Some more skepticism needed

Abbott to hit business with hikes

Apart from Colebatch's column linked above, there seems to be little in the way of commentary about on whom the Coalition's claimed savings are falling.

In fact, there seems to be little skepticism about the claim that the Paid Parental Leave plan would actually save money in the long run.  To give just one example, I'm pretty sure that in the summary Hockey provided,  it made mention of savings from double dipping being reduced in State public service schemes.  How does that work?  Why is a saving to a State budget being credited to a Federal bottom line? 

But back to Colebatch:

The Coalition will pay for its campaign promises by raising taxes on business, cutting support for middle-income and low-income earners, and cutting environmental programs, under the list of savings given out by shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey and shadow finance minister Andrew Robb....

The decision to hit business - mostly small business - with $4.6 billion of tax hikes was politically shrewd. Not one business lobby came forward on Wednesday to criticise the Coalition's new taxes on its members. They would have screamed had Labor done the same.

The Coalition made its riskiest cuts known long ago, and they don't seem to have hurt it.
The savings claimed are surprisingly large - $4.6 billion from axing the Schoolkids' Bonus, $3.7 billion from scrapping superannuation contributions for low-income earners and $5.2 billion from cutting 12,000 public service jobs.

These claimed savings are higher than previous estimates, even by the Coalition. It was a surprise to learn that the Coalition will over-fund its controversial paid parental leave scheme by $1.1 billion in its first two years. The policy it released two weeks ago made no such claim.

There are some errors in Hockey's costings. Innovation Minister Kim Carr pointed out that the Coalition could not claw back the $680 million it claims from axing two business programs without breaking contracts: the money it already committed.

And on another matter of flakey Abbott policy - why is the "Green Army" attracting so little attention?

It's an absolute bit of trivia and typical of Abbott's terrible judgement on environmental issues that he is determined to stop the Clean Energy Finance Corporation - which is specifically about making returns on lending, a point the Coalition does not want people to know - but proceed with his own silly idea.

Save a bit of money now, pay more later

Can Australia afford the Coalition’s NBN?

No doubt the writer is biased, but this article does set out in pretty good detail the reasons I have read elsewhere why the Coalition's planned revision to the NBN is not technically or financially a good idea.

Hint to Kevin Rudd No2

Kevin, a politician who has a video in circulation containing what seems like 5 minutes of swearing to the camera and room in frustration at not being as good at something as you thought you were should not talk about the poor temperament of your opponent.

The way to attack Tony Abbott on how he would conduct foreign affairs is to note that he's never shown much interest in the topic, as Peter Costello said about him with respect to economics; he would take over-simplified lines with no nuance ("Go Israel!" would be the guiding principle for anything to do with the Middle East, just as it is with the Tea Party), and he keeps putting his foot in his mouth with odd comments on all matters.  (What was that line about "maybe you shouldn't be there" in reference to being king hit in Kings Cross at 2 am all about?)

Well, that's odd

I could have sworn I heard Judith Sloan on the Drum last week saying something about how she was writing a column about all the ways she considered the Coalition's Paid Parental Leave scheme a bad idea.

So what do we get today?  A Sloan column that boosts the suggestion that the PPL will not actually cost any money to the budget at all!  So, does that mean you actually like the policy now, Judith?  One could be excused for thinking so.  (And by the way, you caused a bit of a stir a year or two ago amongst Labor types by talking about how it probably made sense to increase unemployment benefits.  I haven't seen that mentioned in an Australian column for a long time - or did it ever appear there?)

The headline to her column, which she presumably did not come up with personally, is of the "Ha! Take that Rudd!" variety, which is very, very popular at the Australian at the moment.

If a photo like this was real, the Murdoch headlines would be:

Looks familiar

Record-breaking floods in Russia force thousands to evacuate - ABC News

The story carries this photo, which looks remarkably like much of Australia in 2011:

Actually, the long buildings also put me in mind of the scenery in the zombie infected world of DayZ, which I have played a bit with my son in the last 6 months.  I've never written an appreciation of that game - I should do so one day.

Some good Krugman

This Age of Bubbles - NYTimes.com

I've been forgetting to check in on Paul Krugman.  (How I wish he lived here for some clear and erudite commentary on what passes for economic policy in the Coalition now!)

The column at the link above notes the renewed economic worries in India and Brazil.  He doesn't think it will cause a world meltdown, but sounds slightly nervous.  (He expressed worries about China recently too.  From a lay man's point of view, the publicity that it has recently had with its "ghost" empty cities has certainly made me think - surely this is a bad sign.)

But he writes with common sense on most topics he touches.  Have a look at his post on Microsoft and Apple, for example.  I feel pretty much the same.

He's also taken delight in noting that changes to Singaporean health system  will no longer make it the free market poster child for health that US Republicans used to claim it was.

As for his summary of the current state of American politics:

If you haven’t been reading the political blogs much — say, Greg Sargent — you may not have a sense of just how dire the political environment is. But here’s the situation. You have a Republican base that truly believes that guaranteed health insurance is the work of the devil. Meanwhile, there’s a Republican majority in the House that owes its position not to broad popular support — Democrats actually got more votes in 2012 — but to a district map that concentrates Democrats in a minority of districts, which in turn means that most Rs are more afraid of Tea Party challengers than outraged independents.

And the debt ceiling looms, with many ideologues assuring the base that Obama can be bullied into gutting his main achievement, which he won’t.

Everyone seems to assume that this will be worked out somehow, but nobody has even a halfway plausible story about how this will be done. Default looks like a real risk.

How depressing...

Hint to Kevin Rudd

Stop announcing things that appear to be, or are, all your own idea.  

That was the problem with you the first time around.  

You must emphasise the consultative process by which you came to a policy or initiative.  Assuming you did consult.

And if you didn't consult with more than Bruce Hawker or your daughter or son - do not announce the policy or initiative at all.

Piffle

Why Abbott is right to abandon surplus promise

Geoffrey Garrett is saying Tony Abbott is doing the right thing in abandoning a promise to get the budget back into surplus in a few years.

What piffle.

Everyone knows that the "budget emergency" will be declared worse than they thought, and that greater public service and spending cuts than claimed will be made in all of the areas a large slab of the Coalition thinks it is having a "cultural war" with - climate change, science generally, education - in particular.

Abbott should be given credit for shifting on nothing in the run up to this election.

Yurt thoughts

I am having the strongest feeling that I should be designing an "urban yurt", a bit like the "urban sombrero" from Seinfeld...

I think it's an idea I could "sell" to Clive Palmer.  

A tired genre considered

Why does live-action fantasy fail at the movies?

I've never been keen on the fantasy story genre, and this is not a bad discussion about why so many of them fail as movies.

(And despite the success of a few movie series in the genre, the article notes that those are based on already fabulously popular novels, thus helping ensure their audience on screen.  I still say Lord of the Rings is boring, though, in book or on screen.)

Free campaign advice

1.  Kevin Rudd:  stop going to childcare centres and talking to children about infrastructure projects:

ASHLEY HALL: Playing with building blocks offered him the chance to share a campaign slogan.

KEVIN RUDD: We're just going to keep building up, because we've got to build things up, haven't we? Making sure we are building and building for the future.

Oh please...

2.  Tony Abbott:  stop bringing up sex appeal when talking to or about women:



On second thoughts, Tony:  please, keep talking to women about how great it is to be women in a workplace dominated by men.   I'm really interested, as are the women of Australia.

Good summary

Why We Should Not Trust Tony Abbott | Tim Colebatch

In short: it's complicated

Improving the scientific foundations for estimating health risks from the Fukushima incident

The article points out the complications with trying to work out the risk from radioactive fallout on humans.  It seems to be written by someone mostly concerned that risk  is probably always being over-estimated, but it does end with a call for some hard work to be put in on the issue.

In any event, if you are a parent with kids in an area around Fukushima, of course you are going to lean towards the side of caution.

NBN talk

I noticed this blog a few weeks ago, that takes a very technical and detailed look at the NBN and the Coalition's alternative, and falls very heavily in favour of fibre to the premises and hence the NBN.

I've always been unsure whether the NBN was really worth it.  But the fact is, it seems hard to find people with detailed knowledge in IT and communications who doubt that the NBN is a good investment that will last many, many decades.

On this basis, I've stopped worrying about it.

And now for something completely different (well, not really) - some anti-Coalition stories

1.  Lenore Taylor has a great explanation of the obviously calculated Abbott bulldust that he's the guy who's trying to rise above tawdry politics:

For three years he conducted a relentless, deliberate and effective negative campaign against the Gillard government, a campaign at times so aggressive that many on his own side were deeply concerned it was causing irreparable damage to voter perceptions of Abbott himself.

But with negative views of Labor’s record apparently entrenched – aided, it must be said, by Labor’s own self-destructive leadership saga – Abbott is flipping to positive just in time.

Slowly but surely his personal approval ratings are improving. He has toned down the attacks. His colleagues and his daughters talk about his “authenticity” as a community member and a family man. They label Rudd a “fake”.

And all the while Abbott refuses to deviate from his strategy of claiming to have a “real plan” without setting out what it is and how it will be paid for in anything like the detail provided by previous oppositions.

And, as I have noted before, the tactics being used against Rudd this time are those he used against Howard:

The last time we saw “the flip” exercised with such confidence and dexterity was in Rudd’s campaign launch speech in 2007, when he managed to flip the economic management debate to one where John Howard, who had just presided over 11 years of consecutive growth and record low unemployment, was on the defensive over the economy.

Rudd had made $45bn in spending promises during the formal campaign, just $5bn less than Howard's $50bn in campaign promises, but when Rudd told the party faithful “this reckless spending must stop” he looked like the competent and frugal economic manager.

2.  Lenore also had a good column a few days ago about the Coalition's deliberate delays to disclose funding for policies:

.... while oppositions of both persuasions have tried to game the formal costings processes, individual policies have almost always been released with their full price tags detailed over four years.

The Coalition's health policy, released on Thursday, had one line under costings which read: "The Coalition's policy to support Australia's health system will cost $340m over the forward estimates." Some of that – we were told on "background" – would come from cuts inside the health portfolio, and some from "elsewhere". In other words: they'll get back to us.

The "PBO has still got our homework" schtick has also worn thin since the Coalition has been telling us for months they already have everything fully costed and figured out.

The "Labor is running a scare campaign" excuse worked for a little while – aided by the ALP's silly insistence on using the $70bn figure for the Coalition's costings black hole, which by a quick reckoning is clearly overstated.

3.  Abbott's mysteriously unanalysed by Rupert's papers "let's go to Indonesia and buy boats!' scheme has apparently not gone over well in that country:

The buyback plan has met with heavy resistance in Jakarta, with a senior member of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's ruling coalition saying it showed Mr Abbott lacked understanding of Indonesia, and the broader asylum-seeker problem.

Mahfudz Siddiq, the head of Indonesia's parliamentary commission for foreign affairs, said on Monday that it was Mr Abbott's right to suggest the policy but warned that it had broader implications for the relationship between Jakarta and Australia.

"It's an unfriendly idea coming from a candidate who wants to be Australian leader," Mr Siddiq said.

"That idea shows how he sees things as [an] Australian politician on Indonesia regarding people smuggling. Don't look at us, Indonesia, like we want this people smuggling.

"This is really a crazy idea, unfriendly, derogatory and it shows lack of understanding in this matter."

4.  Quentin Dempster makes a good point:  if the Coalition is going to make big changes to the ABC, they should be up front about it now.  And let's face it, everyone knows that an Abbott government will find an even worse budget emergency crisis than the terrible disaster of an emergency budget crisis that they have already been warning us about [/sarc], and the urgent need to commercialise the ABC will be justified as a cost saving.