Is climate change alarmism encouraging scepticism?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 77 Comments

Climate change ‘alarmists’ have been utterly relentless in their campaigning. It’s quite possibly the biggest global political campaign in history. My media survey last year found an average of 1.6 different predictions of climate doom a day. Even on a boat tour of Stockholm today I could not escape it, with warnings that human-caused global warming could cause parts of Stockholm to flood (on the other hand, not having their waterways ice up in winter might be one of the pluses of global warming).

But a recent Morgan poll suggests that maybe the constant predictions of doom is having an unintended effect. The number of people who think concerns are exaggerated has doubled since 2006, from 13% to 27%.

There is still an overwhelming majority of people who believe that climate change is happening and strong majorities in favour of policy action. But perhaps the claims of impendending disaster are sounding a little too hyberbolic, and people are beginning to mentally discount the scale of the problems we face.

(It could be that the denialists are gaining some traction; though they get only a small fraction of the media coverage given to the alarmists.)

HT: Pollytics blog.

Jan Palach RIP

~ Andrew Norton ~ 5 Comments

Jan Palach

Memorial to Jan Palach and Jan Zajic, and millions of other victims of communism. Picture taken in Wenceslas Square, Prague, 12 August 2009

Palach, followed by Zajic a month later, burnt himself to death in January 1969 in protest against the 1968 Soviet invasion to crush the Prague Spring.

There is so much to see in this beautiful city that I have not done as much political history tourism as I would have liked, but I did take a photo of this memorial to two brave young men.

Where does Kaplan rank?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 32 Comments

During a couple of days as Singapore’s lone classical liberal last week, I took a particular interest in education advertising. A major theme is rankings, with results of student surveys used where the conventional prestige measures are unavailable.

On advertisement in the Straits Times particularly caught my eye. It advertised Monash University degrees, noting that Monash is ranked 47th in the Times Higher Education Supplement and is a member of the ‘prestigious Group of Eight universities’.

But the courses advertised aren’t taught by Monash. People wanting to find out more had to go to the website of Kaplan Singapore, part of the big US for-profit Kaplan University.

And where does Kaplan rank? It’s not 47th in the THES. It’s not in the Group of Eight. It isn’t in the major rankings at all.

Though this raises yet more questions about the consumer information value of rankings in teaching markets, this teaching outsourcing could be a positive development overall.

There is a potential conflict of interest in the same institution both teaching and assessing, since there is an incentive to soft mark to ensure that students continue. I’m not sure how Monash’s deal with Kaplan works, but it is possible that this conflict is minimised by outsourcing teaching (or Kaplan outscourcing assessment, depending on how you look at it).

Disaggregation of the industry may also bring the benefits of specialisation, with different institutions building skills and reputation in course development, teaching and assessment.

Tony Abbott’s big government conservatism

~ Andrew Norton ~ 17 Comments

Tony Abbott’s book Battlelines is part personal memoir, part Howard goverment history, part conservative philosophy, part analysis of current politics. I don’t think the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts are interesting enough.

For me, its main value is in being a relatively detailed statement of ‘big government conservatism’, from the perspective of a supporter.

Even coming after the big-spending Howard years, there are several proposals for more spending still, including teacher salaries, dental care, and yet more family spending (I laughed out loud at the sub-heading ‘how families have been forgotten’). Luckily there are also some proposed cuts, from a higher retirement age and to superannuation concessions.

Though there is an ideological element to the family spending idea, Abbott’s plausible claim that the Howard government was a problem-solving government rather than one that was highly ideologically driven also helps explain why government grew under Howard.
Continue reading “Tony Abbott’s big government conservatism” →

Political xenophobia 2

~ Andrew Norton ~ 1 Comment

A referee for my political expenditure laws paper pointed out that – contrary to the title of an earlier post – that someone doesn’t have to be a xenophobe to have theoretical concerns about foreign donors.

Perhaps not, though I am not entirely clear what concerns about foreign donors could not be dealt with via other provisions that do not distinguish based on nationality. There are some foreigners whose influence is plausibly seen as bad, but the disclosure regime can deal with them the same way it deals with undesirable Australian donors (for example, I think Labor refuses donations from tobacco companies).

But given the vagueness of concerns about foreign donors, xenophobia does seem like at least a plausible explanation of this proposed ban.

In a Canberra Times op-ed yesterday I noted how the media is repeatedly investigating people with Chinese names, with echoes of the ‘yellow peril’ fears of the White Australia policy era.

Perhaps the machinations of the Chinese regime justify this attention, but after following this issue for a couple of years it is striking how much attention Chinese-background people get.

The ‘xenophobia’ evidence here is stronger than other similar claims, for example about ‘dog whistling’. It directly targets foreigners and assumes that their desire to be involved in Australian politics is improper. It’s a big generalisation, with too many exceptions to justify a ban.

Media 101

~ Andrew Norton ~ 17 Comments

Over the weekend, I lamented to friends that I did not get much media coverage for my paper on political expenditure laws. I thought I had a good argument and had exposed many previously unreported negative consequences of the electoral law reform bill.

But while many days research and writing yielded only a handful of low-profile news reports (though also some opinion pieces), a couple of five minute conversations on Friday with journalists from The Australian about the protential financial woes of universities yielded me a page one top-of-the-fold story with my name in the second paragraph. (My comments were just an updated version of this April post).

Perhaps the lesson is that while carefully-researched papers are a necessary part of building credibility as a dial-a-quote media source, saying something colorful or sensasationalist is the key to actually getting good coverage.

Should it be taboo to mention true things?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 10 Comments

Australia’s decision-makers, meanwhile, continue to fawn over a small minority of electors … who see gay relationships as somehow inferior to their own and unworthy of legal or social recognition. Every so often, we hear them in the media calling homosexuals promiscuous or sick (empahsis added).

– Tim Wright in The Age, 31 July 2009.

Some conservatives have odd ideas about gays, but they are right about promiscuity. This annual survey of gay men in Melbourne consistently finds more than half have casual partners.

Nor is this subject obviously irrelevant to the issue of gay relationships. Conservatives could argue that it suggests a weak commitment to the monogamy that goes with marriage.

Andrew Sullivan, by contrast, argues that the conservative position contains a contradiction. If you deny people the possibility of ‘normal’ stable, monogamous relationships, can it be that surprising if they go for promiscuity instead? This is what the evolutionary psychologists say men are hardwired to do, and it needs strong social institutions to stop them in the interests of something more profound and long-lasting.

I’m not sure what Wright is implying here. Maybe he is just listing resentments against conservatives. But it looks like a double standard, in which approved-victim groups are exempted from any form of negative comment, even if true, while deemed-oppressor groups can be subject to any kind of criticism, however personal or unfair.

There is a line between the virtues of tact and civility and the vices of spin and falsehood. If something is true and relevant to the case for or against an argument, then there should be no taboo on mentioning it.

Two very different ways of arguing for gay marriage

~ Andrew Norton ~ 9 Comments

The Australian and The Age both ran opinion pieces yesterday favouring gay marriage, but the two articles were contrasts in tone and argument.

In The Age, Tim Wright preached to the converted. None of the concerns people might have about gay marriage were addressed. Rather, gays should be allowed to marry because it is a ‘basic human right’. Opposition to it comes from personal flaws: it is senseless, inhumane, mean-spirited, the product of fear, a cave-in to conservative lobbies.

In The Australian, Tim Wilson took a more conciliatory path. Picking up on Tony Abbott’s covenant marriage argument, he argued for pluralism in marriage contracts – letting gays marry and also letting religious people have stricter forms of marriage.

The Wilson approach seems much the better one. Opposition to gay marriage cannot be put down to the left’s standard cast of villains. While I personally think the case for gay marriage is strong, even from a secular conservative perspective, the arguments are counter-intuitive. People need to to be taken through them, not insulted.

Tim Wilson’s argument also highlights that gays and conservative Christians have more in common politically than either probably realise. They are both cultural minorities with the same threats from an homogenising state.

Wright’s article is an example of how an emphasis on rights damages democratic discourse. It encourages people just to assert entitlements, rather than to engage with other people’s views and perhaps reach a compromise on some evolutionary position. Winner-take all politics brings unnecessary rancour and division to civic life.

The partisan self-interest behind political donations regulation

~ Andrew Norton ~ 36 Comments

In my Australian op-ed for my new CIS paper on political expenditure laws I begin by paraphrasing a famous Adam Smith comment on cartels:

ADAM Smith, the great 18th-century economist and philosopher, famously observed that people of the same trade rarely get together without the conversation ending in some conspiracy against the public. When the Senate meets again after the winter recess, members of the same trade — party politics — will decide on how to regulate their political competition.

I’m referring of course to the bill to ban all foreign-sourced and anonymous above $50 political donations to NGOs, plus lower the expenditure and donations disclosure thresholds from $10,900 every 12 months to $1,000 every 6 months.

Proposals to regulate political donations are almost invariably accompanied by high-minded concerns about protecting the political process from improper influence through donations. But one of the great ironies is that while attempts to show improper influence by donors almost always fail, there is one clear prima facie case of the parties being corrupted by donations considerations: the disclosure law itself. Continue reading “The partisan self-interest behind political donations regulation” →

Taxcheck

~ Andrew Norton ~ 10 Comments

Reader John Fletcher has set up a Taxcheck website that tells us how the government is spending our hard-earned tax dollars.

If you earn $50,000 a year, Taxcheck lists expenses ranging from a bargain 13 cents to pay for pharmaceuticals for Aboriginal people to $768 for granny’s pension.

The methodology is:

Estimates of income tax liabilities are calculated through a naive application of 2009/10 marginal income tax rates, with no accounting for the Medicare Levy, Low Income Tax Offset, Family Tax Benefits, or other potentially relevant factors. …The individual contribution to spending on each item in the above table is calculated as tax paid multiplied by that item’s share of total federal expenditure.

Though the numbers are approximate for most taxpayers, Taxcheck is a good idea. It brings the huge aggregate numbers in the budget papers down to figures more readily comprehensible to individual taxpayers.