Month: January 2009

Welfare lobby at it again.

Posted by Chief Blogger – 28 January, 2009

The Australian has published a rather stinging editorial against the welfare lobby. It argues that they are part and cause of the problem, not the solution. Expanding the welfare sector does not expand the workforce, but creates disincentives for people to return to the workforce by creating dependency. The best form of welfare remains work. Further, welfare takes money away from the solution to the problem, lower taxes:

…there are measures the Government can undertake immediately, such as raising the 30 per cent tax rate to $37,000 and increasing the low-income tax offset from $1200 to $1500 – a measure scheduled for 2010. Such measures would cost Canberra $2.75 billion, but would put an extra $25 spending money a week in people’s pockets. And Canberra can encourage the states to cut their own employment taxes. In NSW, Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell has shown the way with a proposal for a one-off $1 billion cut to the state’s payroll tax. All this will inevitably cost Canberra, but letting people keep more of the money they earn makes more sense than keeping taxes up when the nation needs people to spend on goods and services.

Rudd outed by RBA

Posted by Chief Blogger – 28 January, 2009

It appears that the Reserve Bank recommended against the establishment of Rudd’s commercial property partnership with the commercial Banks, worth $4 billion. Rudd apparently ignored the RBA advice, which is not surprising given Rudd’s conflict of interest with the Banks and ALP funding:

A Government spokesman said the Reserve Bank had been “consulted” on the creation of the fund. However, it is understood the bank’s concerns were not taken into account.

I outlined the conflict of interest of the fund yesterday. Both the Banks and the CFMEU are either major donors to the ALP, and/or the ALP is heavily invested in Bank stocks to fund their political future. The centre of these relationships are in Queensland, the home of Rudd and Swan. Queensland ALP also has a history of accepting payments from construction companies in return for development approvals. Last year it was reported that:

Electoral returns show Multiplex donated more than $11,000 in the days before it lodged its winning tender for Brisbane’s controversial North Bank development.

It also gave $20,000 while its unsuccessful bid for the Gallery of Modern Art was under consideration.

The Labor Party denies the Government is being influenced by donations.

But Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg has told ABC Radio’s AM program that it is a conflict of interest.

“Now there’s nothing illegal in what’s happened here,” he said.

“But it’s certainly highly questionable when you have developers lining up to be the preferred tenderer, or actually win a contract, and giving donations on the eve of that tender being released.”

The relationship between NSW ALP and property developers is also infamous, as it came to light last year.

….10 of the biggest developers paid more than $1 million to the Labor Party while Mr Sartor considered $1.5 billion worth of their building works across NSW.

….Developer Stockland has donated more than $100,000 to the ALP while seeking approval for a number of developments on the NSW south coast….

….Meriton donated $100,000, a month before submitting revised development applications for more than 200 apartments on the Rhodes Peninsula….

….Mr Sartor has 324 major projects on his desk under the Part 3A amended section of the act. Liberal Party research shows 48 of the developers involved in those projects have donated to the NSW ALP.

Desperate, Desperate and Desperate

Posted by Chief Blogger – 28 January, 2009

Rudd and Swan really are at a loss. They are seeking economic council from Paul Keating.

“Keating’s been telling everyone he invented budget surpluses. But now is the time to spend, spend, spend,” one government figure said.

More like cut, cut, cut taxes.

MT on a winner

Posted by Chief Blogger – 27 January, 2009

I’ve been impressed with some recent statements made by Liberal Party leaders in response to ALP spending proposals. The responses reflect a commitment to smaller government and a smaller fiscal burden. In response to Rudd’s commercial construction plan, Malcolm Turnbull had the following to say:

He said that if a property owner was forced to sell because of the withdrawal of foreign finance, the building would continue to exist and operate in new ownership without job losses among its tenants or maintenance staff.

“The market should take its course,” Mr Turnbull told The Australian. “It was put to him (Mr Rudd) by banks as a means of protecting their balance sheets. It’s designed to prop up or hold up prices in the commercial property sector.”

Commenting on strong support for the move by the construction sector, Mr Turnbull said: “They’ve been had. This has nothing to do with the construction sector. It is about assets.

“The Government’s got to articulate what it wants to protect, rather than simply accommodating any request by the big four banks.”

Mr Turnbull said the real challenge on jobs was the credit squeeze facing small and medium-sized employers who had to pay more for loans or could simply not obtain credit.

Given that the ALP’s electoral and financial fortunes are so tied up with the banks, there is a clear percieved and if not real conflict of interest with Rudd’s construction proposal. Westpac is the ALP’s biggest corporate donor. In the non-election FY of 2006-07 Westpac donated over $6 million to the ALP and associated entities. Labor Holdings, the investment arm of the ALP, owns over 42,500 Commonwealth Bank shares – including holding a $10 million margin investment loan and reported over $25 million in transactions with CBA. Labor Holdings also owns 1.8 million shares in the Queensland based financial services company Suncorp. The Queensland ALP government investment arm, Queensland Investment Corporation, is also a major shareholder of Suncorp, Bendigo Bank, CBA, NAB, Westpac and the ANZ Bank. Both Rudd and Swan are of course Queenslanders and intimately involved with Qld ALP politics. By implementing this commercial construction policy, Rudd won’t be just protecting the bank’s balance sheet, but also Queensland ALP.

The Six Great Pillars of Australia

Posted by Chief Blogger – 26 January, 2009

From No Republic’s Prof. David Flint:

…Captain Arthur Phillip RN brought to this land what would become four of the six foundation pillars of this nation.

These four were our national language, English, the rule of law, our Judeo-Christian values and the Crown.

All were Australianised and made ours. To them were added, later, the other two foundation pillars of our nation.

One was yet another gift of the British, self government under the Westminster system.

Federation was our sixth foundation pillar. While given legal effect by the British, it was all our own work.

I highly recommend the rest of the speech.

Happy Australia, uh, I mean Invasion Day

Posted by Chief Blogger – 26 January, 2009

From newly made Australian of the Year, Mick Dobson:

THE 2009 Australian of the Year Mick Dodson has called for Australia to change the date of its national day because it isolates indigenous people.

Just moments after accepting the prestige award, the 58-year-old law professor signalled a clear determination to use the award as a national platform for his people, The Courier-Mail reports .

The placard brigade at work. One hand stuck out looking for hand-outs and recognition, with the other hand holding aloft a placard in protest. So not surprising too see that our new Australian of the year will use his award to get more recognition (hand-outs) for ‘his’ people. I thought he was meant to represent all Australians? I really do not understand why our leaders attempt to placate these people. No matter how much money is given or how much we change our national symbols to suit these activists, it is never ever enough. At least there is still a sense of reason with the Aboriginal community:

Warren Mundine, an Australia Day ambassador and former national president of the Labor Party, took a swipe at Professor Dodson. “The best news today was Sydney FC’s four-nil defeat of Newcastle,” he said.

While Mr Mundine congratulated Professor Dodson, he said Australia needed to focus on practical reconciliation, not symbolism. “He has no practicality whatsoever and that’s why he’s been ignored for 13 years,” said Mr Mundine, who was at the forefront of reconciliation talks during the Howard years.

Australia is not perfect, but undoubtedly Australia is a force for good in the world. We don’t need to apologise for our country’s existence.

Kev the Builder

Posted by Chief Blogger – 24 January, 2009

Rudd is preparing to spend $2 billion of tax-payers money to sure up 50,000 commercial construction jobs, that’s $40,000 per job. Rudd is also ready to make the Federal government lender of last resort by issuing loans of up to $30 billion to the commercial construction industry. We are all meant to believe that it is either this or nothing.

“The alternative is to do nothing, the Government I lead will not embark upon that course of action,” he said.

I find this assertion absurd. To put the figures into perspective, according to the ABS’s latest survey of weekly earnings in the construction industry, as of August 2008, the average wage was $59,264. So Rudd is going to spend $40,000 per job to save a job already worth under $60,000. He’s obviously never run a business. If I was a running a commercial property firm I’d go out and hire a whole heap of apprentices and cash in the rest of the payout. Who wouldn’t?

It’s not the role of government to be picking industry winners and losers. The government should be seeking to reduce the fiscal burden on tax-payers and corporations, so individuals can decide how best to spend their money. A more appropriate response would be to cut the raft of construction taxes and charges imposed upon developers and owners. This would stimulate demand without risking tax-payer funds on risky construction projects that are unlikely to return a profit in the near future, given the downturn in the economy.

On a more cynical note, it is not hard to imagine the role the CFMEU had in this policy. The construction industry remains one of the most unionised in the economy, making the CFMEU one of the most powerful unions in the country. The union is also on the biggest donors to the ALP. It is a turning out to be a good return on investment for the CFMEU, just not for tax-payers.

Change you can believe in

Posted by Chief Blogger – 23 January, 2009

I wonder why these poor sods didn’t get access to a civilian trial and rights under the US Constitution?

A suspected US missile strike has killed five people outside a notorious Al Qaeda hub in a tribal area of north-west Pakistan, security officials said…Mr Obama said extremists in each country posed a grave threat which his administration would tackle as a single problem under a wider strategy.

Does a wider strategy include a wider variety of missiles?

Scientists find ‘evidence’ Antartica is warming

Posted by Chief Blogger – 22 January, 2009

So should have been the headline from your ABC. Instead the ABC has portrayed evidence from a new study claiming that Antarctica is warming as definitive. Like a reading from the Gospels. However, what the ABC won’t tell you is that the data or ‘evidence’ upon which the study is based is derived, in other words not real and therefore the results cannot be verified. This is an important issue because Antarctica has been bucking global warming trends over the past 30 years (up to 2002, after which globe has started to cool), with the ice pack at record levels since satellite data was first captured in 1979.

A compliation of the criticism of the study can be found here. Some highlights:

UN IPCC lead author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, who is not in any way a climate change skeptic, said of the study, “I remain somewhat skeptical… It is hard to make data where none exist.” Echoing Trenberth’s analysis were several other scientists.

Former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder said the authors of the Antarctic study “overstated” their results. “In terms of the significance of their paper, it overstates what they have obtained from their analysis,” Pielke told the AP. “In the abstract they write, for example, ‘West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1C per decade over the past 50 years.’ However, even a cursory view of Figure 2 shows that since the late 1990s, the region has been cooling in their analysis in this region. The paper would be more balanced if they presented this result, even if they cannot explain why,” Pielke wrote. Pielke also questioned how the authors “reconcile the conclusions in their paper with the cooler than average long term sea surface temperature anomalies off of the coast of Antarctica.” Pielke added, “These cool anomalies have been there for at least several years. This cool region is also undoubtedly related to the above average Antarctic sea ice areal coverage that has been monitored over recent years.”

Any stats 101 class will tell you that where there are data gaps in a time-series you normally can’t invent the data to fill in the gaps – especially when the data you invent happens to confirm your hypothesis. It’s really stretching ones imagination. Like the IPCC computer models that can’t even replicate known temperatures from known climate variables of the past. 

A twisted lie

Posted by Chief Blogger – 22 January, 2009

John Pilger has spewed forth another anti-everything article. The only thing Pilger has not opposed has been Hamas’ year long rocket launching campaign at Israeli civilians. That should not come as a surprise to readers. Pilger is a lead journalist in promoting anti-Semitic bigotry in the UK media. His latest offering is no different. The first paragraph is comic:

On 13 January, George W Bush presented presidential “medals of freedom”, said to be America’s highest recognition of devotion to freedom and peace. Among the recipients were Tony Blair, the epic liar who, with Bush, bears responsibility for the physical, social and cultural destruction of an ­entire nation; John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia and minor American vassal who led the most openly racist government in his country’s modern era…

None of these assertions are substantiated in the article. Would one expect any more from Pilger? It’s another case of not letting the facts get in the way of a story. Apparently Israel is also deserving of such an honour and should, according to Pilger, join the list of other ‘criminals’ to receive the medal. Juvenile stuff.

I’ll just make three points. Firstly if Bush and Blair are responsible “for the physical, social and cultural destruction of an ­entire nation (Iraq)”, presumably Iraq must have been paradise on Earth under the glorious leader Saddam. Second, according to Pilger all Australian governments have been racist – Howard was just the most open about it. This defies belief given the vigorous Asian migration policy Howard ran, despite criticism from the green left on environmental grounds. Loony Tunes couldn’t have written a better script for Pilger’s arguments. Thirdly, the only people that claim Israel is a criminal state, are Islamic extremists, the nuclear bomb mad Mullahs of Iran, the people of Gaza, (whose whole existence is paid for by American aid money – which gives them plenty of time to build and launch rockets into Israel) and the cultural relativists of the west, who despite their post-modern leanings, are more than willing to pass a twisted moral judgement on anyone that attempts to promote security, freedom and democracy in the world.