Newmania: The UnClivening

Once upon a time in a Queensland far far ago, devotees of the once powerful Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen came to the bitter realisation that the Queensland National Party could not regain its former glory. Their Arch Enemies from the Labor Party had clung to power in Queensland with far more energy than grace, much like a small dog humping its owner’s leg. Regardless of who the National Party elected to lead them to victory, they always fell short. Lawrence Springborg had a few goes, plus Mike Horan, Jeff Seeney and John-Paul Langbroek all tried and all failed to defeat the Labor Government and seize power.

Enter Clive Palmer with boatloads of cash, and Bruce McIver, the brains of the operation. Bruce and Clive were buddies; Bruce had served on the board of one of Clive companies, and still works for him from time to time.The way to win Queensland, they said, was with a united conservative party, backed by big business and values voter appeal. The Queensland Nationals merged with the Queensland Liberal Party and the LNP was born.


Bruce McIver, now State President of the LNP, pulled strings. Thick strings. Ropes. Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman was convinced to step down from leading the city of Bridges and Tunnels, and step up as a Candidate for King of the Whole Blinking State! Mud was slung and names were called; headlines written, prayers recited, promises made, alliances formed and debates debated. When the votes had been counted, the LNP’s victory was so colossal that the state was renamed Newmania.

Newmania would rise from the ashes of the Bligh-led disaster-prone state of Queensland. (The name had to go. King Campbell’s campaign collaborator Wendy Joy doesn’t approve of Queens.) LNP President Bruce McIver and megadonor Clive Palmer were happy. Bruce’s conservative agenda was being attended to in the appropriate manner, and Clive was…WHAT?

Clive Palmer has donated a quarter of a million dollars to the Together Union to help them take care of the thousands of public servants who’s been ‘displaced’ during King Campbell’s Cheap Cuts. If the donation was just a glorious Dummy Spit, as has been suggested by members of King Campbell’s Court, it’s a nice one. A quarter of a million dollars can do a lot of good, and possibly build a few relationships to replace the ones he’s been burning.

Clive Palmer is an extraordinary man. Aside from being a national Living Treasure, he is a genuine mining entrepreneur, Newmania’s richest man, former owner of Gold Coast United Football Club, life member of the National Party of Australia, owner of the Hyatt Regency Coolum Resort (now named the Palmer Coolum Resort), lecturer, spreader of bizarre conspiracy theories, hatcher of grand plans (a replica of Titanic, and a private Jurassic Park style resort with cloned dinosaurs and a jumbo jet pick up and delivery service for guests), horse breeder, accomplished shit-stirrer, and occasional political candidate wannabe. He’s also Bruce McIver’s best friend and the LNP’s biggest donor.

Clive is a big man with a big heart, a big imagination and a short attention span. What could he want from the LNP? Political favours relating to his business dealings? The LNP campaigned on ‘A Strong Resources and Energy Sector' so everything should be flowing in Clive’s direction.

It seems not. Mr Palmer has had several recent differences of opinion with the Liberal Party, the party he was hoping to represent via Treasurer Wayne Swan’s seat of Lilley. After months of huffing and puffing, he announced yesterday that he would not seek pre-selection with the Liberal Party because he has a problem with their position on asylum seekers, although he supports the election of an Abbott Government.

Earlier this year at the Liberal National Conference, Mr Palmer admitted to a shouting match with Tony Abbott over Clive’s proposal that people who are acting as professional lobbyists and journalists should be banned from holding executive positions within the Liberal Party.

Less of a surprise is the ongoing battle between Clive Palmer and Treasurer Wayne Swan. Mr Palmer called the most recent Swan Budget a “sham”. Mr Swan criticised the Axis of Affluence (Palmer, Twiggy and Gina) for their selfish greed regarding the Mining Resource Rent Tax. In fact, Mr Swan labelled the Axis “a threat to democracy.”

When he’s not dabbling in politics, Mr Palmer is planning an immense new tourist development on the Sunshine Coast. He’s going to need many miles of pristine coastline, and some notable advances in science so that he can clone a dinosaur or two. The locals and the environmentalists are against the development and so are the Greens. He’ll also need the co-operation of the state and federal governments to allow him to spend a few hundred million dollars upgrading the Sunshine Coast Airport to International standard.

Clive’s Jurassic Adventureland* will probably take a little longer to eventuate than his replica of the Titanic, with contemporary luxury appointments, a "safety deck" and a casino that will be restricted to First Class Passengers only, so as not to take advantage of people who couldn’t afford to lose lots of money.

And when things were getting dreary in Clive’s world, don’t forget his stunning media conference in which he that linked the Australian Greens to the CIA in a conspiracy theory so convoluted that it could almost be true. Then later, after the state election, he took it back. 

Back here in Newmanian reality, it’s unlikely that a man with so many business interests would be able to devote more than about three days in total to a political career, much less three years. I doubt he’s serious about having political ambitions. That would make Bruce McIver happy; Bruce is adamant that his old boss should not nominate for pre-selection.

Meanwhile, Clive is receiving $300,000 from King Campbell's incredibly tight budget to aid Clive's High Court challenge against the MRRT, but is also challenging that same government to explain why his company was not awarded a major rail contract. If he doesn’t receive a response from Eff Seeney, or if he doesn’t like the response from Eff Seeney, he will take the Queensland Government to the Supreme Court. The rail contract went to his Axis partner Gina Rinehart’s company.

Should someone remind Clive that he has made powerful enemies in both parties, at both state and federal level? At this point, his only chance of getting special favours from any government would be to stage a coup d'état from the lavishly appointed poop deck of Clive’s Titanic Cruiser.

*not the real name

Butchering the Carbon Tax

The Courier Mail today runs the story of young Brisbane butcher Luke Stefanetti, who is having to increase his retail prices by 15-20% in order to maintain his profit margins. Luke is convinced that the Carbon Tax is the single driver that has forced him to raise his profits.


The Courier Mail has chosen – perhaps wisely – not to open comments on this story. If the story was open to comment, we would see everything posted, from misinformed agreement with Luke’s conclusions, to caustic comments about his inability to run a business. I would have liked to have added my comments to the original story, because in a nutshell, I’m not convinced by this piece that the butcher or the journalist know much about the Carbon Tax.

Perhaps they could’ve referred to this basic but handy guide to the Carbon Tax, published in today's News Limited Online editions. (See below). There are a few points here that Luke, and all small business owners, need to know.

In Luke’s case, the most important point is that point is that farmers do not have to pay Carbon Tax, and in fact, they may receive Carbon Credits under the Carbon Farming Initiative. Of course, some farm inputs will be supplied by large polluters, and could be liable for C-Tax – electricity and fertiliser are two examples – but we can’t assume that just because a company is a top polluter and is liable to pay the carbon tax, that they will pass any increase onto customers.

The point is, those big polluters are supposed to pay more under the Carbon Tax. It’s the big stick to encourage them to invest in greener solutions. People like you and me get a tax cut to help us manage the C-Tax, and small businesses like Luke’s Butchery get assistance too.

Luke says that meat prices are going through the roof. Does he mean the wholesale price he pays his supplier? Or the supermarket retail prices? It sounds to me as though someone’s prices are going up and they’re blaming the C-Tax.

Transport costs was another area where Luke feels he’s being hit by the Carbon Tax. It’s probable that he is paying more for transport costs. How much is impossible to say, as we don’t know how much is being transported, or how, or how far the product is being moved. Luke’s business, as a small business, would be exempt from the carbon price on fuel.

One of the things that worries Luke most is his electricity costs. In a C-Tax world, between 9-11% of his electricity bill will the result of the Carbon Tax. According to the Courier mail, his electricity costs are around $3000/month. He should expect a rise of between $270-$330 per month due to the Carbon Tax. No his electricity bill will increase more than that, as it has for each of the past several years, yet these increases will not be attributable to the Carbon Tax. This should be displayed on each bill. Luke should also be investigating assistance from the government. There’s help available – for example, his large electricity usage would qualify him for a 50% rebate on an energy assessment plan to help him become a more efficient user of electricity. He’d not only save money on the assessment; he’s also save money on every single electricity bill if he implemented the recommended changes.

In the meantime, Luke’s 15-20% increase appears to be far above where it should be. I don’t know much about what meat costs, but we could assume that a family might spend $50 per week on meat. That’s an increase of $7.50 - $10 per week, using Luke’s retail increase of 15-20%. Calculating the impact of the C-Tax on a small business is a complex process of financial modelling, and really, he’d be far better talking to his accountant than to a journalist. Comparing that increase to the government’s modelling, I’d suggest Luke is being ripped off. He’s not alone, but this article has some very important tips for nailing down pricing.

Luke needs to grow up and take responsibility for his business. If he is struggling because the things he has to buy (meat, packaging, electricity, transport, staff) cost more, he needs to get quotes from other suppliers, and he needs to understand why prices are rising. A price rise in the area of 15-20% because of the Carbon Tax is the kind of price movement that will see him noticed and investigated by the ACCC. If he’s being ripped off by a supplier, he should know that, too, and consider if he wants to continue to business with them.

It’s possible that Luke is totally on top of all of the C-Tax issues, and that it’s the journalist who has made him look incompetent. In that case, I’d like to see the figures – and I’ll bet the Government would too. Yet even if Luke is a world authority on C-Tax, there’s no getting past this little gem:

Luke told the Courier Mail:

“He didn't vote in the past federal election but says next time around, if he had to vote he would vote for the Coalition and support their promised removal of the carbon tax.”

He does have to vote, because it’s compulsory in this country. He should’ve voted in the last election too, but he chose not to, and was lucky not to be fined. He has no comeback. Decisions are made by those who show up. If you choose not to vote, you have no right to complain about the government.

Perhaps Treasurer Wayne Swan, who is also Luke’s local member, could pop around and explain a few of the details that Luke seems to be struggling with and run through the numbers with him. It’d make a great case study on the Carbon Tax meeting Real Life.

Listen To The Music

In every modern democracy, there’s an ongoing struggle to balance ideology and policy, transparency and secrecy, fact and spin, truth and ‘gospel’ truth, recollection and statistics, experience and passion. Then, after the agreed, signed-off message has escaped from the party's sanctum sanctorum, there’s another phase of this convoluted process in which the professional political spin doctors polish the language, grind away any rough edges and make it fit for pre-public (traditional media) consumption.

Journalists with an expertise in their political environment digest the message released by the political communications specialists, many of whom used to be journalists themselves. Regardless of background, these reporters sieve the information through a series of filters, including whether a story is appropriate for their audience, the channel, the editorial bias, the journalist's personal perspectives and any other news of the day. 

What comes out of this apparently necessary series of processes is what we often see as "news"...or what is rejected by media types as being less than newsworthy. If you think the news is all 'spin', take a moment to consider the announcements and media releases that died with a single touch of the Delete key.
 
Sometimes we can remove one level - the reporter - and televise a live press conference, but unless its an impromptu one, the statement being read was prepared and approved by the spin department, or created from a set of Party-approved talking points.

Take Joe Hockey's presser this morning (transcript not available) in which he made hay from a report showing that Australia's productivity was relatively slow. There were some clumsy Olympic references and the suggestion that this is Very Bad for Australia. What he didn't say was which Productivity Report he was referring to, where Australia ranked compared to which other nations, or who funded the report. Was the report prepared by the AIG or the Ponds Institute? 

Mr Hockey also failed to mention how he might go about improving this dreadful situation with our constipated productivity.

Barely seconds later, Mr Hockey was critical of Wayne Swan's continued offensive against the Axis of Greed, and decided (probably with the assistance of staff) that Mr Swan was drawing attention to himself as "Acting PM" to set himself up as an alternative to the unpopular Julia Gillard. I hate to be the one to break it to Mr Hockey, but here goes: Wayne Swan is the Acting Prime Minister. He doesn't need to draw attention to himself. He gets our attention because right now, he is our elected leader.

Sadly for Mr Hockey, he'll never have that chance. In the Coalition, the Acting Prime Minister is always the Leader of the National Party. Perhaps that's why he doesn't understand how silly his claim of a "look-at-me" strategy really is. Given the absence of gravitas in Hockey's presser, I'd say it's a solid case of the Pot and the Kettle...

Yet on it went. Joe Hockey was anxious to mock the inspiration Mr Swan draws from Springsteen's Born To Run. Meh. I'm not a Springsteen fan, yet I'm delighted to see a politician who has room in his life for more than one idea, more than one source of inspiration. The Australian Labor Party doesn't begin and end at the site of the Tree of Knowledge.

Was the whole Hockey not-news conference simply a way for him to display his supposed intellectual snobbery compared to the Acting PM, who prefers a working-class flannie-wearing songwriter to Hockey's inspirations: Menzies, Howard and probably a trio of mining billionaires. I imagine most of the electoral battle-grounds in Western Sydney and South East Queensland would prefer The Boss too.

But it's not a class war. It's a message war and today, Mr Hockey failed on every count. PR101 still dictates that if you don't have legitimate news, don't call a presser or issue a release. As for his problem with Springsteen, a simple "yuck" on Twitter would've sufficed. Clive Palmer's response, complete with righteous Aussie indignation, was equally misplaced. The issue isn't Springsteen versus Redgum versus learned tomes from Joe's personal library. It's the optimism of knowing that inspiration is everywhere, and yet entirely personal. It's subjective and irrational and surprising, and to do anything less than welcome it, in whatever form it appears, is just plain dumb.

In any case, a sincere gut-felt love of music suggests creativity, vision and a mind that is ready for new ideas. Perhaps today's battle was between open and closed minds, between creating inspired solutions for the future or borrowing policy from the past.



"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
— Albert Einstein

Occupy Class Warfare

When the Federal Opposition responded to the Budget with calls of “Class Warfare”, many of us closed our eyes and hummed old Abba favourites very loudly to ourselves. Tony Abbott’s Budget Reply speech barely addressed the Budget, other than to suggest that the Opposition would fund more language classes and make vague promises about fairness, and mock Wayne Swan's attempt to deliver the Holy Grail of Budgets, the Capital-S-Surplus. As a response, it was entirely without guts.

“The last thing the Coalition wants to do is start a class war, a post code war”, declared Abbott, entirely without irony, as he set about trying to start a class war. Then he suggested that the Government should be governing for all Australians. Again, the lack of irony was delicious.

Protip: Next time you want to start a class war, take a look at the Occupy Movement. At least they can use numbers that add up.

It wasn’t only the Opposition that accused the Government of Class Warfare. Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor of the Australian was happy to take up arms against the imaginary war:

Mr Shanahan has completely avoided the awkward detail that the Labor movement itself is built on an ideological foundation of challenging the class structure. If the ALP is seen as playing a benevolent Robin Hood against a backdrop of ongoing economic uncertainty overseas, why is that bad for Labor?

"After Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan invoked class-war rhetoric to sell the budget, it was well received by families earning less than $90,000 a year, while more people than last year, 18 per cent, said they would be personally "better off" as a result of the payments.

"But the cash handouts to families on less than $150,000, some sole parents and the unemployed have damaged Labor's economic standing. Mr Swan's fifth budget was deemed the worst for the economy since John Dawkins' disastrous 1993 budget after the election of the Keating government."

The Government spin on the Budget was that everyone – not just the rich – should benefit from the resources boom, and this was a way of ensuring that we all get a share.  Surely this is the opposite of class warfare, in that it seeks to minimise the class structure that divides the well-off and obscenely rich from those who live from pay cheque to pay cheque, or worse. And isn’t that the ALP mantra? “A Fair Go For All Australians”?

If means-testing of government handouts in the middle class and McMansion mortgage belts is seen as starting a war with those who already have their five-bedroom Tuscan style family home in the outer suburbs, so be it.

Yet somewhere around the end of last week, conventional wisdom was that “the people” (which rarely seems to include me) would fall into line behind Mr Abbott’s team. Julia Gillard’s jibes at Abbott and Hockey’s North Shore insularity and Wayne Swan’s Malicious Budget would be rejected, class warfare proven, insults hurled and punishment dished out via a further drop in the ALP’s approval numbers.

It didn’t happen.

According to the Essential Poll released this week, just 28% of Aussies agreed with the Federal Opposition’s claim that the Gillard Government - and Treasurer Swan in particular – are conducting class warfare against Australia’s richest people and most successful companies. Even more remarkable is the finding that the income level of the respondents was not a particularly strong indicator of response. People with incomes over $1600/week were only slightly more likely to favour the Opposition’s position. So, does this mean that the electorate is chiefly happy with the budget, and that the Opposition’s class warfare spin was off the mark?

Yes and no.

The big surprise was probably Tony Abbott, but not directly because of his unsuccessful class warfare attack. That was just the latest in a long series of political assaults. Attacking, criticizing, belittling the government are all part of the role of an Opposition party.

But it’s not the whole kit and caboodle of being an effective Opposition. The electorate is starting to want more from this Opposition than just a never-ending parade of disapproving grunts and mathematical impossibilities. We don’t need Abbott’s team of ministerial goons to point out that the ALP Government is in trouble. We can see that. Now, we need the Opposition to prove to us that they are a credible alternative Government.

As was the case last year, Mr Abbott used his entire Budget Reply speech as free media time in which to kick the government from every possible angle, but this year, it failed. Australians wanted to hear what the Coalition had to offer as an alternative budget. We needed to feel confident that in the face of years of economic absurdity from Abbott, Hockey and Robb, the Coalition Treasury and Finance teams could produce a credible alternative budget, not just some vague promises about fairness and language classes.

Instead, when asked to explain why the Government’s Education handout is different to his own Baby Bonus handout, the answer was “They just are.”

Noted blogger Peter Brent said in his Mumble blog in the Australian

 Today voters want grownups in leadership positions.

With their undergraduate, one-dimensional “us against the toffs” rhetoric, Swan and Gillard present the opposite.

They’ve made Tony Abbott a statesman.

No-one has made Abbott a statesman, nor have they turned around the fortunes of the careworn government. The Opposition’s failure to mount a substantial response to what was a pretty average budget is not going to be the One Big Thing that turns around the fortunes of the Labor Government. I don’t believe such a political marvel exists.  

It might, however, force the Opposition to reassess their approach, and convince them to offer more than just a dogmatic black hole with nothing to offer beyond “we’re not them.”

What is $1.5b Actually Worth?

As promised, the ALP Government has delivered a juicy morsel of Surplus, with grand proclamations about the dark years of Deficit being over. Huzzah! We're in the Money, sharing the benefits of the (Big) Boom, while barely blinking at the armada of cutbacks that go to enable this surplus of goodness.

A quick count shows about 40 headline programmes scrapped entirely, cut, or delayed. 

This is a confusing budget, in that the ALP has delivered, against all odds, the thing the voters and the Opposition most wanted, while at the same time, cutting the heart and soul from everything not nailed down. 

 From $5.4b in cuts to defence spending, to a paltry million saved by not building a new weather station at Jervis Bay, the ALP Government has been ruthless in their determination to produce the surplus they believe we all want. In this instance, we have to trust that the Government made the right choices, and only cut the least essential programmes when decided what would be cut and what would survive.

Before celebrating our glorious return to Surplusity, remember that with programmes scrapped comes jobs lost, projects spanning years of peoples' lives shelved, and the hopes of programme directors obliterated. There is an inevitable cost. It’s probably nowhere near twelve thousand jobs to go, as was reported in the Canberra Times last night, yet there will be pain. Bank on it.

But we have our blessed surplus. As Michael Pascoe wrote in today’s Farifax press, “Welcome tp the Temple of Surplus Adoration”. Of course, while the ratings agencies are delighted with the budget, and  low and middle income families are pretty happy, business is less than thrilled, well-off families are wondering where their entitlements are, and those of us without children pretend the whole thing isn’t happening, just as we do after every Budget. Mr Swan should know by now that you can’t please all of the people, and in the case of the ALP in 2012, it’s hard to please anyone.

But we have our surplus, that majestic $1.5 billion dollars. A mere trifle, you may think, but no. It’s $65.50 for every Australian man, woman and child. There’s no end to the things each of us could have done with that $65.50:

·         Download about 30 songs from iTunes

·         4 x 250g packets of my favourite chocolates

·         Movie tickets for a family of 4 (but bring your own popcorn)

·         A 50 minute massage

·         One decent (but not flash) shoe

·         A tank of petrol for a small car

·         About 10 boring minutes on a standard poker machine

·         Dinner for 2 at Sizzler

Okay, you’re right. $65.50 isn’t as exciting as I’d hoped.

It’s probably best that the government did hold onto everyone’s $65.50. They could do some real good with $1,500,000,000. Here’s what  $1.5b could’ve bought:

·         Thirty new high schools

·         6000 average family homes  

·         A medium sized hospital

·         8000+ kilometres of world class multi-lane highways

·         11.5 Joint Strike Fighter military aircraft

·         A year of employment for over  15,000 teachers, doctors, nurses, scientists, agronomists…

·         Nine or Ten Federal Elections

·         Half a Clem7 Tunnel

Given our need for schools, homes, hospitals, scientists, roads and infrastructure, why not make the cuts anyway, and spend the surplus money on doing what governments are supposed to do: provide services for the people.

The answer is less about economics, and more about politics. The electorate demanded a return to surplus, and the government provided it. If all goes according to plan, we will have $1.5b in the bank, for a rainy day. That’s good too.

Budget BonBons

2UE Radio announcer and host of Sky News' PM Live is Paul Murray tweeted a great question today, asking when 'welfare' became 'entitlements'. There are probably as many answers as there are Aussies receiving 'entitlements'.


Paul Murray's question suggests that welfare and entitlements are the same thing. They are payments that come from the same source, yet when I say those words, I see very different images.


Welfare is basic financial assistance for those going through a rough patch. Welfare is minimal. Welfare is housing commission, paycheque to paycheque desperation. It's bread and butter and a kilo of cheap mince meat.


Entitlements are a right, a bonus that someone else is obligated to pay you because you are legally entitled to it. The picture, at least in my head, is of McMansions in outer suburban estates, two car families, professionals. It's the second bottle of wine, or the hand-made pistachio macarons from That Little Shop (you know the one, darling).


Welfare is necessary; entitlements - or the ironically titled Middle Class Welfare - are not.


My response, via Twitter, to Paul Murray's question was that the change occurred during the Howard years, when each budget included some kind of allowance or bonus or tax cut to help Howard's 'Aussie Battlers' - families in the mortgage belt...except that we got greedy. 


It was a time when couples weren't satisfied with a three bedroom, one bathroom triple fronted brick veneer in the suburbs where they grew up. They needed a four bedroom plus study, two bathroom plus powder-room, Tuscan style plus alfresco entertaining, in ground pool plus spa. Plus...plus...plus...


And of course, we enabled and encouraged this; it supported the construction industry, even while it strained the budgets of ambitious families who wanted more...more...more.

Year upon year, sweetener upon sweetener, governments have built an expectation in the middle classes that come budget time, early May, we find out what new goodies are coming our way. Aimed squarely at the aspirational middle class, these budget bonbons became entitlements. 


Surely, those entitlements to assist you to keep up with the Jonses are not welfare; they were never welfare. These were the prosperous years before the GFC, and the Government coffers were bulging. As these handouts were announced, there was no fine print that said 'Payments Available Only While The Good Times Roll," and thus they became entitlements; Payments made by the Government to the middle classes who should not need them. 


God help you if you tried to take these entitlements away! The morning after Wayne Swan delivered his first budget in 2008, my boss was in tears. The Child Care Benefit was being changed: instead of being means-tested and reducing to a minimum rate, as it had under Howard, the sliding scale would now continue all the way to zero. The tears were because on a combined salary exceeding $150,000, she and her husband wouldn't qualify for any Child Care Benefit, and therefore would never be able to afford to have children.


I fought the urge to slap her. They'd been able to afford their $50,000 wedding and honeymoon, and before that, a boob job and an enormous diamond.


Seriously, if a couple on $150,000 can't afford to have a child without government assistance, they need to look at their lifestyle and make some changes. These people were not poor, not struggling, not battling, yet felt entitled enough to cry on my shoulder. The new ALP Government was taking away their only chance to have a baby! Bastards!


I was single then, earning about a third of their combined income, but they expected that my taxes should subsidise their breeding programme. That is the picture of entitlement.


Contrast that with people on genuine welfare: Newstart allowance, aged and disability pensions, Carer's Allowance, DVA Allowances...Are you seeing a different picture?


Today's pre-Budget sweeteners are a little chewier than most, but I wonder why Wayne Swan needs to offer them at all. Isn't the fact that he needs to roll out the dessert cart yet again just a function of our overdeveloped sense of entitlement?


In his drive to produce the Holy Grail of Budgets, a Chocolate Coated Surplus, couldn't he have been honest with us and broken the cycle? 


'No sweeteners this year; you get a surplus instead'?