Right Pulse

A Ministerial release from Julia Gillard:

The Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, will welcome the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, Mr Joel Klein, to Australia on Sunday 23 November.

Mr Klein has overseen reforms in New York City’s public schools that have turned around student achievement and engagement in learning and is coming to Australia to share his experiences.

Mr Klein is sure to bring energy and a new perspective to the current debate about how to improve schooling in Australia.

Can’t wait for those reforms, should be interesting based New York’s education track record. According to America’s Promise Alliance, an education body set up by Colin Powell, New York City has one of the worst high school graduation rates in the USA, at 45 per cent. From the New York Daily News:

The group, which is planning to hold summits on the nation’s dropout crisis in all 50 states and in all major cities over the next two years, took a sweeping look at graduation rates across the country, ranking New York 43rd among 50 large cities.

Couldn’t help notice that Rudd is sending a strong message that Australia will be going into deficit because of a recession in 2009, even though both the OECD and IMF have said that Australia will more than likely not go into a recession, as agreed by the RBA and Treasury. So where is the justification for putting the Federal budget into the red? It seems that Rudd is just using the global financial crisis to justify an old fashioned Labor massive spending spree on states and just about anyone else that pays no income tax. Instead, the spending spree will just crowd out private sector investment in critical areas such as infrastructure and therefore increase the risk of a recession. The risk will also be compounded by the Labor’s back to the future workplace laws and emissions trading scheme. If the budget deficit and the economy goes into recession it will be purely of Rudd’s making.

Elton John recently said: “I don’t want to be married….Heterosexual people get married.”

Not even made with the real thing:

A WELL-known Aboriginal activist has demanded the Reserve Bank of Australia pay damages to his family for using his great-uncle’s image on the $50 note without permission.

Gee, an Aboriginal activist looking for government money. Who would have thought, but it doesn’t end there:

“My lawyer has got to be paid for ten years’ work,” he said.

“I want them to pay for the damages for what they put upon us and we want a re-enactment of the celebration of the $50 note … in Adelaide.

A reenactment? Maybe it involves having a ceremony to hand over the gravy. And what else do we have to thank this activist for?

..Mr Campbell was instrumental in the 1972 tent embassy built on the lawns of parliament house..

I wonder if other banknote relatives will receive compensation for the apparent embarrassment of having their family relatives on the national currency. The dollar has taken a bit of a hit lately on the FOREX markets, but it is still worth something.

Rudd has conceded that the Federal budget will go into deficit. It is a startling turn around, with the budget meant to of achieved a $21.7 billion surplus in 2008-09, “with every dollar of new spending matched by spending cuts.” Not so anymore. Rudd claims it will just be temporary:

Turnbull’s riposte was devastating and would have been much more so if the Government had not shifted.”Experience and history tell us that Labor deficits are never temporary. The last Labor deficit lasted for six years. It only came to an end with the election of a Coalition government,” Turnbull said.

With this in mind and with the growing threat of higher unemployment, Rudd’s pursuit of a highly regulated workplace shows the extent to which he has been captured by the unions. Also, instead of offering tax cuts, extra spending will be provided to people that don’t pay any income tax to begin with. It is clear the budget will now be driven by a socialist ideology. The result could compound already falling business confidence and result in a massive budget deficit and a recession at the same time.

As a final note, a recent Roy Morgan poll has found voters see the importance of maintaining a balanced budget over the next 6 months, with most people rating it as the government’s number one economic priority at 36 per cent:

Australians are clear that, in the next six months, the ‘Number One’ priority for Government Policy is ‘Maintaining a balanced Budget and no increase in Public Debt’ (36%), well ahead of ‘Promoting Infrastructure Development’ (23%) and ‘Overcoming the Skills Shortage’ (21%) a special Roy Morgan Survey conducted on Government policy priorities in early November finds.

Over the longer term people believe the government should focus on infrastructure and the like, which is understandable.  Only around 5 per cent of people didn’t know what priorities the government should focus on. All of which points to an informed electorate.

What do Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Sharan Burrow have in common? They have no idea what it is like to risk your home and everything else you own to run a business, as reflected in the so called “Fair Work” bill:

THOUSANDS of small businesses will face union visits and collective pay claims for the first time under the Federal Government’s workplace revolution.

Changes unveiled yesterday will grant union officials the right to enter almost any business, even those where they have no members.

Unfair dismissals will also be reinstated along with industry wide collective bargaining. The last point being a step back to the 1970s and 80s. Workplace relations legislation should provide incentives for entrepreneurship, not create a union entitlement culture.

According to Bloomberg, the total cost to US taxpayers from the bailout and other related financial measures now stands at USD 7.4 trillion + USD 300 billion for Citigroup = USD 7.7 trillion. That’s some bailout. A quick back of the envelope calcuation shows that the bailout is around 55 per cent of the USA’s annual GDP. More expensive than WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, race to the moon or any other US government undertaking in history (using CPI to adjust for inflation).

Regarding the new Australia film, from the New York Daily News:

Far worse, however, is the racial double standard in a film that proudly pats itself on the back for its own decency. Luhrmann aims to teach us about Australia’s shameful missionary policies, which took mixed-race Aboriginal children from their families to be raised among whites.

The way he does this is by killing off Nullah’s biological mother, so Kidman can nobly care for him.

Jackman also gets a chance to save the boy heroically, but only because another Aboriginal character martyrs himself. We’ve seen hypocrisy in plenty of movies, but you’d probably have to go back to 1941 to find an example as blatant as this.

This commentary is classic American liberalism. The critique, like the movie, starts from a false premise that the ‘stolen generation’ is a well documented and proven thesis. However various Federal court verdicts have had something different to say on the matter over the years. Nevertheless (ignoring the facts) to then call the movie hypocritical, even though various Aboriginal groups have endorsed the movie’s message, just smacks of the type of removed intellectual snobbery we have all come to expect from the American left; when caring for others becomes an act of hypocrisy.

Once again clever editing has protected the ALP in the latest installment of the Howard Years. The programme gives the impression that Howard’s decision to secure the Tampa ship was an illegal act, when in fact it was found to be perfectly legal, as one will discover in Howard’s extended interview. The ship picked up a boat in distress, carrying illegal immigrants. In accordance with the laws of the sea, the Tampa proceeded to the nearest port, which happened to be in Indonesia. Once the illegal immigrants discovered that they were not going to Australia they threatened self harm. The Captain of the Tampa then proceeded to Australia under duress. Kim Beazley gave verbal support to the strategy to secure the Tampa, including the use of the SAS as recommended by Chief of Defence Force. Beazley later changed his mind in Parliament. None of this made it to the TV programme. If it had, it would have undermined the ABC’s editorial line, run at the time, against John Howard. As Peter Reith said, if someone turns up at an Australian airport without a right of entry, then they are denied entry. Why would it be any different at sea?

It’s an absolute open and shut case.

I was also annoyed that the TV programme implied that the East Timorese crisis was all of John Howard’s making because of one letter, from Howard to Indonesia, seeking a referendum on East Timor’s independence. As if the last thirty years of Indonesia/East Timor mostly violent relations were irrelevant. Downer indicates in the extended interview, that the East Timorese leadership fully supported the government’s approach to the issue and that they were prepared and fully accepted the risk of violence as a result of a possible democratic vote in East Timor. The ABC also edited out Whitlam’s recognition of Indonesian rule over East Timor, recognition that was given in the midst of violence at the time.

I don’t cover sport much, but the prospect of a game between the Kangaroos and Wallabies is interesting, mostly because the ARU stands to make millions from it – when it is struggling financially. Apart from the financial incentive, I can’t really see how the two codes can come up with rules that would not not overly favour one side. But apparently that is being sorted:

Promoter Phil Franks plans to include some of the greatest intellects from both codes on his rules committee to devise a plan that will give fans exactly that.

Yes indeedeee…the likes of Phil Gould and Blocker Roach having an intellectual discussion would be something to behold. But as far as i can tell, the rules would likely favour Rugby League over Rugby Union. Simply because any attempt to dumb down the rules to accommodate the Kangaroos would obviously place the more specialised players of the Wallabies at a disadvantage. Some of the rules identified in the press so far might include the following: Twelve man teams with only a five-man scrum, no line-out lifting and with rucks and mauls only to be played in the opposition’s half. It is not surprising that the following statement is given by the journalist in the same article:

Fewer players on the paddock will lend itself towards a style of football that relies less on technical superiority and more on playing ability.

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