, the state would benefit from cheap imports, but its exports (including its mining exports) would be more more expensive. Labour costs would probably be higher, and a small population would have to contend with the significant infrastructure needs and social tensions created by the difficulty of managing such a large boom — all on their own.
In contrast, by forcing the state of Western Australia to send money "over east", the mining boom benefits the whole of Australia, by helping to finance schools, roads and hospitals in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. In return, Western Australia gets to belong to a much larger nation, with all the implicit advantages that brings. These include the protection of the Australian Defence Force, as well as the human capital available from national bodies like the CSIRO, the federal courts and public service, not to mention Australia's millions of eastern workers and dozens of eastern universities.
Ultimately, Western Australia's push for more GST revenue ignores a more fundamental truth. The minerals in the Pilbara do not just belong to Western Australia — they belong to the entire nation of Australia. Despite plenty of idle talk of secession, it's a nation of which WA is still a part.
Ben Eltham| When the Wild West Whinges
The Republic of WA? Come off it. It's time to let go of the notion that Western Australia is being dudded on GST revenue and look at the reality of how states pay their bills, writes Ben Eltham.
Originally published at New Matilda.
Julia Gillard was in Perth on the weekend, speaking at the State Conference of the Western Australian Labor Party.
Our increasingly beleaguered Prime Minister was in an emollient mood.
"Australians, together — I can't imagine us apart," she told the assembled unionists andALP members.
"I can't imagine the Australian economy without the great firms and workers of the West," she continued, in the characteristically stilted prose Australians are becoming sadly familiar with. "I can't imagine my own footy club without Brad Hardie's Brownlow. I can't imagine my own party without John Curtin's courage, my own bookshelf without Tim Winton's Cloudstreet, or our effort in Afghanistan without Ben Roberts-Smith."
If the Prime Minister was in soft-sell mode, explaining at length how much she values Western Australia, it might be because Labor is quickly becoming a toxic brand in the west.
Relations between Canberra and the west have been more than a little fractious of late, and the WA branch of the party is unpopular with voters — nearly as unpopular, it might be said, as the federal party. At last year's federal election, the state that has produced Labor luminaries of the calibre of Bob Hawke and John Curtin returned only three Labor members in the lower house. Defence Minister Stephen Smith, one of the cabinet's best performers, held the formerly seat of Perth with Green preferences.
Endorsing the state ALP's underwhelming leader Eric Ripper, Gillard told Fairfax Radio that "It is tough days for Labor in WA, there's no point glossing over that, but I think Eric is showing a great deal of fighting spirit." There is indeed no point in glossing over it: Eric Ripper is struggling. WA Premier Colin Barnett, in contrast, is currently favoured in the opinion polls, and is attacking the Gillard government in Canberra with an enthusiasm that recalls the hey-day of hardline western conservatives such as Richard Court.
Matters have not been helped by the mining tax debate, which has naturally been as its most intense in the west. The original version of the mining tax, known as the Resource Super Profits Tax, was dumped in the days after Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, and the current incarnation, known as the Minerals Resource Rent Tax, has yet to be introduced to federal parliament.
That hasn't stopped Fortescue mining magnate Andrew Forrest from threatening to lead a High court challenge to the tax, apparently supported by the Western Australian government. Earlier his month, Barnett told the ABC's Chris Uhlmann that "if there is a High Court challenge from the mining industry, the West Australian Government will most likely intervene in support of that."
"This mineral resource rent tax is the most clumsy, inept example of public policy I have seen in twenty years," he added, which is quite a statement from a Premier who has already raised mining royalties twice in twelve months.
A consistent theme of Barnett's anti-Canberra rhetoric has been the state's allocation ofGST revenue. Western Australians are constantly told that they are being dudded by Canberra when it comes to the GST. The result, they are told, is that billions of rightfully Western Australian tax dollars are sent "over east" to Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne in the form of mining royalties and reductions in their "fair" share of the GST.
On the face of it, the numbers support the assertion. Compare the 2011 budget papers of Western Australia to a state like Victoria, which has the lowest level of mining in the country, and you can see the disparity. While Victoria receives nearly half its state budget revenue in the form of GST and other Commonwealth grants, for Western Australia the figure is only 38 per cent.
But there's a reason for this. Commonwealth GST revenue is split up amongst the states in a complex process called "equalisation" by a special body called the Commonwealth Grants Commission. And the Grants Commission takes into account far more than just the population of each state when it allocates the GST. One of the key factors is the ability of each state and territory to raise its own revenue, through the relatively narrow set of taxes, levies and royalties available to them.
As the Grants Commission explains, in a special box in the issue in its 2011 Update Report, "Equalisation seeks to offset intrinsic differences between the States. In the case of mining royalties the intrinsic difference is their mineral endowment, measured by the per capita value of production."
And when it comes to mining royalties, the difference is enormous. Thanks to the mining boom, WA is swimming in revenue. This year the state will levy nearly $5 billion in mining royalties.
As the state's 2011 budget papers explain, "the major driver of growth in the State's revenue is mining royalties. Following exceptional growth of 79% in 2010-11, royalties are forecast to rise by a further $635 million or 15.3% in 2011-12 (to $4.8 billion), mainly on the back of rising iron ore prices."
Another reason Western Australia's Treasury is raking in so many mining dollars is that the Western Australian government has been increasing the royalty rate. And yet, in contrast the explosion of public anger in the west over the RSPT, the reaction to Colin Barnett's two royalty rises has been muted. This may be because Barnett's government has shown a deft touch in negotiations. It may also be because opposition to Labor's mining tax was politically motivated.
Other states have to make do with far less mining revenue. In contrast to Western Australia, Victoria earns the princely sum of $47 million from royalties — or less than 1 per cent of Western Australia's take. To put it in perspective, Victoria earns five times more from traffic camera fines than it makes in mining royalties.
And because of this, the Commonwealth Grants Commission adjusts the amount of GSTrevenue it gives to WA — downwards.
Not surprisingly, the Western Australian government doesn't like this. But it's hard to argue with the Grants Commission's logic. Economically speaking, this is precisely the point of a federal system like Australia's.
If Western Australia was an independent nation, it wouldn't have to send any money to Canberra. But it would face a different and much tougher set of challenges. The sovereign nation of WA would have to maintain its own defence force, its own currency and its own central bank. But, driven by booming commodity prices, a "Western Australian dollar" would likely be worth far more than the Aussie dollar is now. The result would be a super-charged version of the current excesses.
The pressures currently faced by all those parts of the WA economy not linked to mining right would be even tougher: an independent WA would almost certainly face a huge inflation challenge, for instance, necessitating very high interest rates. Yes, the state would benefit from cheap imports, but its exports (including its mining exports) would be more more expensive. Labour costs would probably be higher, and a small population would have to contend with the significant infrastructure needs and social tensions created by the difficulty of managing such a large boom — all on their own.
In contrast, by forcing the state of Western Australia to send money "over east", the mining boom benefits the whole of Australia, by helping to finance schools, roads and hospitals in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. In return, Western Australia gets to belong to a much larger nation, with all the implicit advantages that brings. These include the protection of the Australian Defence Force, as well as the human capital available from national bodies like the CSIRO, the federal courts and public service, not to mention Australia's millions of eastern workers and dozens of eastern universities.
Ultimately, Western Australia's push for more GST revenue ignores a more fundamental truth. The minerals in the Pilbara do not just belong to Western Australia — they belong to the entire nation of Australia. Despite plenty of idle talk of secession, it's a nation of which WA is still a part.
SNEAK PREVIEW: How many public servants is enough?
Between 1991 and 1999, the Keating and Howard Governments reduced staff levels across Australian Public Service (APS) agencies by almost one third. Since the low point of 1999, staff numbers have gradually returned to 1991 levels.
In the first of a series of publications, CPD's public service program has today released our Staffing the Public Service Report: How many public servants is enough?
The report examines staffing levels and trends during the last 10-20 years and the political rhetoric that has accompanied and (at times) justified these trends. Our analysis highlights a growing proportion of senior level positions, widening gender disparities and a significant under-representation of people with disabilities and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees. Women represent more than 80% of part-time APS employees and are over-represented in non-ongoing positions.
Download Staffing the Public Service: How many public servants is enough?
This report is the first installment of the upcoming report on the Australian Public Service. More on this soon.
ROUNDTABLES: The World's Best Public Service?: How we are tracking
Our Public Service Program aims to encourage progressive organisations and individuals to contribute to the public debate about our public service. As part of this, following the release of the first report we will be holding roundtable discussions to present our research findings and discuss public service trends and issues. If you're a public servant or a researcher in this area or think you may have something to contribute, you may be interested in joining us for this much needed discussion.
Event details will be available soon, with roundtables to be held in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in August. If you're interested in participating, please email James Whelan, CPD's Public Service Research Director at james.whelan(at)cpd.org.au*
(* To avoid spam we write email addresses like this. Please replace "(at)" with "@".)
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June 23, 2011
Chris Bonnor| Public Funding of Private Education is Unconscionable
Arguing against the proposition was Amanda Vanstone, former federal education minister, Dr Kevin Donnelly, one of Australia's leading education commentators and year 12 student Andrew Elder.
See the controversial debate, here.
Ben Eltham | Telstra Deal Locks in NBN
Yesterday's deal between Telstra and NBNCo will make it tricky for Tony Abbott to wind back the broadband network. That's a good thing for Labor – and for us, writes Ben Eltham.
Read Ben's article at New Matilda, here.
Regular New Matilda readers will know I am a supporter of the National Broadband Network and a grudging admirer of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's ability to kick heads and get deals done. This week, he added another achievement to his impressive ministerial record with the formal signing of a deal with Optus and Telstra to move the NBNone step closer.
Yesterday's announcement of a three-way deal between the National Broadband Network Company (NBNCo), Telstra and Optus is a crucial milestone for this government. Politically, it's a desperately needed win amid the orgy of media coverage over the anniversary of Kevin Rudd's replacement by Julia Gillard. Economically, it's equally important, suggesting that the NBN will now almost certainly proceed. In policy terms, it's a major and welcome reform.
Indeed, unusually for this government, the policy implications are far more important than the media spin. This deal is the penultimate piece of the puzzle in the structural separation of Telstra.
The term "structural separation" is often bandied about, but rarely defined. The key issue here is the legacy of repeated policy failures by successive governments, going back to Kim Beazley's time as the communications minister in the Hawke government. As Australia's telecommunications infrastructure modernised, little was done to address the market power of Telecom, the old publicly owned monopoly that built and owned the copper wires travelling to every Australian home.
When John Howard privatised Telstra in 1997 the result was a vertically integrated behemoth. Not only was Telstra the largest player in the retail market, it was also an aggressive and ruthless monopolist in the wholesale market. Those of us who have had to wait weeks or even months to get ADSL connected to our homes by a non-Telstra internet service provider will understand the havoc Telstra was able to wreak with its market power.
For years, broadband in Australia lagged behind our international trading partners because Telstra refused to play nice with its competitors, or the government. Under former CEO Sol Trujillo, Telstra had proposed building its own broadband network, but only on the condition that it didn't have to share the infrastructure with anyone else. Even the Howard government baulked at this power-play, backing the ACCC in an increasingly bitter legislative battle against Telstra's anti-competitive practices.
When Labor gained office in 2007 with a policy of building a publicly owned fibre-to-the-node network, there was much speculation about how it would manage to roll it out. Trujillo and his henchman Phil Burgess were barnstorming around the country campaigning against the evils of big government, and Labor's campaign costings of around $4.7 billion looked inadequate for the scale of the job.
So when the government announced tenders to build the NBN, Telstra refused to put in a serious bid, instead submitting a short memo as a way of flexing its muscles. The reasoning was that the government needed Telstra's ducts, tubes and copper wires to build a new network, and that Telstra could always threaten to compete against a new network with its considerable resources. The effect was a slap in the face for Senator Conroy, who eventually declared the bid "non-conforming".
The bankruptcy of Trujillo's strategy was vividly exposed in 2009 when Conroy decided to make an end-run around Telstra with his decision to build a publicly owned fibre-to-the-premises network. Not only would the government build its own network, but it would also legislate if necessary to break up Telstra. The idea of cutting Telstra out of any dealand going it alone transformed the broadband debate, and quickly brought Telstra to the negotiating table. If the government needed Telstra's pipes and conduits, it was equally apparent that Telstra needed the government for its commercial survival. Sol Trujillo was already back in the US by then, replaced by the kinder and gentler public persona of David Thodey, who was charged with a mandate to end the war with the government.
The end result was yesterday's announcement, in which the government, via its wholly owned National Broadband Network Company, acquired Telstra's existing cables, copper wires, pipes and so on. While the deal has been in the works for more than a year, yesterday's so-called "Definitive Agreement" means that the government and Telstra have agreed to the $9 billion deal to "provide for the reuse of suitable Telstra infrastructure and for Telstra to progressively structurally separate by decommissioning its copper network and broadband HFC network capability during the NBN".
NBNCo also picks up a handy subsidiary network of Optus coaxial cable customers for a "mere" $800 million. It makes the rollout of the NBN much cheaper and easier, because one of the largest costs of construction is actually the digging of trenches and the laying of new pipes and cables. In this context, the $11 billion shelled out yesterday is a wise investment.
Business Spectator's Glenn Dyer has a useful round-up of the analysis and commentary on the deal — and it's largely positive. For instance, veteran telco analyst Paul Buddetold the Herald Sun that "the massive capacity of the network, its ubiquitous nature and the low cost to end users will see a shift in the national economy towards a digital economy." Columnist John Durie points out in The Australian that the net result of Telstra's privatisation and eventual lease-back of the copper network means that the federal government has come out ahead: "The government has sold an ageing monopoly network in exchange for a new one and arguably is still in front."
The deal means it will now be extremely difficult for an incoming Abbott government to unscramble the NBN egg, which means that Stephen Conroy is well on his way to finally achieving structural separation of telecommunications assets in Australia. Careful reading of the detailed business case for the NBN reveals that the government will in time own a nation-spanning asset of huge worth to the broader economy in terms of productivity growth.
The political significance of the NBN should not be understated either. When Tony Windsor threw his weight behind Julia Gillard to form a minority government last August, he cited the NBN's importance to regional Australia as his key reason. We have another two years of the Gillard Government before we return to the polls. By then, the NBN will be well on its way to construction. Whatever else happens in the next two years, Labor will be able to point to a genuine nation-building achievement.
John Menadue | Navigating the Refugee Fact Free Zone
John Menadue, a CPD Director and formerly Secretary of the Department of Immigration in the Fraser Government (1980 – 1983), offers a roadmap for those seeking the facts amidst the the heated debate about refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. He wades through the misinformation, lies and unfonded opinions to get to what we need to know to start a useful conversation. Read on if you'd like to join in.
The "race to the bottom" in our treatment of asylum seekers is littered with misinformation and untruth. It seems that the greater the untruth, the more traction it has in the community. The media has largely gone missing.
As described by the columnist David Roberts in climateprogress.org in the US, we are moving into an age of "post-truth politics" where there is little close examination of claim and counter-claim. We seem to have only players and no referees in public discussion. Facts have become a hindrance.
As the late Senator Daniel Moynihan, of New York, said "everyone is entitled to their own opinions but no one is entitled to their own facts".
The politics of refugees is becoming a policy and fact-free zone.
Let's look at some of the "facts" doing the rounds:
At the last election Tony Abbott said that we are being "invaded" by boat people. But only about 2% of Australia's annual migrant intake comes from asylum seekers and even less as unauthorised boat arrivals. Abbott is winning with his invented fact. Essential Research reports that 25% of Australians believe that 75% of our migrant intake is asylum seekers.
Most media would have us believe that most asylum seekers come by boat. Pictures of boat arrivals are obviously more newsworthy than the much larger number of asylum seekers who steadily trickle through our airports every day of the year. According to the Australian Parliamentary Library, over the past decade 70% to 97% of asylum seekers came to Australia by air. They apply as visitors or students, are issued visas, and then apply for refugee status once they are in Australia. "Many use the services of people smugglers to come to Australia" (Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Fact Sheet 73). The Chinese are always near the top of the list of asylum seekers who come by air — 1217 in 2009 and 1202 in 2010. Over the years, only about 20% of asylum seekers who come by air are declared to be refugees. For boat arrivals it is more than 80%.
Give us a picture of another rickety boat in the Arafura Sea and opinionated radio jocks tell us that we have lost control of our borders. But Australia's 8250 asylum seekers per annum are minimal compared with the 358,800 who sought asylum in the 44 major industrialised countries in 2010.
We are told that asylum seekers should not be allowed to "jump the queue". There are 15.4 million refugees identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), while there are almost another 30 million "people of concern". The situation is fluid, unfair and quite disorderly. With just over 100,000 settled under orderly programs each year, only 1% of these people are resettled per annum. At this rate, according to the Refugee Council of Australia, a person putting his name on a list today for consideration as a refugee would wait 170 years for processing. Some queue! In any event, as Brian Brown put to me the other day, "Waiting in a queue is un-Australian". We don't like it and neither do desperate people. Or, as a Hazara woman recently said on ABC's Q&A "If your house is on fire, do you wait to leave by the front door or do you jump out the nearest window?"
The Coalition claims that the punitive Howard policies were successful in stopping the boats and asylum seekers, and that the government should pick up the phone to re-establish a processing centre in Nauru. It ignores the fact that the Pacific Solution cost more than $1 billion over five years, at enormous human pain, yet diverted only 46 persons away from Australia, at a cost of $35,000 each.
When you analyse the asylum seeker flows to OECD nations since 2001, the ebbs and flow to Australia largely match those to other OECD nations. While it is likely that small differences in Australian numbers were caused by domestic policy, it is obvious that the most significant factor in the number of asylum seekers coming to Australia is the increase and decrease in global asylum numbers. The numbers have predominantly ebbed and flowed as a result of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the civil war in Sri Lanka, not because of Australian policy changes. If boat arrivals become more difficult, asylum seekers will try by air, or vice versa. What is important is the total number of asylum seekers rather than the particular form of unauthorised arrivals. The trend of unauthorised arrivals under John Howard followed global trends.
The UNHCR Report on 2010 Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialised Countries notes that asylum seeker numbers in Australia "have gone up for the sixth consecutive year", that is, from 2004 to 2010. Obviously the numbers were increasing in the last three years of the Howard government. This reflected a worldwide trend in asylum seekers. The "push" factors were more important than the Howard government's hard line. The trend of asylum seeker claims lodged in Australia over the four quarters of 2010 was downwards; 2437, 2012, 1980 and 1821. At the same time the trend was upwards in Europe, mainly Serbs fleeing their country. Again, these figures confirm that the trend of asylum seekers is primarily determined by push factors such as war, revolution and human rights abuses, rather than any deterrent policies of destination countries.
Rarely, other than in the recently released Hugo Report, is there recognition of the quite remarkable contributions that the 750,000 refugees since World War II have made to Australia. We have given them protection, but they have made an enormous contribution to Australia in so many fields.Immigration Minister Chris Bowen seems unable to facilitate an understanding of the facts concerning asylum seekers. Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison invent facts.
We need an independent and professional commission with a small secretariat and budget to pull us back from the misinformation and the cynical politicisation of asylum seekers and refugees. If that is done, I am confident that, based on the facts and with leadership that appeals to our better instincts, the Australian community would have a clear understanding of the importance of protecting our borders and human rights.
With Malcolm Fraser's leadership and the support of the ALP, we showed that we could do both when there were much larger outflows of refugees after the Vietnam War.
June 21, 2011
James Whelan | Guidelines for an Aspiring Premier
CPD's Public Service Research Director, James Whelan unpacks election time attitudes and campaign spin surrounding public service sector. He takes a close look at Queensland's apsiring Premier, Campbell Newman and offers up some advice about what Australians really care about, before he takes an axe to our public services.
Read James Whelan's article in ABC's The Drum Unleashed here.
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Q: What is the plural noun for public servants?
A: An agency.
Public service critics and detractors are rarely so kind. Pledges to reduce the size of public service agencies are a routine element of political and media cycles. Kevin Rudd spoke of 'administrative bloating' when the Howard Government began to recruit public servants after years of dramatic down-sizing. More recently, Joe Hockey promised to axe 12,000 public servants upon election "for starters". [link to source?]
We have been researching staffing levels and trends in the Australian Public Service (APS). The facts challenge the basis for anti-public service rhetoric. Next week we will release our Staffing the Public Service Report. This is the first installment of our upcoming report: State of the Australian Public Service. The first paper in our Public Service Program, it will offer a much needed independent appraisal of the Australian Public Service.
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June 20, 2011
Ben Eltham | The Carbon Tax We Really Don't Want
Yes, New Zealand has a price on carbon – but no cap on emissions. Kiwi polluters can emit all they like, in other words. Ben Eltham on what's been left out of coverage of NZ PM John Key's visit
First published by New Matilda here.
The New Zealand Prime Minister John Key was yesterday in Canberra where he was honoured with an address to both houses of Parliament.
There were the usual formalities of gun salutes and motherhood statements about the great friendship between Australia and New Zealand. Key thanked Australia for the support and charity that has flowed across the Tasman in the wake of Christchurch's devastating earthquakes. Plenty of banter was exchanged over the chances of New Zealand and Australia at the upcoming rugby World Cup.
But when it came to the joint Prime Ministerial press conference, the questions to Key were all about carbon.
New Zealand has a price on carbon. Australia doesn't. So perhaps Prime Minister Key has some advice for his cousins, struggling to come to grips with the thorny issue of pricing carbon?
"What I can tell you about the emissions trading scheme in New Zealand is it's worked," he told the press gallery yesterday. He went on to further explain that "in the time that we've had it in place, all of the applications for new electricity generation has been in the renewable space."
"Secondly," he continued, "we are seeing a change in behaviour when it comes to forestry. So, we've now had a period of aforestation, of planting more trees, as opposed to what had been a substantial period of deforestation. So those price signals are working in the marketplace."
So New Zealand's ETS must be pretty good, right?
No, actually. New Zealand's ETS may be politically successful and economically advantageous, but it can hardly be described as the best-practice example of an emissions trading scheme.
Why? Because there's no cap on emissions. As this factsheet from the New Zealand's Ministry for the Environment states, "there is no cap on the emissions that occur within New Zealand."
New Zealand may have a price on carbon, but Kiwi polluters can emit all they like, and New Zealand's emissions can keep rising forever. Moreover, the price is very low: just $15 on the current market. That's far below what's required to drive meaningful decarbonisation.
As a result, New Zealand's scheme is not really a "cap-and-trade" scheme on the European model. It's really just a fancy way of raising revenue. That's right: it's a carbon tax. New Zealand's scheme will almost certainly fail to reduce the country's emissions. Indeed, it's hard to see how it could succeed. There is no mechanism to limit carbon emissions in the first place.
No wonder the scheme has been called by one economist "the world's worst emissions trading scheme."
But you could search high and low in the political coverage here in Australia to discover that crucial point. Instead, most of the political media seems to have bought the line that because New Zealand has a price on carbon at all, it is somehow a model of how to achieve a political solution to greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
The Herald Sun's Michael Harvey even reported it by claiming the success of New Zealand's low price and non-existent cap somehow translated into "pressure" on the Greens "to accept a lower carbon price". Pressure from whom? Harvey doesn't say.
The West Australian reported the press conference with the headline "NZ leader urges low start to carbon cost". Really? Nowhere in the transcript does Prime Minister Key "urge" Australia to do any such thing.
In fact, Key answered the West Australian's political reporter Andrew Probyn by saying "Let me start by saying it's not for me to determine what's the right approach for Australia, that's a matter for Australian politicians," before going on to explain that New Zealand's price on carbon was costing consumers there about $150 a year, and the price would move up to $25 a tonne in 2013.
But that's federal politics in 2011, where media outlets spin the news every bit as aggressively as the politicians they report on.
If we need another example, look no further than Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's "plebiscite" on a carbon tax. The idea was ridiculed by the Government, the Greens and even Steve Fielding as a stunt, which is exactly right. And yet the political media duly reported it as though it were a genuine proposal, rather than what it obviously was — a clever tactic to grab the media's attention.
In fact, while Abbott wants to hold a national vote on carbon taxes, he has also said he won't abide by the result if the answer is "yes." At least Michelle Grattan, who has seen a thing or two in her time, called it for what it was: "Abbott's position, however, is contradictory and illogical", she wrote, surely the leading candidate for understatement of the year.
As usual with Tony Abbott's media opportunities, the tactic worked and the absurd substance of his proposal was ignored. Much of the reporting today has been about the plebiscite, rather than other, far more serious and alarming aspects of the carbon debate — like the facts behind New Zealand's ETS, or the recent death threats to climate scientists and campaigners that has led the Australian National University to upgrade its security.
It's difficult to underestimate just how poorly Australian citiziens have been served by the media reporting of climate change policy. The scientific reality has routinely been obfuscated and elided. The lies of big polluters are consistently accepted as "modelling". And the colour and controversy are universally considered to be newsworthy, while the minor issues of policy mechanisms and structures are ignored. The time has long gone when we could expect the Australian political media to report on the substance of policies, rather that tactics of politics. Not only do they not want to, they don't know how.
Public services in the news 21/6/11
Strike action 'may close Australia's borders' > Proposed industrial action by staff at several Federal Government departments could shut down airports and seaports, and leave Australia's borders unsecured…
Public service workers are not all lazy jobsworths or freeloaders > Anyone who has chosen a career in public service is entitled to feel bitter and resentful. Not just because of pay freezes, job losses, worsening conditions and attacks on their pensions, significant as they are…
Log-off looms as denizen of data looks back > Wadeson says a private cloud will be progressively built inside the Department of Human Services over the next two years, which will have the same effect as a public cloud. "There are real issues with a public cloud, because we have confidential financial records on the Centrelink side, and on the Medicare side there are health records"…
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