Christine Kerr on the alcopops

The real motive behind the alcopops tax hike | The Australian

Christian Kerr sets out a very strong case for very strong cynicism over the alcopops tax increase.

I had been wondering what proportion of alcopops are based on rum and dark spirits, which are almost exclusively marketed to men. Kerr supplies the answer: about 75%.

This indicates that the increase is largely off target, if the concern is to reduce binge drinking in women in particular.

It may also mean that the move is much more unpopular with the electorate than I first imagined, so something good may come from it after all...:-)

Warning: religion

Tonight's very distressing scenes on the television from the earthquake affected areas of China reminded me of a recent article at First Things, inspired by the recent Burma tragedy, about theodicy.

Wikipedia explains that theodicy is " a specific branch of theology and philosophy that attempts to reconcile the existence of evil or suffering in the world with the belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent God, i.e., the problem of evil."

There are several ways a Christian can seek to explain the problem of evil, but I think I am probably now more inclined to take the Jewish/Kantian view, as explained in the Wikipedia article, that it is a bit presumptuous for humans to believe they can work it out at all.

Still, the First Things article I mentioned struck me as expressing very elegantly the emotional power of a theodicy that is based on a traditional Christian belief in real evil and a Fallen creation. It is written by David B Hart, said to be an Eastern Orthodox theologian, and while it is all worthwhile reading, the last paragraph sums it up nicely:

As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes — and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”

I feel a little sorry for people who have never felt the emotional appeal of such a belief system.

Solar for the poor means solar for no one

Solar power rebate change cools public demand | The Australian

A DECISION to break a pre-election promise on solar panel rebates is already reaping havoc, with cancelled orders and staff laid off.

Phillip May and his partner, Sophia Moody, are seething after the decision in Tuesday's budget to introduce a means test for an $8000 rebate when household income exceeds $100,000.

Adding to the insult, the rebate introduced by the Howard government first came about because Labor had promised one and that it would be available for households earning less than $250,000.

"This has kicked the guts out of our company," Mr May said last night.

The two directors of small Queanbeyan-based installation firm Solartec have been fielding calls all day from would-be clients who now won't go ahead with energy-saving panels.

On talk back radio yesterday, I heard a caller who was about to install a 2 kilowatt system at an (after rebate) cost of $14,000 arguing that it was only the higher income home owners who would even consider installing panels at this cost. He said he was only doing it to make his contribution to reducing greenhouse gases; not because it was economically viable.

Seems a good point. While there was an argument for changing the rebate system, this method seems a bit perverse.

Pointless replies

Why is there prominence given to Budget replies, especially when the Opposition is years away from regaining power in the lower house? I never watched a Labor one during the Howard years, and I didn't watch Nelson tonight.

The Coalition's decision to oppose the "alcopop" tax increase is not going to win much public favour, and I doubt that the 17 - 25 year old demographic of young women who will most appreciate the move are the Coalition's natural constituency anyway.

Did Nelson mention pensions? It seemed to me, listening to talkback radio on the first couple of days after the Budget, that the most common complaint was that the nation had a spare $20 billion that the government wanted to save for future spending, but it couldn't increase aged pensions.

So, what can you do with a spare few billion dollars? According to this Liberal Party publication from 2007 (which is actually full of interesting graphs and stuff about how the Coalition was benefiting pensioners), Australia is spending about $24 billion a year on the aged pension for about 2 million recipients.

A 10% increase in the pension would therefore appear to cost roughly $2.4 billion. Of course, with the aging population, such an increase might be more problematic for the future; but then again, when will all that superannuation sloshing around start to help the government bottom line?

So, yes it does seem there was some room for improvement to pension rates, although I guess it would be better to add the support in some other fashion than a straight rate rise.

In other movie news...

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes

Early reviews for Prince Caspian are pretty positive. Yay!

I don't know why they chose to open a few days ahead of the Indiana Jones movie. It's being absolutely swamped in publicity terms.

I guess the hope is that the pretty rock solid American Christian audience that I suspect accounted for a lot of the first Narnia movie's box office success is pretty much guaranteed to see this sometime during summer, regardless of when it opens. (Of course, The Lion,the Witch and the Wardrobe deserved its success anyway.)

Least anticipated film of the season

Florist detour and frock stars come up smelling of roses - Film - Entertainment

The only point I can see in having a "Sex and the City" movie made is for women to have some sort of clear test as to their new boyfriend's sexuality. The number of straight men willingly in a cinema to see it (or, at least, there at their own suggestion) will be vanishingly small .

And really, was there ever a worse look in a dress than the open cut thing that bony-chested what's-her-name is wearing in the photo at the link? (Oh dear: I have commented in a bitchy sounding way on women's fashion. No, no, I don't want to see the movie, honest.)

UPDATE: here's a pretty funny column on the same topic, which repeats this comment which apparently appeared after the movie's review in The Times:

I don't think SATC is just for girls. I am a reasonably well-adjusted bloke and I am looking forward to seeing the film with my girlfriend. I am then looking forward to poking my eyes out with red-hot pokers, burning my skin off, and rolling around in salt for a while."—Phil Mann, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Devine Vs Wodak

Puff goes the drug liberaliser - Miranda Devine - Opinion - smh.com.au

It's interesting watching the argument between Miranda Devine and Dr Alex Wodak on the question of marijuana laws. Seems to me Miranda is clearly winning.

Didn't Nicola get the memo?

On the 7.30 Report on Monday, Kerry O'Brien had this exchange with Health Minister Nicola Roxon:

KERRY O’BRIEN: Have you consulted the States on this? You've told them of your decision are they relaxed and comfortable about the prospect of up to 400,000 extra people coming back into the public hospital net?

NICOLA ROXON: Those are estimates from the health insurance industry. They haven't provided us with the basis upon which they make those estimates or whether, in fact, those people will present at public hospitals.

KERRY O’BRIEN: At least they've given us some figures, you haven't given me any.

On the ABC today:

Treasurer Wayne Swan has confirmed his own department predicts 485,000 people will dump their private healthcare cover under changes to the Medicare surcharge that were confirmed in last night's Federal Budget.

The figure is well above what the industry was predicting as a result of the surcharge income threshold doubling to $100,000 for singles and $150,000 for couples.

It's about time our PM had them both in his office for a cup of tea and introduction, isn't it?

Also in the Kerry O'Brien interview, there's a sign that he's starting to get sick of the way the Rudd government media manipulation works:

KERRY O’BRIEN: The decision on the health fund tax levy was leaked to both Fairfax and News Limited newspapers for Saturday morning and then Wayne Swan confirmed it on radio. Are you comfortable that this kind of media manipulation has now become commonplace? Why not, if you want it out, why not just announce it if you want it out there before the Budget? I would have thought that would be a more honest way to do it, wouldn't it?

Why doesn't he ask pointed questions like this to Kevin Rudd himself, to whom he still gives a puzzlingly easy ride?

Budget comments

Short summary: it's all a con.

A lot of the reaction tonight is pretty positive, but those taking a more cynical view seem to me (of course!) to have the more realistic take on it.

This summary here on ABC Online seems pretty right. It's not taking spending cuts seriously at all. Of course, as Turnbull had warned, severe spending cuts were not necessarily good in current circumstances anyway. However, (again as Turnbull complained tonight,) Swan was selling the need for "inflation fighting" spending cuts before today, but he hasn't really delivered on his own promise.

There was an economist writing in the Courier Mail today who argued that assessing the likely effect of a budget on inflation was extremely difficult and depends on assessing the effect of all cuts and spending programs in the entire budget. This makes a lot of common sense, but I can find no link.

In any event, it seems clear that the $2 billion net savings in the budget as delivered will make next to no difference to inflation. Are people forgetting that only a couple of days ago Access Economics was claiming that every $3 billion dollars saved would prevent a .25% interest increase? Some months ago, Ross Gittins claimed that it would take an extra $10 billion in surplus (or a surplus of 2.3% of GDP) to have the equivalent effect. I think I heard that this budget has a surplus of 1.8% of GDP. Therefore, even on Access Economics more 'optimistic' view of how effective spending cuts could be, any praise for this being an inflation fighting budget seems distinctly premature.

On the nature of some of the savings, Alan Kohler made this interesting point I haven't seen elsewhere:

One of the big savings measures is a bit of a fiddle though. The cancellation of the $959 million “Australia Connected” fund that was awarded to Singtel Optus and Elders has been counted as a saving, but the $4.7 billion National Broadband Network amount that replaces it is not counted as an expense because it hasn’t been spent yet and is not detailed in the forward estimates.

And on the point of the "future funds," which really are there just to delay large infrastructure spending until the lead up to the next election, the Crikey budget blog notes this:

...Wayne Swan today indicated both the capital and interest would be spent on appropriate projects. Given the expected inflation environment over the next few years – and the fact that, when it comes to infrastructure, we are suddenly playing catch-up for years of State Government neglect – it’s hard to work out how expenditure by these funds won’t have a similar inflationary impact several years hence as they would now.

The Opposition has made the point that its education endowment fund was a permanent fund that earned ongoing income to upgrade universities; it was not simply a pool of capital to be spent and disappear over a few years.

As I say, all a con.

On the other big political issue of the week (the Medicare surcharge levy adjustment), there is no denying that there was a logical argument for increasing the limits, as there is with taking bracket creep into account in tax tables. But also as with tax bracket creep, governments that adjust too quickly are not really helping their bottom line.

Given that there was no adjustment for 10 years, some adjustment was justifiable now. But to take it from $50,000 to $100,000 for a single person is just ideology at work, not logic. (I've had a quick look at CPI figures for 97 to 07, and it looks to me like $67,500 would be the correct inflation adjusted figure.)

Isn't that effective "tax cut" going to have an inflationary effect?

There's no doubt a significant number of single people will first drop out of private health insurance because of this change, followed by more married couples when the funds increase their already barely tolerable premiums because of the loss of the single people.

It's the first case of a unexpected and clearly bad idea borne of Labor ideology for this government. As Tony Abbott ably argued, it is very likely to make dealing with the problems within the public health system much worse in the long run.

UPDATE: I typed this last night then forgot to post it. I see now that Andrew Bolt was making the same points. Peter Hartcher makes the case for it actually being bad for inflation.

UPDATE 2: I hear that Malcolm Turnbull is running with the case that it is actually going to stimulate inflation, and he may be right.

So, to get my criticisms in order:

It's not that I was looking for a budget that did cut into people's income (eg by not delivering the tax cuts,) but the government is trying to sell the budget on pure spin, as Bolt says.

Swan is selling increased tax as a "saving": does that really make sense? Some of the other savings may well be illusory too, as noted above.

Putting the surplus into funds to be spent in future might not be such a bad thing, provided the process of identifying infrastructure spending comes up with sound projects. From that point of view, the budget is a bit of a "wait and see" proposition, as it may or may work well in the future.

It's not a budget that deserves strong condemnation; on the other hand it is not one that deserves praise either.

It is definitely the most highly "spun" budget we have seen for many years.

Slow blogging

Work, and a need for deep meditation in my underground bunker in preparation for the forthcoming release of a couple of unusually highly anticipated movies, is likely to keep me from posting much for a week.

Also, for whatever reason, I have been finding it harder to find particularly "blog worthy" stuff on the internet in the past few weeks. (Hence my need to post on the rather mundane topic of rating the Indiana Jones movies. Last night, I watched another vaguely remembered Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movie - Sailor Beware - with my son, and enjoyed it a lot. I am tempted to try to explain here why, but I'm not particularly good at that style of writing anyway.)

Anyway, there is likely to be something in the Budget that I will write about, so don't go away for too long.

Moving CO2

Carbon Dioxide Capture And Storage: Grasping At Straws In The Climate Debate?

This short article argues that there is strong reason to be skeptical of CO2 storage being able to be done at the scale really required to be effective:

The Climate Panel sees CCS as offering great potential. In various scenarios it accounts for between 15 and 55 percent of the reduction of greenhouse gases by 2100...

The problem is, according to Anders Hansson, that CCS is still a relatively untested method.

“There are a number of small facilities, in Norway, for instance, where they capture and store a million tons of carbon dioxide per year. Swedish Vattenfall is starting a pilot facility in eastern German this summer.”

Globally, a total of some millions of tons per year is being stored today within the framework of CCS. But to live up to the hopes placed on CCS requires the storage of several billion tons. In other words, this involves gargantuan volumes. In fact, carbon dioxide would be the world’s largest transported good.

“In full scale this technology only exists in the imaginations of the people developing it,” says Anders Hansson. “It’s overly optimistic to place such great faith in it, considering all the uncertainties found in the scientific literature.”

Back to the egg

Another year, another column from Tracee Hutchison about childlessness, and her resentment that politicians tend to concentrate spending on supporting families.

Last year, Tracee said this (in reference to Bill Heffernan's famous "barren" comment about Julia Gillard):

Despite John Howard's and Peter Costello's attempts to distance themselves from their wayward senator's latest spray, they are the culprits of turning the family values mantra into political paydirt and their imminent budget sweeteners to families will reinforce it.

Forget about the clever country we once aspired to be, we've become the conception country.

Exactly as I predicted, the Labor Party attitude is not pleasing her either. From today's column:

Why should single, childless people, many of whom are struggling to find relevance in a kids-and-couple dominant culture, be forced to pay for other people's children through a combination of taxes and imposed maternity leave levies? Isn't that a bit like rubbing our noses in it? Very inconsiderate if you ask me, especially when there's nothing in either budget for us.

The first part of today's column is all about how she has ended up accidentally childless.

I'm not unsympathetic to the sorrow that a single woman in her early middle age may feel at the realisation that they probably are not going to ever have a kid. (Although, as I have said before, I don't know why many modern women who know they want children will still waste years and years sleeping with partners who won't commit to the idea.)

That said, I don't know that Tracee exactly gives credibility to her argument that single people are "ignored" by government by explaining first that she walks this emotional precipice when someone just tries to make small talk with her:

And then, at some point, the mere thought of being asked one more time if you have children makes you want to shriek like a madwoman or slap the nearest person to you very hard indeed. You opt, of course, for a dignified silence for fear of being whispered about in unbecoming sentences such as "no wonder she can't find a fella …"

With such a sound and rational grounding in the issue, she should run for the Greens for Parliament.

A slight overstatement, perhaps

Danger of infection in surgery preparation - National - smh.com.au

There's an orthopedic surgeon upset about idiosyncratic rules in Sydney hospitals:

Dr Robert Molnar has for the past six months unsuccessfully sought an explanation from the Health Department as to why he is not permitted to use alcoholic surgical preparation solution on his patients at Westmead Hospital, yet he is able to at St George and Sutherland public hospitals.

The rules vary across hospitals: alcoholic solution can be used at Fairfield, Concord, Prince of Wales, Royal Women's and Royal Prince Alfred hospitals but is barred at Liverpool, Nepean, Gosford, Canterbury or Royal North Shore.

And why does this matter? Apparently, the alcohol based ones are known to offer better protection against post operative infection:

A Sydney orthopedic surgeon, Doron Sher, said that if the surgeon was appropriately educated the risk of fire was minimal.

"There is evidence in the literature showing that infection rates are lower using alcoholic Betadine," he said. "I use the alcoholic solution when I get the option because I believe that you get a lower infection rate."

But I like this line in the report best, as I assume this conclusion hasn't been verified in studies:

Dr Molnar had used an aqueous antiseptic to prepare the skin.

"You may as well spit on the wound...." he said, noting that alcoholic solution could be used at most private NSW hospitals.

Overdose?

Will changed a week before overdose death - National - smh.com.au

Isn't it an odd choice to be calling a death by Nembutal an "overdose". According to Wikipedia, there are very few things Nembutal can be used for in humans, and of course its fame now is mainly as euthanasia groups' preferred suicide drug.

Seems a bit like saying someone died of a rat poison overdose.

Ridiculous

This bud's for you, and you, and you too - Los Angeles Times

Go and read this piece by Joel Stein that shows how unbelievably farcical "medical marijuana" is in California.

(I always assumed such a system was a joke, but it's a much bigger joke than I ever imagined.)