Author: Andrew Norton

Quackonomics

~ Andrew Norton ~ 7 Comments

If you read this blog, you’ve known since November last year what Peter Costello told Parliament yesterday: that Kevin Rudd’s ‘Brutopia’ comes not from the late British conservative intellectual Michael Oakeshott, but from Donald Duck comics. In the Treasurer’s words:

When you ask where he [Rudd] draws his inspiration for his quack economic policy, you find that it comes from a Donald Duck magazine. …This is the evolutionary cycle of the Labor Party. We have moved from Mark Latham’s roosters to Kevin Rudd’s ducks.

The SMH took it one better, labelling Rudd’s views ‘quackonomics’ (in a play on Freakonomics), but they are still buying the Oakeshott line:

Labor’s spin doctors argued that the tactics showed the Government had failed to find any point of substance against Mr Rudd. Yet you can be sure this year he will resist the temptation to intellectualise his subject matter with clever terminology even if it was actually borrowed from British conservative Michael Oakeshott, rather than Donald Duck.

I’ll email the journalist today and ask him to get Labor to provide the exact source of this claimed Oakeshottian term.

Is there a conservative case for gay adoption?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 27 Comments

The ACT Government’s Civil Partnerships Bill, which lets two persons of either sex form a legal relationship, has again been vetoed by the federal government. According to Attorney-General Philip Ruddock the government’s

first objection was that “it involves a formal ceremony”.

“What it’s doing is equating (gay partnerships) with marriage,” he said yesterday….

He said marriage was a “cultural institution” that provided a basis on which children might be conceived and brought up and provided with proper support.

We are so used to the idea of heterosexual marriage and parenting that the idea of gay marriage and parenting is counter-intuitive. But if you think the issue through from any secular set of assumptions, including conservative concerns with the family, the logic leads inexorably to supporting gay marriage.

As children are already growing up in gay households – with 4% of gay men and 16% of lesbians according to the Private Lives survey – prohibiting gay marriage (or civil partnerships) is not providing ‘proper support’ to those kids, it is lessening the chance that they will receive proper support from two adults by making it easier for one partner to walk out on his or her parenting responsibilities.

Objecting to a ceremony – which the legislation doesn’t require anyway, just one witness – is similarly counter-productive. The guests at a ceremony are there to help the couple celebrate the happy day, but also as witnesses to the commitment they are making and an added source of social pressure to keep to their vows.

Though the conservative case for gay marriage is strongest when children are involved, politically there is no denying that children are the most contentious part of this issue. A Roy Morgan Poll released today found that though only 33% of Australians think homosexuality is ‘immoral’, 57% oppose homosexual couples being able to adopt children. Surveys last year indicated that opposition to the ACT civil union legislation was under 40%. There is a sizeable group of people who support gay partnerships but do not support gay adoption. This is a common pattern overseas; for example the Eurobarometer found that on average around Europe 44% support gay marriage, but 32% support gay adoption.
Continue reading “Is there a conservative case for gay adoption?” →

David Jones vs Clive Hamilton

~ Andrew Norton ~ 7 Comments

Upmarket department store David Jones is taking the Australia Institute to court, accusing it of misleading or deceptive conduct for describing DJ’s advertising of children’s clothes as ‘corporate paedophilia’. According to the Australia Institute, the department store’s catalogue posed child models in sexually provocative ways, something David Jones denies strongly. Whatever the merits – or lack thereof – of David Jones’ claim there is some irony to be enjoyed here. In his 2005 book Affluenza Australia Institute Executive Director Clive Hamilton includes a ‘Political Manifesto for Well-being’ that declares:

‘advertising codes of conduct should be legislated so that irresponsible and deceptive marketing is outlawed’.

An adverse finding for Hamilton will see him punished by legislation he thinks should be strengthened and enforced much more vigorously. Be careful what you wish for…

Irony enjoyment aside, I think this is a regrettable action by David Jones. The best course of action here was a debate over the value of the Australia Institute’s claims, which indeed occurred last year. Clearly the Australia Institute was engaged in hyperbole (otherwise the DJ’s advertising people would be behind bars), but there were divided views over whether their advertising in question went too far or not. But if people didn’t like the advertising, nobody is forcing them to shop at DJ’s.

Given his persistent opposition to freedom of commercial speech it’s going to be hard for Hamilton to credibly play the free speech martyr. But perhaps this will be lesson to him in the virtues of not regulating speech via the courts. There are widely differing views about what constitutes acceptable speech, and this diversity has been dealt with via a mix of social norms as to what it is and is not acceptable to say and show, and helping people avoid what they don’t want to see or hear via ratings systems or self-help. Generally, censorship has been limited to extreme cases where there is little disagreement or clear harm flows from publication (though with exceptions such as vilification laws). If you think DJ’s catalogues are offensive, just put them straight into the bin (or the recycling bin, as Clive would insist). The alternatives – censorship or heavy-handed legal action – are worse than the original problem.

In defence of political donations

~ Andrew Norton ~ 5 Comments

With this week’s disclosure of political donations by the Australian Electoral Commission, the usual critics were having their say. As he did last year, Stephen Mayne used Crikey to attack what he sees as an inherently grubby process – people giving money to political parties, including (shock, horror) foreigners, something that seems to particularly upset political funding moralisers not otherwise known for their nationalistic views.

In The Age another regular, Melbourne University law lecturer Joo-Cheong Tham complained that:

Money allows some to speak much louder than others. For example, businesses and wealthy individuals are able to secure influence over parliamentarians through the purchase of political access. In the last financial year, both Tabcorp and Tattersall’s gave $10,000 to Progressive Business, presumably for membership of the organisation. Membership of this fund-raising arm of the Victorian ALP would have entitled them to attend closed-door ministerial briefings by Premier Steve Bracks and Treasurer John Brumby. Such secret meetings give rise, at the very least, to an apprehension of undue influence and corruption.

As with other leftist critiques of the political process, Joo-Cheong Tham’s work (you can see his perspective in more detail at the ANU Democratic Audit project) fails to see the bigger picture of the political process. These issues arise mainly because because of politicised processes – in the case of Tabcorb and Tattersall’s because gambling is heavily regulated, and Tabcorp and Tattersall’s rely on government patronage to keep competitors out. If anyone could set up a gambling outfit there would be no need to listen to tedious speeches at Progressive Business functions or to give them any money. There probably wouldn’t be any funding to disclose.
Continue reading “In defence of political donations” →

The climate change McCarthyists

~ Andrew Norton ~ 15 Comments

Never in the history of think-tanks has a research proposal received so much publicity. Starting, so far as I can tell, in The Guardian, it spread through the world, including the front page of this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald. The problem (according to The Guardian):

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

Professor Q, who has joined the chorus of criticism, has also tracked down a copy of the original letter (pdf) the AEI sent to prospective authors.

It really is hard to see what the fuss is about. There is a political consensus that something needs to be done about climate change, not because we are necessarily 100% certain about the science, but because policymakers cannot do nothing in the face of potentially catastrophic risks. Few decisions are made with perfect information. But I cannot see that there is anything to be lost from continuing to hear from the sceptics, and that the sponsoring body once took some money from Exxon or has staff that once worked for Bush tells us little that is useful.

Like most of the right-wing think-tanks the AEI does not do hired gun research and does not get itself in the position of leftist NGOs of having a dominant funder that can influence their public statements. It only gets 17% of its annual funding from corporations, suggesting that the capacity of any one company to have an influence would be very limited even in theory, and probably near zero in practice.

As I have said in many posts, arguments stand or fall on their merits, and the claim that (as the AEI letter asserts) the IPCC process has biases or that the AEI has taken Exxon money alerts us to potential issues with each, but does not spare us the effort of actually listening to what they have to say. The AEI was not offering $10,000 for quick spin. It was offering $10,000 for 7,500- 10,000 words by December 2007. It’s hardly a huge sum for a long paper from an expert.

The charge of McCarthyism is terribly over-used, but launching such a prominent and widespread attack on research that hasn’t even been written is resonant of Senator McCarthy’s attacks on those he suspected – sometimes correctly, often not – of being communists.

Minchin on big government conservatism

~ Andrew Norton ~ 4 Comments

I had been worried that the ‘big government conservatism’ critique of the Howard government may actually please its Ministers, helping to fend off attacks from the left and claim the much fought over middle-of-the road voters. And that seems to be the case. In his quasi-rebuttal of CIS criticism in this morning’s Australian, Finance Minister Nick Minchin says:

IN politics, fighting battles on two fronts is an unavoidable obligation for parties aspiring to hold the middle ground. ….
Such criticisms delineated a bizarre dichotomy between the Government’s critics on the Right, deriding us for creating a nanny state, and the more predictable Labor attacks that the Government was heartless and meanspirited.

Rudd says the Government spends too little on education, while the CIS bemoans that real per-capita education spending has grown faster under the Coalition than Labor. Rudd attempts to portray the Government as attacking working families, while the CIS has the Government showering these same families with undeserved largesse.

Ah yes, and the Coalition is in the sensible centre. But Minchin is still sensitive to the claim that his is a big-spending government. Though conceding that

It is true that spending on health, education and social security has risen under the Howard Government. It is true that in real terms the Howard Government spends more in these areas than Labor did.

He goes on:
Continue reading “Minchin on big government conservatism” →

Labor’s unscientific plans to boost science

~ Andrew Norton ~ 9 Comments

[This post was mostly lost in a server change, and has been restored from the National Library archive.]

I knew that sensible Labor higher education policy could not last. Today’s policy announcement on maths and science education contains another HECS remission initiative that could be worthwhile, by encouraging graduates with science or maths expertise to enter teaching. But another proposal is a waste of money:

Labor???s New Directions for Maths and Science Policy will:

* Reduce the HECS contribution for new maths and science students from the current annual student contribution rate of $7,118 to $3,998 from 1 January 2009.

What is the theory behind this? The press release (which is all we have) is rather vague, but there are two hints. The first is that:

Australia needs the best maths and science teachers in the world so that they can educate the next generation of Australians in the skills required to build our economy and our future prosperity.

At the moment, the funding system is not directly based on what course a student enrols in. It is based on how particular units of study are classified. This means that people studying teaching or education pay a lot more for units classified as ’science’ or ‘maths’ than they do for units classified as ‘education’ or for other disciplines such as the humanities in which a teaching student may enrol to build subject-specific expertise. At the margins, it is possible that this puts some teaching students off specialising in science.

But why does everyone studying maths or science need to get a discount? Lucrative health-related courses include units classified as ’science’, and ‘maths’ classified units can be included in a variety of courses. The people who go off and used sophisticated maths to play the financial markets will get this discount as much as the people headed off to teach at schools. At most, the cost should be reduced to those enrolled in teaching courses.

The second hint is that:

Investment in critical areas of expertise such as maths and science has stagnated while our economic competitors have surged ahead. Today only 0.4% of Australian university students graduate with maths and statistics qualifications, compared with an OECD average of 1%.

But this policy in itself will not create a single extra graduate in maths or science. As regular readers of this blog will know, the number of places isn’t set by student demand. It is set by the bureaucracy. And Labor’s policy makes no mention of creating any extra places.

Perhaps Labor is proposing a voucher system, with the hope that extra demand will translate into extra supply. Even then the policy is not likely to work, as there is already excess supply in science. Also, universities are at long last waking up the need to understand their costs, so Labor may need to send them a price signal as well as sending one to possible students.

A voucher system seems unlikely. So at most the policy can change who enrols in maths and science subjects, not how many enrol in maths and science subjects. As I noted in yesterday’s post, interests are the main driver of course choices. So if there is an effect from this policy change, it will be to shift demand away from other courses that draw on people with science or maths interests, such as the health-related courses or engineering. It’s hard to see that there is any value in doing that; these occupations have more serious workforce shortages than any science-related field. Indeed, only in secondary school science and maths teaching is there evidence of an under-supply of people with science backgrounds.

So this policy is not, as Labor claims, an ‘investment’ in ‘critical areas of expertise’. It will not provide a single extra dollar or a single extra student to science or maths. It will simply be a handout to people who are going to study those disciplines anyway.

Would a HECS remission incentive be effective?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 6 Comments

As reported in this morning’s papers, Labor’s early childhood policy includes 50% HECS remissions for:

10,000 early childhood graduates working in areas of specific need, such as rural and regional areas, indigenous communities, and areas of socio-economic disadvantage.

This is a considerable improvement on previous Labor suggestions that HECS be cut across the board to attract students to particular disciplines. That policy is doomed to failure because students’ course preferences are driven by their interests, and not by money. The share of applications received by each discipline has generally been quite stable over time, despite the introduction of differential HECS in 1997 and widely varying salaries on completion. Also, people tend to discount the value of financial transactions in the future. An 18 year old isn’t going to be strongly influenced by a few thousand dollars they will have to repay when they are 30.

Though the current Labor policy does not provide large financial incentives – on their own figures only about $20 a week to begin with – it has the benefit of being received immediately on the desired behaviour occurring and does not require the student to alter their fundamental interests or career plans; just where they put their skills to use.

Indeed, the way it is framed may mean that is has a greater incentive effect than simply paying people working in these locations an extra $20 a week. A 50% remission sounds like more than (for example, I have not done the actual sums) a 3% wage increase. And loss aversion psychology may mean that people perceive avoiding a loss (debt repayment) as more valuable than the equivalent gain (a pay increase).

The main criticism of HECS remission schemes is that the incentives are effectively restricted to the least experienced workers, when dealing with the toughest cases would preferably be dealt with by workers who had been in the industry for a longer period of time. But given that the Commonwealth would be reluctant to get directly involved in paying early childhood staff, and this scheme may have incentive effects beyond its actual monetary value, as higher ed interventions go this seems to have more promise than most.

There, I have said something positive about an ALP education policy:)

What happens to the Liberal Party if it loses? (Part 2)

~ Andrew Norton ~ 13 Comments

By the end of 2007, it is possible that the Liberal Party will be out of government throughout Australia. As I noted in part 1 of this post, this has led some people to forecast its demise as an organisation. Like political parties around the world, the long-term trend in Liberal membership is down. But unlike political parties in many other parts of the world, the major Australian political parties have retained large support bases, people who tell pollsters that they ‘generally think of themselves as’ Liberal, Labor, or whatever.

Quite surprisingly, given all that has occurred since, a larger proportion of the electorate generally thought of themselves as Liberals in 2004 than they had in 1967, the first time the question was asked and a year after the Coalition’s biggest ever share of the two-party preferred vote, at the 1966 federal election. 40% were Liberals in 1967, 41.5% in 2004. Because Country Party/National Party identifiers have shrunk from 7% to 3% of the electorate in that time the proportion of Coalition identifiers is down slightly, but the Liberal Party itself has held up very well (though fewer voters overall class themselves as ‘strongly’ preferring their party, with 29% of Liberals strong supporters in 1967 and 21% in 2004). Labor is down 5 percentage points, from 37% to 32%. There was a lot of talk in the 1990s about the rise of minor parties, but in reality the two major parties have proven to be highly durable.

Though Liberal-leaning voters cannot be taken for granted – more on that below – they are a good foundation on which to build towards a majority. While Liberal infighting may damage the party’s electoral prospects, the large Liberal support base shows why it is still an institution worth fighting over. Norman Abjorensen may be right that in theory there is scope for realignment in Australian politics, but in practice the voters aren’t likely to pay enough attention to make it work. The Liberal brand has value, independently of who its key figures at any given time are or what it stands for at any given election. Most people who have voted Liberal at recent state elections will vote Liberal no matter how unimpressive the party’s performance. The trick is in getting enough non-aligned voters and weak supporters of other parties to vote Liberal to secure victory.
Continue reading “What happens to the Liberal Party if it loses? (Part 2)” →