Month: April 2009

Holden muscles on in the USA

Posted by Chief Blogger – 22 April, 2009

You may have heard of recent disparaging reports about Holden’s future in the local press. In the USA things are a little different. The Washington Post has a great right-up about the Pontiac G8 – basically the Holden Commodore S, SS and HSV models. It’s hard to find a bad review of the G8 in the USA:

It was a nice car. That’s “nice” as in “bad” and “kick- . . . ,” well, you get the idea…the G8 GXP proves that GM can and does make darned good cars…it is not likely to win any awards from the Sierra Club or from President Obama’s auto task force.

I wish some of the pundits in Australia and the left would get the idea as well. G8 sales have started the resurrection of the Pontiac brand, with nearly 3000 in March and nearly 22,000 sales since March 2008 – a good effort considering the economic times. It also makes the G8 Pontiac’s current highest selling car. By comparison, Holden sold in 51,000 Commodores in Australia in 2008. A brand that is well established in the domestic market.

The free market

Posted by Chief Blogger – 21 April, 2009

As you decide what to do with your $900 tax ‘bonus’ remember the following, from P.J. O’Rourke:

…the free market is the greatest reserve of our freedoms.

Not government give aways or controls.

It’s like damning the air to say that capitalism has finished.

Torture and Bush

Posted by Chief Blogger – 21 April, 2009

Pleasant? No. But we don’t go around seeking to cut other people’s head off and trick the mentally disabled into being suicide bombers to indiscriminately kill civilians:

The four memos on CIA interrogation released by the White House last week reveal a cautious and conservative Justice Department advising a CIA that cared deeply about staying within the law. Far from “green lighting” torture — or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees — the memos detail the actual techniques used and the many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation….

All of these interrogation methods have been adapted from the U.S. military’s own Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (or SERE) training program, and have been used for years on thousands of American service members with the full knowledge of Congress….

The dedicated public servants at the CIA and Justice Department — who even the Obama administration has concluded should not be prosecuted — clearly cared intensely about staying within the law as well as protecting the American homeland.

Rudd has blood on his hands: What’s Rudd doing now?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 20 April, 2009

Upon listening to an interview with WA Premier Colin Barnett, the thought came to me: what exactly is Kevin Rudd doing to alleviate the suffering caused by his lax illegal immigration policy, other than trying to appear outraged and shocked and sending his Deputy PM out to answer to the media? Premier Barnett began coordinating medical treatment for the victims of Rudd’s policy, while Rudd went into hiding. At one stage the government even appeared to be denial that the boat carrying the illegal immigrants had actually caught fire, under the guise that they did not want to speculate on matters. Publicly admitting what had occurred, as Barnett did, allowed emergency and medical staff time to coordinate treatment. As Barnett said in the media interview, he never speculated on who was to blame.

This episode has once and for all exposed Rudd’s inability to lead in a crisis. It also shows him to be as cynical as conservatives know he is. Despite warnings from the media and the public service, Rudd went ahead with his lax immigration policy knowing full well that it would likely result in an increase in arrivals and increase the risk that people might die in the crossing. So why push the new policy? To satisfy the chattering classes. From Piers Akerman:

The refugee lobby has shown itself to be far more interested in using the lives of truly desperate human beings as political weapons than it has in applying solutions that might have some effect “upstream” of the problem, where it should really be addressed, rather than “downstream” at Ashmore Reef and in remote parts of the Indian Ocean….

It’s miserable of the Government to now claim the deaths last week were the result of a global refugee “push” when it’s obvious they were due to Labor’s own refugee-policy “pull”.

Rudd has blood on his hands (indirectly) – update VI

Posted by Chief Blogger – 20 April, 2009

Conservative blogs have been pounding the relaxing of illegal immigration policies since last year, and now Rudd’s policy change has had dire consequences, as revealed by Liberal Premier Barnett:

FIVE boatpeople were killed and 51 people, four of whom are believed to be Navy personnel, were injured today after a fire that may have been deliberately lit led to an explosion that sank the vessel….

After repeated questioning over West Australian Premier Colin Barnett’s allegation that desperate asylum seekers had poured petrol over the deck of their leaky boat before it exploded, Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus confirmed this afternoon it was a possibility.

Mr Barnett said: “The refugees spread petrol their boat, the vessel they were on.

“Whether they ignited it or it just ignited is unknown at this stage. But clearly that caused a major explosion, not only injuring refugees but it’s a great concern that four defence personnel also (received) significant injuries to them during this incident.”

Greg Sheridan confirms what we have all been writing about:

There is no doubt the Rudd Government has been widely reported internationally as softening Australian border controls. That must act as a magnet for illegal immigrants.

Former Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews:

The tragic events this week are an indirect result of the government’s flawed policy.

Steve Cook, chief of mission for the International Organisation for Migration in Indonesia.

People smugglers have clearly noted that there has been a change in policy and they’re testing the envelope.

Piers Akerman last December:

The inevitability of a replay of the SIEV-X disaster has undeniably increased under Labor.

BBC’s Nick Bryant:

Government officials have conceded in private that the end of the Pacific Solution, which was brought in after the Tampa affair in the run-up to the 2001 election, is being used as a marketing tool by Indonesian people-smugglers.

Let’s just hope the opposition hammer the government to the wall about this. Once again, the left’s good intentions have left a trail of disaster in their policy wake.

(via Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair and Margos Maid)

UPDATE

After trying to avoid the spotlight over the issue, Rudd gets tough now:

KEVIN Rudd has said people smugglers are the “vilest form of humanity” and that they should all “rot in hell”.

The Prime Minister also called people smugglers “the scum of the earth”.

Well if they are so bad, why give them an excuse to make money on the back of your weak illegal immigration policy? From Alexander Downer on the people smugglers:

“These people hope that we run as slack or as lax a policy as possible because that is how they maximise their profits.”

UPDATE II

Someone at the AFP didn’t get Rudd’s message: cover-up and avoid for as long as possible and then appear horrified when you are finally cornered to give comment.

It is now emerging that the Rudd Government had been warned its softer border protection laws would encourage new waves of people smuggling.

Secret intelligence briefings prepared by the Australian Federal Police were recently delivered to senior government ministers.

News.com.au understands the AFP also expressed serious reservations last year as the Rudd Government wound back John Howard’s tougher approach to immigration detention.

As another boat load of 100 people arrives.

More→

Antarctic ice okay

Posted by Chief Blogger – 18 April, 2009

You won’t see this reported at ‘your’ ABC:

Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.

“Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally,” Dr Allison said…

Mr Garrett insisted global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. “I don’t think there’s any doubt it is contributing to what we’ve seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica,” he said.

Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. “The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west,” he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.

No doubt? Only in the minds of the deluded like our Enviornment Minister Mr Garrett

A dismal showing from the Spectator

Posted by Chief Blogger – 17 April, 2009

The Spectator Australia has backed Rudd’s national broadband network. The logic underpinning their argument is flawed and it is disappointing that the editors at the magazine can’t look past Rudd’s spin too see the many serious problems with his plan. Their basic premise is as so:

Government’s raison d’être is to provide services to citizens that could not be provided economically by anyone else, or if they were, would be priced to the point of abuse. This is a classic economic principle…

It is? Says who? Not Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman, etc… Maybe classical liberalism according to Kevin Rudd, but not according to the great classical liberal thinkers. If a service can’t be provided economically by the private sector, what makes Spectator think it can be provided by the government economically without the impost of excessive levels of debt and taxation on individuals and families? Besides, it has never been proven that Rudd can provide 100 megabit download speeds more economically than the private sector – such as Telstra’s existing fibre-optic network and associated retail on-sellers. Certainly, AAPT has already publicly declared that Rudd’s network will be financially un-viable and too expensive for consumers. And then there is the question if consumers want this service? I mention this in relation to the move to WiFi over fixed cable – hence the demise of fixed telephony.

…Telstra can exercise monopoly power over its obsolete copper wire system…

Good luck to them, because people are moving away from the “wire system” to embrace WiFi, mobile telephony and cable services that are provided by other companies. ADSL 2 runs through the “wire system”, but there are a host of IPs that can sell household 25 megabit connections at $50 a month, while government agencies and large businesses already have access to Telstra’s existing fibre-optic network.

…Australians can access the whole gamut of internet-intensive products and services that are yet to emerge…

Like what? Not mentioned in the article. Certainly nothing to justify $43 billion in new public debt.

Remote medical diagnosis, for instance, was not practicable until cable internet spread. Why should this process stop at 25 Mbps?

Who is saying it should stop? The argument here is about the business strategy to get to a higher download speed and it appears that there are cheaper less risky options available through future WiFi networks and Telstra’s existing cable and fibre network. Rudd’s plan is the most expensive and risky strategy.

…pundits miss the point of public works when they demand cost-benefit projections, and posit prices that ultimately ensure the broadband network makes ‘a commercially viable return’. Indeed, it is the very lack of a commercially viable return — at least in the medium term — that makes such projects suitable only for public provision.

The current ISP’s don’t seem to have any trouble making money at the moment and there is no reason to suggest that they won’t have any trouble in the future in utilising new technology to offer faster internet services as the demand arises. And what constitutes the medium term? Japan is the only developed country of note with a national fibre-optic network, and after nearly 15 years the network is still receiving heavy government subsidisation (loans to private companies) with only 31 per cent of households having taken up the service. In 2007 it was reported that NTT in Japan had to slash its subscription targets by 10 million because of the lack of uptake.

…costs and benefits from a project with such long gestation cannot be gainfully forecast; intervening inflation, changes in preferences and technological breakthroughs overseas make perspicacity impossible.

Yeah exactly. So let the market sort out the appropriate technological response when the demand arises, instead of government trying to pick market winners.

The government would be foolish to price the finished broadband network to recoup its costs, even if it knew them….The bulk of the benefits from the National Broadband Network will not come from the fees charged for access, but from the as yet unknown products and services…

Ooookayyyy….So we are going to go into $43 billion in debt to provide “unknown products and services”. But the Spectator Australia is not proposing debt to fund the proposal, but a new tax:

…the Rudd government is borrowing so profligately elsewhere it would be better to pay for this project from a small specific tax. The government’s credit rating would then be secure, the public would more keenly monitor the network’s construction, and Australians would be reminded of the eternal link between public spending and public taxation…

Ignoring the “eternal link” reference, to put $43 billion into perspective, it is the equivalent of abolishing the GST for a whole year. It would not be a small tax. Furthermore, to fund long lead items and to commit to expenditure on a capital project, the government would need most of the money up front. This will exaggerate the impost of the tax on tax-payers, not too mention the higher cost they will have to pay to use Rudd’s internet network.

Holden should not wait to move

Posted by Chief Blogger – 17 April, 2009

Reports from the USA are that GM is going to off load Pontiac. If that happens, and given that Saturn is currently being approached by buyers and Opel and Vauxhall are looking to spin off from GM as the one corporate entity, Holden will be left alone. That means Holden will have no front wheel drive vehicles to source from Europe to sell in Australia and no car maker in the USA in which to sell its rear-wheeled drive cars.

Holden management, its dealers and the Rudd government need to start looking for a buyer now! Dealers could start by initiating a scheme similar to the one being used by Saturn and O/V dealers, where for every car sold, the dealers put aside a few hundred dollars to go towards a fund to buy a stake in the company. That would reduce the funding requirement for Holden. Management need to ignore Detroit and look to tie up with one of GM’s offshoots -  preferably O/V – which would give it access to small engine technology and a worldwide distribution network. Rudd could provide bridging finance for any deal and tax incentives for locally built cars to get the industry going again and to help attract a buyer.

But they all need to move now and not wait for GM to go into bankruptcy.

An absurd waste of tax-payers money

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 April, 2009

The government has launched a new website – www.economicstimulusplan.gov.au – which touts how they are going to save the Australian economy with a good dose of environmental activism and payments and tax breaks for people that for the most part don’t pay income tax to begin with. Standard leftist stuff, full of good intentions but likely to leave a trail of disaster in the form of debt and addiction to government welfare, with all the negative implications for personal liberty, agency, progression and initiative. Other policies won’t work through the economy until just before the next election. And then there is Rudd’s broadband network which will take 10 years to roll out. From IPA:

For a paltry $43billion, we are told that the new broadband network will directly “support” 37,000 jobs. If I have entered enough zeroes into my calculator, that’s a cost of over $1 million per job.

…it’s hard not to conclude that the Government is just tossing a random collection of expensive policies at the wall and praying for one eventually to stick.

Or around $117,000 per job per year over the life of the project. Add to this:

…the $10.4 billion package will create about 75,000 jobs at an average cost of $139,000 per job; infrastructure package of $4.7 billion will create 32,000 jobs at a cost of $147,000 per job; COAG package of $15.1 billion will create 133,000 jobs at a cost of $114,000 per job. Yet, the $41.5 billion package will “support” up to 90,000 jobs over the next two years at an average cost of $461,000 per job or $230,500 per job per year.

This equates to over $114.7 billion in new policies to support 367,000 jobs, which is around $320,000 per job or on average $153,000 per job in total over the life of each individual plan. Nearly three times the average Australian wage of $58,000. It is no coincidence that of the 367,000 jobs supported, most are in two of the most heavily unionised industries in the economy: government and commercial construction.

An unpopular view

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 April, 2009