The Fourth of July

The pool is stained. (Pic courtesy the Guardian)

 

Yesterday was the fourth of July, gentle reader, so we're bombarded via the media with stories about the 250th Anniversary of the adoption of the USA's declaration of Independence.

It can also be called a semiquincentennial, if you're keen to impress with your vocabulary.

To be frank, the celebrations leave me more than a little unimpressed, as they're characterised by vulgar expressions of American exceptionalism.

In fact, down through the years, much of what happens on the other side of the Pacific has left me unimpressed, but unfortunately it can't be ignored. Decisions made in Washington, and the vicissitudes of American culture and history have affected my life and experience.

I remember being shaken awake by my father on 22nd November 1963 to tell me of John Kennedy's assassination. He was succeeded by Lyndon Johnson, whose cynical use of the Gulf of Tonkin incident on 4th August 1964 to gain congressional approval to wage war in Vietnam had a major influence on my future.

Australia's commitment to send troops to Vietnam in April1965 was largely triggered by American policy, and it was only one month later that our defence act was amended to allow conscripts to be deployed overseas.

Then in 1967 my birthdate was drawn in the national service ballot, and after deferment for eighteen months whilst I graduated as a teacher and worked for twelve months to discharge my bond, I was enlisted in January 1969.

Vietnam followed in 1970, and it was then that I had my first encounter with American GIs. They also left me unimpressed. They were very poor soldiers, and our unit gave them a wide berth, as they attracted unwanted attention from the VC.

There were also two occasions when they went very close to causing us real harm. The first was when we encountered a bunker system in April, and USAF F105s dropped napalm closer to our position than the bunkers. The second was a few months later when an American artillery detachment based at the Horsehoe lobbed a couple of salvoes of 155mm rounds on a track junction we were ambushing because they neglected to check for friendlies prior to the fire mission

We discovered that the reason for their carelessness was their practice of using marijuana during fire missions to escape their apparent boredom.

We had a couple of phrases describing the Yanks. The first was "They draw the crabs" and the second "You can tell them anything; sell them anything".

The second aphorism helps to explain the "election" of Donald Trump. I put "election" in quotes, because you look at the turnout figures in the 2024 presidential election, and examine his slim majority, you understand that he was supported by about one third of American voters. Trump's 77.2 million votes  equate to roughly one-third of all eligible American adults. 

When the financial crisis arrived in 2008, like many other Australians I lost a large chunk of my superannuation balance because of regularity failure across the Pacific, and most recently, American foreign policy pushed fuel prices higher and contributed to inflation in Australia.

Today I read a post by an American on social media telling Australians how grateful we should be because they saved us from the Japanese in World War Two. 

This same American is no doubt ignorant of a number of salient facts of history. The first is that the US didn't enter hostilities until two years after the rest of the free world, and only then after their Pacific feet was blown out of the water on December 7th 1941.

The second is that Australian troops were the first to stop the Japanese on land in New Guinea.

And the third was that they supported us out of pure self interest. Australia was, after all, an unsinkable aircraft carrier.

You'll just have to forgive me for remaining unimpressed with the USA after the impacts it has had on my life since 1970. They continue to tell us how wonderfull their republican experiment is.

Frankly, it's still very much a work in progress.

Trump in Drag

Pic courtesy The Australian

Last Wednesday we saw Pauline Hanson front the Press Club.

She was given a free pass to talk for almost twice as long as most speakers, and we were exposed to all the ugliness of her grievance politics.

She abused journalists, trotted out a range of the same cliches that she's been whining about for over thirty years, and continues to be unable to pronounce the name of our country. That ought to tell you something.

But to me, the most alarming feature of her address was its resemblance to the style and delivery of Donald Trump.

First of all, like Trump, her style is incoherent and aggressive. Her delivery was peppered with half-truths, insinuations, and condemnations.

It was an appeal to the darker sides of our national characteristics, those of xenophobia, arrogance and paranoia. The Australian values of tolerance, a fair go, and generosity didn't get a guernsey.

And her speech was replete with figures which, when subject to analysis, are largely confected.

She said - 

Again, the 2021 census showed that 1 in 4 people, 23% speak a language other than English at home, the most common being, Mandarin and Arabic.

Then -

How can you generate social cohesion if people can’t speak the language? In that same census, 872,000 people self-reported, as speaking English “not well” or “not at all.”

When this is examined, there is a clear inference that 23% of people who speak a language other than English at home are a problem. She tries to conflate bilingual Australians with non-English speaking Australians. Whilst she doesn't explicitly state it, her followers will conflate the two sets of statistics. It's not what she said that's the problem, it's what her followers heard. That's classic dog-whistling.

Then there was this -

Forty-three per cent of low-income renters were experiencing rental stress. Up to 3.2 million people in Australia were at risk of losing their home, and we know that around 130,000 Australians are sleeping rough every night.

She provided no definition of "low-income renters", nor did she reference her figures. Then she said - 

According to official data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics  7,600 people sleep rough on any given night across Australia. 

This figure represents roughly 6.2% of the total homeless population, which exceeds 122,000 individuals. It looks as if she's done some more dodgy conflation, inferring that all people classified as "homeless" always sleep rough. Again, she talks about two separate sets of statistics, and uses the breakdown of one set, then applies them to both. She doesn't do this explicitly, but the inference is enough for many of her followers who can't see past the confected outrage, to wrap them up together. 

Again, her statistics are dodgy, as is the notion that there is a direct connection between the homeless crisis and immigration. It simply doesn't add up. She confuses common sense with ignorant assumption, and encourages her followers to do the same.

She talks about the Salvation Army's Red Shield report, and lists a series of figures from the respondents to that survey. Again, she neglects to mention who those respondents were. The survey pool was a total 4400 respondents across the country. The respondents were vulnerable community members who had accessed the charity's Emergency Relief services (such as Doorways services) within the prior 12 months. So again, she's referencing 4400 people from a population of 28 million.

She then goes on the quote percentages from this group of 4400 people, and pretends to apply it to the total population. Again, she doesn't explicitly do this, but leaves it to her supporters to join the dots, even though what they will come up has only a casual relationship with the truth. This is textbook Trump.

 Food insecurity is unacceptable in a country like Australia, but with a population of 28 million, it's nowhere near the crisis that her dodgy statistics imply. Most of what she says is skillfully designed to generate outrage, and outrage plays well with semi-literates on social media. It feeds the algorithms, puts money in the pockets of big tech, and contributed in no small measure to the popularity of Trump. 

Trump's relationship with Musk puts the social media-populist politician relationship in stark relief. Hanson's relationship with Rinehart is a horse of a similar colour. Many billionaires are quick to chum up with politicians that can get into a position of power, and legislate to enhance their portfolios. Besides, Rinehart's father was renowned for his answer to what he called the Aboriginal problem, He advocated that indigenous Australians should be bred out by doping their water supply to make them sterile.

Much of what I see in Hanson resonates with my lived experience in the sixties and seventies. The injection of fear into our political culture at that time had me sent to a futile war as a conscript. The fear was communism, used by a lazy Coalition government. The political manipulation of that fear went close to costing me my life, and it killed a couple of my mates. 

Hanson sells fear of Muslims, Asians, and Aborigines. Selling fear to gain power is often catastrophic. A quick scan of twentieth century history reveals this solid truth. 

Australian voters woke up by 1972, but much harm had been done by then. Let's hope they wake up to Hanson a bit sooner.

She resembles, after all, Donald Trump in drag.

A Welcoming Commemoration?

Pic courtesy Wikipedia

Since Anzac Day, gentle reader, we've been inundated, in both social and legacy media, with stories about people booing at dawn ceremonies.

The targets of the misbehaviour (because that's simply what it is) have been the welcome to country ceremonies delivered by a local indigenous person.

Almost without exception, people responding to the issue take opposing sides, and often become very aggressive about it.

For me, there are three aspects.

The first is about how we should behave at public commemorations. I was brought up in the tradition of respectfully observing these commemorations, and that booing (for example) is very bad behaviour. To me, it matters not form what the piece of public ritual takes, the mere fact that it is publicly symbolic means it should be publicly respected. 

If you object to it, you take it up with the organisers. You don't publicly abuse the presenter. I'm a lifelong republican, but I don't boo "God Save the King".

Then there is the nature of the ritual. In the case of Welcome to Country, it's a gesture of welcome. It can be seen as a measure of reconciliation. There is a ritual involved which has been appropriated from indigenous culture, and its intent in that ancient culture was to avoid conflict.

On that ancient traditional level, it's about peace. On another level, especially since the failed referendum, it's about reconciliation. How it can be seen as offensive on either of these two levels is beyond me.

Finally, there's the context of the significance and solemnity of the Anzac commemoration. My attitude to this has been coloured by personal experience. I was conscripted to fight in Vietnam in 1970, and finished up in a rifle section. Two of my companions in that section were Murris. One was from Alice Springs in Central Australia, an Eastern Arrernte man.  The other was a Bundjalung man from Kyogle. 

The digger from Alice Springs was seriously wounded when we hit bunkers in April 1970, and ended up on a  medevac flight back to Australia. He never completely recovered and died in 1996 at age 49. Both these men were respected members of our unit, but were not well treated on return to Australia. As far as I'm concerned, any misbehaviour directed at a Welcome to Country ceremony is a personal affront to every indigenous veteran.

The fact that some politicians have jumped on the outrage bandwagon (on the one hand outraged that there is a Welcome to Country at the dawn service, and on the other outraged at the booing) is sad.

We ended up in Vietnam on the back of a political exercise, and that did not work out well for us or the Vietnamese. It was particularly tragic for the five hundred plus Australians who died there, and the thirteen hundred plus wounded.  

Let's keep grubby politics out of the issue.

It dishonours all of those who served, especially the scores of indigenous men who defied regulations prohibiting their eligibility to serve and signed up anyway.

A Just War or Just a War?

Pic courtesy Leunig and Jason Goroncy

 No doubt, gentle reader, you have come across the criticism of Pope Leo by the POTUS.

On the face of it, none of Trump's Truth Social post  makes a great deal of political sense. He needs the conservative Catholic vote in states like Pennsylvania, michigan and Wisconsin, which were fundamental to his election in 2024.

What is also hard to fathom is his grounds for this criticism. His Truth Social post talks about Leo being "weak on crime, weak on nuclear weapons", and mentions a meeting with David Axelrod. 

Now Leo has not made any definitive statement about crime since he began his reign as pontiff,  apart from criticising state crime in Iran after the reported killing of protestors. Maybe Trump doesn't believe there is any such thing as state crime..

As for nuclear weapons, Leo has described nuclear weapons as "a profound horror" and "an affront to humanity".

So maybe Trump is unhappy about the Pope's criticism of the war against Iran.

That criticism did not name either Trump or the USA, but did call for deescalation. 

In any event, the Pope is qualified (unlike J D Vance) to talk about the moral theology underpinning the notion of a just war. For a war to be just, a number of criteria have to be met. Frank Brennan discusses this in his homily given on the Third Sunday of Easter.

He quotes Cardinal McElroy of Washington, who pointed out that the war was not necessary, that diplomacy had been bulldozed, and that there was ambiguity about the intention and purpose of the military commitment.

The principles of a just war are that it has just cause, is a last resort, is declared by a proper authority, has a right intention, and a reasonable chance of success, and that the end is proportional to the means being used.

Trump's "just cause" has ricocheted between preventing Iran accessing nuclear weapons and changing the regime. Strangely enough, there was an agreement called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency, limiting Iran to nuclear material insufficient to construct a bomb, but that agreement was dissolved in May 2018.

Guess who withdrew from the agreement. I'll let you guess. It wasn't Iran.

Trump appealed to the Iranian people to overthrow the mad Mullahs, but was unwilling to provide any material support, so any sane observer might be tempted to doubt that genuine regime change is part of a just cause.

As for "proper authority", Trump doesn't have congressional approval, and the "reasonable chance of success"  seems to have evaporated with Iran's persistent intransigence.

The USA's attack on Iran in the middle of diplomatic negotiations reminds me eerily of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour on 7th December 1941.

Was Imperial Japan's aggression part of a "just war" back then? The lead up and sequence events are similar. There's a fair chance that the outcome for the aggressor this time will also be similar.

The Mug Lair

Pic courtesy South China Morning Post

I've blogged before, gentle reader, about the relevance of language, and observed how it has changed and developed during my lifetime.

According to the Dictionary of Australian Slang, the term "Mug Lair" means a "flashily dressed young man of brash and vulgar behaviour". 

The Oxford Dictionary definition describes a "person who is stupid and vulgar", adding for effect "a two bob mug lair, all bleach and trousers", although I've heard "all mouth and trousers"

And finally, Acronyms and Slang uses "a bothersome show-off" as its definition.

If we break it down, a "mug" is generally accepted as a gullible person, and a "lair" as an attention seeker, although putting the two words together subtly alters the impact of the description.

It's a great shame that the Australian slang term has largely been left behind in common use. My grandfather and father would have been very familiar with it.

Mind you, they inhabited an Australia which was unsullied by language dragged across the Pacific by social media.

Across the pacific, one third of American voters* set up an electoral college that gave power to a classic Mug Lair. There were 241,184,779 eligible voters in 2024.  Of those, 32% voted for the Mug Lair; 31% voted for Harris; and 36% did not vote. 

The definition is a perfect fit, except he is no longer young.

*One third didn't vote, one third voted for his opponent, and one third voted for the Mug Lair.

  

Quo Vadis Cuba

 

Havana in happier times.

Back in 2018, gentle reader, I spent a couple of weeks in Cuba.

I blogged about it at the time, and have been observing from a distance since.

Back then I noted that Obama's visit to Cuba in 2016 had a positive effect on the country, encouraged as it was by Pope Francis. Obama was the first sitting US President to visit the country in eighty-eight years, as the previous visit from Calvin Coolidge was in 1928.

When I was there, the optimism generated by the thawing of relations was rapidly beginning to fade, as Trump had been in the White House for a year and a half.

There were still plenty of tourists around, and cruise liners were visiting Havana. These days, since US restrictions introduced in 2019, all US-based cruise ships are banned from calling on Cuban ports.

In addition, the supply of oil from Venezuela which had pretty much kept the Cuban economy afloat has dried up since the US kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro.

Now we have Trump announcing that he would be taking over Cuba. His exact words were - 

"I do believe I’ll be having the honour of taking Cuba. It’s a big honour, I ​mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it."

Apart from the stark arrogance of this statement, it ignores the fact that the country is in trouble because of sixty-eight years of spiteful US embargoes. What I recall of my visit is the laid back happiness of the Cubans I encountered, which contrasted so strongly with what I had encountered in the Americans I met back then.

It appears that exporting misery has become fashionable across the Pacific.

Deja Vu

About 56 years ago, four students at Kent State University were shot dead by the Ohio National guard.

I remember it well, as I was at the time a rifleman in 7 RAR and we were patrolling on operation Concrete. The news filtered through to us when we got back to Nui Dat at the end of the operation. The students were protesting the invasion of Cambodia, an event that was happening only 100 Kms to the North West of our location. 

Neil Young released "Ohio" shortly after the massacre, and despite the fact that Nixon was re-elected in 1972, the impact of this song, together with publicity about the My Lai Massacre  (which was in news at about the same time) began to have a profound effect on public opinion against the war.

Bruce Springsteen has released Streets of Minneapolis which is already having an impact given the extent of its shares on social media.

There has been, and always will be, a visceral reaction across the Pacific  to US citizens being shot by uniformed people in their own country.

This incident may represent a turning point in US public opinion.

It's certainly deja vu. 

(The words mean "already seen").

 

Advice for the Troops

 

When I was on the way to Vietnam on the HMAS Sydney in February 1970, we were given a pamphlet outlining how we were expected to behave as soldiers in our interactions with Vietnamese civilians.

We had very little contact with civvies, except on leave in Vung Tau, so it wasn't all that useful, but coming across this little piece of history online the other day, reminded me that the military did make an effort to provide some factual information for its soldiers.

In the fact sheet above, issued to American GIs in World War Two, the military explained the phenomenon of fascism, the ideology that these same GIs were fighting.

Taking some of that advice, and applying it to the current situation under the Trump administration, is a revelatory exercise. 

The Fact Sheet #64 was entitled "Can We Spot It?"

The second paragraph begins with - 

Any fascist attempt to gain power in America would not use the exact Hitler pattern. It would work under the guise of "super-patriotism" and "super-Americanism". 

Trump's slogan is "Make America Great Again". 

It goes on to list three fascist aims -

1. Pitting of religious, racial and economic groups in order to break down national unity - In the United States native fascists have often been anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-Labor, anti foreign-born"

That is a pretty accurate summary of what is happening in the USA now, where members of minority groups are being taken off the streets into detention. It has an application in this country as well, when you look at the hate that is daily posted on social media, usually referring to Indigenous Australians, Muslim Australians, and Asian Australians. It's the bread and butter of One Nation.

2. Fascists cannot tolerate such religious and ethical concepts as "the brotherhood of man". Fascists deny the need for international cooperation. 

This has a very familiar ring when Trump's railing against globalism is considered.

3. It is accurate to call a member of a communist a "communist" - Indiscriminate pinning of the label "Red" on people and proposals which one opposes is a common political device. It iis a favourite trick of native as well as foreign fascists.

This labelling is used with boring frequency. It has the advantage for the neo-fascists in this country and abroad in that it removes any possibility of debate. The label is enough. It is particularly popular on social media, as it operates as a type of shorthand which suits those who are too lazy or ignorant to describe what they actually object to. 

My father fought fascists in World War Two, a war in which forty thousand Australians died.

The ignoramuses who post about the communist menace have short memories, or no understanding of history.

History Rhyming

Pic courtesy holocaust encyclopedia.

If you have any interest in history at all, it's not difficult to detect a pattern emerging aligning the current Trump administration with Weimar Germany and from there the rise of Nazi Germany.

The Nazis needed scapegoats. They had the Jews. Now it's completely obvious that undocumented (or documented) immigrants are the scapegoats. They are building internment camps, (called concentration camps until that term went out of fashion).

You could have assumed the US military command would save the day because they would refuse Trump's illegal orders. They didn't. The motorboat strikes were the litmus test. US military command is getting frog-boiled.

Senator Mark Kelly and Representative Elissa Slotkin saw this coming a mile away. Kelly has been threatened with demotion and loss of his military pension.

Slotkin has received bomb threats at her home, and numerous death threats. The Nazis used intimidation to silence their critics although they were slightly less sophisticated. Remember Trump labelled her actions as "seditious behaviour punishable by death."

The ICE crackdown, is getting incrementally more violent by the week culminating in the shooting of a protestor in Minnesota. Remember Hitler's Brownshirts. Intimidation worked well for them.

That's the domestic stuff. Now for foreign policy.

Hitler first annexed Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland (1938) and Bohemia and Moravia in 1939 on the basis that the populations were German speaking.

Trump has kidnapped Maduro and threatened Greenland, Cuba and Columbia. There have been reasons given which talk about the security of the USA. Hitler talked about Lebensraum.

Without drawing too long a bow, you could say that under Trump, the USA has been Weimar Germany for awhile. The Germans, however had an excuse to feel aggrieved post Versailles, but Americans aren't dealing with hyperinflation.

Pic courtesy Wikipaedia

Perhaps the MAGA cult, spread by oligarchs like Musk, has been a major influence.

Is Greenland is the new Poland?

Wasn't it JD Vance who said Trump is America's Hitler?

We live in interesting times....

A Royal Commission?

Pic courtesy CPA

We're hearing, gentle reader, a clamour for a Royal Commission after the Bondi tragedy.

I have written that this clamour can be classified under the heading of "cashing in" on that tragedy, but beyond that, perhaps the notion has some merit. 

Let's put aside the politics and the ghoulish behaviour of most of the media, (especially social media) and consider terms of reference for a Royal Commission.

The generality of the call is all we're hearing at the moment, not the specificity* of its terms of reference.

Here are my humble suggestions of what those terms of reference should be -

1. Was there a connection between the events of October 7th 2023 on the Gaza/Israel border, the IDF's response since, and an increase in anti-semitic rhetoric and behaviour in Australia?

2. Was there a connection between the activities of Islamic State Franchises in the Philippines and Australia and the radicalisation of the shooters at Bondi?

3. Was the granting of a firearms licence to Sajid Akram an oversight on the part of the NSW firearms registry?

4. Are the various state firearm's registries competent to ensure that militants don't gain access to weapons, and are they sufficiently resourced to ensure this?

5. Are the National Intelligence Community (NIC) agencies competent to cooperate and share information that will prevent a recurrence of this atrocity?

If this is to be a good faith enquiry to prevent another attack like Bondi, these are the factors that need to be examined. The brief of the commission needs to be narrow and specific to prevent it weaponizing the politics of the situation.

A simpler brief will also allow the findings to be expedited. A Royal Commission needs to heal divisions, rather than exploit them, to unify rather than to blame, and to provide a strategy to prevent this obscenity from happening again.

Any outcome that doesn't ensure the last one is futile. 

*With apologies to Kevin Rudd.

 

Housing and Migration

Pic courtesy the Wire.

One of the memes doing the rounds in social media at the moment, gentle reader, connects migration with the housing crisis.

Lets have a look at that, and attempt to establish the reality.

First up, what are the actual existing migration rates in Australia?

The graph (from the ANZ Bank) is interesting. We see peaks in 2007, 2011 and 2024. Between 2006 and 2019, the rate was more or less steady around 400,000. Then we see a precipitous drop with the pandemic, with a rebound about 650,000 peaking in 2023.

The rate began to fall after this peak, and continues to trend down.

A graph (from Adviser voice) of the accumulated shortfall doesn't match all that well with migration. It was higher between 2012 and 2015 than it is now.

No doubt migration is a factor, but it part of a complex picture that has been developing for decades. Issues such as planning systems and zoning are important.

Interest rate changes, fewer people per household, and investment policy are also significant.

So why has it become a political issue?

That's much easier to understand. The alleged link has become a meme (an idea that spreads). Social media amplifies memes, and they develop a momentum of their own very quickly.

This is especially the case if gross oversimplification provides the structure of the meme as it does in this case. 

Link that with the xenophobia that lurks in the dark corners of Australian politics, and before you know it, some people take to the streets.

Maybe we should be looking at better solutions than restricting migration. This would have a minor impact on housing, and conceivably would have unintended harmful consequences.

Any housing reform needs to address the issues of construction and supply. It should also look at less restrictive zoning and planning. Approval pathways should be streamlined and development approvals fast tracked. 

The use of prefabricated and modular homes needs to be considered. It's always been a mystery to me that homes in Australian are built one at a time. As a petrol head I understand that motor vehicles haven't been built as unique units since Henry Ford invented the assembly line. Most cars are not custom built these days, and if they are, they cost an arm and a leg.

Social  housing seems to have been abandoned completely by one side of politics, and only halfheartedly promoted and supported by the other. Of course, it's difficult to make money out of investing in social housing. Social housing seeks to provide affordable rents which limits revenue.

Given the dimensions of the crisis, maybe it's time for some radical measures. Here are some suggestions -

1. Remove negative gearing beyond the residential home.

2. Abolish the Real Estate industry. It's unnecessary, and its costs to buyers and sellers operate as a handbrake for people trying to enter the market.

3. Remove stamp duty and land tax.

These radical measures terrify most politicians, so we probably won't see them anytime soon.

What operates now in the housing sector defies Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The first level on his pyramid specifies shelter after all.

Assumptions and Spin

 

Image courtesy Richard Bradley

To be perfectly honest, gentle reader, AI gives me the yips.

But every now and again, just to stir the possum, I ask it a question.

I asked - "Why have energy prices in Australia increased?"

The answer didn't mention "net zero". 

Here it is in full -

Australia is a major energy exporter, and domestic prices for gas and coal have been driven up by high global demand and geopolitical factors, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

Gas-fired generators are often used to top up supply when other sources are insufficient, and the high cost of gas in the wholesale market effectively sets the price for all electricity during those periods.

A large portion of an energy bill (around 40-50%) covers the cost of the poles and wires network. Significant investment is currently required to replace aging infrastructure, improve cybersecurity, and build new transmission lines to connect remote renewable energy projects to the main grid. 

These costs are passed directly onto consumers through network charges.

Many of Australia's coal-fired power stations are old and becoming less reliable, leading to frequent unplanned outages. When these major generators fail, backup power (often more expensive gas) is required, causing price spikes in the wholesale market.Inflation and Interest Rates.

The general rise in inflation and interest rates has increased the cost of capital expenditure for energy companies, which in turn influences the final price for consumers.

The only rationale across this list with a direct relationship to the current government's policy refers to the cost of replacing infrastructure. Some of this replacement is simply maintenance, as what is in place now is aging. This would be necessary irrespective of how the energy is generated.

Certainly, the cost of networking wind and solar is a factor. The Australian Energy Council has presented estimates, but they don't necessarily show that the generation source is the prime factor driving increased costs. There are a range of factors, it's very complicated, and a long way from the "Net Zero is to blame" meme.

Perhaps there is another very significant factor which arises from how energy is marketed and sold, not how it is generated.

Electricity costs in Australia rose by 183% between 1996 and 2016, which was about three times the general rate of inflation. South Australia is  fully privatised and has the highest prices. Marketing, advertising, managerial and sales staff (increasing by over 200% in comparison with pre-privatisation) has a cost attached. 

Privatisation has delivered high rates of return to private owners, who were able to inflate the asset based used to calculate permitted returns at a net loss to the taxpayer.

Private companies face higher borrowing costs than government, and these are passed on to customers. Contrary to expectations of increased efficiency with privatisation, the sector experienced a marked decline in labour productivity after privatisation.

The history shows that privatisation was not the efficiency silver bullet expected, and it's worth considering whether nationalisation of the grid might at least be worth consideration. It's an essential service, after all.

But then ideology would emerge as a consideration, and debates over ideology never end well....

"Peace" in our Time

 

Pic courtesy NYT.

We're being bombarded with media (both mainstream and social) about the arrival of "peace" in the Middle East.

When you've lived as long as I have, and observed the history of that part of the world, the notion that there is now "peace" is greeted by at the least incredulity, and at the most derisive laughter.

I am the same age as the state of Israel, after all.

Granted, credit should be allocated to Trump, as he seems to have driven much of the negotiation. His financial connections in Saudi Arabia though his son-in-law have no doubt greased the palms of the oligarchs that run the show in that country, and his family businesses will no doubt benefit from the reconstruction benefits and the contracts they generate.

He needed them to be onside, and along with the Qataris, the Egyptians and the less compromised Europeans, in the end they were.

He is, after all, in the same business as Osama Bin Laden.

Let's identify what has actually changed after the agreement.

First, and most critical, the Israelis aren't continuing to kill scores of Gazans using air-delivered high explosives daily. I have personal experience as a conscript, of being on the receiving end of misguided ordnance. It was a long time ago, but it's not something you forget. To be delivered from that is, I suppose, a kind of "peace".

Second, the living hostages have been released, along with thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by the Israelis. 

And there is hope of something more permanent. Excuse my cynicism, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Migration

 

It's a long time since I've heard Gaelic spoken in a church, gentle reader, but I had that experience on Sunday.

The last time was August 1980, when my bride and I were visiting the Irish Republic and we went to mass in Cork. Forty five years is a long time, and viewed from the perspective of the marches a few weekends ago, we've actually gone backwards in this country in our views on migration.

Yesterday was celebrated as Migrant Sunday in our local parish, and speakers of different languages, all migrants, read the prayers of the faithful in their own tongues. 

Thus we heard Irish, Spanish, Swahili, Pidgin, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Fijian, Arabic, and Bahasa Indonesian. 

The fact that one of the speakers was native Irish, and physically indistinguishable from the bulk of the population was especially significant. 

My father, a descendant of Irish migrants used to describe being called a "dirty little tyke" as he was horse whipped by an Orangeman in Warwick back in the day.

This in a relativelly conservative regional city like Toowoomba, could be considered remarkable, but it isn't. These people are members of our community, welcomed and contributing. Unfortunately migration is frequently used as a dog whistle by those who are happy to use fear and bigotry as their ticket to political influence. 

That was very clearly demonstrated in the recent marches.

Perhaps our Filipino parish priest expressed it best with a garden metaphor. 

He noted that the magnificent floral displays witnessed in our carnival of flowers are comprised of a wide variety of diverse blooms, and this diversity is largely responsible for the spectacle. 

Same Same, But Different (USA & Australia)

Pic courtesy EF.com

I'm surprised, gentle reader, at the outrage generated by the speech given to the United Nations by the incumbent POTUS.

We share democratic values with the Americans, but we certainly don't share democracy. About a third of them don't vote, and those that do are often pretty ignorant of anything beyond their district.

Nothing expressed on that occasion at the UN should come as a surprise to anyone who understands the USA. It's revealing to look at a few statistics gathered recently about American culture. They explain the bizarre platform that drives what currently masquerades as the GOP.

Gallup Polling indicates that 67% of Americans identify as Christian. Of those, 33% are Protestant. Of those calling themselves Christian, the Pew Centre found in 2021 that within Protestantism, evangelicals continue to outnumber those who are not evangelical.

Currently, 60% of protestants say "yes" when asked whether they think of themselves as a "born again" or evangelical Christian, whilst 40% say "no" or decline to answer the question.

Now Evangelicals hold pretty rigidly to some core concepts. They include a belief in divine healing, and by a wide margin, evangelical leaders surveyed reject the idea that human beings and other living things have evolved over time due to solely to natural processes.

As recently as 2005, the issue of the teaching of Creationism in public schools was before the courts in Louisiana. It was declared unconstitutional, but recent surveys show that between 12 and 18% of high school biology teachers teach it as a valid scientific alternative, or give mixed messages by endorsing both Creationism and Evolution.

In other words, a fair slice of US voters, particularly in the South, have been taught anti-scientific theory at school.

So Americans are prone to accept a range of simply preposterous notions because they basically know no better. Twenty-three percent of Americans have never left their shores, and as a consequence have little understanding of foreign cultures or value systems.

There are other more pragmatic reasons for the dissemination of the opinions expressed by the POTUS. They include the necessity to gain and hold attention, the capacity to pick up on prevailing social anxiety, and a mercantilist view of the world.

All of these factors coalesced on September 23rd. They revealed the gulf between the values held by mainstream Australia, and those who elected the 47th President.

Such an individual would never be elected in this country, due to the strength and stability of our democracy. We have, in this country, the blessed trinity which underpins it.

This blessed trinity includes first of all, compulsory voting, introduced in 1924, obliging governments to deliver ballots into every citizen's hands. which ensures complete civic participation, legitimacy, and majority consensus. 

Then there is preferential voting (1918) which eliminated vote-splitting, ensured representative majoritarian electoral outcomes, responded to popular preferences, and encouraged policy dialogue amongst both niche and broad political interests.

The institutional element of this trinity is the Australian Electoral Commission (1984), which professionalised and depoliticised electoral management, provided impartial electoral management, and maintains voter rolls and facilitates fair redistributions.

None of this should be taken for granted. If ever it is, we would deserve the dysfunction and chaos we observe across the Pacific.

Real Sovereignty

Polling on subs. Pic courtesy Lowy Institute

An article by Peter Varghese in the "Pearls and Irritations" weekly is worth a read.

Varghese, now Chancellor of University of Queensland, has a distinguished career as a diplomat and public servant, from 1980 until 2016. 

He served as diplomat in Vienna, Tokyo, Malaysia, and India and completed his public service career as secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2016. 

He has served in both Labor and Coalition administrations, and was appointed Senior Adviser (International) to Prime Minister John Howard from 2003 to 2004.

From 2004 to 2009, he was Director-General of the Office of National Assessments, an Australian government intelligence agency which reports directly to the Prime Minister. 

In other words, he knows what he's talking about when it comes to international trade and security, and strategic intelligence.

His essay makes the case that Australia can and should defend itself by itself, and that the old alliances have changed to the point that they are now irrelevant. He points out the advantage of our geography. He sums up Trump's administration very clearly - 

More likely than not, Trump's presidency will be judged by history as venal, incoherent, and driven by a penchant for manufactured drama.

He urges self-reliance, and points out that Trump is a naked transactionalist with no regard for historical alliances. He suggests that the US may withdraw from AUKUS, which he suggests would be a good outcome, in that it would force our government to quickly develop and implement more effective force projection.

Whilst he's not as clear as Hugh White in terms of his rejection of nuclear submarines, his thinking is similar, in that he advocates higher defence spending, and building our relationships with Asian countries to our North.

The rapidly changing situation is most likely the reason for the Albanese government's abundance of caution in relation to Trump. Perhaps ignoring his volatility is not a bad strategy.

Trump is nothing if not attention-seeking, and my teaching experience reminds me that ignoring attention-seeking behaviour works pretty well.

We live in interesting times...

History Rhyming in Images

 

Los Angeles 2025

This post, gentle reader, is a montage of images.

Half were photographs taken in Europe during the second world war.

Auschwitz 1944

The other half were taken in Los Angeles during the last couple of days.

Los Angeles 2025

They're posted without comment, except to point out that in each case one minority group was targeted by government.

Berlin 1943

Warsaw 1942

Los Angeles 2025

During World War Two those targeted were Jews.           

During the last few days, the people targeted are undocumented immigrants.

You can come to your own conclusions.....

Malice or Bitterness?

Pic courtesy CAWA

No doubt, gentle reader, you came across the reporting of shouts of abuse directed at a Welcome to Country introducing this year's Anzac Day dawn service at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance, and at a similar ceremony at King's Park in Perth.

It seems that there was a degree of organisation behind the Melbourne disruption, but the Perth incident was not planned.

Cries of outrage were heard from a range of sources, both directed towards the disruptions, and the place of Welcome to Country rituals at Anzac Day commemorations generally. Ex-service community social media networks lit up, again displaying strong feelings and abysmal ignorance.

The controversy highlights currents of malicious chauvinism that have simmered below the surface in this country for at least a century.  

The first of these currents relates to Anzac Day. The day is simply a commemoration after all. It is not a celebration of national pride, or a glorification of the warrior class - whatever that is. The men who died are not honoured by the screams of outrage directed at the inclusion of Welcome to Country ceremonies. Their memory is demeaned by it.

Anzac Day belongs to the whole nation, and is essentially an inclusive tradition. Welcoming attendees to a dawn service is simply a manifestation of this.  

The ignorance revealed by objections to all Welcome to Country ceremonies, not just those on Anzac Day, is another issue entirely. In the first place, given that indigenous Australians comprised over five hundred  distinct clan groups, welcoming people to country occupied historically by that clan by an elder is an entirely authentic process.

 "Country" does not refer to Australia in this context, something entirely ignored by those who mistakenly believe they are being welcomed to 2025 Australia. Various ex-service organisations made a virtue of declaring that nobody had the right to welcome them to the country they had fought for, completely forgetting that none of these clans have ever claimed to represent the whole country.

Then there are those who take offence because the elders who conduct the ceremonies are usually paid for the privilege. I find that strange, given that one of the hallmarks of a successful capitalist community is its willingness to pay for ritualistic expressions of symbolism. 

It matters not whether putting money into a collection plate at a church service or paying for admission to a football match is payment for witnessing a form of social ritual, these practices are very much part of contemporary mores and have been for a long time.

Frankly, I believe that anyone who would object to a gesture of welcome has been very poorly brought up. As my mother would have said if she had been alive to witness these objections - "They need to grow up!"

  

Karma and the Voice

 

Image courtesy Om Swami

Karma (as it appears in the AI overview in my Google search) is defined as "the ultimate consequences of an earlier action. Essentially, good karma leads to positive outcomes, whilst bad karma leads to negative ones".

The Coalition had a dose of bad Karma on May 3rd, and I'll attempt a quick analysis which I reckon informs the result. I'm no political commentator, but there are patterns in the results that are pretty obvious.

Peter Dutton used the Voice referendum as a wedge to both unite his party with the Nationals, and discredit the ALP. In both those strategies, he was successful, and plenty of pundits forecast that his negative campaigning leading up to the referendum would be poisonous when the country next went to the polls.

So let's see if there's any truth to that notion.

Here's a list of seats that the Coalition lost to Labor -

Banks; Bonner; Leichhardt; Sturt; Bass; Braddon; Deakin; Menzies and Moore.

Quite a few of these seats recorded a better than 40% "Yes" vote in the Voice referendum. Here they are -

Bonner; Sturt; Deakin and Menzies.

Then we should take a look at the so-called Teal seats and other Independents recording better than 40% "Yes" in the referendum -

MacKellar; Warringah; Kooyong; Ryan; Curtin and Clark.

In fact, all of these seats with the exception of Fowler, Indi, and Kennedy, recorded a majority "Yes" vote.

The fact of the matter is that the strong swing recorded against the Coalition on May 3rd was led by voters who supported the Voice. The evidence is clear when you look at the electorates Labor won and the Independents held.

It's completely likely that they carried their disgust about Dutton's campaign to the ballot box.

What goes round comes round..... 

Update -

The Coalition has broken.

Remember how Dutton followed Littleproud in kicking Blackfellas.

More Karma?

Shared Values - Take two

 

Monthly value of US merchandise exports to Australia (A$ millions) since 1988

Monthly value of Australian merchandise exports to the United States (A$ millions) since 1988

Pics courtesy Wikipedia

I've posted about this before, but the issue is much more significant now.

The rationale of "shared values" is routinely advanced by our political class to support the notion that we should, as a matter of policy, go along with much of what is happening under the Trump administration at the moment.

Given that, it would be useful to examine just which values we share with Americans, at both the individual and community level. This is difficult, in the first instance, because the diversity that exists across populations in both countries makes it difficult to determine what those individual values are.

Would an African-American from Chicago hold the same values as a white American from the Midwest, or a Latino from Texas? Would a hipster from urban Melbourne hold the same set of values as a wheat farmer from Merredin, or a Murri from Dajarra?

The answer, of course, is that individual comparisons and assumptions simply do not hold, so we will have to look at institutional and political values.

AI will tell you that Australian values respect mateship, and the notion of a "fair go', whereas Americans value individual achievement, free will, and economic success. The institutional outcomes of these factors are universal health programmes, strong social security and welfare structures in Australia, and private insurance and a relatively scelorotic welfare system in the USA.

It describes an Australian laid back attitude to leadership, and a lack of deference to authority, whereas Americans respect authoritative leaders and those in positions of power. These values feed consensus (not weak) politicians in Australia, and authoritarian leadership in the USA. The current situation mirrors that.

It says Australians have a more relaxed approach to the work-life balance, and focus more on enjoying life than making money, but Americans value career advancement and are tolerant of long working hours. 

The cliche of the tall poppy syndrome is cited in Australia, but Americans are painted as admiring "superstars" and those who are very successful.

And when it comes to class structure, Americans are described as categorising people by status, whereas Australia has a relatively low degree of class structure.

Frankly, I believe that there is confusion generated by the fact that we share a common language and there are strong parallels in our national history narrative, as we are post colonial societies which began as British settlements. These commonalities mask or hide significant differences.

These differences were demonstrated starkly to me when I served beside Americans in Vietnam fifty five years ago. I vividly remember situations where the hierarchical culture of many American military units got in the way of getting the job done. As Australians, we often exploited this culture when we were scrounging for materials. It was very easy to use rank as a wedge to get what we wanted.

The attitude towards race demonstrated by the Americans was in strong contrast to ours. We saw indigenous diggers as of equal status. The Americans didn't, and this was sometimes a source of tension when we fraternised with African-American soldiers when on leave.

I remember being pulled aside by a well-meaning GI in a nightclub in Saigon, and being told "You don't want to associate with those motherfuckers". He was referring to a group of black Southerners who were great and generous company.I saw these same attitudes, especially to race and status, when I visited the USA in 2018. Nothing has changed in half a century.

In summary, I believe that the rationalisation of "shared values" as a basis for our alliance is mythology.

We need something more solid than that, given what is at stake.