Alan Jones:
Prime Minister promised in 2007 in the lead-up to the election that his party in Government would pay small business invoices within 30 days…When he found out last October that wasn’t happening, he said he’d stop the delays in payment to small business and lead by example…a recent report by Dun & Bradstreet found average public sector payments took 57.8 days in February this year compared with 49.1 days in August 2007, before Mr Rudd became Prime Minister.
Interesting insight into the political views of Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop. I always considered Bishop left of centre, and her interview on Insiders has confirmed this view. When asked about Abbott’s upcoming book on conservatism, her response was vague enough to indicate that she does not care much for Abbott’s conservative views:
BARRIE CASSIDY: And just finally, Tony Abbott says that what the Liberals need right now is more conservatism. Is he right about that?
JULIE BISHOP:…He hasn’t yet brought this idea to the party room but when he does I certainly look forward to a healthy and robust debate.
In other words, ‘I disagree with Abbott’s social conservatism and will fight him in the party room.’ Bishop has previously given strong support for abortion rights during the debate over funding abortions in third world countries, that took place at the beginning of the year. Earlier in the interview Bishop basically came out as a ‘progressive’ in the same vein that Gillard implied that she is a ‘progressive’ during a recent talk in the USA:
BARRIE CASSIDY:…An article in The Australian at the weekend put the argument that when it comes to renewal, your own state is the real drag on the ticket with ageing backbenchers going around yet again.
JULIE BISHOP:…In the United States I think the US Congress average age is about 67. Nancy Pelosi would be thrown out under this scenario.
And that would be a terrible thing? So Bishop holds up Nancy Pelosi up as a role model, despite her radical leftist views on economics, not to mention social issues. Cassidy should have sought more clarity on Bishop’s response.
This interview is symptomatic of what’s wrong with the opposition. One might criticise Howard’s conservatism, but it brought the Coalition nearly 12 years of power. By contrast Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop as a pair of ‘progressives’ don’t even look like winning power anytime soon, despite the fact that the budget is a shambles and that Rudd governs like a PR consultant. Barnaby Joyce is doing his bit in the National Party, Abbott might have to do the same for the Liberal Party to give them any chance.
The arrest of Chinese born Australian and Rio Tinto executive in China Stern Hu on espionage charges, according to Greg Sheridan, may be a watershed event in Australian-Chinese relations:
These arrests always tend to be of ethnic Chinese, no matter what their citizenship, as though Beijing does not recognise the foreign nationality of anyone of Chinese blood. But if Australian executives cannot have difficult business dealings and negotiations in China without being arrested, this is a grievous development….If the Rudd government cannot secure Mr Hu’s release within a few days, it will be seen as having zero influence with Beijing. Kevin Rudd’s ambition to be a “zhengyou” to China, a good friend who can tell even unpleasant truths, will be torn to shreds.
Joyce has also added his two cents, and no doubt he feels vindicated by recent events in arguing against the Chinalco-Rio Tinto deal:
…what we should acknowledge is that the direct ownership of state-owned enterprises by the Communist People’s Republic of China is part of the same plan.
While the collapse of the Chinalco-Rio Tinto deal and iron ore price negotiations seem like plausible explanations, Rudd’s softly softly approach to China should also bear some responsibility. Certainly, given the respect Howard had in the region, especially with Japan and South Korea, China would have thought twice about such a move under his prime ministerial leadership. But given that Rudd has thrown all his eggs into the one Chinese basket, he has left himself isolated, exposed and vulnerable. It may be time for Rudd to make a good will visit to Japan, South Korea and India. This time leaving China off the itinerary like he left Japan off when he first visited China as PM.
UPDATE I
Rudd’s refusal to involve himself personally in this affair is starting to look like a massive mistake. This is no longer just a consular matter, but an affair – at least on the Chinese side – that is being driven from the very top by the Chinese President. Rudd has by contrast been made to look weak and feeble, someone not cut out for senior leadership. Glenn Milne:
…the question must be asked as to whether Kevin Rudd created the context in which Hu has become a diplomatic proxy for a sharp deterioration in bilateral relations.
Yesterday federal ministers were sent out to attack Malcolm Turnbull over his call for Rudd to pick up the phone to his Chinese counterpart to demand the businessman’s immediate release.
But if there is a view in the community that such action is required, then Rudd has only himself to blame. Indeed the case of China is redolent of much of Rudd’s prime ministership; his propensity for promoting the impression of leverage without actually having any. The domestic policy equivalents here are Grocerywatch, Fuelwatch, and Bankwatch. Now, to Hu’s detriment we apparently have Chinawatch.
So much for Rudd’s special access to Beijing, he clearly has none. This situation would not have happened under John ‘ the man of steel’ Howard and Alexander Downer. China probably sees Rudd as a useful idiot of the west, the same term Lenin gave to left-wing socialist dissidents in the west. From Greg Sheridan:
The bottom line is clear – if Hu is not released, our relationship with China is shattered and the Rudd government will be profoundly embarrassed and seen to have no influence in Beijing…there is also nothing wrong in Malcolm Turnbull’s energetic prosecution of the issue…The decision to imprison Hu was a political decision and therefore the decision to release him must occur at the political level. Eventually the Prime Minister and Smith must secure this result. It is extremely discouraging that Smith commented that “we may be in for the long haul”.
Given that the Chinese President appears to have directed the arrest, a new travel warning should be issued for China to protect tourists and business people. The rule of law simply does not apply in China. No charges, imprisonment without a fair trial with no chance to see the ‘evidence’ against you. Rudd should also give serious consideration to a massive trade, business and cultural visit to India in the next 3 months. That would send a clear message to the Chinese leadership that we are moving on from Chinese trade and their immature responses to a business deal gone wrong.
Interesting article in the WSJ about Obama’s abandonment of democracy promotion. For example In his Egyptian speech:
…while he asserted his belief in “governments that reflect the will of the people,” he added, “Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.”
This, alas, is very much the claim advanced by many authoritarian regimes, including the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia, which Obama had visited the day before. Nowhere did the president make the critical point that elections are the only known way to determine the will of the people. That, apparently, would have been “presumptuous.”
…while it may be possible to identify derogations from democracy and human rights in America, those that are ubiquitous in the Muslim world are greater by many orders of magnitude. If democracy and human rights are held as high values, then all societies are not morally equal. This is a thought that cuts sharply against Obama’s multicultural sensibilities.
I just finished reading a book on the Rhodesian Bush War. It was a choice between a racist white minority efficient government and a racist black inefficient supposed majority government. With Obama’s cultural relativism and emphasis on “freedom from want and freedom from fear…if people are starving, then elections may or may not address those issues, but they are not a perfect overlay”, where would he stand on Rhodesia? Average life expectancy at the end of the Bush War and the rule of white minority government in the early 1980s was around 62 years. Under Mugabe’s supposed majority black government it is now 37 years. Dose anyone seriously think Mugabe represents or ever represented the will and aspirations of the majority of the population because he was black and was voted in? So according to Obama’s foreign policy mantra, with its emphasis on freedom from want, starvation, diseases, etc…over voting rights, he would have to support the racist minority white government. Given Obama’s African origins, it would seem unlikely – if he ever had to make the choice – that he would have supported Ian Smith’s government. Which proves the unsustainable nature of his policy of cultural relativism. Classical human rights and democracy are absolutes that should taken together, not to be traded off when it is inconvenient or you don’t want to offend.
The front cover of the latest edition of the Spectator about Ian Plimer’s best selling book, Heaven and Earth.
Hilarious. It has drawn fire from of one angry Guardian journalist, who lists criticisms against the book, one of which is almost as funny as the cover of the Spectator:
He (Plimer) claims that only 4% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is produced by humans. In fact the pre-industrial concentration was roughly 280 parts per million. Human activities have now raised this to 387ppm. Work it out for yourself.
Why, because as a typically innumerate left-wing journalist you can’t? Let’s ignore the difference between rates of human carbon emissions compared to observed increases (about half). Nothing in the link given by the journalist to support his case says it isn’t around 4 per cent. But again, let’s not argue at the margins. Instead of using 4 per cent, let’s say randomly that 8 per cent of C02 is produced by humans, double what the Guardian claims it isn’t. C02 only accounts for around 0.0384 per cent of the atmosphere to begin with, which would mean total human caused carbon emissions would account for only 0.003072 per cent of the atmosphere. It’s hardly scary stuff. So relax.
UPDATE I
The Huffington Post is also joining the counter-insurgency with basic scientific falsehoods.
CO2 — our leading contribution to heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere
Ah, no. Water vapour is the largest greenhouse gas. Continuing:
Returning to the facts — before the emergence of human industry, there were 280 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere. Now, as the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration informs us, there are 387 ppm. Not “the tiniest fraction,” but a significant jump — the predicted result of pouring billions of tonnes of the stuff into the atmosphere every year at an ever-increasing rate.
This is the same half-truth espoused by the Guardian (see above). The journalist has a hard time distinguishing between ppm and an element’s fraction in the atmosphere.
MT is rolling out the debt truck:
Gillard takes issue with the message:
Ms Gillard said the global recession had punched a $210 billion hole in commonwealth revenues. She challenged Mr Turnbull to nominate what areas he would cut to make up for the shortfall if he did not support borrowing.
The basic claim made by the government is that the collapse in revenue has driven the budget into deficit, not spending. Even a cursory look at the ABS’s Government Finance figures reveals that this is not the case. Taxation revenue for the March Qtr was $64.5 billion, which while lower than in the December Qtr, was still higher than what it was in the September Qtr for FY08/09 by around $4 billion, see Cat. No. 5519.0.55.001 Government Finance Statistics, Australia – March Quarter 2009, Table 3. Commonwealth Government, Operating Statement – General Government. Given that the economy has avoided a technical recession – something Rudd claimed credit for even though it was due to trade – and that unemployment is still below 6 per cent, one should not expect a significant contraction in taxation revenue over the next four years. The reason the budget is and will be in deficit in years to come is due to $133 billion in new and unfunded spending measures and Rudd’s desire to put a straight jacket on the Australian economy with his Emissions (Employment) Trading (Termination) Scheme.
In terms of savings measures, I’ve previously proposed a range of ideas. Abolishing the ETS would save the Federal finances $2 billion a year and rising, privatising the ABC and SBS around $1.5 billion a year, getting rid of the Human Rights Commission – another $20 million a year and putting an immediate hold on the National Broadband Network would save at least $43 billion in total and likely higher when the system begins operating at a loss. So that’s multi-billions saved right from the top of my head.
Readers may recall University of London’s emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott, and his famous quote during a debate about politicians and their vain attempts to control the climate:
“Angela Merkel the German chancellor, my own good prime minister (Tony Blair) for whom I voted — let me emphasize, arguing in public two weeks ago as to who in Annie get the gun style could produce the best temperature. ‘I could do two degrees C said Angela.’ ‘No, I could only do three said Tony.’ [LAUGHTER] Stand back a minute, those are politicians, telling you that they can control climate to a degree Celsius.”
“And can I remind everybody that IPCC that we keep talking about, very honestly admits that we know very little about 80% of the factors behind climate change. Well let’s use an engineer; I don’t think I’d want to cross Brooklyn Bridge if it were built by an engineer who only understood 80% of the forces on that bridge. [LAUGHTER]”
Well it looks like they are back to their old tricks:
Leaders of the world’s major industrialised nations (G8) have reportedly agreed to carbon emission cuts that would limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Has the world gone completely mad! These cretins can’t even manage their own budgets, so how do they seriously think they can manage the Earth’s climate? It’s like a far fetch script written for a B-grade Hollywood movie. And the worst part is that so many people honestly believe that our political leaders can manipulate the Earth’s climate to suit national objectives.
Looks like there are some sour grapes from the collapse of the Rio Tinto-Chinese deal:
Four employees of multinational miner Rio Tinto are being held in China on suspicion of espionage, an Australian government minister has said…The incident comes amid high-stakes negotiations between the Anglo-Australian miner and China over lucrative iron ore contracts. The incident threatens to cause a diplomatic headache for Australia, which relies heavily on trade with China…Relations between the company and the Chinese became strained last month when it backed out of a $195bn deal with the state-owned Chinalco, opting for a rights issue and joint venture with local rival BHP Billiton instead.
The claim is that the Rio Tinto personnel were ‘stealing state secrets.’
Some background. Prior to the last election Rudd claimed to be an economic conservative, even committing to keeping the budget in surplus and not raising taxes. I’ve previously linked to supporting quotes, even a cursory google search will bring up sufficient detail to satisfy readers. Rudd comes into power, forecasting a massive budget surplus by putting a hold on all new non-election spending proposals in the name of controlling inflation; doing so at the very time the world economy started to collapse. Rudd then back tracks in the space of 3 month and by October 2008 begins the first installment of his cash-o-rama, which by April/May 2009 reaches a whopping $130 billion in new unfunded spending proposals. This will send Federal debt to over $300 billion and total new contingent liabilities of around $1.5 trillion (not including the $26 billion in liabilities that would have been incurred if Ruddbank had been approved by the Senate). Deputy PM Gillard on her recent trip to the USA even sought credit for following the at-arms ‘progressive’ governments of Brown and Obama in spending up big. The up shot being that the International Bank of Settlements has estimated that Rudd’s cash-o-rama to be the third biggest in the world, even though Australia has not suffered a sub-prime mortgage or housing meltdown, and even though our financial system is the best in the world, with half of all the world’s most highly credit rated banks being Australian. In otherwords, where is the market failure to justify such spending?
Even now the state of the budget deficit remains pure guess work on the part of Treasury, along with the government’s claims that the budget will return to surplus in 6 to 7 years on the back of hoped for record economic growth. An unlikely scenario. This is what was reported in May 2009:
TREASURER Wayne Swan has been unable to say when the Budget will return to surplus, refusing to confirm figures from government sources that Australians would see a balanced budget in 2015-16.
As of yet, no strategy has been laid out to return the budget to surplus. Meanwhile on the other side of the world, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has adopted a very different approach. Back in 2008 it was reported by the London Times:
Germany would not “take part in a competition to outdo one another with an endless list of new proposals”…Nor would she “participate in this senseless race for billions”, she said, exhorting her party to “have the courage to swim against the tide” – a left hook at the Brown jawbone. She has been blunt that America’s orgiastic resort to cheap money and wholesale bailouts could recreate the conditions that led to the current mess, and is likely to look on Barack Obama’s extra spending dry-eyed.
Her position has been the exact opposite of Rudd’s. So at this point you are probably saying, ‘yes, and?’ Well, Rudd is in Germany to meet Merkel and guess what he is now saying about deficit spending:
WORLD leaders needed an exit strategy from the unprecedented spending and government intervention they resorted to during the global economic crisis and should use the G20 to co-ordinate it, Kevin Rudd said last night.
Oh really? Just Rudd spinning it to try and please Merkel. No doubt the message will change when he gets home. It is a tacit admission that Rudd does not have an exit strategy for his own government’s spending habit. And why the G20 should have any role in controlling Federal government spending is beyond belief. Sounds like Rudd outsourcing fiscal management and responsiblity to the G20, just as he tried last year to out source general economic management to the IMF when he realised he’d messed up his fiscal strategy as the world economy started to shrink. Another case of Rudd trying to be all things to all people to cover his own incompetence.
UPDATE I
Rudd’s two faced antics have not gone unnoticed in the press, The Australian:
JUST as Kevin Rudd’s self-proclaimed “fiscal conservative” status was fading into a figment of the past, Kevin Rudd has taken an international lead in constructive, rational economic policy discussion. Reminding world leaders in Berlin that nations need an exit strategy from the spending spree and government intervention precipitated by the global financial crisis, the Prime Minister focused on the post-crisis challenges.
Someone should remind Rudd of his own new found advice. But like I wrote yesterday, when Rudd gets home he will no longer play for the role of the appeasing statesman, and the drive for a surplus budget will be lost in transit.
Here we go again. Back to the ALP’s old habit of running down the own country and it has only taken them eighteen months to get started. Rudd’s desperate attempts to appeal to every audience is well known. Like a classic Cleon styled demagogue, Rudd will say whatever he feels he needs to say in order to be loved by his audience. Gerard Henderson:
Over time political spin loses its clout. The democratic leaders who make an impact are rarely loved while in office and demonstrate little sensitivity to criticism. In the past, Rudd had adapted his persona to meet new challenges. There is unfinished business here.
As a small example of Rudd’s everyone man tendencies – this is what he had to say to a gathering of Italians in Australia before his trip to Italy:
HAYDEN COOPER: At a fundraiser for earthquake victims, Kevin Rudd even admitted that his own country falls short in comparison to Italy.
KEVIN RUDD, PRIME MINISTER: The most beautiful country on Earth.
I wonder what Tourism Australia or the Minister for Tourism would say in response to Rudd’s claim? I can just see the Italians running a great tourism advertisement in Australia quoting or own PM about Italy. One could never imagine Howard saying such a thing, and it probably indicates that Labor in opposition never lost its love hate relationship with the country. By the time Paul Keating left office he had made running down Australia a party trick to amuse and win over Labor party faithful, the Canberra Press gallery and associated mandarins. Looks like Rudd intends to continue this ALP tradition.