America, the land of real equality

One good thing has already come out of the United States presidential campaign.  Australians are starting to realise that maybe America is not so bad after all.  Of the two people most likely at this stage to win the White House, one is a woman, and one is black.

Most commentators on the US have been blinded by their contempt, and in some cases their hatred, of George Bush.  So far those same commentators haven't acknowledged that the country that gave the world George Bush, might also give it Barack Obama.

The daughter of John F. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, has waxed lyrical about how Obama "appeals to the hopes of those who can still believe in the American Dream" and how he "can lift our spirits".

Were Obama somehow to become president, we can be guaranteed more paeans of praise.  One immediate result of his election in Australia would be that our Australian political parties would be forced to start looking for their own Obama.  Charisma would be back in fashion.

If Obama or Hillary Clinton becomes president, America's critics will be forced to think again.  The American people won't be able to be written off as an assemblage of religion-obsessed, gun-toting, rednecks.  Most likely, America will come to be regarded as the repository of all that is enlightened, liberal, and tolerant.

That perceptions about the US could be susceptible to so dramatic a change reveals that a country can't be judged by its leader.  As much as any elected politician would like to be able to speak for "everyone", the reality is that they cannot.  In the same way that half the electorate did not vote for John Howard while he was prime minister, about half the electorate didn't vote for Kevin Rudd either.

Australians pride themselves on their egalitarianism, and we've come to think of it as our defining national characteristic.  We like to think that egalitarianism and a fair go are reflected in our politics.  A person's background, at least intheory, should be no barrier to advancement.

We're staggered by the extent to which money seems to play a part in US elections.  With still nine months until polling day, Clinton has already raised more than $US100 million ($A112 million).  And she's just one candidate.  That figure is twice as much as what was estimated as the combined spending by the Labor and Liberal parties for last year's election.

There's an argument that America's political system and its political parties are more open and more diverse than in Australia.

In the middle of the 19th century a Japanese visitor to the US recorded that "in America a man was judged on ability rather than ancestry".  A few years later a foreign diplomat asked after the whereabouts of George Washington's descendants.  He was shocked that no one knew.  Americans also regard themselves as living in a classless and egalitarian society.  Whether that's true or not is hardly the point.  What matters is that it is believed to be true.

The fact that the population of the US is 15 times larger than Australia's only partly explains the differences between the countries.  In all walks of life, Americans are more likely to embrace competition than are Australians.  This trait is obvious in business and it extends to politics.  Americans take it for granted that most of their public officials should be elected.  In Australia, we're happy to leave the task of appointing our officials to politicians.

It's difficult to imagine any Australian political party allowing anyone who is not a party member to have a say in that party's selection of candidates for office.  Yet this is precisely what happens in the US.

In Australia, even the suggestion every party member should be given an equal vote in the preselection process has proved controversial.  The idea isn't popular because power would shift away from powerbrokers and to the grassroots membership.  Grassroots members are more difficult to control and influence than are a few trusted cadres.

Even more controversial would be to allow party members to vote for the party's leader.  This is effectively what happens in the US, and the British Conservative Party now has such a system.

If the strength of a political system can be measured by the diversity of candidates seeking national leadership, there's no comparison between Australia and America.  In addition to Obama and Clinton for the Democrats, for the Republicans there is Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon;  John McCain, a war hero;  Rudy Giuliani, a Catholic of Italian heritage;  and Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian.

Australia has had 26 prime ministers.  Every one of them has been a male of Anglo-Celtic background.

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Isn't all this talk of an apocalypse getting a bit boring?

This year is the 40th anniversary of Paul Ehrlich's influential The Population Bomb, a book that predicted an apocalyptic overpopulation crisis in the 1970s and '80s.

Ehrlich's book provides a lesson we still haven't learnt.  His prophecy that the starvation of millions of people in the developed world was imminent was spectacularly wrong -- humanity survived without any of the forced sterilisation that Ehrlich believed was necessary.

It's easy to predict environmental collapse, but it never actually seems to happen.

The anniversary of The Population Bomb should put contemporary apocalyptic predictions in their proper context.  If anything, our world -- and the environment -- just keeps getting better.

Ehrlich was at the forefront of a wave of pessimistic doomsayers in the late 1960s and early '70s.  And these doomsayers weren't just cranks -- or, if they were cranks, they were cranks with university tenure.

Despite what should be a humiliating failure for his theory of overpopulation, Ehrlich is still employed as a professor of population studies by Stanford University.  Similarly, when George Wald predicted in a 1970 speech that civilisation was likely to end within 15 or 30 years, his audience was reminded that he was a Nobel Prize-winning biologist.

These predictions were picked up by people eager to push their own agendas.  And a subgenre of films arose to deal with the "inevitable" environment and population crisis.  Soylent Green (1973) depicted a world where all food was chemically produced, and other films imagined dystopias where amoral bureaucrats strictly controlled the population -- just the sort of things advocated in The Population Bomb.

In retrospect, these fears seem a little bit silly.  The green revolution that was brought about by advances in agricultural biotechnology came pretty close to eliminating the problem of food scarcity.  Nor did the alarmists expect the large changes in demography and fertility rates that have occurred during the past few decades.

Nevertheless, for people in the 1970s, predictions of apocalypse through overpopulation and famine were just as real as the predictions of an apocalypse caused by climate change are today.  And, just like today, environmental activists and their friends in politics were lining up to propose dramatic changes to avert the crisis.

For instance, the vice-president of the Australian Conservation Foundation wrote just last week in The Age that we needed to imagine global suffering before we can tackle climate change through "nation-building" -- whatever that is.

But there are substantial grounds for optimism -- on almost every measure, the state of the world is improving.

Pollution is no longer the threat it was seen to be in the 1970s, at least in the developed world.  Changes in technology, combined with our greater demand for a clean environment, have virtually eliminated concerns about pungent waterways and dirty forests.  Legislation played some role in this, but as Indur Goklany points out in his recent study, The Improving State of the World, the environment started getting better long before such laws were passed.

Goklany reveals that strong economies, not environment ministers, are the most effective enforcers of cleanliness in our air and water.  Indeed, the world's 10 most polluted places are in countries where strong economic growth has historically been absent -- Russia, China, India and Kyrgyzstan have not really been known for their thriving consumer capitalism.

Other indices, too, show that humanity's future is likely to be bright.  Infant mortality has dramatically declined, as has malnutrition, illiteracy, and even global poverty.

And there are good grounds for hope that we can adapt to changing climates as well.  History has shown just how capable we are of inventing and adapting our way out of any sticky situation -- and how we can do it without crippling our economies or imposing brutal social controls.

Environmental alarmists have become more and more like those apocalyptic preachers common in the 19th century -- always expecting the Rapture on this date and, when it doesn't come, quickly revising their calculations.

Optimism is in too short supply in discussions about the environment.  But four decades after The Population Bomb, if we remember just how wrong visions of the apocalypse have been in the past, perhaps we will look to the future more cheerfully.

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Land constrictions cause housing pain

Urban planners and politicians have vastly increased the cost of housing with plans such as Melbourne 2030.

Last weekend, Demographia released its 2007 housing affordability findings.

Covering 227 urban areas in the US, Canada, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, this tracks average house prices compared to average household income.

Melbourne was the 22nd most expensive and Australia's housing affordability was the worst of the six countries surveyed.

Yesterday, Australian Property Monitors provided corroborating data which showed Melbourne prices had risen 25 per cent in 2007, the fastest growth among state capitals.

These reports confirm what aspiring home owners already know: buying a house is getting more difficult.

In 2007 to buy the average house in Melbourne took over seven times the average household's annual earnings.  That's more than double what it took 25 years ago.

Such price escalation need not occur, especially in Australia where house building and land development is very competitive.

Over half of the cities in the US and Canada have remained as affordable as Melbourne used to be.  These are the places which have not confined new development within restrictive urban growth boundaries.

Restricting land supply inevitably increases its price.  Lengthy approval processes and requirements for more common space accompanying developments add to the costs.

In Melbourne and Australia generally, we are now reaping the bitter harvest of the now dominant new breed of urban planner.

In previous years, urban planners saw their role as examining where housing demand was shifting and arranged trunk roads and other major infrastructure to facilitate this.  Nowadays, they have become social engineers.

The planning fraternity wants to create denser cities such as Paris with caf society, greater use of public transport and so on.

They and many of the "elite" sneer at people who prefer to live in the suburbs, particularly those who build McMansions.

But actually the European cities they admire are pretty similar to Australian cities -- 90 per cent of the population live in outer suburbs.

Planners also claim a denser city means lower infrastructure costs but usually it is more expensive to replace ageing pipes than to install new ones.

How can we unwind the planning regulations that have priced houses out of reach of first home buyers?

An abrupt change that floods the market with developable land, as Treasurer Wayne Swan has recognised, would see recent buyers and land developers facing major losses.

What we need are policies that will progressively relax the planning restraints that are pricing new home buyers out of the market.

But, first off, state governments need to understand that land restraints are the root cause.  Planning Minister Justin Madden is in denial about the effect of Melbourne 2030.

He claims to have released an ample supply of land.  The facts of house price increases disprove this.

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Garrett cops a bagging over eco-priorities

Denied responsibility over the great economic issues like carbon emissions and pulp mills, or those with vast diplomatic ramifications like Japanese whaling, our neophyte Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, has turned his attention to plastic bags.  Showing no bashfulness in employing the ABC's most overused word of 2007, he says it is, "absolutely" critical that we get cracking on phasing out plastic bags by the end of 2008.

Presumably he is considering a tax on the bags rather than outright banning but this was unclear from the remarks he made and his office could provide no clarification.

Plastic bags have long been a target for activists.  They incorporate a galaxy of ogre-like features.  They are made from oil, are part of packaging rather than something busybodies classify as being actually used, they are a big part of the rubbish chain, and they are the ultimate one-shot discardable product vilified by those who think we are running out of resources.  Years of green bags have blazed the trail in showing a more politically correct way of carrying shopping.

Among the issues Mr Garrett raised were the costs plastic bags cause through landfill, affecting wildlife and garbage.  All these tug at appealing concerns that may be inadequately catered for by normal market processes.  In other words, the users of plastic bags might obtain benefits but impose costs on others as a result.

Careful examination of all of these concerns shows them to be baseless.  Plastic bags are a trivial component of landfill and many would regard them as best being kept there since the landfill is lined and its contents insulated.

Plastic bags and harm to wildlife is a hoary old chestnut.  It has about as much plausibility as when, in a Seinfeld episode, a Kramer golf ball got lodged in the blowhole of a whale.

The issue of rubbish is one that concerns many.  According to the annual analysis of this undertaken by Keep Australia Beautiful, plastic material is the category with the highest volume of garbage.  But the reports do not demonise plastic bags within the category and, indeed, the detailed tables suggest that plastic bags comprise only 0.005% of garbage items.  This is miles less than paper, soft drink containers, beer cans, cigarette butts and a host of other items.

The point here is that if we decide there are spillover costs of waste products either in terms of the eyesore rubbish effect or the landfill effect, plastic bags would be way down the chain of targets.

Retailers do not supply these bags because they want to impose harm.  Indeed, they would prefer not to supply them (at least for free) since this incurs costs (and some retailers have now actually begun charging for the bags).  The point is that plastic bags are a considerable convenience to shoppers, and retailers are in the business of meeting consumer needs.

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Mundane matters must take priority

Luxembourg Finance Minister Jean-Claude Juncker provided a pretty good assessment of the events of the past few days when hesaid:  "The least we can say is that we live in interesting times.  That's about the only positive thing I can say."  How positive one should be about living in "interesting times" is debatable.  Many people would regard the concept as a curse.

Anyone who has seen the value of their share investments or their superannuation shredded is unlikely to regard the experience as merely interesting.  And if the contagion spreads into the "real economy", those whose jobs are at risk will have more than a passing interest in their prospects for continued employment.

Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan will have watched the turmoil with interest.  The hope that the collapse in equities prices won't translate into a recession is one of their few consolations.  Both have spent the week reassuring the nation about the strength of the Australian economy.  The data indicates they're right, of course.  The chances of Australia's falling into a recession are low.  But they, and all market watchers, know the panic that engulfed the markets on Tuesday is not neccessarily being driven by the data.  It is being driven by confidence, or rather lack of confidence, about the world's growth prospects.

If general pessimism spreads to Australia, our Prime Minister and Treasurer will be in for a very interesting time indeed.  Things used to be different.  Politicians could afford to take a slightly more relaxed attitude to stockmarket crashes and potential recessions.  These events were perceived to affect a relatively small proportion of the population.

In 1960, the Menzies government induced a credit squeeze in an attempt to curb speculative economic activity.  One measure was a directive to the banks to reduce lending for private investment in shares or property.  The Liberal Party was not too concerned about the electoral consequences of the squeeze.  It comforted itself with the knowledge that the only groups complaining were the press and business.  It even imagined that a mild recession was a political bonus.

Party officials believed "middle-class electors generally approved the government's efforts to quell the boom and to clip the wings of speculators".  Those officials got it very wrong.  At the federal election the following year, Menzies came within one seat of losing office.

More than 20 years later, during the "recession we had to have", Paul Keating boasted that 20 per cent interest rates had "de-spivved" Australia.  In Memories of a Bleeding Heart, Keating's speechwriter Don Watson recalled that it was more than "spivs" who suffered during the recession.  Watson's wife had to close her publishing business.

In 2008, the situation has changed.  More than half of all adult Australians directly or indirectly own shares, for example, so theactions of the Reserve Bank and the US Federal Reserve are of concern to more than speculators and spivs.  The audience for financial information is bigger than ever, and the scrutiny of governments and their actions is enormous.

After the events of this week, a possible reaction from Rudd and Swan would be to go slow or delay reform proposals in areas such as federalism, infrastructure, or health and education.  They now have other things to worry about.  Such an approach is understandable, but it would be wrong.

An uncertain economic future increases, rather than reduces, the imperative for reform.  The history of policy reform in this country is that it usually takes a crisis to provoke government to action.  If Australia does escape a recession it will be only because of the reforms of the past two decades.

Fixing federalism won't immediately translate into higher share prices, but in the long term it will help to make business more competitive.  The more competitive a businesss, the higher its profits.  And as the profitability of a business rises, its value to its owners rises.

If we really are facing a global meltdown, and the gravest economic risk of our generation -- as some would have us believe -- it will be difficult to get policymakers to concentrate on the mundane matters of domestic reform.  But there's no alternative.

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Having a whale of a time

There is a story about an Australian farmer and a debate he has with one of his sheep, as told by whalers in Norway.

It begins with the Aussie telling the sheep that there is no need to eat whale meat anymore.  The sheep replies, "That's good news, then there is no need to eat sheep meat either."

The farmer replies, "No, no, no!  Whale eaters are going to eat sheep meat instead."

The story ends with the sheep trying to convince the farmer that all life forms are special, but the Aussie insists that whales are special because he believes they are special.  The sheep finally replies, "Baaaaah!"

Like many Norwegians, I find the Greenpeace campaign against whaling, and Australia's support for it, somewhat naïve.

The hunting of an animal species for food should be respected unless one of two criteria is violated:  the harvest is unsustainable or the method of killing is inhumane.

In the case of whaling by the Norwegians and Japanese it is undertaken in accordance with strict quota and there is no evidence to suggest numbers of minke whales are in decline.  Furthermore, the use of a grenade tipped harpoon guarantees a speedy death as long as the shot is accurate.

While the Japanese are condemned for using the pretext of science through a loop hole in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) regulations to kill hundreds of whales each year, the Norwegians simply whale in defiance of the Commission.

In the lead-up to the recent federal election, the then Labor Opposition said it would take a tough stance against whaling and use military resources to gather evidence to mount a case against the Japanese.

The federal election has been and gone and the surveillance vessel, the Oceanic Viking has remained in port for most of this month.

The Federal Court in Sydney handed down a decision last Tuesday ruling that it is indeed illegal for the Japanese to hunt whales in Australia's southern whale sanctuary.  The Judge also acknowledged that the international community does not recognise Australia's claim to Antarctica or our whale sanctuary and so the ruling can't practically be enforced.

Indeed the Rudd government will not take action against the Japanese because that could be considered an act of war by the international community.

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A social order Australia does not need

The Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities came into full operation at the beginning of this year.  One of the justifications for the charter is that it will force state government departments and local councils to become more open and accountable.  Attorney-General Rob Hulls said a few days ago:  "The beauty of the charter is it means that government and government decision-making has to be transparent."

It's a pity that such a commitment to transparency doesn't extend to the freedom of information laws.  In the same week as ministers were congratulating themselves on having ushered in a new era of accountability, it was revealed that the Victorian Supreme Court had ordered the Department of Infrastructure to release publicly reports on the progress of the state's major projects.  The State Government had spent two years and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees attempting to keep the reports secret.

Nothing in the charter requires the State Government to abide by its own freedom of information laws.  And this proves the reality of the charter.  It's introduction has more to do with politics than with idealism.  For the Labor Party, the charter fulfils two functions.  First, it allows the ALP to claim the moral high ground as the party committed to protecting human rights.  Second, the charter rewards one of Labor's key political constituencies, namely left-wing legal academics, lawyers and judges.

Put simply, the charter prevents the Victorian Parliament, government departments and local councils from infringing on human rights.  If people believe their rights have been affected, they have a number of avenues open to them, including the ability to seek a declaration from the Supreme Court that their rights have been infringed.  While the Supreme Court can't actually overturn a government decision, a declaration claiming that something the government has done is in breach of a person's human rights will have a powerful political impact.  The government would be expected to respond, most likely by changing its decision.

The argument from advocates for the charter is that no one should be opposed to protecting human rights.  But the question is not about protecting human rights.  Instead the question is how to protect those rights.

The best way to protect human rights is through the democratic parliamentary process whereby elected representatives make decisions on behalf of the community.  The system is far from perfect, and it sometimes fails.  But it's better than the alternative.  If a politician gets a decision wrong, they can be voted out at the next election.  If a judge gets a decision wrong, the community is powerless.

The charter effectively hands to judges the political authority that once belonged to members of parliament.  For some people this isn't a problem -- and indeed for some people this is the whole point of having a charter.  According to them, politicians can't be trusted to protect human rights, but judges can be.

It isn't simply the principle behind the charter that is flawed.  The way the charter operates in practice will create myriad problems -- and a bonanza for lawyers.  As the Liberal shadow minister Robert Clark has identified, the charter will promote bureaucracy and cause massive uncertainty.

Take some real-life examples.

According to the charter, every person has the right to freedom of expression.  When last year the Government introduced new measures to reduce graffiti, it was required under the charter to prepare an eight-page justification about why banning graffiti was not an unreasonable limitation on someone's right to self-expression.  Instead of government officials working to stop graffiti, they are now required to spend their time explaining why they should be allowed to do their job.

Under to the charter, every person has the right to a fair trial.  Last week in England it was reported that lawyers are using a similar provision in that country to prevent school principals expelling students for drug dealing or violence.  According to those lawyers, unless principals collect statements from named witnesses, cross-examine them and prove their credibility, principals will not be allowed to expel a student.  The family of a 14-year-old boy who was expelled for alleged drug dealing is using these grounds to claim he was not given a "fair trial".  Already it has been claimed that Tony Mokbel might use the charter to avoid a trial in Australia.

There's pressure on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to introduce a national bill of rights in a form similar to the Victorian charter.  Thankfully, there are some in the Labor Party who appreciate that such a move would be disaster for democracy in this country.  The Labor NSW Attorney-General opposes a national bill of rights.  He's warned against "do-gooder academics running around the country trying to impose a sort of social order".  That's a warning Kevin Rudd should listen to.

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Lower taxes can lead to a bigger take

The ALP, in its 2007 national platform, committed itself to keeping tax as low as possible, while maintaining a sound revenue base.  This is an admirable goal but needs to be implemented if it is more than mere rhetoric.  In this regard, it is well worth considering what has happened to capital gains taxation over the past decade.

In 1999, the Howard government introduced a 50 per cent discount to CGT for individuals and trusts.  This discount has been vehemently criticised by most observers as favouring the rich.  Others have partly blamed it for fuelling the so-called housing bubble.  Every year somebody calls for the discount to be abolished either on equity or revenue grounds.

Much is made of CGT, as if it were the linchpin of the Australian tax system.  In 2007-08, the government expects to raise more than $198 billion in income tax revenue.  The CGT is expected to raise well over $10 billion (about 2 per cent of revenue) and the CGT discount will lead to forgone revenue of under $5 billion.

The other important point is that revenue from the CGT has increased dramatically since 1999 when the discount was introduced.  According to Australian Taxation Office data, the CGT raised $5.2 billion in 1998-99, and Treasury conservatively expects it to raise more than double that amount this financial year.  Looking only at individual taxpayers, they paid just over $2 billion in 1998-99 and just over $4 billion in 2004-05, the last year of ATO data.  Over that period, CGT revenue from listed companies that cannot access the discount actually fell.  In other words, with a decline in the tax rate, tax revenue grew.

This is not an isolated occurrence of the Laffer curve working.

The important point, however, is that the CGT discount does not favour the rich per se.  Looking at 2004-05 ATO data, 47 per cent of net capital gains were declared by taxpayers with taxable income of less than $100,000, yet they pay only 29.95 per cent of the CGT raised from individuals.  People with a taxable income over $100,000 declare 53 per cent of net capital gains and pay 70 per cent of the CGT from individuals.

To place those figures in context, about 5 per cent of the taxpaying population have incomes over $100,000.  They earn 20.5 per cent of taxable income and pay 31.7 per cent of net income tax.  In other words, the CGT is highly progressive, just like other aspects of the personal income tax system.

The tax system needs to be more focused on financing the activities of government and less focused on social engineering.  Rather than condemn the CGT discount, we should learn the lesson from this episode.  Lower taxes can lead to more revenue and are likely to promote growth and investment.

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What to do when a review doesn't go far enough

Both governments and businesses are constantly reviewing their operations.

For businesses the objective is to see what new trends are emerging, how to reduce costs and how to better orientate services and products to consumers.

Governments nowadays seldom have firms that are competing for the consumers' dollars.

Their own reviews more typically concern policy frameworks and regulatory arrangements.

As a result, governments and businesses use different forms of outside advice.

Businesses tend to use management consultants, among the best well known of which are McKinsey's, Booz Allen Hamilton and Accenture.

Governments rely on internal review bodies, like the Commonwealth's Productivity Commission or the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission (VCEC).

These review bodies have little expertise in management matters -- indeed they seldom have any executives with commercial experience.

But governments are sometimes reluctant to use outside management consultant expertise.

Especially in areas of policy sensitivity, this may throw up unpredictable recommendations which can be placed in the public arena.

Recognising reform of Victoria's retail water provision needs addressing, in August last year the Government sought advice from the VCEC.

It asked the VCEC to examine the best structure and management approaches for the monopoly water suppliers (City West, South East and Yarra Valley).

The government also asked the VCEC to address more general efficiency issues in the provision of water supply augmentations.

Among these was an invitation to the VCEC to offer "options to reduce costs of the metropolitan sector".

Addressing efficiency and regulatory impediments is the area of VCEC expertise.  The VCEC's policy evaluation skills could have illuminated issues concerning urban water provision.

This could have explored additional sources of urban water from the state's eastern catchment areas.  It also could have been a staging post to allow the government to back away from its proposed $3.1 billion white elephant desalination plant.

In contrast to these policy concerns, management issues regarding the provision of water are not matters on which the regulatory reform agency is expert or equipped to address.

Shortly before Christmas the VCEC issued a draft report, "Water Ways: Inquiry into Reform of the Metropolitan Retail Water Sector".

Unfortunately, perhaps following informal advice from the government, this discusses only the management issues concerning the supply businesses.

In its 234 pages the VCEC draft report does cover such issues as stormwater harvesting and rights to recycled water.  But the bulk of the report examines management matters like financial gearing ratios, interest cover and how the retailers might deal with plumbers.

A large part of the draft report examines whether there should be one, two or some other number of monopoly suppliers of water.

Investigating a re-arrangement of corporate deck chairs is far removed from the VCEC's core competencies.

The Government presently has a disastrous water supply policy which, if left unchanged, will impose considerable unnecessary costs on consumers and business alike.

If the VCEC final report does not address the key issues of water policy it will have been a waste of resources.

Without such a focus, the review will simply be one component in a Government strategy for blunting discontent about the higher water prices that current policies will cause.

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Next time you sip a latte, look beyond the feel-good choice

Just how fair is fair trade?  Mass market retailers from Safeway to Starbucks now sell us coffee that is supposed to quench our thirst and appease our conscience, but there is more to fair trade than feel-good marketing and social justice.

Coffee has long been highly politicised.  In 17th-century England, coffee became allied with the cause of free speech when Charles II shut down the coffee houses that he thought were brewing criticism of his government.

And in the eyes of modern activists, coffee is symbolic of the unfairness of international trade.  Their story of coffee is of the developing world exploited by globalisation and wicked multinational corporations.  And their solution is fair trade -- marketing coffee under a brand that guarantees growers more bang for their beans, sustainable agricultural practices and so on.

But there is more to fair trade than meets the eye.  It comes at a high price.  The program carries a great deal of ideological baggage and fair trade certification is full of requirements that can limit economic development rather than encourage it.  For example, to achieve certification, coffee producers are required to structure their organisations not as the small businesses that have been so successful in capitalist economies but as democratic worker co-operatives.

For fair trade advocates, the only way the developing world can compete in a global coffee market is by adopting the quasi-socialist communal structures that have constantly failed to compete in other industries.

Individual farms are unable to achieve certification by themselves -- the fair trade organisation will only approve co-operatives that can contain hundreds of farms.  This practice reduces entrepreneurship and competition between producers, eliminating the benefits of innovative farming techniques.  And in some regions, the fair trade system encourages farmers to grow in less climatically favourable areas, depressing the quality of the coffee beans.

Nevertheless, the fair trade marketing machine is extraordinarily powerful, and the brand has revealed an eager base of socially aware consumers.

The politicisation of the coffee industry has happened in conjunction with another major change:  the awakening of the Australian palate.  Coffee, like many other foods and drinks, has benefited from an expansion of taste that has added, for instance, sushi and specialty cheeses to our diet.  It's worth remembering just how recently it was that mass market stores like Gloria Jean's were seen as gourmet retailers pushing the radical idea that the flavour of our flat whites actually mattered outside niche cafes.

In the middle of this gourmet revolution, whether we buy fair trade or just good old free trade coffee is merely another one of the thousands of choices we face in our overloaded supermarket.  And Australians are wealthy enough to spend extra on products we feel are more ethical.

Indeed, symbolism has become an important part of the way we dine.  Similar campaigns against genetic modification and for organic and sustainable agriculture are just as much about image as reality -- too often they are based on flimsy evidence and have negative consequences for producers and the environment.

The fair trade system is more than our preferences in the supermarket.  At best, fair trade has an ambiguous effect on the economic wellbeing of coffee growers in the developing world;  at worst, it may actually be holding them back.

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Tackling obesity -- should the public pay?

The demand by AMA Victoria that the State Government fund bariatric surgery for the chronically obese is no doubt motivated by compassion, but illustrates some of the ways the debate about obesity has become severely distorted.  Obesity is not a public health problem and should not be treated as one.

Until relatively recently, the phrase "public health" indicated health problems that were actually public problems -- sanitation, the control of epidemics, water quality, airborne pollution and so forth.  But increased obesity is not a public health crisis like an outbreak of bird flu would be.  Obesity is not contagious -- when one person over-indulges on fast food, their colleagues and neighbours aren't put at risk.  And, in 2008, nobody orders pizza without being fully aware that cheesy crusts can lead to weight gain.

For these reasons, obesity is too often tragic, but it is first and foremost a private problem.  Medical campaigners who seek to redefine the parameters of public health are eliminating the crucial policy distinction between public and private health concerns.  When every health problem becomes a national crisis, no medical treatment is ineligible for government funding.  Bariatric surgery may be an important, even necessary, tool to treat obesity, but it does not automatically follow that it should be paid for directly by the taxpayer.

Of course, the most common objection to this line of reasoning is the simple calculation that the cost of treating obesity now is far less than the cost of treating the consequences in the future -- resolving heart disease and diabetes may be more expensive than bariatric surgery.

All public policy should be subject to economic assessment.  But this is a slippery slope.  Britain's National Health Service shows what can happen when the government makes all health problems its business -- those calculations rapidly lose their compassion and become cruel assessments of moral, rather than medical, questions.  Last week British PM Gordon Brown hinted that individuals whose lifestyle choices had created their health problems -- obesity is the classic example -- may be refused treatment in order to cut costs.

The only way to avoid this trap is to drop the conceit that all medical problems are public problems, and to reintroduce the idea that individuals should be responsible for their own health.

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Politicians find religion a cross to bear

Over these Christmas holidays it seems as though religious leaders have been happy to talk about anything other than religion.  In Australia, climate change and refugees have featured prominently in church sermons.  In England, the Archbishop of Canterbury used his Christmas message to champion the importance of waste recycling.

Tony Blair was right when a few weeks ago, on the eve of his conversion to Catholicism, he said that any British politician who talked about religion ran the risk of being regarded as a "nutter".  He drew a comparison with the United States where politicians were not afraid to discuss their faith.

In Australia, there is certainly a chance that a politician who talks about God (or even a god) will be laughed at.  An explanation about why religious leaders in this country are more comfortable debating politics than religion might be their fear that the phenomenon described by Blair will eventually extend beyond politicians to include themselves.

In this country, a politician speaking about religion also faces the risk of something worse than being thought a nutter.  It's just as possible that anyone who admits that their religion influences the way they vote in parliament will be accused of being a dangerous theocrat intent on introducing the moral majority into Australia.

The evidence that a politician who talks about religion faces such a threat is widespread.  It is obvious in the treatment of Tony Abbott, tagged by the Canberra press gallery as the "mad monk", to the way the ABC has labelled Catholic social groups, such as Opus Dei, as semi-secret organisations.

There are a number of contradictions in the way that religion and politics is treated in Australia.  The first is the inability of much of the media to appreciate that a secular viewpoint carries as many moral assumptions as does one determined on religious grounds.

The debate about stem cell research, for instance, is often presented as though one side is arguing a moral position and the other side isn't.  This is not true.  In fact, the arguments from both sides of the debate are founded in ethical and moral considerations.

It is impossible for anyone, regardless of their religious beliefs, not to approach policy questions without some moral framework.  Morality simply cannot be taken out of politics.

To be fair, one of the reasons why the media handles these issues the way it does is because of a misunderstanding of the meaning of the separation of the church and state.  The original intention of this ideal was to ensure that the government did not interfere in the affairs of the church (or churches).  It means, for example, that the government could not institute an official state religion and that political office holders were not required to pass religious tests.

Separation of church and state does not mean, and was never intended to mean, that anyone with religious convictions was disqualified from participating in politics.

There is also a contradiction in the way the media reports political and moral statements from the churches.  Contributions on "social justice" issues are welcomed, but contributions on avowedly "moral" issues are not.  The implication is that it's entirely appropriate for politicians to pay attention to religious leaders who preach about the treatment of David Hicks or the evils of WorkChoices, but when those same church leaders start talking about abortion or euthanasia politicians should ignore them.

For the past 11 years there has been an added element in the mix of religion and politics in Australia -- the presence of the Howard government.  The so-called authority of the religious right on the federal Coalition was the subject of widespread investigation and study.  Any discussion of religion immediately brought with it accusations of how Howard government ministers pandered to the conservatism of the Christian evangelical churches.

In recent years claims such as "God is working for the Liberal Party" and "an extreme form of conservative Christianity now has real influence on our politicians and their policies" became the stock-in-trade of the Liberals' opponents.  The problem with these theories is that Howard's critics struggled to provide examples of this supposedly pernicious power.

The former government's positions on illicit drugs or same-sex relationships were certainly the same as those of some church organisations, but many non-religious groups held similar positions.  If indeed the religious right did have the influence claimed for it, then seldom has so much influence been used to so little effect.

So far Kevin Rudd has defied Tony Blair's pronouncement.  The new Prime Minister has proved to be no less religious than his predecessor -- if anything, Rudd has been more willing to talk about religion than was Howard, most notably in his description of himself as a Christian socialist.

Having made much of his Christianity during 2007, it will be interesting to see what effect, if any, religion has on the Prime Minister's policies during 2008.

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Ironic title not ironic enough

The White Man's Burden:  Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
by William Easterly
(Penguin, 2006, 448 pages)

When you are the new kid on the block, the swiftest and surest way of making a name for yourself is to pick a fight with whoever is the current king of the heap.  If the competition is to see who knows the most about directing foreign aid, and your name is William Easterly, you pick a fight with Jeffrey Sachs.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special adviser to the UN on the "Millennium Development" project, provides the intellectual grunt behind pop-star Bono's more charismatic efforts to "Make Poverty History".  Sachs is the only academic on Time magazine's list of the world's most influential people.

Easterly, on the other hand, toiled for years as a research economist for the World Bank, and sought to reach out to a wider audience during the 1990s with a series of articles in Foreign Policy critically examining US and "western" foreign aid.

While Sachs and Bono focused on African poverty and called for a massive increase in foreign aid, Easterly was trying to point out the incredible record of failure arising from the programmes already in place.  While Tony Blair and Gordon Brown played to the "Make Poverty History" crowd, Easterly was pointing out the absurdity of perpetuating a cycle of debt forgiveness for recidivist defaulters.

This dispute did serve to open up the field for public debate, but the focus on the protagonists took attention away from other voices, such as Dr George Ayittey, a prominent Ghanaian economist and President of the Free Africa Foundation.  He told this reviewer:

Africa is a mess.  To fix it, the Sachs/Bono approach seeks more aid.  Easterly believes World Bank/IMF policies contributed to Africa's ruination and, therefore, a reform of their policies would help.

I believe that Africa's salvation lies in Africa itself -- not inside the U.S. Congress or the corridors of the World Bank.  And its salvation lies in returning to and building upon its own indigenous institutions ...

Easterly's "Us and Them" style determines the structure of the book, describing aid providers and recipients as either Planners (bad) or Searchers (good).  "Planners determine what to supply;  Searchers find out what is in demand", Easterly said.

Planners, such as Sachs, are those who prefer grandiose plans such as the UN's Millennium Development goals, which set elaborate goals for poverty reduction and health improvements around the world by 2015.  Providing voluminous (and damning) evidence, Easterly shows that it is precisely this kind of "big push" that is most likely to fail.

There are so many parties involved in such Utopian programmes that no-one need take responsibility and there is no accountability for failure.  Easterly approvingly quotes Edmund Burke's caution against revolutionary utopianism, and sees himself very much at one with the "Searchers".  While the Planners dominate the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Searchers tend to work on the ground.  In the case studies of AIDS-prevention programmes or infrastructure projects, searchers seek to understand the local cultures, establish direct incentives for good behaviours, and achieve remarkable results.

Easterly is frustrated with the outcomes of the recent focus on culture as a driver of economic development.  While any supporter of economic and political freedom would agree on the importance of supportive cultural institutions -- democracy, property rights, the rule of law, civility, etc. -- in the hands of Western Planners what often occurs is the forced transplantation of Western institutions into very different societies.  A true Burkean would not look at the outcomes of 500 years of Western societal development and then transplant them into the very different context of Africa.  For Easterly, as for Burke, the evolutionary process is just as important.

As a good research economist, Easterly wants more reliance placed on measurable outcomes and accountability.  But this is where the artificiality of the supposed conflict between Easterly and Sachs becomes clearer.  Amartya Sen, Nobel prize winning economist, has rightly pointed out that for all Easterly's "purple prose", his objectives, if not his methods, are not so different from those of Sachs:

in Easterly's rejection of plans to aid developing countries, there is nothing of the false ethics that finds frequent expression in the anti-aid attitudes of those who argue ... the affluent have no moral responsibility to help the wretched

A truly radical view would come from someone like Dr Ayittey, quoted earlier, who went on to say:

Africa doesn't need aid.  The aid resources it desperately needs can be found in Africa itself because its begging bowl leaks horribly.

Perhaps inevitably, given the gravitational force of power and money, Dr Ayittey's think-tank is nevertheless based in Washington, DC.

Easterly criticises the neo-colonialism of Western aid agencies, and the not so "neo" imperialism of American foreign policy, but seems unable to imagine a world in which Western aid agencies are not somehow prime movers in creating economic development in recipient countries.  The supposedly ironic tone of the book's title -- The White Man's Burden -- comes back to haunt the author.

George Ayittey's book, Africa Unchained:  The Blueprint for Africa's Future,
was published in 2004 by Palgrave Macmillan.

Is Transport welfare?

No Way To Go:  Transport and Social Disadvantage in Australian Communities
Edited by Graham Currie, Janet Stanley and John Stanley
(Monash University ePress, 2007)

Transport policy wars are usually fought on two battlefields.  On one, the combatants fight over the funding mix between roads and public transport, while on the other, there is vigorous dispute about the relative merits of public versus private provision of infrastructure and services.

This book considers a third front in the transport wars -- "mass" transit pitted against "social" transit.

Of course, for those who like really big government there is no battle here at all (just fund everything), but for the saner parts of the political spectrum, there is a real need to weigh up priorities.

But can transport policy usefully be an extension of welfare policy?

The contributors to No Way To Go:  Transport and Social Disadvantage in Australian Communities generally take an implicit position in the mass versus social debate, but it becomes explicit when two of the editors write that "the individual benefits of reduced social exclusion to the people involved are likely to be many times greater in ultimate value than those that focus on people who are already included".

In other words, taxpayers are likely to get more bang for their buck by providing a base level of service for the currently transport disadvantaged (social transit), rather than by increasing levels of service where there is already reasonable provision (mass transit).

A key premise of the book is that "poverty has less to do with absence of income than with people's lack of capacity to choose and do what they want to be".  While this may generally be a dubious proposition, it is true that in the area of transport it is the lack of availability of a base service, rather than unit trip price, which is the obvious manifestation of comparative disadvantage.

One of the strengths of this book is that it does consider this important debate without too many diversions into the other contentious transport debates.

Refreshingly, for a public transport book, it is recognised that "car availability is a strong defence against transport disadvantage, particularly if the car is your own" and that "the car will continue to be central to assuring social inclusion for very large numbers of Australians".  While co-editor John Stanley has in the past written critically on how the Victorian train and tram privatisation was undertaken, the fact that he is CEO of the private bus industry association in Victoria means that No Way To Go also contains no in-principle opposition to private operation of services.

Overall, the book provides useful information about international trends in addressing transport disadvantage, considers particular categories of disadvantaged groups and assesses some current trends in government policy.

The fact that most of the contributors are academics means that, at times, the book gets weighed down by academic style and prejudice, a problem compounded by an unusual structure (partly arising from its origins as an "e-book"), some repetition and some deviation from the main task of the work.  Although the mobility issues confronting those in remote indigenous communities are undoubtedly among the most serious in the nation, they are so far removed in nature from those facing other disadvantaged people in normal urban situations that they could well have been considered elsewhere.

More illustrative of the main issues of the book are the chapters which consider such issues as how the ageing of the population will increase the numbers of people unable to drive cars for health reasons.  Undoubtedly, the most powerful case study is provided by Anne Hurni, who contributes a chapter looking at the transport problems confronting sole parents and young people in western Sydney.

Decades ago, the poorest members of the community lived in inner urban areas where both extensive public transport and the ability to walk to many destinations prevented specific problems of transport disadvantage from arising.  Today, the location of many of the poorest members of the community on the urban fringe, or in provincial centres, means that walking or public transport are not viable options and living in such places therefore produces comparative transport disadvantage.

Warrnambool provides the case study for a regional centre and the chapter about it contains some interesting examples of how the funding of community transport can provide counterproductive outcomes for those it is designed to help.

This chapter includes some useful suggestions for regulatory reform.  The authors argue that non-students should be allowed to access spare capacity on school buses and also that school buses should be allowed to be used to provide route bus services at other times of the day.  Currently, they are prevented from doing so as school buses do not meet Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) requirements.

The DDA is clearly going to have a major impact on transport funding priorities for the next two decades.  State governments have been handed an enormous cost burden by this piece of federal legislation and, in many cases, meeting its requirements will preclude consideration of spending on other priorities.

The main problem with No Way To Go is that it does not offer any real answers to questions about how anyone in government should assess the merits of different measures to address transport disadvantage.  Nor does it provide a workable model for weighing these up against measures to improve mass transit.  Actually, the more one considers the topic the more one concludes that if public transport is to have a viable future, it really will be necessary to include social transit in the welfare budget and leave transport authorities only responsible for mass transit.

After all, if the socially disadvantaged are provided sufficient welfare payments so that they can afford to buy a car, those welfare payments are not included in road budgets.  Thus, it hardly seems equitable to include welfare-motivated social transit in the public transport budget.

Addressing transport disadvantage is surely an aspect of a policy to address general disadvantage.  The value of spending on social transit can be more easily compared with other welfare measures, as opposed to other transport measures.  And, if the decision is made to spend welfare dollars on social transit, community services departments can contract-in services in the same way that education departments have historically contracted school bus services.

Transport authorities should be solely charged with the responsibility of moving as many people as possible as efficiently as possible.

The history of food hints at its future

Australian Agriculture:  Its History and Challenges
by Ted Henzell
(CSIRO Publishing, 2007, 308 pages)

Agriculture began in Australia with the arrival of the first European settlers in 1788.  In the early years, wheat was grown in coastal New South Wales, with the flour produced rationed along with a fixed quantity of beef, sugar and tea.  Many early settlers considered fruit and vegetables a health hazard -- indeed, a Dr Johnson suggested that cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar and then properly thrown out, as it was good for nothing.

Over the last two hundred years much has changed -- including not only where and how our food is grown but what we like to eat.  This history is detailed, commodity by commodity, in a new book by Ted Henzell with the deceptively bland title Australian Agriculture:  Its History and Challenges.

Henzell's book contains much of interest for food buffs on the history of different products and their methods of production.  It is surprising to learn that it was Chinese migrants who grew most of the vegetables for Sydney at the turn of the twentieth century and that they practised one of the most sustainable organic farming systems in the world -- the use of nightsoil (human manure).  This perhaps explains why recipe books back then recommended that carrots be boiled for two hours!

There are also stories for those interested in wine, including material on some of the colourful characters who pioneered wine-making in our hot climate before the advent of mechanical refrigeration.  Interestingly, the Forster brothers in Melbourne were using refrigeration to make their lager beer 50 years before South Australian wine producers realised how important refrigeration was for the production of light white wines.  Furthermore, fortified wines are remarkably tolerant of hot oxidant conditions during fermentation, which perhaps explains why they accounted for about 85 per cent of Australian wine sales during the 1930s and 1940s.

Henzell puts the modern animal liberation campaign in some context, when he describes just how many cattle died on the early sailing ships on their way to Botany Bay.  Nearly all the early introductions were financed by the government, as live importation was such a costly and risky business.  Only 227 beasts survived of the 364 boarded in the first 10 years of settlement.

In the chapter on sheep and wool, Henzell explains that with the industrial revolution underpinning the development of the wool industry, there was an excess of mutton.  So, in the 1840s, when there was a sharp fall in demand for stocking new stations, about a million head of sheep a year were boiled down for tallow.

While some have suggested that the recent failed wheat crop is a sign of inappropriate intensive European agricultural techniques and climate change, Australian Agriculture documents the tremendous increases in wheat yields over the last 100 years -- particularly the last 20 years -- as a result of innovations such as high-yielding varieties, rotation with canola and improved management with nutrition and diseases.

Henzell also documents the extent to which yield per hectare has increased dramatically in cotton, driven by a significant investment in research and development and the adoption of new genetically modified varieties.  In contrast, productivity in the sugar industry has suffered from the banning of organochlorine pesticides and growing the crop as a monoculture.  Not only does Henzell illustrate how Australia's fruit and vegetable industries have used quarantine policy to limit competition from imports, but he also shows the extent to which those policies have hampered opportunities to develop export markets.

The most powerful message to draw from Henzell's book is not only that each commodity has a unique history, but that each commodity will only survive as an Australian industry into the twenty-first century if it manages to stay internationally competitive -- in particular, through the development and implementation of new and innovative technologies, from the planting of the crop through to the sale of the final product.  And considering how recent an addition many "staple" foods such as tomatoes are to Australian kitchens, we may be eating very different foods in many different ways by the end of this century.

Freedom in the nanny state

Nanny State:  How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America into a Nation of Children
by David Harsanyi
(Broadway, 2007, 304 pages)

Booze, smokes, porn -- the usual suspects -- are joined by trans-fats, cheerleaders and jungle gyms in the long list of life's pleasures being regulated out of existence by an ever-expanding government in Nanny State:  How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Piggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America into a Nation of Children by David Harsanyi.

David Harsanyi's book is an amusing tour of the worst excesses of the Nanny State.

His examples are appropriately bizarre, such as the legislation drafted by Californian congressman Doug Ose to control swearing on the airwaves, which sets out in excruciating detail which words, hyphenated compounds, and other grammatical forms are banned.  Or the 50-year-old being asked for his ID in a Kentucky bar because a 70-year-old had successfully sued on the grounds of age discrimination when he wasn't asked.

Apart from that small and virtuous group called libertarians, everyone else is a target for Harsanyi.  He saves particular scorn for what he sees as the inherent hypocrisy of moral conservative crusades against porn, Internet gambling and Janet Jackson's nipple, while simultaneously promoting less intrusive government as a political ideology.  However do-gooders of the left are named and shamed in greater numbers for their multitude of Nanny State interventions.  For those opposed to excessive regulation, it is always tempting to highlight the overlap of conservatives and the left.  But this is a cheap shot without at least attempting to explain the motivations of both groups.

It may be that the conservatives causes (porn, gambling, drugs and prostitution) are the last faint echoes of what was previously a full-blown symphony of control, while the regulation of the left is just beginning in limiting individual choices.

The proper limits of regulation and the symbiotic relationship that much of the new regulation has with risk avoidance raise tons of questions that would make for a fascinating book, but this is, unfortunately, not that book.  Nanny State is long on examples of nanny-state regulations, but is disappointingly short on analysis and argument.

Over the past 30 years, the nature of regulation has changed markedly in all developed societies.  In Australia, shop trading laws were heavily restricted in all states, price controls existed for many foodstuffs, such as milk, eggs and bread, and monopoly providers delivered telecommunications and electricity.  In addition to economic controls, abortion was illegal, homosexual sex was against the law and married women were barred from working in the public service.

It would be a mistake, therefore, to regard the more recent past as a golden age of freedom.  In many important respects, individuals have much greater freedoms now than they did in the past;  both in how they choose to live their lives and in their economic freedoms.  The nature of what might be called regulation of the personal sphere is, however, changing.  The religious basis for laws relating to temperance, abortion, homosexuality, and mixed-race relationships has given way to ever-increasing state paternalism.  In the past, certain behaviours were seen as morally wrong, now new laws are passed ostensibly to protect others from our actions and increasingly to protect us from ourselves.

Why this is occurring in the personal sphere, at a time when the limits of regulation in the economic and moral spheres are receding, is immensely interesting.  For the first time in human history, people in developed societies are free to make many fundamental life choices:  in fertility, sexuality, and timing of death, yet at the same time are losing the choice to smoke, to eat certain types of food, to drink alcohol when pregnant.  How this reversal of the traditional approach -- that is, regulating what can be done in the bedroom while leaving the kitchen alone -- will pan out for individual's lives is still unknown.

This book has much to recommend it as a handy and enjoyable compendium of some of the most excessive examples of law-making.  No case can be proved by example, however, so Harsanyi's claim that the rise of this new regulation stops people learning common sense and lose the capacity for personal responsibility remains open to attack from the equally possible examples of people behaving with immense stupidity.

What's the appeal of "totalitarian chic"?

Exposing the real Che Guevara and the useful idiots who idolise him
By Humberto Fontova
(Sentinel HC, 2007, 256 pages)

&

President Reagan -- The triumph of imagination
By Richard Reeve
(Simon & Schuster, 2006, 592 pages)

In politics there have been many powerful symbols, but few have crossed over from politics into popular culture like Albert Korda's photograph of the "heroic guerrilla", Che Guevara.  The image sells and has been emblazoned on a diverse range of objects from clothes to piggy banks.  Guevara's image has come to represent rebellion and has achieved a recognition that few political activists have.  Yet Guevara's life and works were hardly the sum of his so-called political achievements.  Guevara was an enthusiastic and deluded Marxist revolutionary with a penchant for executions, making his status as a political hero questionable, particularly when there are so many more deserving.

Lately, a cadre of anti-Guevara activists have become quite vocal in their disdain for Guevara and the status he has achieved.  One of his most vocal critics is the Cuban exile, Humberto Fontova, who recently published Exposing the real Che Guevara and the useful idiots who idolise him.

As a child, Fontova's family was separated as they tried to flee the (then undeclared) new communist nation.  His family was eventually reunited when they arrived in the United States, but Fontova is incapable of letting those he holds responsible for their exile get away unscathed.  His book is designed to tear apart the credibility of the man who he believes responsible for so much of the past and contemporary hardship of the Cuban people, while also taking a swipe at the "useful idiots" in the United States who dutifully, but unthinkingly, revere his image.

But Guevara is not the only murderer in history who has achieved significant public support after their passing.  Despite being responsible for up to 70 million deaths, Chairman Mao still enjoys reverence amongst large sections of the Chinese people.  The Politburo now only pays lip service to his legacy, but he is still glorified in public mosaics and buildings throughout the country.

Stalin enjoys similar treatment.  Stalin once famously had the census-takers shot after they reported that 30 million people had died under his regime.  Yet today he still commands considerable respect amongst the Russian people.  His years of power often generate respect amongst a population which appears more content with the certainty of totalitarianism than the unpredictability of freedom.

The Kims of North Korea have also built cult followings within their realm.  However, any cult status achieved in the West is for their quirkiness, as portrayed by the Kim Jong-il marionette in the film Team America:  World Police.

But only Guevara's image has managed to transcend politics into popular culture.  Ironically, his stature is highest in the countries to which he was most passionately opposed.

In a recent article in the Washington Post, journalist David Segal argued that an image of Guevara in an art exhibition was demonstrative of his cult status -- "Che is politics' answer to James Dean".  But Guevara is not Dean:  Che was very much a rebel with a cause.

Yet, as Fontova argues, Guevara was hardly the anti-materialist, harbinger of peace that many Hollywood celebrities would like him to be.  Guevara was killed by Bolivian troops, with support from the CIA, during his attempts to stir up a revolution in Bolivia.  Following his capture, Guevara accepted that he had executed up to "a couple of thousand" people.  Documentation is available to prove that he executed at least seven hundred.  Furthermore, Guevara hardly rejected materialism:  proudly owning Rolex watches and living in mansions in the most exclusive parts of Havana.

Guevara's image is often used to evoke rebellion against the established order and few would doubt that the "heroic guerrilla" was also not afraid to use violence to achieve his aims.  Yet Fontova points out that Guevara's life is largely a myth cobbled together to maintain the legitimacy of his stature.  In particular, most of his fans and critics know Guevara as a guerrilla who used his military skills to help Castro take Cuba.  But Fontova shows convincingly that Guevara's military career was a mirage perpetuated in the magazines and newspapers of the West.  During the Bay of Pigs invasion, Guevara was fooled and diverted by a CIA plot which involved fireworks, mirrors and the playback of a recorded battle.  His involvement in the defeat of anti-communist rebels was to arrive at the real battlefield on the final day after the rebels were essentially defeated.  The irony is that despite not seeing a real battlefield he still suffered injuries -- he accidentally shot himself.

Equally, during the Battle of Santa Clara, where Che's forces overthrew the Cuban Batista regime, the US print media claimed that one thousand people were killed.  However, as Fontova details, the Batista troops gave up with little struggle and only one person was killed.

Rather than a military victory, Castro's success in Cuba was more a public affairs victory in Washington DC and New York.  Throughout and following Castro's and Guevara's takeover of Cuba, The New York Times often ran stories recognising their significant military achievements against the Batista rebels, despite it now coming to light that most battles involved few shots, let alone casualties.

What is clear is that Guevara, like Castro, has achieved his cult status despite his failures and the pain that he inflicted.  It would be more appropriate to argue that Guevara was less the "heroic guerrilla," and more the "artful dodger".

How has Guevara successfully escaped his reputation, well described by one of his friends as that of an executioner who engaged in "bloodletting for its own sake"?  Is Guevara's appeal based simply on the idealism that he portrayed (outside of the execution chambers) to a youth market waiting to be led?  Or was the "Heroic Guerilla" just an image that prints well and communicates a subconscious message?

What is perhaps of interest is that there is no conservative idol.  There is no conservative pop icon that enjoys unparalleled support amongst young people and movie stars.

Perhaps the closest "icon" conservatives have to an idol is the former President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.  Particularly in US politics, candidates now actively invoke the spirit of Reagan to secure elections.  The current Republican Presidential Primary is filled with candidates who all claim to be the heir to the Reagan legacy.

Guevara was a man of many words and he often spoke in crusading language when he talked about the success of communist Cuba and his interest in overthrowing the United States.  Equally, Reagan evoked very strong language in defence of the United States, conservatism and the justification for the overthrow of the Soviet Union.  Both leaders also spoke about sacrifice in achieving their stated goals.

Both men also tapped into the imaginative psyche of their audiences.  Guevara's imaginative appeal appears to have been established long after his passing, aided by a number of hagiographies and a gullible media.

The capacity for Reagan to tap into the imagination of the American people was the topic of Richard Reeves' book, President Reagan -- The triumph of imagination.  Reeves depicted a political leader who understood the value of words as well as action, and who understood the need to articulate a future of hope for his audience.  Reeves' argues that, after Reagan's passing, conservatives romanticised his Presidency and achievements beyond reality.

The period between his death and his burial supports this view.  Reagan's demise gripped the United States -- there was a week of mourning and his body was on display 24 hours-a-day in the Capitol Building.  The long hours were uncommon but necessary to clear the hordes that attended to pay their respects.

Reagan also remains the only conservative political hero to have his ideology endorsed with a moniker -- Reaganism.  Reagan had clearly tapped into the imagination of the American people and has been revered despite the gulf that separates the day-to-day details of his Administration from the legends that now surround him.

Despite his success, Reagan has not achieved the same degree of celebration that Guevara has:  he hasn't appeared in fashion houses or been tattooed on an unmentionable part of Angelina Jolie's body.

The image of Reagan at the rally in support of Senator Durenberg, with his weathered face and stiff posture framed by a sea of American flags, is the closest photograph that encapsulates the image now portrayed of Reagan -- a stoic, uncompromising crusader.  Yet it has only made its way onto t-shirts on conservative websites and the occasional political memorabilia store in Washington DC.

Perhaps it is their defeat that makes their memory fashionable.  Purchasing pro-communist memorabilia is not limited to naïve celebrities and left-wing political activists who are capable of turning a blind eye.

Conservatives often buy communisms memorabilia for its chic value.  I confess to owning North Vietnamese propaganda prints, and North Korea is one of the top ten destinations to which I want to travel.  If it is defeat that transforms communism's face into pop-culture, perhaps we should be celebrating Guevara's t-shirts.