It's All about Politics under the Bridge

Federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, recently changed his mind about the sale of water from Queensland's Warrego River -- a decision that had nothing to do with the conclusions of a scientific report commissioned by his government, rather it was all about keeping the peace.

A year ago the CSIRO Murray-Darling Basin Sustainable Yield Project was established to provide governments with "a robust, Basin-wide estimate of water availability on an individual catchment and aquifer basis".

A first report on water availability in the Warrego concluded the planned sale of water under the Queensland Government's water sharing plans would have retained about 90 percent of natural flows in a system that contributes less than one percent of inflows to the Darling River.

But you may well ask why the Queensland was considering auctioning water at all, when it had just signed up to the Federal Government's proposed $3 billion water buyback for the Murray-Darling system.

Well, the water sharing plans were part of Queensland's commitment to a previous COAG (Council of Australian Governments) agreement and were apparently developed using "the best science" in accordance with agreed national policies.

But then again how useful is "the science" when a process is so political?

Add the uncertainties presented by climate change and farmers and environmentalists and politicians can really claim whatever they like.

Take the recent CSIRO report -- the report Mr Turnbull used to stop the sale of water from the Warrego River.  It concludes that given climate change, there could be an increase in inflows to the Warrego River of 28 percent or a decrease of 44 percent.

Environmentalists focused on the possible 44 percent decrease and claimed there should be no sale.  Queensland irrigators could have used the same data to claim that, given there is a potential 28 percent increase from climate change and the diversions are going to have about a three percent impact on inflows under any scenario the sales should go ahead.

Given also that the Environment Minister lives in the inner Sydney seat of Wentworth, where just about everyone believes the Murray-Darling basin is already in ruin and that we already have a climate crisis, I wonder why he even bothered with the CSIRO report at all.

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Rudd's confusing foreign policy

With a federal election campaign just a few weeks away, there are many things we still don't know about Kevin Rudd.  We don't know his tax policy.  We don't yet know the final version of his industrial relations policy.  And other than Labor's promise to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq, we don't know too much about his foreign affairs policy.

A single-sentence summary of Labor's foreign policy would be along the lines of "wait until Hillary or Obama becomes the next US president".  While this might be what Labor wishes for, things are never as simple.  For one thing, George Bush is going to be around for another 15 months.  There's also no guarantee that a Democrat will win the presidency.  And if a Democrat does replace Bush, Iraq will continue to dominate US foreign policy.

The only element of Labor's foreign policy that has had any public or media scrutiny has been its position on Iraq.  This is fortunate for Rudd because on issues such as the condition of the US alliance and relations with our neighbours in the region, the ALP's stance is confusing and contradictory.  Worse, as it stands, there is potential for Labor's foreign policy to undermine this country's commitment to democracy and human rights in the Asia-Pacific region.

John Howard has succeeded in balancing Australia's political relationship with the United States against our commercial dealings with China.  At the same time, the Prime Minister has recognised that as a democracy our long-term interests rest with other democracies.  This is why the Coalition has made the first steps to establishing a defence treaty between Australia, the US, Japan and India.  It is this kind of treaty that Rudd opposes.  The reason he has given is that China regards such an arrangement as an attempt to "encircle" it.

Rudd is correct in his assessment of China's attitude.  What he has not explained, though, is why Australia's foreign policy should be held hostage to China, or to any other country for that matter.  His approach is peculiar given that Labor has always regarded itself as more willing than the Coalition to pursue an "independent" foreign policy.

In recent years, China has made important strides towards political freedom.  I hope it will continue towards the creation of a liberal democracy.  But for the moment at least, the values that prevail in China are quite different from those that exist in this country -- and Australia's foreign policy should take account of this.

ALP foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland said earlier this year that "we can't assume that forever and a day the United States will have the predominance of influence it currently has".  This is true.  And it is for precisely this reason that Australia should be establishing closer defence links with countries that uphold the importance of democracy and human rights.

One of the reasons that the ALP has rejected a defence treaty between Australia and Japan is because such a treaty would require each country to assist the other in case of a military attack.  The problem with Labor's rationale is that it is almost impossible to contemplate a situation in which Japan is attacked and Australia did not provide support.  This country's economic and security interests would be vitally affected if Japan suffered a military threat.  It is a mistake to imagine otherwise.  Labor has been quick to complain that the Coalition does not show due deference to the United Nations.  Another criticism is that Australia has been complicit with America in allegedly breaking international law by invading Iraq.  In contrast, a Rudd government would ensure that Australia is a "good international citizen".

To its credit, the ALP has acknowledged that sometimes pre-emptive peacekeeping action might be necessary to prevent crimes against humanity.  Labor has set the condition that such action must be "sanctioned by the international community in accordance with strict predetermined criteria".  This is fine in theory.  The question Labor can't answer is what happens when the "international community" can't or won't stop crimes against humanity.

Neither the UN nor international law prevented the genocide in Rwanda.  And the "international community" has gone missing during the Darfur crisis.  A few weeks ago China blocked a UN resolution that would have allowed for the deployment of peacekeepers to Sudan.  The US and the European Union had lobbied for the resolution.

Kevin Rudd's efforts to present himself as different from John Howard are understandable.  What he should not lose sight of is the fact that for the foreseeable future, the best guarantor of peace and security in our region will be the United States.

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Reformer Rudd under the radar

In the art of war, the first rule is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent.  To miscalculate is to invite defeat.  This is the position of the Howard government in relation to the Rudd opposition.  At the core is the government's time-warped assessment of Kevin Rudd's workplace relations policies.

The possibility is that Rudd has initiated fundamental change on core Labor values.  It's a probabiity the government seems intent on ignoring.  To understand the likely development, several trends need to be considered.

Until Rudd assumed leadership, federal Labor was constrained by the irrational Labor Left in the union movement.  This still exists but is being brought under control.  It's the same internal ALP struggle that has occurred in Victoria.  Victoria's union Left destroyed the Cain/ Kirner government.  The Bracks/ Brumby team has quietly neutralised much of these elements.  Steve Bracks and John Brumby did not undo Kennett's workplace reforms and continued the reform trend, for example their occupational health and safety reforms.  Without a state industrial relations commission, Victoria has been the greatest beneficiary of federal workplace reforms in the building sector.  Rudd is most closely replicating the Bracks/ Brumby model.  The starkest example oddly comes from NSW, which has long been controlled by the disciplined Labor Right.  But unlike the Bracks/ Brumby Victoria, the NSW Labor Right institutionalised its control through the instrument of the state industrial elations comminsion.  The NSW IRC secures labour movement control because it legalises the corruption of commercial competition principles and practices that would otherwise be illegal under federal competition laws.  To do business in NSW requires compliance with these deal-making power arrangements.

Significantly, Rudd does not intend to return the federal IRC to the centre of Labor policy.  This sent shockwaves through the NSW labour movement, most clearly expressed by NSW labour academics.  The NSW system has always hidden its power structures under a mask of academic and theoretical respectability delivered to it by NSW labour academics.  Recently the academics have been vocal in expressing dismay that Rudd's workplace relations policy will not replicate the NSW model.  They have accused business of exerting excessive influence over Rudd.

But Rudd seems to be doing something new and unexpected with core ALP values.  It appears he has rejected the hard Left and hard Right both at the same time.  What then are his policies and values?  It's a bit hard to be sure, but a good hint comes from a publication produced by the Catholic church.  In June this year an official publication of the Australian Catholic church bishops strongly criticised Work Choices.  Workplace Relations:  A Catholic Perspective alleged that Work Choices fundamentally destroyed Christian social justice values.  It urged Catholics to agitate against the policy, reflecting similar calls from the Uniting and Anglican churches.

The Catholic bishops' position and Rudd's workplace policies have distinct similarities.  Rudd's small claims-type process for small business unfair dismissals is contained in the Catholic publication.  So is the absence of a return to IRC dominance.  Rudd and the Catholics apply similar policies to enforcing collective negotiations, securing a role for unions under law.

Perhaps Rudd's proud public adherence to Christian values is the genuine driver of his policy principles.  Maybe he follows the evangelical Christian movement that glorifies business and wealth creation within a Christian framework.  If so, there are potential contradictions.

If these observations are close to the truth, they are probably inconvenient for John Howard.  Rudd's application of a new framework of core Labor belief does not fit the government's fear campaign based on the union bogyman.  If Rudd has opened a new political ground, the Howard government's failure to recognise and study this is probably Rudd's greatest strategic advantage.

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Markets being stifled by the man with a plan

It was not so long ago that governments considered themselves better qualified to make commercial decisions than businesses.

When companies did not invest the way the government thought they should, or offer the sort of product ranges officials thought were required, government stepped in with "industry plans".

These usually involved subsidies and protection from imports in return for industry-wide efforts to develop in particular directions and also to improve productivity.

In the 1980s, under Bob Hawke, we had plans for just about all industries -- cars, clothing, pharmaceuticals, computer software, and photographic materials.

In spite of politicians and bureaucrats having no commercial expertise, some industry plans actually helped companies adapt to the global market.  This was due not to any new competition-killing factories or designs but to reduced levels of protection from overseas suppliers which stimulated efficiency gains.

Since the fall of socialism, industry plans are no longer credible.  Nobody would listen to a politician berating business manager's as mugs because their business decisions diverged from those the politician preferred.

Instead, the modern approach accepts the market as working far better than state planning.  The justification for political intervention nowadays is "market failure".

This is a term that used to refer to very rare cases, such as monopoly or over-use of public roads.  But it is now a catch-cry justifying the ever-widening range of government intervention and regulation.

The former East German communist leaders once announced that they had lost confidence in the wisdom of the people and that the people would have to regain that confidence.

Our own governments also mistrust the consumers they rule over.

For example, they consider consumers unable to make the wisest choices between energy cost savings and higher up-front costs for things such as insulation.  This form of so-called "market failure" justifies regulations requiring new home owners to install $7000 to $14,000 of energy saving costs.

The government case, that consumers are incapable of trading off up-front expenses for future savings, might equally apply to most products.  Does it follow that we should substitute the wisdom of government for consumer choice more generally?

Restraints on consumer choice are also often part of an army of environmental regulations.

These include measures extending energy-saving regulations to fridges and washing machines.  A whole host of new ones in the pipeline will extend these to televisions and other energy-using purchases.

These regulatory measures follow reports that massage data to claim that allowing consumers to choose would mean general community losses due to "market failure".

A recent NSW Business Chamber report shows the mounting costs from environmental regulations.

These regulations restrict landowners' and homeowners' choices.  In addition, they entail delays and other costs stemming from bureaucratic processing of the massive increase in public participation in decisions.

Local environment plans cascade on top of state and federal regulations and add to the energy regulations, the waste management, water use heritage and other measures that are immunity to government assaults on red tape.

This political override of individual consumers and property owners harms us all.  The outcome of socialised decision-making drives us closer to the dreaded East German industrial paralysis.

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Victoria's water agenda doesn't float

Abandoning the characteristics of a fiscally responsible Treasurer, Peter Costello yesterday argued for downgrading economic considerations and adopting multiple desalination plants around Australia.  This week's demonstration against Mr Brumby's plant in Wonthaggi reminds us that there are contrary powerful views that are also not anchored in economics.

The proposed Melbourne desalination plant, like that for Sydney, was spawned by a Government reluctant to build dams to service the growing urban population.

The water agenda in Australia has been largely hijacked by claims that we are the driest continent, fuelled by environmentalist hysteria.

One fiction that is easily addressed is the dry continent myth.  Although most of Australia is desert, rainfall per capita is, after Iceland and Russia, the third highest in the world.  And, although most of the rainfall is in the monsoonal far north, the eastern and southern seaboards have more rainfall per person than do the southern European countries.

It also needs to be recognised that 85 per cent of the water that is actually used Australia is for irrigation and other farm uses.  Farmers, being businessmen, will buy and sell their entitlements to water when the price is right.

The Melbourne desalination plant owed its support to the mistaken beliefs of former environment minister John Thwaites, that water derived from rainfall had become too scarce.  On coming into office he abandoned Melbourne Water's longstanding plans for sequential dam construction, opting instead for chic, New Age slogans involving "less is best".

When the drought arrived, this solution was shown to be empty of logic, politically unpopular and economically crippling for many industries.

The issue now is how to resolve the crisis the Government has created.  The present plan is to replace a decade of inaction by four separate projects to be developed simultaneously.  Asdie from the desalination plant, these involved:

• Upgrading the irrigations ystem in the Goulburn Murray area (largely entailing taking back water from irrigators.
• Linking the Goulburn River with the existing Sugarloaf dam.
• Treating recycled water.

The Victorian Government generally provides few costings on water supply to accompany its glossy brochures and flim-flam.  From the figures it offers (which include some optimistic estimates of the cost of wind, its preferred power source), a desalination plant would entail a cost of $2.25 per kilolitre.  In addition, its sea level location would entail considerable pumping costs.

By comparison, the Sugarloaf Pipeline, including the costs of buying water from irrigators, would cost $0.54 per kilolitre.  In other words, the Government is considering two projects, one of which supplies the water at less than one quarter the cost of the other.

But there's more.  The Sugarloaf solution is only being proposed because it allows the Government to maintain a skeleton of its commitment to building no new dams.  A new dam along the lines previously envisaged could be built either using the Macalister or the Mitchell.  Previously the Government has used the cost, $1 billion, as justification for inaction on a new dam.  This cost, however, is not much greater than that for its favoured Sugarloaf option and only one-third of the cost of the desalination plant.

Based on the $1 billion capital cost and the operating costs of the Thomson Dam, a new dam could supply water at $0.33 per kilolitre.  This is some 40 per cent less than the costs of the Sugarloaf pipeline and only one-seventh the costs of the desalination plant.  Such a dam would also deliver two to three times the supply of the 75 billion litres envisaged for the Sugarloaf proposal.

A new dam in the north-east of the state would also assist in relieving flood damage.  It is easy to overlook that in its natural state about one-third of Victoria, including virtually all the populated places, was regularly engulfed by floods.  Melbourne could not exist if earlier generations had not tamed the Yarra and many townships in the east of the state continue to be flooded with alarming regularity.

The Government sailed into office on the back of placating disparate interest groups including the green mystics who oppose all development.  Now secure in a longstanding tenure, it has to gently unpick the policies that it cobbled together a dozen years ago to appeal to disparate single-issue interests.

Mr Brumby has placed his most trusted lieutenant in charge of reviewing urban water provision.  The key task is to find a face-saving way of extricating the Government from the $3.1 billion white elephant desalination facility bequeathed by the Bracks-Thwaites team.  Mr Costello's intervention in favour of such facilities has now made it that much more difficult.

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The slippery slope towards internet censorship continues

The Australian Government continued down the slippery slope towards internet censorship yesterday by introducing a bill to give the Australian Federal Police the power to nominate terrorism or crime related websites for filtering.

In The Australian Greens Senator Kerry Nettle expressed concerns that the Police Commissioner might use these new powers to call for Greenpeace's website to be filtered -- which really should raise more questions about the activities of Greenpeace than the value of the legislation.

Nevertheless, there is slightly less to this bill than it seems at first glance.  The internet industry code currently governing online content already provides for filtering of pornographic and offensive content.  But this filtering is voluntary, not mandatory.

At the moment, internet service providers who want to be designated "family friendly" by the Internet Industry Association have to offer their customers one of a range of approved PC or server side commercial filters.  And these filters are periodically updated according to an Australian Communications and Media Authority black list.  Yesterday's bill would merely allow the AFP to add terrorism or crime related sites to that black list.  But why would aspiring terrorists and criminals willingly install a family friendly filter onto their PC?

A lot rides on how the Internet Industry Association rewrites its codes of practise in the light of the government's NetAlert scheme.  Under NetAlert, all internet service providers will be compelled to offer consumers the choice between an unfiltered internet connection or a server-side filtered one.

Again, terrorists are unlikely to choose a filtered internet connection.  The government's new legislation only really makes sense if the unfiltered product is not going to be truly "unfiltered".  That the internet content bill was introduced quietly yesterday morning does not inspire confidence that the government plans to leave our internet connections alone.  And it's worth remembering that the Labor Party has for a long time promised mandatory server side filters if they win government.

Quite aside from the internet censorship issue, this bill highlights a disturbing regulatory trend -- governments delegating the policing of the internet to the communications industry.  Many of the measures canvassed by the inquiry into social networking sites would do just that.  Even outside the high-technology sector, counterterrorism and anti money laundering regulation in the financial sector compels firms to police their own customers.

Particularly in the communications sector, these sorts of regulatory burdens can only add to costs for consumers.

Alan's excellent adventure

Paul Keating is entitled to feel a little miffed.  In Alan Greenspan's 531 page tome, The Age of Turbulence:  Adventures in a New World, published on Monday, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve spends entire chapters documenting his 18-year fight against inflation.

Greenspan praises John Howard, Peter Costello, Bob Hawke and Ian Macfarlane.  But he can't find any space for Keating.  As Keating can take much of the credit for forcing Australians to realise the importance of defeating inflation, the omission of an entry for Keating in the index of Greenspan's book is a glaring omission.  The only mention of anyone named Keating in The Age of Turbulence is a reference to Charles Keating, who was jailed in the early 1990s for fraud committed while running an American savings and loan company.  The collapse of the company cost taxpayers $US3 billion.  Somewhat unfortunately for Greenspan his consulting firm had artifled the financial health of Keating's business a few years before it went broke.

People will read The Age of Turbulence for many reasons.  No doubt some of the people who queued for hours in New York bookstores to buy it on the day of its release did so in the belief that Greenspan would reveal the secrets of how to make money on the stockmarket.

However, anyone who purchases the book for this purpose will be disappointed.  Greenspan endorses the sentiment of Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary.  "There's no way to know for certain when a market is overvalued or undervalued".  Greenspan happily admits that identifying turns in the business cycle before they occur is more an art than a science.  For example, in 1997 he feared that US stocks were overvalued and that the bull run was coming to an end.  He was wrong.  The bulls reigned supreme for another three years.

On reading The Age of Turbulence one of the reasons for Greenspan's success quickly becomes obvious.  He understands that economics is not actually about economics -- at least not economics as it is taught to graduates these days, which is as an endless series of mathematical equations of ever-increasing complexity.

For Greenspan the study of economics is the study of what people and businesses buy and sell.  He had an intuitive feel for what was happening in the real economy.  Because he was at the Fed for such a long time it is often forgotten that Greenspan ran a successful business consulting firm for 20 years.  This, combined with his directorships of companies such as Alcoa, Mobil, JPMorgan and General Foods gave him an insight into how the economy worked in practice, as opposed to how it was supposed to work in theory.

John Howard might buy The Age of Turbulence because of the particularly nice things that Greenspan says about him.  "Howard impressed me with his deep interest in the role of technology in American productivity growth.  Whereas most heads of government steer clear of such detail, he sought me out on such issues during numerous visits to the United States between 1997 and 2005".

What will be less attractive to the Prime Minister is Greenspan's attitude to things such as the Future Fund.  He finds the concept "truly scary".  Greenspan doesn't believe it is "politically feasible to insulate such huge funds from government direction".  And this is exactly what we've already seen in Australia.  Labor has promised to raid the Future Fund to build a broadband network.

There's something else that should attract the attention of Liberal MPs.  Greenspan (a lifelong Republican) despairs at the refusal of the Republican Party to address the growing US government deficit or to care about its consequences.  This grim assessment of economic policy making under George Bush has already gained wide publicity.  What has received less coverage is his broader critique of the party.

Greenspan says the Republicans have abandoned their core beliefs.  Instead they have accommodated themselves to the "new political realities", which are that voters like big government and the best that can ever be hoped for is to slow the growth of government.  This attitude, combined with a willingness "to loosen the federal purse strings any time it might help add a few more seats to the Republican majority" resulted in the Republicans relinquishing any claim to their "libertarian small-government ideal".

Greenspan's conclusion following the loss of the Republicans' control of the Congress after the 2006 elections is devastating.  "The Republicans in Congress lost their way.  They swapped principle for power.  They ended up with neither.  They deserved to lose".

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Same-sex equality a basic Liberal ideal

Conservative does not mean the same thing as regressive.  You wouldn't know it from the decision by Prime Minister John Howard late last week to oppose any reforms to remove discrimination against same-sex couples.

Howard's decision follows a federal cabinet split on the issue.  Lacking a uniform view, the cabinet decided to leave the final decision in Howard's hands.  And at a party room meeting last week he announced he was not going to support reform because it was "complicated".

Howard has clearly taken the lead from the small number of Liberal ministers who argued in cabinet that the recognition of gay relationships didn't fit in with the agenda of an avowedly conservative Government.

The proposed reforms would have allowed same-sex couples to have the same government benefits as heterosexual couples in areas such as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the Medicare Safety Net and reforms in migration law.

A conservative approach to social policy is non-interventionist.

Conservative philosophy holds that it is society, not the latest fashions of the political class, that should shape social norms.

In 2007, it would be impossible for Howard to argue that same-sex couples are not a part of contemporary Australian society.  If the Government chose to recognise their existence, it would be the fulfilment of a traditional conservative approach to social policy.

The reality is that the Liberal Party platforms of each state division provide support for the cause of reform.

As it is a federated organisation, the philosophical platform varies from one state and territory division to another.  Party platforms provide an insight into the guiding principles of the division and what it would do in government.

None of them argues for perpetuating known discrimination.  In fact, the reverse is true.  In every state, the Liberal Party makes a commitment to the principle of equality.

The ACT's division platform is strongest.  It states its support for "respecting the value, dignity and contribution of all members of the community regardless of sexual preference".  It goes on to argue "all people should enjoy the same rights and opportunities and exercise the same responsibilities in a community that values and respects diversity".

The Victorian division states in its platform that Liberals have "shared values of liberty, fairness, equality for all and favouritism to none".  Other states and territory divisions offer comparable statements.

The platform providing the most comfort to opponents of gay civil rights is that of the Northern Territory.  It supports a "progressive party committed to social, economic and political progress within a framework of traditional conservative values".  However, the NT platform provides Howard with little to work with.

The federal platform commits the party to continuing Robert Menzies' vision for adapting to a changing society.  "Liberalism," it argues, "is not a fixed ideology but a broad-based political philosophy that relates a core set of enduring values to the changing realities and challenges that societies confront over time".

Perhaps the most telling argument in favour of reform is how each division of the Liberal Party treats same-sex couples.  Every division except Queensland offers a joint, couple or family membership.  If you apply online, none of the membership forms stipulates requirements for the gender mix of a joint membership.  In fact, the default setting on the Tasmanian and ACT division websites is for two people, both with the title "Mr".

Of course, each Liberal Party platform also supports the role of the family.  But none chooses to define what constitutes a family, rightly leaving that question open to the diverse interpretations appropriate for the contemporary mix of modern Australian society.

The party has always had divisions between its conservative and liberal wings.  In the cabinet debate, ministers Malcolm Turnbull, Brendan Nelson, Joe Hockey and Philip Ruddock argued for the reforms.  It is believed Howard also argued in favour of reform.

In a tight election, Howard has clearly been spooked by the Australian Christian Lobby, which is campaigning against reform.  Given his low polling, Howard needs all the friends he can get.  But to win an election campaign a party always needs to hold its base, and the base is rarely impressed by short-term policy shifts.

Howard's conservatism should lead him to support reform recognising the dignity of same-sex couples.  His critics have always wrongly equated his conservatism with regressivism.

The Prime Minister has, unfortunately, missed his chance to prove his critics wrong.

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Better to be alert than NetAlarmed

The internet will kill your children, or something.

At least, that is the message of the Federal Government ads plastered on the side of every second tram trundling down Swanston Street.

The Government's approach to internet safety has all the hyperbole and sensationalism of tabloid current affairs programs.  This is not surprising.  Scare campaigns about the dangers of chatting or stumbling upon nudity usually have little to do with children, and all to do with raising fear in parents.  Parents vote.

NetAlert, the initiative that provides those free internet filters that were broken within 30 minutes by a year 10 student, will do little to stop children finding pornography online if they want to.  And the mandatory internet filtering that the Government has announced will be expensive and mostly unworkable.

In a further step, last Thursday the Government announced an investigation into sex offenders and pedophiles on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.  But the policy options raised by the Government -- such as segregating adults and children online, mandatory age verification, or requiring parental approval before signing up to sites -- will be as ineffective as NetAlert.  Bureaucratic obstacles are no defence against individuals determined to cause harm.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Government's internet policies are not much more than cynical vote-gathering.  In the absence of any other ideas for the upcoming election, the Federal Government is asking voters to think of the children.

But what do the children themselves think about internet safety?  The Department of Communications kicked an own goal last week when it released a study of the attitudes of parents and kids.  Parents were concerned that the internet exposed children to pornography and was full of strangers and chat rooms.  Children were more worried about pop-up ads, viruses and substandard internet speeds.  Not surprisingly, few were concerned about pornography.  Some expressed concerns about interacting with dangerous strangers.

The study did not provide any support for one of the bulwarks of the Government's policy -- the mandatory internet filter.  It revealed instead that internet literacy was a more effective protection against any potential danger online.

Regulating MySpace and filtering the internet provide no substitute for education.  Governments can have a role to play in educating about online safety;  they set the school curriculum and most children attend public schools.  The second way governments can approach child safety is through police work.  After all, parents should be outraged not that pedophiles could be on MySpace, but that there are pedophiles at large.

Like any matters to do with children, parents have to take the bulk of the responsibility.  The most effective approach to internet safety and obscenity is monitoring online activity.  The best protection for children is the setting of boundaries.

Too much of the Federal Government's internet policy is a distraction from these far more effective approaches.

A few months ago, many commentators assumed that the Federal Government had a rabbit to pull out of the hat before this election.  Free internet filters and giving Kieran Perkins the title of "Parent Ambassador" are unfortunately more likely to make the Government look like bunnies.

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Murray Logging Ban No Help to Red Gums

Last week the New South National Parks Association launched a legal challenge to the logging of state forests along the Murray River.  It claims the red gum forests attract more than 20,000 water birds and include extensive wetlands areas.

But interestingly, these forests have been logged since the 1800s and are still biologically diverse so why stop logging now?

Indeed since the 1980s, many of the red gum forests along the Murray River have been recognised as natural or near natural wetlands and listed under the international Ramsar Convention because of their special ecological values.

But they were not always well managed.  During the late 1800s, large quantities of timber were cut for building and operating river boats, gold mining and as sleepers for railways.

The extent of the logging, including along the entire river frontage to a distance of approximately three kilometers from the river bank, resulted in concern that the forest would be entirely cut out.

A Conservator of Forests was appointed in 1888 and his focus was on protecting the forest from over-cutting, controlling over-grazing, introducing silviculture treatment and protecting the forest from fire.  Export duties were imposed to reduce timber removal.

The current extent of many red gum forests along the Murray River is thought to be a result of regeneration from this time which also coincided with a decline in Aboriginal burning.

Significant quantities of red gum timber continued to be harvested during the 1900s.

There were official assessments of the timber resource in places like the Barmah forest beginning in 1929 which continued right through until the early 1980s.

They showed a general increase in trees growing -- not withstanding significant volumes being harvested, and despite river flow regulation since the construction of the Hume Dam in the 1930s.

In the past 25 years, focus has changed from timber production to preserving the forests for their biodiversity values -- but there has still been some logging and grazing in many of the red gum forests along the Murray.

There is now a push from greenies in NSW and Victoria to ban both logging and grazing.

Conservationists are missing an important point -- these forests are a product of careful management by the industry over the last 100 years.  In excluding logging, forest thinning and controlled burning, the ecological values within these forests will inevitably change.

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A Government with no message

The issue of whether John Howard or someone else leads the Coalition to the election is a distraction.  Voter disaffection with the Federal Government goes much deeper than the choice of leader.

On many measures, John Howard has been an outstanding Prime Minister and he deserves to continue in the job.  But the question from voters is:  what are you going to do for me next?  The PM has between now and election day to give an answer.  As yet, we're not sure of his reply.

Like it or not, Australians are demanding the vision thing.  And it's clear that we want to hear about more than just good economic management.  So far the Coalition hasn't made enough of a case for its re-election.

Julia Gillard yesterday was able to exploit this lack of ideas when she claimed that the Government had even worse industrial relations plans.

In fact, the Government does not appear to have any plans, for industrial relations or anything else.

Labor hasn't offered much more of a program than the Coalition.  But the Opposition doesn't have to spell out a comprehensive policy program to be appealing.  Instead, Rudd can afford to be seen as merely a credible alternative.

With no new vision to present, Howard is struggling to retain voter attention.  He is running on his record.  And there are many highlights to that record.  However, it is also a record that can best be described as one of big government conservatism.

Record surpluses have not resulted in record tax cuts.  Real tax reform would not simply have reduced the top marginal rate for example.  Real tax reform would also have addressed the disincentives that those on low incomes face when they move from welfare to work.

The pork-barrelling and advertising sprees that have served the Government so well in previous elections are no longer having the desired effect.  Instead, these strategies merely paint the picture of a Government in pursuit of votes.

All of this is ironic because on many things Howard is a forceful and passionate advocate for choice.  He's vigorously defended the right of parents to choose the school they want for children.  So his instincts should be for lower taxes and a free economy.  Instead, what we've got is more economic and social regulation, not less.

It seems there is no limit to the range of issues on which the Federal Government will preach.  The latest example is the campaign to warn families of internet dangers.  It's debatable whether it is the job of the national government to tell parents to monitor what their children do on the internet.

The Howard Government's approach to economic reform has been quantity, rather than quality.

There is no better illustration of this than WorkChoices.  The Government is right to emphasise the growth in employment over the past two years, but the new industrial relations system is complex and confusing.  The unions and the ALP have been able to exploit this issue precisely because few people understand the new system.

The so-called media reforms did nothing of the sort.  Australia's traditional print and television media are still protected by the Government and insulated from competition by new technologies.  The country could have had real broadband by now if the Government had allowed the private sector to build it.

What should have been a crowning achievement of the Coalition, the GST, has simply led to bigger and bigger government.  GST revenue has flooded state governments with money but isolated them from any responsibility for collecting it.  This has completely distorted notions of political accountability.

The AWB scandal should have been greeted by a comprehensive deregulation of wheat markets, and an abolition of that old protectionist bulwark, the single desk.  Instead, we have had piecemeal reform designed to punish AWB, rather than deregulate the wheat industry.

The Liberal Party's commitment to federalism has largely been abandoned.  The Prime Minister now calls himself a nationalist, but he may have misread the public mood on the issue.  Support for federalism is not merely support for archaic notions of states' rights.  People want government to be accessible and accountable, regardless of whether that level of government is federal, state or local.  A Canberra takeover of state government functions doesn't fulfil these criteria.

Elections are about more than economic management, and so they should be.  So far Labor has defined the terms of the debate.  The task for John Howard is to tell Australia what else this election is about.

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Impact statements drag us through the mill

Scientists and ambitious enviro-bureaucrats have sucked governments into insisting upon "environmental impact statements" (EIS) for an expanding range of development proposals.

Initially such requirements envisaged an EIS being conducted rapidly and precisely with unambiguous findings.

This has proven to be way off the mark.  The EIS process is costly and lengthy and often its conclusions are contentious.  It is a major deterrence to new ventures.

Originally an EIS was structured to give a green light to proposals using technology designated as "state-of-the-art" or using "world's best practice".  Today some anti-business commentators pillory such terms as meaningless.

Indeed, when an EIS indicates that the environment will not be seriously harmed by a proposed activity, this regularly becomes a springboard from which a new set of objections are raised.

So it is with Gunns' proposed Tasmanian pulp mill.  Environmentalists oppose using Australian timber resources and the infinite cleansing power of the oceans to build a facility which is essential to the production of this and every newspaper.  This is despite the mill replacing older and heavier polluting facilities elsewhere in the world.

Having battled the environmental approval process for three years, the Tasmanian pulp mill is now awaiting the findings of another study, headed by Commonwealth chief scientist, Jim Peacock.  But one thing is certain;  unless Dr Peacock finds that the mill should not proceed, there is no prospect of the environmentalists and their favoured scientists accepting his verdict.

EIS procedures nowadays impede developments.

We have already seen the mechanism turned against even the most "environmentally correct" facilities such as wind farms.  Now we have the prospect of activists using the process to target other eco-indulgent white elephants such as the proposed Wonthaggi desalination plant.

They might do us all a favour by stopping this wasteful $3 billion proposal dead in its tracks.  But the problem is that such success would energise activists to oppose any other measures to bring water to Melbourne.  Low shower pressure, cracked cricket pitches, dying gardens and dirt-caked cars is their idea of the good life.

There is a better way.

Getting an EIS green light does not grant immunity from lawsuits.  If Gunns builds a mill that has adverse effects on oyster farming or any other business, it becomes liable for hefty damages.

Working through capital markets and bankers, this is a highly effective deterrence against harm being done.  Recognition of this can considerably reduce the scope of the EIS process.

The present tortuous approval process means fewer projects and fewer well-paid jobs.  This is of particular concern to Tasmania, Australia's Cinderella state.

Placing impediments on development is a reversal of long standing attitudes.  Columnist Mark Steyn noted that the first Labour Day was proposed 120 years ago by the US Carpenters and Joiners union to honour those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold".  Unfortunately, many who are active in the politics of economic development are today more interested in "rude nature" than how it can be used to improve our world and its living standards.

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The dangers of a pulp mill celebrity status

It seems a distant memory but new projects once excited emotions of support.  People tended to recognise them as bringing greater wealth, better jobs and spin-off benefits across the community.

Gunns' Tasmanian pulp mill epitomises a regrettable change.  Here is a project that introduces a state-of-the-art facility that adds value to basic raw material production;  goals that politicians of most stripes have ever advocated.

Weighing in at $2 billion, the investment will give Tasmania a pulping factory that meets the most stringent environmental requirements in the world.

It will employ thousands of people in a state that has been the laggard within Australia.

In years gone by the mere prospect of such investment would have thrilled governments and community alike.

Not now, it seems.

Predictably, Bob Brown and the Greens oppose the development.  But the Greens are not alone.  They have, on this issue, also gained support from a wider bunch of flaky anti-development elitists.

These are led by Geoffrey Cousins, a businessman that Canberra insisted be placed on the board of Telstra.  The Telstra board, showing far superior judgement to Prime Minister John Howard, resisted his appointment.

Maybe they had previewed the novel he has written, The Butcherbird, which portrays all businessmen as either rogues or mugs.

Cousins has assembled a coterie of film and sports stars to campaign against the proposal.  These include Bryan Brown, Rachel Ward, Rebecca Gibney, Johnny Diesel and John Newcombe.

People who have devoted their careers to sporting or acting pursuits rarely make the transition into genuine political figures.  Among actors Ronald Reagan broke through.  The jury is still out on Arnie.  Among sportsmen, Justin Madden may consider himself such a rarity.

For the most part such public figures tend to focus on using politics to bulldoze through some favoured cause:  saving seals, whales, forests, and so on.

Seldom do their "causes" involve people and never do they involve ordinary working people.  The training, working and social lives of the sports and celebrity elites hardly ever arm them to analyse the real conflicts entailed in promoting their favoured cause.

And they are largely divorced from those generating the wealth that supports their own service industries.

This certainly applies to the stars that Cousins has recruited to his cause, none of whom wants to have their views subjected to public scrutiny.

But their celebrity status has the effect of paralysing government decisions.  In the case of the pulp mill they are threatening to galvanise the "doctors' wives" to toss Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull out of his leafy Sydney electorate.  Turnbull is sufficiently intimidated to have delayed the approval processes by adding yet another layer of review.

These appeals from naive celebrities to the "concerned" rich people in areas thousands of miles away would consign Tasmanians to a lower standard of living.  Their political pull means that instead of governments putting out the welcome mat to new investment, we see delaying measures and an array of unnecessary reviews impeding it.

A surfeit of "democracy" in allowing everyone a say in what each of us does is a recipe for stagnation.  Most people with little direct interest in a matter will not bother to think through the consequences on others and, in parading their own vanities, many may not even care about any adverse ramifications.  Others will willingly recruit political muscle to obtain even minor benefits at others' expense.

There has to be a better way.  This should de-politicise business decisions or at least confine the politics to those closely affected.

The Prime Minister may have hit upon a guide to a solution in suggesting that people in an affected region might be allowed a veto over whether a nuclear power station should be built.  The Swiss handle nuclear waste disposal by calling for communities to offer locations for the waste and prices at which they would agree to its (safe) storage.  This allows communities to benefit by payments that defray their rates and there is eager bidding for the storage facilities.

The trick is to define a community meaningfully.  It has to be large enough that the effects of the development be mainly confined within it.  But it must be small enough to avoid the dilution of benefits and maintenance of the selfish moral posturing that Cousins is seeking to tap in his campaign.

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Dealing with that $30,000 phone bill ... without regulation

There is a "mounting dossier" of complaints to communications regulators concerning unexpectedly high mobile phone bills, reports the Australian Financial Review today.

It's hard to be too sympathetic with somebody who couldn't figure out they had spent nearly $30,000 in a single month - they must now have an extraordinary library of downloaded ring tones.

But this surge in complaints is partly due to technological convergence.  As mobile phones increasingly provide the same sort of internet connection that consumers are used to at home, those consumers expect it to be just as accessibly priced.

Unexpectedly high bills were the subject of a high-profile Australian Communications Authority investigation in 2004.  The services the ACA fingered as culprits less than three years ago, MMS and subscription services, are strikingly different from those now.  In 2007, it is mobile data and download services on 3G handsets that are at fault.

The industry ombudsman says that complaints over high bills have increased thirty percent over the last year.

Mobile providers need to develop processes to deal with the high account activity that leads to these extraordinarily high bills.  Neither the consumer nor the firm is helped by the sudden appearance of a multi-thousand dollar debt.

Firms offering home broadband services have dealt with the unexpectedly high bill problem before.  Early plans punished consumers with high "excess" data prices, but now most firms have structured their prices to "shape" data to a lower speed once consumers reach a certain limit.

This is a model that the mobile industry may be able to adopt.  Indeed, some major mobile carriers apply hard caps to a range of premium services.

Furthermore, in the United States, the iPhone/ AT&T deal offers unlimited data plans, which may indicate that the price of mobile data is trending towards zero.  Certainly, in Australia mobile data is now much cheaper than it was when the only technology available was GPRS on a standard GSM phone.  And some Blackberry plans offer unlimited email data already.

Horror stories like those in the AFR today tend to encourage regulatory responses.  In this case, legislators should be wary of knee-jerk reactions - mandating specific pricing models for high data usage could raise prices for consumers across the board.

Instead, the phenomenon of unexpectedly high mobile bills simply illustrates how the communications industry needs to adjust their business models to changes in technology and consumer demand.

Working on relationship reform

As opinion polls are consistently indicating a Labor win at the federal election, it's worthwhile contemplating workplace relations under a Rudd government.

Many companies in traditional hotbed industrial relations sectors may be fearing a breakout in union militancy.  If Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd is elected, one image is of mad unionists wreaking revenge on businesses that supported the "extreme" laws of the Howard government.

This may happen in some instances but Rudd's announcements last week of his workplace relations policy details provide the opportunity for more considered analysis.

What's clear is that Rudd's policy adopts great quantities of Howard's reforms.  Howard has in effect won much of his cultural battle because his reforms have initiated large changes inside the ALP.  Howard has shifted the political middle ground and Rudd has gone with it.

A successful Kevin Rudd would have Howard's status quo to help him in the first six months because Work Choices would remain unchanged until the Senate altered in mid-2008.  After that, Rudd's agenda would be subservient to the strange politics of an unpredictable Senate.  Rudd is unlikely to gain control of the Senate.  If he could secure effective Senate approval, it's probable that new legislation would not be operational until early or even mid-2009.  New bureaucracy takes time to construct.

These scenarios show that Work Choices could remain effectively operational for even the first two years of a government led by Rudd, who would then be preparing for 2010 election.

If he did move to full implementation of his stated agenda, some things are known and others remain uncertain.  Locked in permanently under Rudd are Work Choices' right of entry and pattern bargaining restrictions, bans on secondary boycotts and orders against unlawful industrial action.

Retained for the bulk of a Rudd government's first term and sometimes beyond are the construction sector's reforms including the sector's policeman -- the Australian Building and Construction Commission -- and the building code of practice.  Existing Australian workplace agreements (AWAs) are retained for the length of agreements and new AWAs are allowed in workplaces where AWAs now exist.  Current unfair dismissal laws would probably remain unchanged for another two years for reasons stated above.

This timetable probably suits Rudd.  His greatest threat on winning government would be an immediate implementation of his workplace agenda.  If it's accepted that Work Choices has contributed to lowering employment without creating wage pressures on inflation, a dumping of Work Choices will raise the prospect of wages escalation and the Reserve Bank responding with interest rate increases.  This could destroy Rudd's election chances in 2010 by proving he was a bad economic manager.

With Work Choices remaining for so long into his first term, Rudd minimises his risk of damaging the economy.  The risky changes would happen late in his first term, probably delaying their negative economic impact until after a 2010 election.  Rudd's economically destructive policies include laws to force businesses into unwanted collective agreements, the removal of the AWA option and the big one, re-imposing unfair dismissals on small businesses.

It's with these probabilities that businesses have to decide the direction of their approaches to workplace relations.  It's a critical moment for chief executives.

The usual orthodoxy among management is to sit tight in the face of changing laws and the possibility of union militancy.  This "do nothing" management culture has fostered management accountability avoidance and a refusal to confront negative worker-to-manager communications.

These cultures remain a central cause of underperforming businesses.  Some chief executives recognise this but don't know the pathways to resolution.  But workplace reform is and always has been, about relationships inside companies.  It's about achieving direct, quality relationships between each and every person, at every level.  The legislative frameworks that encompass the relationships are secondary to the relationships themselves.

In competitive business environments, it's the quality of relationships in companies that create the competitive edge.  If Howard were to retain government, businesses seeking competitive improvement can move forward with certainty on the real workplace agenda of relationship building.

If Rudd wins, there's a possible window of about two years where the relationship objective can be advanced.  After that, uncertainty enters the equation.

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Society rhetoric just a pulp fiction

In politics, words are designed to obscure.  For instance, Kevin Rudd has been telling business groups all week that it is Labor's job to govern for "society", not "vested interests".  John Howard, too, argues that his government represents Australian society, not the sectional interests of union thugs portrayed so stereotypically in anti-Labor ads.

Each party claims to represent society against overpaid and overdressed CEOs or overpaid and underdressed union apparatchiks.  Whatever "society" is, it must be delighted -- no matter who wins the election, it has a friend.

So it's not surprising that Margaret Thatcher's declaration in a 1987 interview with the British weekly Women's Own that "there is no such thing as society" is considered the very epitome of ideological heartlessness.

Of course, her remark is more often than not taken out of context -- the Iron Lady was targeting people who routinely place the blame for their misfortunes on others -- but at the same time the statement can stand by itself.

Society is so large and so vague a concept that it is meaningless.  There are individual men and women, Thatcher went on to argue, and there are families.  She could have added friends, and she probably should have added communities -- but Thatcher was essentially right.  Society is a rhetorical fiction.

No political leader could ever hope to understand, let alone represent, the enormous range of wants and needs of everybody in a country of 21 million people.  Individuals are just too diverse to be pressed into a great big lumpen ball of "society".  Furthermore, the boundaries of society are unclear.  Does society stop at the water's edge?  Does society stop when we go to work?  Is it society, or is it the government that compels us to pay tax?  (It sure feels like government).

The fiction of society also supports some remarkably poor public policy.  For example, federal Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews has argued that the new citizenship test is designed to ensure Australia has a cohesive society by formally codifying some Australian values.

The word "value" is just as fraught as the word "society" -- 100 philosophers locked in a room wouldn't be able to decide what it means.  Nevertheless, the Federal Government is convinced that as long as potential citizens can identify Sir Edmund Barton in a multiple choice list, Australia's values will be maintained.

When we try to figure out what might be the shared values of our society, we usually end up repeating bad jokes from Crocodile Dundee.  Instead, we should recognise that individuals can have values, and communities can have values, but insisting that everybody in the country recognises our Judaeo-Christian heritage won't do much for anybody.

It would be better to drop the illusion of society and instead view Australia as a collection of varied and overlapping communities, which are voluntarily entered into and held together by genuinely common interests.  These communities can pivot around schools, workplaces and football clubs, and economic, social or cultural interests.

And governments don't have the burden of encouraging community.  Indeed, a community imposed from the top down is not a community at all.

Governments do have a role in removing the impediments to community activity, but dressing up public policy with vacuous rhetoric does nothing more than obscure the importance of genuine community.

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