Friday 13 February 2015

The Elephants in the Press Gallery - The AIM Network

The Elephants in the Press Gallery - The AIM Network





The Elephants in the Press Gallery














The Press Gallery have been busily, emphatically, excitedly making
the most of the new leadership tensions story that Abbott has gifted
them over the past few weeks. But amongst the innumerable number of
articles about what’s gone wrong for Abbott, how he got to this point so
quickly in his first term, and what he plans to do to fix this mess,
there are some massive elephants in the Press Gallery who are being
consistently ignored. In fact, there are enough elephants to build a
pretty decent circus, if you throw in the journalists as the clowns.



Here are some of the most obvious elephants who have been ignored in
the leadership crisis coverage, the 16 months of Abbott’s government and
in some cases, his entire 6 years in Opposition:



  • Abbott’s ‘budget emergency’ is a lie he has used to justify cutting
    government spending for ideological reasons, at a time when the economy
    needs stimulus, not cuts. This fake ‘budget emergency’ has decimated
    consumer confidence and has reduced the amount of money in the economy
    to the point where Australia is teetering on the edge of a recession.
    Put simply, Abbott has ideologically wrecked the economy because he
    prefers small government.
  • Abbott’s budget aimed to protect wealthy Australians from ‘budget
    pain’ and to blame poor people for all the economy’s problems. The blame
    is based on the lie that the unemployed are lazy and if they want to go
    on being so lazy they will be punished because of it. This ideological
    position relies on various economic lies such as the following:
    • That jobs can be created by the unemployed applying for more jobs.
      There are 5 unemployed people per available job in Australia. People
      want to work and there are no jobs for them to work in.
    • Tax cuts for the rich create jobs. No, they don’t. Demand from
      consumers create jobs. Tax cuts for the rich just make the rich richer,
      and inequality worse. If consumers can’t afford to spend, the economy
      grinds to a halt.
    • Wealth trickles down. No it doesn’t. By next year, the 1% richest people in the world will own half the world’s wealth. There is no trickle.
    • Government spending and taxation is like a household budget. No it isn’t. If you haven’t heard of Modern Monetary Theory yet, follow this link.
  • Abbott is failing to get his budget through the Senate, not because
    Labor controls the Senate, but because right wing minor parties, those
    who traditionally supported (and in one case funded) the Liberal
    National Coalition, are refusing to pass policies they know are so
    unpopular that they would threaten their political careers putting their
    names to them. It’s really as simple as that.
  • Abbott never properly defined what he would do as Prime Minister
    because he knew if he told the voters what he really wanted to do,
    ideologically, to the Australian economy, culture and society, he would
    never have won the election. The Press Gallery ignore this elephant
    because to point it out would be to also admit that they never
    scrutinised Abbott in the lead up to the election since they were too
    busy writing about Labor leadership tensions. The first rule of
    political journalism in the Press Gallery is ‘never ever admit you were
    wrong in the past’. Anyone with eyes could see exactly what the Abbott
    government was going to be like and if you followed independent media
    sites like this one you would have got a very accurate preview of the
    situation we are in now. But you never got this preview from the
    mainstream media. And the last thing they want to do now is to admit
    they were the reason the electorate got such a shock when they realised
    who Abbott really is, and what his real plans for this country were.
  • There are things Australians should be scared of, and there are
    other things Australians should stop being scared off. We should be
    scared about Climate Change. We should be scared about wealth
    inequality. We should be scared about our own and future generations’
    ability to find jobs in an economy where manufacturing is declining, the
    mining boom is over and competitor economies are forging ahead with
    technological innovation on the back of better education systems than we
    have access to in Australia. But instead, Abbott, at every opportunity,
    without scrutiny from the Press Gallery, goes straight to two
    boogeymen-under-our-beds as diversionary tactics to try to scare us into
    supporting his ideological agenda (which we’ve already proved we don’t
    like). These boogeymen are ‘debt and deficit’ and terrorism. The quest
    for the revered ‘surplus’ is akin to the government throwing all their
    resources behind an ideological holy grail, at the expense of Australian
    jobs and to increase household debt. It is nonsense, yet the Press
    Gallery don’t seem to understand this. Oh, and terrorism? According to this helpful analysis on Crikey,
    more people died in the past ten years falling off chairs in Australia,
    than they did from acts of terrorism here and overseas. What would you
    say if the Abbott government tried to make you scared of sitting down?
These five elephants should be at the heart of any political
discussion, at the heart of debate about policy and what is right for
Australia’s future. But this is where the grand-daddy elephant needs to
be pointed out. Political journalists in Australia are not interested in
discussing policy. According to them, there was no need to discuss the
effect that Abbott’s policy decisions have had on his current
leadership-crisis predicament. No, as usual, the journos are as shallow
as a puddle, with analysis such as this from Lenore Taylor, Laura Tingle, Laurie Oakes and Peter Hartcher.
These articles all share two things in common; they perpetuate the myth
that the Liberal government’s problem is all about Abbott and the
dysfunctional processes around him, when really the entire government
has helped create this situation by all sharing the same ideological
agenda as Abbott. They all supported the turd, cooked the turd, and
perpetuated the lies that brought the turd about. And now they’re all
complaining that Abbott’s has failed to polish the turd and they want to
give Malcolm Turnbull a go. But it’s Turnbull’s turd just as much as it
is Abbott’s. Where is this analysis? And of course, they ignore the
elephants I’ve described, whilst also ignoring the role the Press
Gallery played in putting Abbott where he is, without scrutiny, without
analysis, without a heads-up about what the country was about to
experience. Rather than taking a step back and looking at themselves,
they keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Exactly like
Tony Abbott. The Australian public deserves better government. And we
deserve a better Press Gallery to help explain what a better government
would look like.













Friday 6 February 2015

Barrie Cassidy and Jonathan Green are wrong and this is why . . . - The AIM Network

Barrie Cassidy and Jonathan Green are wrong and this is why . . . - The AIM Network





Barrie Cassidy and Jonathan Green are wrong and this is why . . .














Abbott’s main argument against those in his party who want him out
is that to get rid of him now would be to return ‘to repeat the chaos
and instability of the Labor years’.  This is understandable; after all,
what else has he got going for him?



My question is, rather, why do elements of the mainstream media buy into this narrative?


Even commentators who are not nominally part of the right-wing
commentariat, such as Jonathan Green and Barrie Cassidy, are basing a
large part of their argument about how Abbott got there in the first
place on the electorate’s haste to be rid of the Gillard/Rudd
governments. Cassidy could be channelling  Abbott when he talks
about ‘the failed, disunited and chaotic Rudd-Gillard-Rudd
governments’; he says there was ‘a six or seven year period of
dysfunctional and chaotic governments’. Green says Labor was ‘a government we had come to hate’.



Sure. Labor lost the 2013 election, 46.51% to 53.49% on a two party
preferred basis. So I’m not sure who the ‘we’ is that Green is talking
about. Some of us, certainly. But others of us both valued what Labor
had achieved, and feared – rightly as it turned out – what an Abbott
government was capable of.



It would be foolish of me to dispute the impact of the changes in
leadership, the public backstabbing, the vengeful backgrounding of
journalists and the mistakes in policy and its implementation made by
these governments. Possibly it was Rudd’s back-down on climate policy
which most undermined his public authority. The governments were
certainly spooked by Abbott’s relentless negativity, rarely seeming able
to get clear air to promote a more positive agenda. And there were
disastrous policy failings, such as that on asylum seekers.



On the other hand, much of this was blown out of all proportion by
the Opposition and the media. Why is a minority government that has the
support of independents illegitimate? Will this be the case if the LNP
scrapes into minority government in Queensland? Does anyone really think
there are no factions in the Liberal Party? Or that they aren’t crucial
in deciding who leads the party? Why is only the negative side of the
Rudd government’s insulation scheme ever mentioned? Even Tony Abbott’s
Royal Commission didn’t manage to blame Rudd for the deaths of the four
workers whose unscrupulous bosses abused this program. Yet you’d think
Rudd went out and murdered them himself from the press treatment it
received. And why is so little credit ever given to the Labor government
for the stimulus package that saved Australia from the worst of the
GFC? Instead, there has been a relentless and damaging talking down of
the economy.



So did these failed and chaotic governments really not achieve
anything? I’ll just list some of what they did achieve, as Cassidy and
Green, and no doubt others, seem to have forgotten about these. The fact
that some powerful vested interests didn’t like them doesn’t make them
any less important reforms. The fact that some of them were used against
the Labor government doesn’t make them wrong either. Nor does the fact
that Abbott has repealed or undermined many of them. It’s impossible to
say which if any of these policies those who voted against Labor were
rejecting, but aren’t government supposed to act in the national
interest regardless of popularity? Labor governments:



  • Saved Australia from the worst effects of the GFC
  • Put a price on carbon, which resulted in a decrease in carbon emissions.
  • Began implementing the Gonski reforms to base educational funding on need
  • Began building a world class NBN
  • Introduced a mining tax to share the benefits of the resources boom more fairly
  • Introduced paid parental leave
  • Supported an increase in the minimum wage – modest, but still an increase
  • Introduced the National Disability Insurance Scheme
  • Achieved the Tasmanian forest deal
  • Achieved plain cigarette packaging
  • Won a seat on the Security Council to give Australia a stronger international voice

Why are Cassidy and Green and their ilk ignoring these positive
achievements? (It’s OK Barrie I don’t really hate you. I just think you
should know better.)



My guess is that it is only by portraying the Labor
governments as incompetent and hated that they can excuse their own
failure to look properly at Tony Abbott and his policies
, and to publicise what they would have found if they looked at all.



It’s true that Abbott made himself a small target. But there were
still things you could have analysed. Did you ever look in detail at
Direct Action and how it might work? Did you ever wonder in print
whether a price on carbon was a good thing? Did you ever suggest that it
would be wise to look more closely at the effectiveness of an NBN based
on fibre to the node – and therefore on Telstra’s aging copper network?
Did you ever question the inequality of Abbott’s paid parental leave
scheme? Did you ever consider what would be lost if the mining tax was
repealed? Was government debt really a problem in Australia?



And even if Abbott’s agenda was relatively limited, couldn’t you have
probed a bit deeper into his political agenda? He laid it out for you
in Battlelines. Small government, trickle-down economics, culture wars and social conservatism. It was all there for you.



Maybe a bit more work from journalists on sites like The Drum
wouldn’t have made any difference, given the torrent of anti-Labor venom
pouring out of the Murdoch press. Maybe the disunity and policy
mis-steps of the Labor government would have led to an election loss
anyway. But what I find hard to understand is the wilful denigration of
Labor’s achievements, a perversion of the narrative if ever there was
one.



While I’m on the subject, please don’t go on making the same mistake
over and over again. Apparently, according to Green, Labor still can’t
do anything right. Bill Shorten is ‘carping’ in opposing not just the
destruction of Labor’s achievements but also the demolition of Medicare,
cuts to funding for health and education, the farce of Direct Action
etc etc. And for Cassidy, ‘Malcolm Turnbull is immune; above it all’.
Really Barrie? He’s voted for every piece of the Liberal agenda so far.
How about you start reporting facts not fantasy?




Sunday 1 February 2015

The MSM asleep at the Wheel. - The AIM Network

The MSM asleep at the Wheel. - The AIM Network



The MSM asleep at the Wheel.













MSM





Last week Mainstream Media (MSM) political
commentators were united in their condemnation and their mockery of PM
Tony Abbott following his bizarre announcement that HRH Prince Phillip
would become an Australian Knight.



They also seemed equally united in their condemnation of Abbott’s
overall performance and the prospect of an imminent leadership challenge
in the Liberal party following the Queensland election. Better late
than never, I suppose.



In fact, media unity on these two issues is similar to their united
front on Labor’s economic prowess, particularly between 2010 and 2013,
when they gave Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey unquestioning prominence as
they recklessly hacked away at Labor’s economic record.



The difference then, is that they were dead wrong about Labor’s grasp of the issues.


ruddWhen
Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister in 2007 he inherited a gross ‘debt’ of
$58 billion; quite trivial by today’s standards. At the time, he and
Labor were treated lightly by the media until the GFC exploded and
suddenly, the big question was: what would they do about it?



But up until this time, the media had been asleep at the wheel
unaware of what had really been going on. For the ten years or so prior
to 2007 they had happily been drinking the wine of what they perceived
as good fiscal management by Peter Costello who had been delivering
surplus budgets year in, year out.



But they should have known that in a national economy, the three
principal sectors of management, i.e. government, private and external,
the respective balances of each will always play against each other,
while their aggregate total must balance when combined. If two are in
surplus, one must be in deficit. If two are in deficit one must be in
surplus and the net result must always equal zero.

A simple formula expresses this as follows:

(I – S) + (G – T) + (X – M) = 0

where I is Investment, S is Savings, G is Govt. Spending, T is Taxes, X is Exports and M is Imports.



During Costello’s time no one ever queried that up until 2007 while
he bathed in the glory of government surpluses, external income was in
deficit, and private debt, particularly household debt was skyrocketing.

costelloCostello’s
surpluses were made possible because of the availability of easy
credit, e.g. home equity based loans, banks offering credit cards to
anyone breathing, and even some who had stopped breathing. Costello took
advantage of the ignorance of the MSM and the people with his surpluses
and actually gained their admiration in the process.



As we all remember, soon after the GFC struck, the Rudd government
announced a stimulus program, one much criticised by the then LNP
opposition and the budget went into deficit. This created excess
reserves in the banking system necessitating the issuing of bonds to
ensure the central bank could control the overnight cash rate.



This necessary monetary process was misconstrued and presented as
borrowing to finance the government’s spending when it was nothing of
the sort. It quite falsely became the “debt and deficit myth” the LNP
used so effectively to discredit Labor.

Following that stimulus the external sector (trade) remained in deficit
but the private sector (business) stopped borrowing and began paying
down debt.



Fast forward to today and we find that household debt has remained at
its historic high. Meanwhile, the business sector have been using
accumulated profits to reduce debt and buffer themselves from
deflationary forces in the absence of attractive investment
opportunities.

chinaAt
the same time, successive years of deficit budgets caused by China’s
economic slowdown coupled with an over-valued Australian dollar has had
the effect of limiting further deterioration in unemployment.

That’s the good news. Now for the bad news. Joe Hockey’s austerity budget threatens a seismic shift in these balances.

The move to austerity will actually force the private sector towards
higher indebtedness (deficit) by running down savings because there
won’t be the flow of money to enable current levels of saving.

If the household part of the private sector starts saving and/or begins
to pay down household debt (credit card and mortgages), the economy
generally will begin to contract, business will slow, unemployment will
grow and the deficit will also grow from further reduced revenues. The
December 2014 inflation rate announced last week confirms this trend.

This means that the private sector will bear the burden of balancing the
economy on a scale that will drive the country into a horrible and
prolonged recession.



This is exactly what is happening at the moment in Europe.
davosThis
is why the European Central Bank has decided to issue fiat currency of $
1 trillion euros into the reserves of the member banks. This is why
austerity doesn’t work, at least in these circumstances.

The question arises therefore, why is it that the Australian MSM
economic experts are not pointing out this fact? Are they once more
asleep at the wheel? Or, is it just too hard for them to acknowledge
Labor’s better understanding of the way the economy works?

It is my opinion that neither they, Joe Hockey nor Mattias Cormann understand any of this.