Nic Stuart

Values

2012-01-27T13:44:00.000+11:00

I'm going to attempt to blog more regularly and paste more than just my columns.

This comes from London's Daily Telegraph. It is by Peter Oborne.

Now we turn to the case of Stephen Hester, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, who is reportedly pressing for a substantial annual bonus in addition to his already colossal £1.2 million salary. There are no questions of integrity with Hester, as there are with Huhne and Laws. However, an extremely important issue is at stake, concerning the values that guide Britain as a nation.The key point to bear in mind is that Mr Hester is not a banker. He is a civil servant, heading an organisation which is 84 per cent owned by the British government. His immediate boss, Robin Budenberg, the chief executive of UK Financial Investments, earns just over £145,000 a year. Mr Budenberg in turn reports to Sir Nicholas Macpherson, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, who earns at least £175,000.It is outrageous and insulting that Mr Hester should insist on such a huge salary, and beyond belief that he should be insisting on a bonus. Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that he is by no means the hungriest RBS employee. His colleague John Hourican, the head of RBS’s calamitous investment banking division, is reportedly demanding more than £4 million.Consider this: supposing that Mr Hourican gets his bonus, it will pay him approximately £11,000 every single day – as a state employee. In just three days, it would surpass the amount that a young corporal, risking life and limb in Afghanistan, gets in an entire year.

SETTING THE AGENDA

2012-01-23T14:06:00.000+11:00

Back again.

This is actually my third column for 2012. I'll post the others over the next couple of days. I've been a bit slack in keeping up to date.

This is about the need for Australia to keep "making things" and the importance of government in ensuring it continues to do so . . .

SETTING THE AGENDA

One of the most vital political skills is the ability to set, and dominate, the agenda. Viewed from this perspective, politics is like a game of football. The critical skill is to keep possession of the ball. Eventually, if it’s held long enough, opportunities will open up to drive it through the opposition’s defence to score.

But the crowd’s focus isn’t just on the scoreboard at the end of each match. Supporters want to believe their team is in control; they want to know it hasn’t just been forced to respond to the tactics of the other side. They need to have faith in the idea that there is a game-plan, a strategy, behind the player’s movements.

Capturing and retaining people’s trust is a delicate task. It requires much more than simply winning the daily battle of the headlines. And it explains a great deal about the real reason the government is having so much difficulty getting its message to cut through. One critical factor – holding the strategic agenda – has been neglected in the unending struggle to win the tactical struggle of the moment.

This week has provided two clear demonstrations of how the government is fumbling the ball and losing control of the agenda, although the opposition is not doing much better both sides are displaying an inability to distinguish between the old-style politics that relies on a public with a short attention span and the new requirement to persuade and inspire the voters.

The decades now the car industry has enjoyed its untouchable status simply because of our intense dependence on vehicles. Participating in life without a car in the garage is, in most cities of Australia, quite literally impossible. The idea that we, as a country, can't manufacture something so vital is anathema. It was a concept Kevin Rudd put into words when he insisted, “I don't want to be Prime Minister of a country that doesn't make things".

But when taxpayers realise they're paying a baseline subsidy of $100,000 simply to keep each worker in the (self-described) ‘industry’, questions rapidly arise. You need to go back some seventeen years to 1984 before you can discern the last moment when politicians genuinely attempted to shape the business environment. It was Labor’s then Industry Minister John Button who actually managed to square the circle, finding a way to keep both consumers and manufacturers happy while creating the conditions for an economically viable car industry. Those circumstances have ceased to exist.

It’s understandable, then, why the current Minister Kim Carr thinks he’s winning the media battle. This week the headlines have all been about the way Labor’s putting together an industry assistance package (more giveaways, this time worth more than $100 million) while the opposition is arguing internally and divided about its earlier pledge to slash $500 million worth of subsidies.

The trouble is that the old simple equations are being challenged. They’re no longer accepted in the broader community. There’s absolutely no evidence that the community is prepared to abandon support for automotive manufacturing. Most voters want us to keep making cars here. The trouble is there’s no quid for the pro quo. The industry is simply waiting, expectantly, to be bankrolled.

That’s where Labor has vacated the intellectual field. Button led a debate about exactly how government support should be targeted to achieve the best result. Carr hasn’t even been able to effectively convey the idea that he’s got a long-term plan to support the industry, rather than a short-term fix. That’s why, although the opposition’s currently divided, Tony Abbott isn’t suffering the sort of polling agony that you’d expect as its internal differences are dredged up in the media.

The empty rhetoric of special pleading and weirdo interest groups rapidly emerges whenever there’s a political vacuum. It’s up to government to lead if it wants to occupy that strategic space. This has become most surprisingly apparent in the debate over a critical element of our future defence strategy.

Kevin Rudd’s Defence White Paper of 2009 identified the need for a new submarine. The proposed new fleet of twelve will represent a critical element in the new force structure. It’s meant to play a key role in deterrence.

Last year we couldn’t even send one of our existing Collins class boats to join the all-important multi-navy RIMPAC exercises being held off Hawaii. Yet Labor – even Defence Minister Stephen Smith, someone whose entire life has been consumed by following politics – is silent about the replacement vessel. It’s no wonder that the media void is being filled with ever-more outrageous proposals as each day passes. Most critically, an orderly transition to this key component of our force structure is becoming less and less likely.

It’s just a couple of weeks since the year started. In that time serious commentators (as well as others with access to the media) have proposed our Navy should buy, alternately, Japanese, German, Swedish, Spanish or US nuclear submarines. The only voice not heard is that of the government. All that’s required are a few decisions and a plan. It appears even this is beyond its capacity.

One of the more astute contributions to the debate came in a Kokoda Paper by Brice Pacey, launched this week. In an exhaustive examination of the issues he points out, simply, the limitations of buying something off-the-shelf and expecting it to meet our requirements. Follow this logic and you arrive at the inevitable conclusion that the country should be prepared to invest in the industry. Son of Collins, built in Adelaide. The payoffs are obvious: just ask the South Australian government. In February the Australian Submarine Corporation will become the largest employer of apprentices in that state.

Strategists like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Andrew Davies pose other rigourous questions, not focused on industry but instead revolving around the mission the submarines are required for. Why not buy a smaller, cheaper vessel? What's the strategic imperative to operate in the South China Sea? Is it really plausible to suggest we'd deploy boats in North Asian waters if they couldn't refit at the major US base in Guam?

Governments are elected to provide answers to these sort of questions. In a fortnight's time the Seapower Conference – the biggest fixture in the Navy year – will be held in Sydney. The Minister will make an announcement about the amphibious fleet. But indications are there will be no word about the submarine fleet.

The result is predictable. The government’s already lost control over the agenda. Issues drift. Confidence is eroded. Tragically, nothing’s likely to change.

SPECIALITIES

2011-12-23T05:52:00.000+11:00

Training is vital; making sure people are properly and effectively equipped to do the job.

These are some thoughts on retaining specialities in the military . . .

Struggling to be Uniform

How long does it take to become an expert? Not merely competent, or proficient, but a real expert? In his book “Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell makes the case that success in any field is almost directly related to 10,000 hours practice of a specific task. Plus, of course, a few other vital ingredients: luck, interest and opportunity.

It's an argument that explains a lot. It's an idea that forward-thinking corporations and businesses have tapped into. It means allowing people to specialise, rather than forcing everyone to be a generalist. The changing external environment drives the to re-structure organisations so they can keep specialisations. They have to adapt if they aren't going to be left behind.

But this isn't the thinking behind the most fundamental change to the Army for nearly 50 years. The military has realised that too much focus on specialisation can risk harming the ability to achieve a mission. It’s no use relying on experts if there aren’t enough, of if the task requires a generalist.

It's no accident that this restructuring into an adaptive army is part of “plan Beersheba". In 1917 it was here that the Australian Mounted Infantry shocked the Turks by suddenly charging entrenched machine guns. Despite only being trained to fight on foot and wielding bayonets instead of swords, the Light Horse succeeded where infantry couldn’t. They'd broken every “law" of warfare to do so.

This sense of adaptability is exactly what the Army's Head of Modernisation, Major General John Caligari, is attempting to achieve in the revamp unveiled last week. It's all about reintroducing flexibility into the structural: something that’s been lacking in the past.

When the commitment to Vietnam ended in 1972 there was a similar attempt to get back to “real soldiering". The 1st Division was properly re-established with three similarly organised brigades. Specialist units (divisional and corps troops) were grouped separately, to be allocated as required. But the good intentions didn't last long, primarily because of lack of money. Meagre resources resulted in a focus on specialised units. Gradually, one Brigade concentrated on mechanised warfare while separate battalions also took on special roles, such as housing the parachute capability.

Yet already one battalion (2 RAR) has been allocated to the amphibious role, our ‘marine’ unit. The tension between expertise and generalists runs deep.

Success depends on committing resources to fund the transformation. That's why it's important that, although the drive for change is coming from the Army, key politicians are supporting it. Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Senator David Feeney emphasises the re-creation of multi-roll manoeuvre brigades will not mean any disbanding of capabilities. Instead, he says, “this is about achieving both breadth and depth". He promises money is there to realise the transformation.

The Army’s taking a real risk as it moves towards a more generic structure. That’s why it needs to ensure that it is nurturing and retaining those areas of expertise that have taken so long to build up. The specialisations or areas of “corporate knowledge" that form the basis of successful enterprises. The sort of tasks that require 10,000 hours of practice (20 hours each week the 10 years).

You don't need to look very far in the business world to find enterprises that, in the attempt to become “lean and mean", have simply hollowed out their vital core. The expertise that's required to actually operate isn't actually fixed in the minds of the CEO or Dep Sec – no matter how wonderful their annual reports may suggest these creatures are.

Despite many attempts it's been impossible to isolate the particular features that enable an institution to keep the strength and resilience it needs to operate in hard times. The military has, of course, evolved its own unique structures, bonds and traditions to allow it to do exactly this.

Like uniforms. Camouflage might be required in the field but there's no obvious operational requirement that mandates the use of service dress when working in the bureaucratic jungles of, say, Russell Hill or Campbell Park. But the uniform is a bond. It builds esprit de corps. It’s an intangible that provides strength to the institution. Those silly little distinguishing patches and badges are the outward expression of values that people are prepared to die for.

Then some idiot comes along and thinks he knows better than a century of experience.

During the year we've seen some of the most stupid, pettifogging and mindless attacks on the core ethos of the Army since Federation. Incredibly, most of these have come from within. Today the suicidal urge cloaks itself in the need for uniformity and saving money: the very people who should be guardians of the tradition are leading the putsch for change.

Berets have been dispensed with because they’re not “sun smart”, however the SAS hasn’t been stripped of their signature item. Perhaps they’re expendable. The result is that some people can don berets, while others can't. Unsurprisingly, helicopter pilots and tank commanders are still finding it difficult to slip a headset over a slouch hat.

The attempt to get rid of regimental bands has, fortunately, been arrested. The forces of idiocy have, nonetheless, reformed for a new assault. This time Mess Dress is targeted for “correction".

Anyone who's ever had the pleasure of donning black tie knows that evening dress makes no sense. Yet this is mild compared to the riot of vivid colour, spurs, chain-mail and gold-braid that accompanying the profusion of mess dress at, say, a British cavalry dining-in-night. Our military’s restrained attire is drab by contrast. And yet some troglodyte has rubbed his remaining two neurons together and decided even the smallest expression of individuality and regimental pride must now be stamped out.

The intention is to strip each Corps of its identity, compressing everyone into dreary homogeneity. And then, as if to prove that this is all some bad joke, the committee designing the new uniform adds a bizarre, gay little touch of debonair insouciance: a little prissy chain to keep the front of the waistcoat together.

This lunacy is so idiotic that derision and contempt are the only appropriate emotions.

POLITICIAN'S PAY

2011-12-12T12:44:00.000+11:00

How much should we pay those who govern us?

Less than bloggers, perhaps?

This column considers the issue . . .

HOW MUCH IS JUST ENOUGH?

First, three names. Firstly, from the US and in the red (Democrat) corner, President Barrack Obama. Secondly, and in the corner that used to be red but is now a rather nice shade of rather fetching light pink, (the ALP’s) Prime Minister Julia Gillard. And finally, weighing in from Singapore, the (People’s Action Party) PM Lee Hsien Loong.

The common factor is, of course, that the parties the three pollies all represent belong to the “left” of the political spectrum, although it’s a very long time since Singapore’s PAP has been about “redistributive wage justice”. The party claims it has a good excuse for paying its politicians so well. If voters disapproved of such pay rise, the assumption is they’d install the opposition. They don’t, therefore they approve. After all, the PAP has been the only political party to run the island state since independence although it’s worth noting that managing to exclude opponents has taken a fair degree of electoral boundary “adjustments”, combined with an enthusiastic approach to suing anyone who complains about the regime.

Secondly, three figures. $3,000,000; (US) $400,000 and finally, $470,000. Can you match the numbers to the people? Makes sense, really, doesn’t it? You’d expect that the PM of the fastest growing, economically dynamic country would be pulling in a lot more than the others. That must be the reason that it’s Singapore’s PM who's the highest paid politician of the lot.

Who’d want to be US President? You might have the ability to order global nuclear destruction if you wake up in a bad mood one morning, but there’s no money in it. It’s a wonder the free market manages to get anyone interested in the job . . . then again, perhaps it’s this lack of interest that explains the previous occupant. Or, depending on your point of departure in the political spectrum, it might help explain the current ones failings.

In Australia, political pay rises meet with bi-partisan approval. It’s only the odd pollie, here and there (like Kevin Rudd) who dares to stand up to the seemingly unanimous demand for our representatives to be properly paid (but look what happens to them). When overall economic performance hasn’t been that bad and wages are rising, this issue doesn’t attract too much angst. What’s different now is that society more generally is becoming far more unequal. The issue is simple: which group should our representatives be aligned with? The top income earners (a group they’re quite happy to be associated with) or the have nots as part of some sort of attempt to ensure their financial interests are genuinely aligned with the poorer members of the community.

And is it really reasonable to assume that Gillard should be about to come in for a big, fat pay rise that, depending on the time of day and the exchange rate – should comfortably ensure she earns more than her mate Obama? Where’s the relativity here?

From another viewpoint, of course, that’s ridiculous. But we’re not necessarily dealing with reality here. Instead, we’re inhabiting a magical world of make-believe logic; a world where you can marshal any number of cogent, persuasive and effective arguments to convince yourself of anything you want. After all, if you've ever “negotiated" your own pay rise, you know exactly what it’s like.

Let's face it. Although there’s a lot of verbiage about Key Performance Indicators, Goals that have been achieved, Relativities with other comparable individuals, and lots of other nonsense like this, none of these factors are really relevant in determining the actual remuneration anyone receives. In the public service such decisions are usually arrived at through an opaque connection between your genuine contribution to the Department and your relationship with your boss. In private industry it’s all very different. In big corporations, the amount of pay any individual worker receives is the result of an exhaustive review that takes account of the way your boss feels about you, together with your individual contribution to the company. You can spot the difference at once.

Take, for example, the other immediately obvious fact that lurches out from the above formula. The only direct and intimate relationship between remuneration and performance is the ability to gouge whatever you can from any employer. Te old days of win-win have been replaced by a new formula: win-loose. The only question is who is to be the sucker.

News that the Remuneration Tribunal is about to award a massive increase to politicians has been greeted by two reactions: immediate condemnation or, by those who’ve taken a moment to consider the massive pay rise that’s to be granted to the pollies, delayed condemnation. As Tony Abbott said, “it’s ever a good time to give a politician a pay rise”.

As usual, Andrew Leigh (one of Canberra’s two local members) helps to put this into context. The most interesting study he refers to relates to American Governors. A three-decade long analysis by Tim Besley of the London School of Economics found that the political leaders who best represented their constituents were, in fact, those who were best paid. This seems to prove the truth of the adage that if you pay peanuts; you get monkeys. It’s also a strong argument for paying politicians properly, let down, unfortunately, by only one fact.

The extra money on offer seems to make political office more attractive to lawyers: in other words, the more the job pays the more likely you’ll end up with a former lawyer in the job. And who in their right minds would want that?

And there’s the nub. We may have no problem with the PM getting properly paid – but Peter Slipper? Why should a man that just under half the parliament would probably reject for the position of independent umpire be rewarded for abandoning the Liberals with a pay rise of $70,000 that will see him taking home something like $315,000 when it’s finally announced? He will, of course, retain his Gold travel pass entitlement – although the person who is eventually elected to replace him will lose the perk. Perhaps it might be better to ask Slipper to choose. MP’s who want to move onto the new pay-scale should be entitled to. However they’d also need to be prepared to dispense with the perks they’re accumulating at the moment.

But this is all just fiddling at the edges. The reality is that the pollies pay curve since federation has been something of a ‘U’ shape. They’ve reaped the benefits of increased wage inequality, just like the plutocrats. And that’s the way it’ll stay, too. Yet perhaps that’s exactly why we should change the process for awarding them pay increases, aligning it directly with the poorest members of the community.

But pigs might fly, too.

SWANSONG

2011-12-07T13:08:00.000+11:00

One way of looking at the governments current problems is to focus on the overarching "narrative" pushed out by the leadership.

Currently, this is absent. Because of that everyone focus' on the economic story, which, as this column suggests, is going to pieces . . .

WAYNE’S WORLD, OR HOW BIG IS YOUR SURPLUS?

So. No need to worry then. Wayne Swan’s pledge to the financial markets is to have the budget in surplus by 2012/13. The government’s still promising (awards for creative writing, anyone) a tiny surplus; $1.5 billion. That’s out of outlays of around $370 billion. It's not so much a surplus as a rounding error. Swan is pretending he's so on top of this economics caper that he can predict the future down to (roughly) one quarter of one percent.

Perhaps after he retires from politics he might like to go into futures trading. Surely that’d have to be a doddle for someone who's so on top of their game; World’s Greatest Treasurer (EuromoneyÓ, 2011) and all that.

The only thing that might provide pause for thought is that the boffins in Treasury have just reduced their predictions for economic growth in that same year down by 13 percent. Now that’s a fairly significant change in the period of less than six months. But revisions of this magnitude are useful because they demonstrate the key factor that underlies these forecasts. They are, essentially, extremely careful calculations based almost entirely upon complete and utter guesswork.

Good conjectures, certainly, but speculation nonetheless. Like predicting the winner of the Melbourne cup or whether interest rates will rise or fall. And, in time, the underlying fundamentals will almost certainly change again. And this will make the forecasts what they were all along: demonstrably rubbish.

As trashy and worthless as confident assertions that the Euro could never possibly fall apart, that the stock market will keep going up forever or that marriage can only ever be between a man and a woman. Given the numbers, anything can happen.

The reality is that with the ongoing European crisis and US economic slump its no wonder gloom is enveloping the world. Our housing market’s down, people put a brake on their spending before Christmas, and the next thing you know is you've got Gerry Harvey demanding that the government keeps shovelling money into people's pockets so that they can quickly spend it at his shops. A cash splash to keep our struggling multi-millionaires going.

Quite suddenly, there he is. “I don't quite get", Harvey said last week, "this business (about the surplus)". Particularly, apparently, when it means his operations are reduced to “treading water". His model for the economy can be summarised in three simple words. “Spend, spend, spend!"

The problem is Harvey's model is broken. Just look at the other developed Western economies. At the same time as Swan was reducing the size of his surplus the UK Chancellor George Osborne was admitting the extent of carnage in the UK. Welfare spending up (£15 billion), tax receipts down (£156 billion). His autumn statement was so miserly it made Swan look positively profligate. In the US debt is back (slightly) from its peak a couple of years ago, although private-sector debt is still well over 160% of GDP. Wherever you choose to look around the world it's evident that a seismic change is already beginning to enter the mix. Ordinary people understand that our current pattern of exponential development with bigger houses, more televisions and more consumption is coming to a grinding halt. This is providing challenges for the future.

That's the challenge for Swan. To use this period to drive us into the future. But that seemingly requires a degree of imagination that the careful, thorough, political apparatchiks that guide Labor are lacking.

A normal government should be able to use all this as an excuse for further stimulating the economy, rather than cutting expenditure. Unfortunately, perceptions of waste surrounding Kevin Rudd’s period in office have so tarnished Labor’s economic credentials that this is just not possible.

The imperative behind the economic statement was politics. The only essential element is to prevent the coalition from claiming Labor had never achieved a surplus. Swan's promise –made so casually just 18 months ago–has now become a millstone.

Under Paul Keating net debt (as a percentage of GDP) went above 20 percent. Treasurer Peter Costello, aided by benign economic conditions brought it back into surplus in 2004 (before the demand for give-ways reasserted itself). Now our public debt is predicted to peak at a comparatively tiny 8.9 percent, yet even this is too much in the new orthodoxy.

And how will this surplus be achieved? Well, slashing $640 million from higher education for a start. And this is the point about the cuts. They are so needless. So miniscule. The government is correct: the removal of the HECS reduction for maths and science students probably won’t significantly affect the number of people applying for these courses. But that’s exactly what makes these cuts so ridiculous – they are so very marginal. They don’t “do” anything in terms of spelling out priorities or setting Australia's course for the future.

Underneath all last weeks spiel and spin lay an unspoken reality. This government has no agenda beyond attempting to appease the markets and appeal to the swinging voters – if any of these are still left. Governments have two ways of balancing the budget. One is to slash spending; the other is to raise more revenue. This government is relying on the third, Micawber, option: the desperate hope that “something will turn up".

Wilkins Micawber is that chap with the large family in Dickens's Great Expectations. Seemingly perspicacious, he recognises that as long as a family’s expenditure is less than their income the result is happiness. Yet, despite his honesty and uprightness, he remains forever unable to get the books to balance. That's why he's left desperately hoping to be rescued. The irony is (and this is obvious to the reader, even if he is completely oblivious to the fact) that he doesn't require great wealth to live contentedly. But he's so trapped in the paradigms of the moment that he can't see the obvious.

In the end, Micawber emigrates to Australia and succeeds, becoming a bank manager. Dickens doesn't say if one of his descendants later became Treasurer.

PAKISTAN MUST BE INVOLVED FOR THE SOLUTION TO WORK

2011-12-05T17:47:00.000+11:00

This is simply recognising reality. There can be no purely military solution to the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan.

Regardless of what actually happens on the ground in that landlocked country, the need is to involve Pakistan in working towards fixing the situation.

Otherwise, as their column seeks to point out, failure is guaranteed . . .

We've lost this battle already

The two outposts were perched high up on a bare, rocky knoll on the ridge. A goat-track, stretching just slightly below the crest, provided access to the collection of small, rough stone sangars that had been thrown together on the barren ground by Pakistani soldiers. From these they had good observation, during the day, of the area for miles around.

But it was late at night when two American AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, together with an AC 130 gunship, screamed in to blast the little shell-scrapes apart. By morning, 24 of the 40 soldiers manning the small outposts had died. Most of the others were badly wounded.

According to Pakistan maps the area was clearly on their side of the Duran line – but that doesn’t really mean anything in the freezing mountain air. This is the arbitrary border drawn with a red pencil on the map by a British official back in 1893. The tribal people living in the region treat the line as if it's imaginary. They come and go as they choose. And so do the insurgents. As recently as four years ago Kabul knocked back a plan to build a fence along one section of 150 kilometres the Taliban has used as an infiltration route.

Somehow, in the early hours of the morning, shots were exchanged between the forces. Perhaps there was a third group, the Taliban, out there on the mountains as well. It really doesn’t matter, now. No matter which side of the border the bunkers were on, their destruction has signalled the effective end of cooperation between two already uneasy “allies”.

Islamabad has already cut off land supplies to the NATO forces in Afghanistan. Worse is to come.

Australia is at war. As you read this, our soldiers are patrolling the barren rocky hillsides in Orüzgan where they’ve been sent to fight the Taliban. But back at the ALP’s National Conference at Darling Harbour it’s not until 2:15 on the 3rd day (squeezed in before a discussion on “open and accountable government") that anyone will have the chance to discuss “Australia's place in a changing world". That’s as close as our government wants to go towards admitting we’re in a war. One we’ve got no idea how to win; no idea how to escape.

‘Labor elders’ like John Faulkner and Bob Carr have come up with some quaint ideas in their attempt to reinvigorate the party. They believe it’s on life-support but that an injection of reform can restore life to the moribund frameworks that are atrophying the strong policy veins that once pulsated through the corpus. Back in the Vietnam era, people were galvanised over vital issues of international policy. But events like war are off the policy agenda, today. No one’s displaying even the slightest agitation over Julia Gillard’s unilateral decision to bind ourselves tightly to Washington’s embrace, rather than considering Australia’s own needs.

Take, for example, Gillard’s successful hi-jacking of the party’s nuclear policy. She believes uranium sales to India should be allowed. We do desperately need to improve our relationship with this cultural and economic powerhouse, but there’s more to it than just this one issue. And she also needs to explain, carefully, exactly why she won’t sell the nuclear fuel to Pakistan. What moral framework is at work here? Or is it just to do Washington’s bidding.

Gillard is locking Australia into an embrace with US foreign and military policy so tight that it is smothering the voice of intelligent dissent – whether from Left or Right. She was correct when she proclaimed, “foreign policy is not my passion”. What has not been apparent until now is that, instead of a simple absence of interest, her failure to grasp the realities of power is her Achilles heel. Critical failings are on prominent display.

This policy failure has become entrenched in our struggling, half-hearted commitment to Afghanistan. The key to unravelling this is the necessity of engaging with Pakistan. But this isn’t happening. People on the streets of Lahore are now taking things into their own hands. Politicians, like Imran Khan, are increasing the frenzy. And, as this column warned last week could happen, the military relationship with the US, previously under intense strain, has now snapped.

Pakistan has closed its border with Afghanistan. If it moved to close the air routes as well the result would be disastrous. It’s that serious.

“People all over Pakistan are united; they are up in arms over this", insists one highly placed analyst. “Let America keep its crumbs", says another, referring to the military-aid package that bolsters Islamabad's budget. “China is ready to help us." A top-level diplomatic source warns; “You can't whack a people to the negotiating table. The US no longer appears to respect the alliance. How would you feel if more than 4,200 of your people had been killed by US bombs dropping unannounced from the skies in the last couple of years?” Anger is palpable; the emotions are raw.

Operationally, our troops are achieving real successes. Unfortunately their success in removing insurgents from the fight in Orüzgan is rendered strategically pointless by both a corrupt regime in Kabul and the failure to recognise that Pakistan must be involved in finding a solution. Defence Chief General David Hurley, who was in Islamabad last week, issued a statement unequivocally regretting the killing of the soldiers. By contrast, American commanders appear unable to understand they will never obtain victory through using force. They are so occupied in the attempt to achieve tactical victory that they abandon strategy. Even if it was concluded successfully, the engagement on the border couldn’t possibly have been worth the diplomatic and political cost.

It appears impossible to understand what was motivating the commander who authorised the airstrike. Perhaps he is so caught up in the moment that each successive second bears no relationship to the preceding one. Tactical genius becomes strategic stupidity of the worst order.

The West’s decisive technical advantages are irrelevant in this particular conflict, because the vital terrain is in the mind. It cannot be destroyed by a bomb or occupied by soldiers. Keeping the 177 million people of a nuclear-armed Pakistan aligned to the West is far more important than prosecuting an insurgency propping-up a corrupt government in a country of 29 million.

In the past the ALP’s National Conference was marked by vibrant foreign policy stoushes. How sad if no-one is interested enough to be energised by these issues any more.

STRATEGY, NOT MORE TACTICS

2011-11-29T13:16:00.000+11:00

the year lurches to a close. At times like this it's traditional to consider what the new year might bring for the government.

Policygeddon

We should feel like celebrating. Christmas is nearly here and with it comes the long, languid summer holiday. The gardens are blooming thanks to the recent rain and the economy is stable. The champagne is sparkling and we've finally limped through another long parliamentary year where the government finally managed to opportunistically cash-in on personal ambition – always the best horse to back in any race.

So why isn't a mood of optimism flooding through the country?

We've become accustomed to a barrage of advertising and electronic media messages that rely on simplicity and brevity for their power. Events are quickly labeled as “good" or “bad". This dichotomy pervades every aspect of our lives; conditioning our expectations and making it difficult to establish what's really happening in the world.

Take Labor’s triumph last week in encouraging Peter Slipper to occupy the Speaker's chair. Exploiting the opportunities of incumbency is nothing new. Governments of both persuasions have long taken the opportunity to encourage individuals to act in a manner that may initially appear to be inimical to their former party’s interests.

And what condemnation; what disgust; what outrage and anger immediately accompanies the supposedly sordid transaction! Suddenly the party that has harboured the traitor in its midst realises what a scoundrel they have been suckling. This fury results in new revelations. They are shocked, distressed and dismayed to find out how unfit that person is to occupy a position of public trust.

How unfortunate that it took so long, and such treachery, before the party realises what a viper they've been nurturing all along.

Slipper first entered Parliament as a National in 1984, before being re-elected seven times as a Liberal. Mal Colston, Labor's rat, was first elected in 1975 before eventually defecting in return for the Deputy Presidency of the Senate in 1996. One year later he was facing 28 charges of fraud with his former party energetically and ruthlessly pursuing him. And yet he was the very man who precipitated Australia's worst constitutional crisis. Queensland Premier Joh Bjelkie-Petersen labeled Colston a “dangerous socialist” and refused to send him to the Senate, instead attempting to send a confused simpleton, Albert Field. And why was this Senate seat so vital? Because of a political disaster accompanying Gough Whitlam's attempt to appoint a conservative, Democratic Labor Party senator Vince Gair as ambassador to Ireland.

Notice the common thread. All were Queenslanders. Makes you think, really, doesn’t it? The point is that neither party has clean hands when it comes to opportunistically seizing political advantage.

Perhaps this is responsible for the numb mood that’s overhanging the season. Julia Gillard has been remarkably successful in pushing ahead with her supposed agenda. She has resolved – for the moment – two of the intractable issues that so bedeviled Kevin Rudd's period at the helm. There is to be, finally, action on global warming in addition to a resources tax, no matter how many compromises have been made along the way to guarantee their passage through parliament. And if her government’s failed to do anything to stop the boats laden with desperate people arriving at our shores, well, at least she can say Tony Abbott has rejected a bill that would have sent a small number of asylum seekers back to a country that hasn’t signed up to the UN Refugee Convention. And I suspect it’s that particular formulation that resides at the disquiet that underlies Gillard’s occupancy of the Lodge.

At drinks last Thursday I admitted to the PM that I’d wondered, on the day of her coup against Rudd, if she’d even manage to celebrate one Christmas there. She laughed, because she knew just how tough to dislodge she’d prove to be. But the sudden opening that the humour seems to offer quickly closes. Any vulnerability is hidden. It’s difficult to empathise with someone who refuses to offer anything back in turn.

Nevertheless, Rudd is now the only one who believes he has any chance of being recalled as the party’s saviour. There are still light years between Gillard and the possibility of victory at the next election, but the polls suggest that she’s now clawed back from outright devastation to mere destruction.

This was always supposed to be the year of “decision and delivery". In a way, that’s been achieved. Simply holding onto power was vital. Every day that went past has made Gillard stronger. During this period the requirement was proving that the government could accomplish things. This required an inevitable focus on the tactical. That's why this year was the time for the inescapable compromises that make up the muck of government to come to the fore. Any attempt to concentrate on achievement tarnishes the ideal as the political fixers beaver ahead, bartering away once cherished desires for hard-nosed accomplishment.

This is the time for sordid deals in which the workings of the machine are inevitably exposed. Unfortunately, watching the application of all the oil that’s necessary to smooth the working parts isn't an edifying spectacle for anyone. Attend too closely and you'll rapidly become disgusted at the grease-stains and quick-fixes necessary to keep the engine working.

This is why Gillard desperately requires another message for the coming year. Two words that, this time, might inspire and infuse a tired government with hope. She needs to conjure up the possibility that something positive is finally in the offing. The PM urgently needs to find a way of demonstrating a strategic focus that will allow her to abandon the long, grinding tactical trudge through the trenches to others.

Obtaining one extra vote in the House is far from solving the government’s continuing problem in maintaining its working majority, but it’s a start. Yesterday’s release of the Murray-Darling plan demonstrates the sorts of problems inherent in continuing to patch over underlying issues. By attempting to please everyone the compromise has walked away from science. The political origins of the “solution” become evident. This encourages all the parties involved to continue making as big a stink as possible in the hope of gaining amendments that will benefit their interests. The fight quickly returns to the trenches.

Gillard will have to demonstrate she can escape these quickly. Another year like the last is not desirable for anyone.

PAKISTAN & AFGHANISTAN

2011-11-26T07:31:00.001+11:00

It's no use simply repeating that Pakistan is part of the problem in Afghanistan. It has to be incorporated as part of the answer as well.

The West is not doing this. This column makes the argument that at least part of the reason for this is that our politicians are too interested in their own domestic agendas and re-election campaigns . . .

The tar baby

Nothing was left to chance. The atmospherics surrounding Barack Obama's visit here were all carefully choreographed from afar. Washington wasn’t going to leave anything to chance and Canberra – in particular, Julia Gillard's office – rushed in to assist with every detail.

That's why the diggers stood eight-deep in serried ranks behind a US president under stars and stripes alternating with draped flags bearing the Southern Cross. The Australian soldiers were, simply and casually, being used as a political prop. A pop-concert was put on beforehand to ensure a happy mood enveloped the hangar. Then the politicians swooped in and quickly did their thing before departing. A staged, manipulated event, the triumph of form over substance.

If you thought it was all about America's need to shore up support in the region, well, that's fine. That's exactly what the coverage suggested. It was, supposedly, all about them wooing us, a play in which Gillard had the role of blushing bride. But that doesn't mean that this was the real agenda driving the visit. The US doesn't need us. Not really. Obama's trip was hijacked for a domestic political agenda. It had far more to do with Gillard's need to place her own stamp on the Alliance, allowing her to 'own' it. The point of this was all about eliminating a political rival: not Tony Abbott but Kevin Rudd.

It worked a treat. Just as Labor’s swift move on Thursday to replace the Speaker has consolidated Labor's grip on Parliament. Obama's trip emphasised (in a way that nothing else could) that Gillard is now the “it" girl. Notice how invisible Rudd's become? Even his statement admitting Gillard bypassed him with her unilateral decision to sell uranium to India went virtually unnoticed. Except, perhaps, in Pakistan, but more of that shortly.

The PM acted here without bothering to even genuflect in the direction of Labor policy, which restricts sales to members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Party policy to have only three uranium mines is another logical absurdity; does this mean the PM will wake up one day and suddenly decide to abolish this clause as well?

The problem with Gillard's actions is not the unilateral nature of these decisions – the difficulty is rather that there's been no real explanation of any reasoning behind abrupt reversals in policy directions. And this is important, because it's difficult to discern any international strategy originating in her office. With the possible exception of attempts to sideline Rudd and ‘fall in’ behind the US, of course.

This absence of strategy became most critically apparent on Monday, when she gave a speech outlining the continuing problems in Afghanistan. It was nothing more than a simplistic analysis that proffered glib answers. It most certainly was not a genuine exploration of the current situation and realistic solutions that might return the region to some form of stability.

The speech was so far in lockstep with Washington that it's difficult not to conclude it represented nothing more than a “tit-for-tat" in return for the domestic bonus of Obama's visit. Unfortunately, America appears mired in this region with no discernible way out. The dysfunctional, corrupt Afghan government of Hamid Karzai, the seemingly unstoppable continuing surge of the Taliban and finally the utter deterioration of relations with Pakistan would appear to presage an overall strategic failure that we are rapidly becoming caught up in.

Afghanistan has become a tar-baby for the US. In this story the character Br'er Fox makes a pretty doll out of sticky tar to trap Br'er Rabbit. When the 'baby' fails to reply to a polite greeting, Rabbit begins punching it, but his arm sticks and is held tight by the tar.

"If you don't let me loose, I'll hit you again", Rabbit warns. He then uses his other hand to attack, but this becomes stuck as well. Then his legs. Finally his head, until Rabbit is stuck fast. The more Rabbit attempts to extricate himself, the more he becomes bound up in the problem, because his only answer is to keep doing more of the same thing.

The only workable solution for the Afghanistan problem is for the US to draw back and re-examine the fundamental causes of the ongoing crisis. Instead of assisting Washington to find new solutions, Canberra is now parroting America’s line. Perhaps that was the quid pro quo for Obama’s personal support for Gillard.

Bizarrely, at the same time as the PM was making her speech to parliament condemning Afghanistan, Defence Chief General Hurley was in Islamabad with other top-level intelligence officials. Given the massive tensions that are tearing away at the West's relationship with this country, it was an unusual time for her to be presenting one message to parliament while the senior delegation was actually attempting to engage with Pakistan. Separating the issues is impossible.

Pressures became apparent at recent, extraordinary, meeting between Pakistan's Military Chief General Kayani and US Joint Chief Admiral Mike Mullen in Seville, Spain. Although this has not formerly been reported, it’s understood increasing frustration between the two senior officers led to one of them leaping up from their chair and almost coming to physical blows with his counterpart. To suggest the relationship is “under pressure” is a massive understatement. Astonishingly, it’s understood that Pakistani officers have begun refusing opportunities to study at US Military institutions; a posting that would normally indicate the individual could expect promotion to the highest level. The mood amongst the elite in that country is rapidly becoming antagonistic towards America.

The point is that the US cannot afford this. Despite all its power, the world's superpower is quite simply not strong enough to enforce the result it desires in the region. As it is the US is spending $10 billion a month but failing to achieve its objectives. That's what makes this conflict so radically different Vietnam. At some point all wars end. This one is already causing the American budget to pointlessly haemorrhage. As well as representing a strategic failure, by the time the US departs it will be left with a crippling debt.

Admiral Mullen's frustration is perfectly understandable. It's born out of aggravation and irritation at perceived Pakistani encouragement for the insurgency. The trouble is that military action alone has been unable to produce a solution for Afghanistan. Equally understandably Islamabad wants to ensure a friendly (if not client) government in Kabul and it will never depart the region. It can outlast the superpower.

The strategic objectives of the two countries are not aligned. That's why Gillard chose the wrong horse when she decided to unequivocally back America. The decision to sell uranium to India simply drives home the depth of our commitment. It offers nothing to Pakistan. While that country feels excluded and that its representations are being ignored it will have no desire to participate in achieving a worthwhile solution.

DISTRIBUTING THE WEALTH

2011-11-22T16:22:00.001+11:00

We keep being told of the "trickle-down" effect: if someone gets a pay bonus then it eventually trickles down and the entire economy benefits from it.

Unfortunately, less and less money appears to be trickling down at the moment and instead it's only a few who are managing to hoover up the rewards of our increasingly sophisticated world, as this column points out . . .

Very nicely thank you

Paul Keating, always a luminous wordsmith, once spelt out what he claimed was Labor's guiding philosophy. He insisted a very special idea animated the workers’ party. Their world wasn't composed of dog eating dog. Whenever there was a bit of profit left over – that little extra bit of icing on the cake – Labor would share it round.

The others wouldn't. It was a keen point of difference. John Howard was well aware of the powerful image of the plutocrat, stuffing his swag with money before driving away in their Mercedes, while the ordinary person (with their children to feed and educate; mortgage to pay) was left standing hungrily, rummaging through the bins in the second-hand op-shop.

That's why, in his 1996 victory speech, Howard was quick to dedicate “my government to the patents of traditional Australian values. And they include those great values of mateship and egalitarianism." It was a vision of prosperity for everyone; with workers being rewarded according to their effort.

So how has the reality matched both sides’ political rhetoric? Unacceptably. The world both sides conjure up that describes us sharing in the bounteous opportunity of economic prosperity doesn't bear any resemblance to the way things have turned out. Even more depressingly, neither side of politics appears willing to consider any way of redressing this spiraling trend towards increasing inequality. Instead they celebrate it.

Here I'm indebted to the Grattan Institute's Saul Eslake for pointing me in the direction of the Paris School of Economics' World Top Incomes Database. This is a terrific little website which enables you to measure income disparity (as opposed to wealth) in countries around the world.

Start exactly 50 years ago in 1961, the year Julia Gillard was born. It's easy to discern a simple trend. The graphs take on a “U" shape. In that year, for example, the top tenth of income earners received nearly a third (29.7 percent) of the rewards. By 1978 their proportion of take-home had dropped to just a quarter (25.01 percent). The nation had become more egalitarian. But then the trend reversed itself.

By the last year of Bob Hawke's government the top 10 percent of earners grabbed 27.66 percent of the share. The inexorable trend had reasserted itself; it zoomed ahead under Keating. He did help workers; but those at the top benefited most. By 1996, when he’d lost office, the upper demographic were nearly back to where they'd been, receiving almost a third of income.

Since then the overall trajectory has remained steadfastly committed to greater and greater inequality. In 2007, the last year for which there are statistics, the top tenth took home 31.5 percent of income. And the concentration of remuneration becomes quicker the closer you get to the top. Even the merely ‘rich’ are being left behind as the ‘very rich’ earners draw further and further away from their brethren.

Four years ago the top five percent snaffled 21.6 percent of the take. But the plutocrats did even better! The top one percent of earners managed to grab nearly a tenth (9.8 percent) of income. The single consistent trend has been for senior management to seize a larger and bigger share of the profits, regardless of the government's so-called political complexion. The period from which this disparity became inexorably set in concrete was Keating's time as Prime Minister. From that point onwards the gouging of profits had apparently become acceptable; even desirable.

Was this a worldwide trend? Possibly, but if inequality makes the world speed faster then we should be happy that Australia is doing more than it's bit to hurry things up. UN figures for income (as opposed to wealth) are rather old (from 2006) but they show inequality here is higher than in economic basket cases like Ireland, Greece and Spain (although less than Portugal, the UK and the US). It's not so much what these figures prove as what they disapprove. There's absolutely no indication that offering the bosses greater remuneration produces better economic outcomes.

The only underlying correlation that's borne out by the statistics appears to be that there is no direct relationship whatsoever. Detailed comparisons of executive remuneration and resulting national productivity improvements clearly and incontrovertibly demonstrate one startling fact: no matter what you put on the X or Y axis, and whichever way the graph is held up to the light, there is absolutely no demonstrable relationship involved between pay and productivity.

Higher pay for bankers may lead to economic success for the economy, but it's difficult to prove. Giving a surgeon more money may assist them concentrating in between golf days and yachting events. The difference is that a medical operation has the potential for a catastrophic personal result for the patients. The surgeon's personal actions (along with others in the team) are demonstrably and intimately linked with the outcome of the operation. That's not necessarily the case in business, government, or any larger (by definition, bureaucratic) institution where the people in charge are far more dependent on the efforts of their minions.

Let's take, for example, the operations of a mythical airline company. Pilots and engineers are directly responsible for the planes safety. The cabin crew deals with passengers, directly shaping their flying experience. The remote CEO sits in a far-away office, dreaming of Asian expansion in the supposedly lucrative high-spending markets offshore. Selling his visions, no matter how implausible, allows him to pockets millions. Investors who've been watching their fortune dwindling continue to watch share-value vanish before their very eyes.

Financial engineering may be important to the future of the company, but so is keeping the workers happy and getting them to do the job today. Eventually it won't be possible to tighten the screws further, but this just sets our economy up for continued battles between workers and bosses. This is bad for society and while we expect government to play a role in facilitating a more even distribution of wealth.

In this regard the current government's efforts have been disappointing. The Liberals have been, if possible, even worse. Although Labor tackled means-testing benefits, its resolve weakened in the face of opposition. The point is that there's nothing “natural" about the means used by the wealthy to sequester their profits. Eslake reels off potential tax reforms. Capital gains tax. Superannuation. Negative gearing. Trusts. Exemptions from GST.

This government is becoming conspicuous by its failure to live up to its own speechifying.

UNCERTAINTY

2011-11-14T16:32:00.000+11:00

Saturday's Column. Another three diggers wounded in Afghanistan.

This column attempts to look at the confusing situation for those based in the Patrol Bases who live, cheek by jowl, with the Afghan soldiers they are helping.

WAR IS ABOUT DEATH

The Lieutenant commanding the Heavy Weapons company, 2 Kandak, 4 Brigade, is about as close to a poster-boy as you can get in Afghanistan. While I was at Patrol Base Marshal (pron: Mara-shal), in the Chora Valley, he single-handedly disarmed a 10 kilogram, pressure-plate triggered, Improvised Explosive device and led his men out into the Badlands on patrol. Two days earlier his soldiers had successfully engaged insurgents who were moving through the area and forced them, eventually, to leave without receiving any assistance from Australian forces.

Oh. There is, of course, that other thing. He also, sometimes, speaks to the Taliban at night on the radio.

Welcome to Afghanistan, where nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems.

A Patrol Base is about close as you can get the front line without actually being on patrol. Dotted through the countryside, and supported by the bigger Forward Operating Bases, these are company size positions that supposedly allow the ANA to dominate the surrounding area. They are, if you like, islands of government control in the of the people.

There's strong evidence about their effectiveness. Both ways. On the positive side they've enabled the Kabul government to physically demonstrate its presence throughout the country. They limit the insurgents' ability to move at will through the countryside.

Unfortunately, the effectiveness of each base depends almost entirely on the local commander. If he's good, then the strategy is effective. If, however, he's less than capable or something negative occurs which corrupts the mood on this little island, well, that’s not good. That's because everyone has a gun and we are operating in a country where violence is seen as a normal and permissible means of resolving disputes; a place where the majority of soldiers can neither read nor write. The random, arbitrary nature of life envelops everything in Afghanistan. If you're in the wrong place, at the wrong time, things will happen. Attempts to read meaning or logic into events fail simply because there is no way of constructing them into a coherent narrative.

Understandably, sitting in Canberra, we reject this. When we're informed that in the past few months four Australian soldiers have died and another ten have been seriously wounded at the hands of the very people they are training, it's natural to assume that the strategy is wrong. But that's drawing a linkage between discrete events that may not actually exist.

Go back to Marshal. Ahmad Bardis is the charismatic young officer who flicks open an old Australian Field Survey Notebook as he begins to speak. He's obviously picked this up after our troops pulled out of the patrol base, but now he wields it as if it's a baton investing him with authority. He talks about what he needs.

“A helicopter", he says. “When I engaged the Taliban the other afternoon, two of my soldiers and one local civilian was injured. It took 10 hours for them to be evacuated."

It's an understandable request. Nobody wants to risk exposing themselves to enemy fire if a wound is likely to mean death. But the demands don't stop there. It turns out the commander has other needs as well. Material. Equipment. Pay. A Quick Reaction Force to support his outpost. Before long an avalanche of requests have been lodged: all justifiable, but none with any chance whatsoever of being provided. And before you rush to blame the Australian’s for failing to support him, consider exactly how this unit prosecutes the fight against the insurgents.

It seems that a group of about 20 ANA soldiers were patrolling the valley when the Taliban opened fire at them from a compound. They went to ground and returned fire while the lieutenant brought up about 35 reinforcements, including a recoilless rifle. The exchange continued for a couple of hours, although no attempt was made by the ANA to cut off or surround the buildings. Instead they simply blasted away at the walls while requesting further support.

Eventually they ran low on ammunition. A small group had been detached from the Kandak headquarters with a resupply. Unfortunately these soldiers took the wrong direction and were pinned down by the Taliban before being personally rescued by the Lieutenant. After another couple of hours shooting both sides successfully disengaged.

The next morning the ANA were left in control of the battlefield. It appears two women and three children had been killed, possibly by the soldiers, while a local man had been badly beaten by the insurgents when he protested against them using his house. The soldiers also found two blood-trails, thought to belong to wounded Talibs.

So what had happened? The government soldiers had managed to successfully demonstrate their presence. They didn't run away and could count the engagement as a victory – if a highly qualified one. After all, the ANA was left in possession of the ground and hadn’t lost any soldiers.

The point is not to attempt to measure success by our own, more traditional standards. And there’s another codicil to this story, one that might assist in understanding exactly why none of the ANA soldiers rushed to die for their country.

The concept of “legitimate government" has been a rather tenuous notion in Afghanistan since well before the Soviet invasion in 1979. The US has already announced it is effectively pulling out in a couple of year’s time. We will depart at the same time – although Julia Gillard's probably still hoping to be told exactly when that will be by Barack Obama during his trip next week. When we've gone the Afghans will still be there. They know that “their” President Hamid Karzai will also have options of his own. He'll be able to live in Saudi Arabia or Washington. They, on the other hand, won't be leaving.

And this explains why the mood in the little, isolated, patrol bases is so variable. They feel they've been left without support. Small events take on bigger proportions. Small groups of Australians are detached to work in these troubled locations and that's where we suffer casualties from disaffected ANA soldiers.

Our soldiers eat bacon; the Afghan's don't eat pig for religious reasons. Our soldiers have their own toilets; the Afghans cannot see why. It's casual racism, and it grates. Incidents occur. This is the sort of war we're fighting.

AFGHANISTAN WRAP

2011-11-08T21:52:00.000+11:00

How to make sense of what's happening in Afghanistan?

I certainly don't have any concept of the way things are going to play out after my brief month in the country with the Australian Defence Force.

Nevertheless, it's incumbent on journalists to attempt to understand some of the more significant and pressing concerns that surround us, which is how I've attempted to frame this particular column . . .

Sinking the SLIPPER; or Australia in Afghanistan

The regular astute reader of this column will be well aware that I spent the past month in Afghanistan. They will also have discerned this morning that the usual, hirsute photo of a bearded (but craggily rugged-looking) man has been suddenly and abruptly replaced by a clean-shaven one. Such are the rigours of marriage.

The opportunity to pontificate on my newfound special subject – Operation Slipper, with particular reference to Australia’s military deployment in the mountains of Orüzgan –didn't last long after my return to Canberra. Regrettably, this seems to be the reality of our relationship with the world. Any interest in such matters is merely tangential. Back at home we’re concerned with truly important things, like which political party will tax less and whether house prices are rising again.

It's a pity. The tragic death of three and serious wounding five other diggers will provoke the usual litany of platitudes and trite clichés from our politicians this week, unmatched by any resurgence of interest in what the troops are actually doing. Perhaps that's because our operational methods have changed and now appear to be working.

The Army's finally settled on a strategy that appears to be working. This doesn't mean it's pretty. The targeted “removal" of insurgents from the battlefield has created space for a rudimentary civil society to begin functioning in this one province. This is not something, however, that I have any knowledge of. Most reporters are kept well away from the Special Operations Task Group. It operates cloaked by successive (and, I believe, unnecessary) veils of secrecy.

The Mentoring Task Force, however, is performing its role of training the Afghan's as efficiently and effectively as you'd expect. Particularly given that, this year alone, four of them have been killed by the very people they are trying to help.

The (Australian) deputy commander ‘in-country’, Colonel Dave Smith, is confident the strategy is right. He says he needs time to make it work. Unfortunately the sands are already rushing through the narrow hourglass of Canberra's political patience. Soon they will begin a final cascade into the void until support for continuing the mission has vanished completely.

The political reality is that John Howard unilaterally committed our forces to Afghanistan twice, first in 2001 and then again in 2006 after it had become obvious that country was again about to fall into the grip of jihadist extremists. Then Kevin Rudd embraced this as the good war, in contrast to the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Both politicians relied on broad-brush rhetoric: neither attempted to explain the potential cost or the fine detail of the strategy, let alone the tactics our soldiers would pursue.

This has naturally resulted in the collapse of any enthusiasm for the deployment. Today a majority of Australian's want our boys (and girls) home. This inchoate mood remains unformed and there are no moratorium protests. Yet.

Perhaps some are afraid that if we knew more about what's happening in Afghanistan there would be renewed calls for an exit. While the military strategy is working in Orüzgan, this has less than two more years to run. Questions abound about what will replace it. Serious gains have been made over the past 18 months – whether the government in Kabul will manage to hang on to these seems doubtful.

It certainly doesn't deserve to. President Karzi is surrounded by a web of corruption and duplicity. We've done the right thing by strengthening the government in Kabul, simply because this was the “least bad" option. But in doing so we're pouring dollars collected from the Australian taxpayer directly into the pockets of a few individuals who are using the money for their own ends.

This funnelling of wealth isn’t a story Defence wants told. Neither are the stories about heroin production or the marijuana crop, even though these are both huge success stories. It isn’t as though our commanders aren’t aware of these problems; they’re just (apparently) limiting themselves to the military mission, doing what they can and willingly accepting the political blinkers that have been placed over their eyes.

What’s unfortunate about this is that the politicians aren’t looking at the bigger strategic picture. As emphasised above, two politicians (alone) have moulded the shape and structure of our deployment. Most recently this was born of Kevin Rudd’s political need to show swinging voters he was tough; tough enough to withstand casualties; tough enough to ‘get the job done’.

That political need has surely vanished. Today the western powers are backing towards the door, seeking simply the right moment to politely exit. Everyone has decided the cost has been great enough. Ever since Alexander the Great first arrived some 2335 years ago, Europeans have simply passed through Afghanistan. It seems we’ll be unlikely to be any different.

Oh, and don't think that we are fighting for “Western values" or something like that. That would come as real news to the women of Orüzgan, hidden in their compounds or behind their burqua’s.

Our deployment has done virtually nothing to change Afghan society – and perhaps that's exactly how it should be. You can't impose change with a consensual, take it or leave it approach. Much of our recent development work has been appreciated. The locals are keen to have dams and electricity. Other offerings have been less successful. Just take the “schools" we've built. I spoke to one authoritative source who insists the vast majority either remain empty or are being used as madras's. Another person, who I also trust (but who has a vested interest in the success of our development program) disagrees. Who knows where the truth lies?

The hospital in the provincial capital of Tarin Kowt is making a difference, as are the Dutch built roads. Life is undoubtedly better than it previously was. Women, however, remain locked away in a mediaeval existence governed by traditional practices most Australians would find utterly abhorrent.

Make no mistake; a visit to the bad-lands quickly explodes any post-modernist conceits about not making value judgments on the relative merits of particular societies and ways of living. Maybe even Canberra isn't so bad, after all.

Impressions of Afghanistan

2011-10-28T18:42:00.000+11:00

The unit of journalism is the 'story'.

Everything is composed around that idea. Beginning, middle and end. The narrative drives inexorably in one direction.

But sometimes it's not possible to fit everything into this formula, and that's why I chose a different approach with today's column . . .

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Sometimes, being a journalist is like being a prospector. Every now and then you find a little gem that you think points the way to a mother lode of comprehension. Unfortunately, only too often, these nuggets send you traipsing off down the wrong path. It can take ages to find your way back to reality.

Finding ‘truth’ in a war is virtually impossible. Facts are relatively easy to come by, but stitching them together into a narrative that makes sense is quite another matter. No single story can possibly explain, or encapsulate, everything that’s happening. There’s often no single way to pull the disparate threads of truth together.

And yet today, more than a decade after our involvement in Afghanistan began, a failure to ask (and attempt to answer) the major questions represents a culpable failure of the political process. It’s now exactly a year since our parliament first ‘debated’ the conflict – an exercise in futility that only succeeded in raising more questions.

With both sides of politics inexorably determined to avoid raising the issue, this seems like a good opportunity to ask if anything has changed over the past year and examining how much progress has been made.

“Are we winning the war?” Define victory.

“Will things have improved enough for us to pull out in 2014?” The political decision has already been made to get out then, regardless of the situation on the ground. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. That’s why the military strategy is operating to that time-line. Our forces will pull out, regardless of any requirement for some units to remain in an ‘over-watch’ role. This is a generational war. Nobody’s planning to be there at the end.

“So what is the best we can hope for?” There’s no silver bullet. Strengthening governance and training Afghan forces might at least postpone the Kabul government’s collapse – perhaps even indefinitely.

“Is the number of troops we have deployed ‘about right’? Politically, yes. Militarily, no. The government made it quite clear that it won’t send any more diggers to fight. Nor do we need tanks or artillery. Almost exactly a year ago, however, our politicians and highest brass culpably and outrageously failed when they refused to send out another battalion to match the American force ‘surge’. It’s too late to increase the levels now.

“How’s the poppy crop looking?” Difficult to tell at the moment, because the seeds are still being planted. It’s looking like another bumper harvest, because it’s the main cash crop in the province. Police in Orüzgan did, however, recently burn two massive cashes of opium. This seems to be an indication the Afghan government is beginning to take the drug war seriously. The haul was large enough to allow police to retain a large number of samples to assist them in indentifying the drug in future.

How many people died this week? I am aware of at least two women and three children dying in one incident, but other reports suggest up to twelve people died in that contact. Government forces probably, accidently, killed them. That’s in just one valley; Chora district. There are six districts in the province. The correct answer is; no one knows.

“We’re simply developing and extending the strategy we’ve always been following.” Hah Ha, good one! We’ve chopped and changed, but finally appear to have worked out what we should’ve been doing all along. The new method is to use our overwhelming technical intelligence to identify insurgent commanders. The Special Operations Task Group then removes these people from the battlefield. The role of the infantry companies at the Forward Operating Bases is to mentor and stiffen Afghan National Army units. This encourages them to patrol the “green” (the cultivated area) and stop the insurgents controlling the villages.

“Does the ANA dominate the ground?” No. This is not because the Afghan soldiers aren’t capable; they are. The problem is rather that the country has been torn apart by total war for the past thirty years. Why bother dying for one régime today, when there might be another tomorrow? The aim is to convince the soldiers that they are fighting in a worthwhile cause.

“How high can marijuana grow?” Closely planted crops on an 800 sq m block in the Chora district will grow to over two meters tall. The eventual harvest is, we’re told, intended for “personal use”. Of course. All 6,400 ‘heads’.

“Are the diggers doing the ‘heavy lifting?” Yes. And no. The patrol template the battalion is operating is grueling and so is the mentoring mission. The SOTG creates vitally needed ‘space’ by sowing fear and confusion within the insurgency. However it’s the Americans who are both in front (Operational Detachment Alpha teams) and behind (Police Mentoring) our forces. That’s why a US colonel, rather than an Australian, controls the province.

“Which is the best company in 2 RAR?” ‘D’ company appears to be the one to beat.

“What soundtrack works best for this war?” Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” seems the most appropriate music. It’s about a track through the desert; a road that goes on, and on, and on. The endless, elemental theme hints at the local issues fuelling this conflict. It’s wrong and simplistic to attempt to blame anyone person, or country, for the violence. But unless a political solution can be found the war, like the haunting music, will drag on indefinitely.

“Why do you write so much stuff that's negative about the military?" We’re back to the beginning again here, aren’t we? Facts are complex. They rarely produce a simple story that's black, or white. The real story is not that we are “winning" or “losing". If anyone tells you that, they’re lying. The situation is far more nuanced. Focusing on the detail reveals a trickle of positive aspects. But there's much more to the overall situation than that. And it's this broader story that needs to be told.

Unfortunately, everyone has another agenda. The politicians want to wish the war away, but it’s here to stay. Crossing your fingers and hoping for the best isn’t a strategy, yet no one is prepared to genuinely hold the war up for examination to work out what we should do if we stay, or if we should leave. Nobody wants to face the consequences. In the meantime, people will die.

Afghanistan, Again

2011-10-22T03:31:00.000+11:00

Back to Afghanistan. Getting here has taken a while, hence no posts for some time.

This time I'm over with the Australian Army. The result is, inevitably, I'm being exposed to a very different picture. In some ways it's more complete . . . in other ways there is a lot missing.

I'll put up the posts in the order they were filed to the Canberra Times . . .

THE MILITARY AND THE MEDIA

The young officer allowed his frustration to show at the end of the pre-deployment course, just before travelling into Afghanistan. “What can you do", he asked, “if the media reports something that's just plain wrong".

It's an understandable frustration for the diggers. They're about to put their lives on the line as part of our effort to reconstruct the fragile country, doing the job our governments ask them to do. They're frustrated, for example, with a recent media report suggesting that even their boss reckons the task of rebuilding the country might be doomed to failure. It's not that any of the particular quotes appearing in that story were incorrect; but over here, in the Middle East, people argue the overall impression created was incorrect.

At a local level soldiers can see the difference they're making. In Oruzgan, the province where the bulk of the Australian forces are deployed, there's been real progress. The Chora road is open and the last fortnight has seen a dramatic drop-off of insurgent activity. This lull always comes as the cold of winter begins to envelop the bare, rocky, countryside in its grip. The difference is that this year it's happening about a month earlier than previously. The Taliban don’t want to continue the fight.

The policy of targeted killing is succeeding in taking out insurgent leaders, one after another. Intelligence suggests the Taliban are now finding they are having difficulty motivating locals to fight. Their network is under assault; off-balance; more concerned about defence and pressing attacks on the government forces.

And yet, and yet . . .

The media focus inevitably on the fact that the main provincial base takes a rocket every day. These are fired from different locations and the insurgents don’t stay to fight. But journalists passing through quite accurately trump this up into the obvious story. More than a decade after the World Trade Centre attacks; almost half a decade after our troops deployed in force to this part of the country; the insurgents' reach is still strong enough to pose a direct threat. How can this be regarded as progress?

It's the difference between focusing on the tactical gains that are measurable and distinct and the strategic progress that appears fragile and blurry. One story shows the advances, the other demonstrates how far there is to go. And it's in the telling of this story – the broad picture – where the friction between the military and the media is at its worst.

Of course it's nothing like the 1970s, when the country was torn by division over the Vietnam conflict. Nevertheless, every poll asking whether Australians support the conflict that their soldiers are currently engaged in comes back with an emphatic answer. “No". Unsurprisingly, those on the ground feel as if someone is undermining them. The difficulty is pinning down exactly who.

The past four months have witnessed a big change in the way our forces are engaging with the media. They are opening up. For the first time one journalist, Chris Masters, has been permitted to film (with a military team) the Special Operations Task Group. Until now the activities of the SAS and commandos have been kept under wraps. This silence has permitted conspiracy theories to flourish. Stories have emerged about hits gone wrong and the killing of innocent people. The lack of transparency inevitably means that the media seizes on any unsubstantiated rumor. The difficulty of finding out the truth, often for good operational security reasons, increases the tendency for journalists to put the worst possible interpretation on events.

The military's still been unable to convert tactical success on the ground into strategic support for the war. But that doesn’t mean this is necessarily the soldiers fault. One officer says more journalists have been deployed with the forces in the past 4 months than in the preceding 4 years. No one is certain whether this was a political directive (from Stephen Smith) or a military one (following the departure of Angus Houston). The result has been, however, dramatic.

Channel 9 recently screened an extended, four-minute news report sympathetically portraying the operations of a unit clearing a valley. This sort of publicity is simply gold for the military, because it shows it's achieving the mission. What's difficult to explain to the soldiers is that they are being badly let-down by the politicians. The failure is not at a tactical level: it's the strategic level that failure emerges. The politicians aren't making the case for our deployment.

After the death of (yet another) Australian soldier, Julia Gillard insisted “it's in Australia’s national interest to be there, full stop". And so it is. But the full stop abruptly truncates a necessary and vital debate. A simple assertion doesn't carry the weight of persuasive power. It can't, because it doesn't explain. And when the Prime Minister is under assault on every front, it's no wonder that her claim is being increasingly challenged.

This is a strategic issue. It's not up to the soldiers to explain why we are in Afghanistan. Nor should they be expected to come up with proof that strategic objectives are being achieved. Many of these are simply out of their control. Our forces have no choice, for example, with the local officials they are forced to work with.

The military is finding itself sandwiched between the media's insatiable demand for stories on the one hand, and vague generalisations proffered by politicians at the strategic level. There are two ways of explaining this.

One asserts that the objectives of journalists and soldiers are fundamentally divergent. This assumes the military (like any good bureaucracy) doesn't want to be challenged as it goes about its business. This is the Vietnam paradigm, which suggests the tension will never be resolved.

It doesn't have to be like this. In a paper almost a decade ago (then) academic Rod Lyon warned that treating information as part of the “battle space" risked confusing operational success with strategic victory. This can't and won't, be decided by media manipulation.

POWER

2011-10-10T09:04:00.000+11:00

What is real power?

Position is one thing, but it's no guarantee of the real ability to change the actions of others as this column attempts to show . . .

POWER IS AS POWER DOES

It's really just a form of porn, although admittedly for an unusual sort of person. Every year the Financial Review produces a glossy magazine proudly bearing the title “the Power Issue". This year’s cover-girl is a woman, dressed in stylish clothes, eyes shut. The picture encapsulates a thousand words.

The Julia Gillard on the cover apparently can’t quite see her way beyond the immediate problems assailing her. She’s troubled; sleepwalking; not fully awake. Although she graces the wrap-around, the photo seems to hint that even the editors understand the irony of their attempt to posit her as the most powerful person in the country – despite her position.

Gillard certainly won't feel like volunteering the next time the Fin ask her to take part in a photo-shoot. Perhaps the people compiling the survey thought they wouldn’t need to ask her again. They may be right. Nevertheless inside (after 14 pages of glossy full-page ads for cars, watches, clothing and travel) we eventually come to the rationale for Gillard's prime ranking. And guess what? She's there because “she is still the Prime Minister, still untouchably the most powerful office in the land".

Untouchable? Ask Kevin Rudd.

After a statement as ridiculous as that you instinctively understand that there's no reason to read further. This becomes clear turning the page. Number 2 on the list is Glenn Stevens, Governor of the Reserve Bank. His nomination – instead of the Treasurer, Wayne Swan – reveals clearly that the problem lies with the panel responsible for the choices. They don't understand the way power works.

Stevens, for example, might appear extremely powerful to anyone hoping desperately that they won't have to pay higher interest rates on their mortgage. That's because the central bank's board is responsible for taking the critical decision that's used as an excuse by all the other banks to jack up their repayments as well. Stevens makes the announcement; ergo, Stevens looks powerful. This fails to understand how the Governor voluntarily fetters himself.

It's not just that the decision isn't his alone. The point is that Stevens slavishly obeys the dictates of economic theory. The mistake the panel make in appraising Stevens is in thinking that he is in some way his own man. He isn't. He's a bureaucrat. His mission in life has been legislated by Parliament and it is, centrally, to keep inflation low. Peter Costello gave this task to the Bank more than a decade ago and its importance has been borne out by our economic success in a stable world for more than a decade. But the current ebbs and flows of financial crisis are challenging the theoretical underpinnings of this mission. The US is printing money in a desperate attempt to stave off its own recession. After following the then fashionable theory and uniting its many currencies, Europe is now also in crisis. Everyone gazes at China and worries about the fragility of that miracle. A new economic theory will undoubtedly be able to explain what's occurring and how the world could have avoided becoming engulfed by the mire of woe that surrounds us. Many suggestions are already being advanced, but we still haven't arrived at the point where everyone accepts the need for a new way of thinking about the problem. The new economic wisdom will be based on two critical realisations that do not form part of our current paradigms.

We are going to need to think about growth in a different way, and this will be because of recognition that resources are not infinite (as assumed by the textbooks). The world has changed and, no matter how many complex algebraic equations are constructed to buttress a case suggesting otherwise, eventually economic theory will be forced to catch up with reality. When it does so the old shibboleths will be overthrown. Until then, however, Stevens will willingly bind himself to a particular course of action or, better still, inaction. The Reserve's biggest contribution to the economy over the past year has been doing nothing; leaving interest rates steady as the board attempts to work out whether they should be lifted or reduced. This indecision has been portrayed in the media as careful judgment. It's been seen as an example of the Bank's brilliance in choosing just the right level at which to peg rates for so long. This may be the case: personally, I suspect the Board has been caught in a welter of vacillation as it has wavered, first one way, then the other.

This edition was printed before, of course, the revelations about possibly corrupt practices riddling Securency, the Reserve's currency-printing subsidiary. There has still been no satisfactory explanation provided by the Bank about allegations that originally arose two years ago, at a time it was assumed that Stevens was fully in control of the institution. If he was not aware of what was going on it seems fair to ask exactly how aware and responsible the Governor is for our more general economic situation.

This is the problem that riddles the Review's forlorn effort to distribute power. It mistakes the figurehead on the prow with the engine room that's driving the vessel forward. Another example is Stephen Conroy, supposedly the fifth most important person in the country. Sure he's administering the National Broadband Network and this is one of the most expensive projects government has ever taken on. But that doesn't mean he was responsible for the decision to initiate it. It was all Kevin Rudd's idea. Conroy is simply a political player and one who can do nothing other than watch as power slips slowly but surely away from his grasp.

No, the real problem with the survey is its fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of power. It's on surer grounds when it examines other categories. In strategic affairs, for example, power is correctly divvied up between Minister Stephen Smith, Defence Chief David Hurley and Secretary Duncan Lewis. That, of course, is simply a listing of the three people at the top of the hierarchy; no surprises there. But correctly, added at the bottom is Mark Thompson from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. What makes him a player (like others in the organisation) is that he has ideas and thoughts and articulates them effectively. This is the key to real power. The ability to inspire others and convert them to your way of thinking.

Perhaps even Gillard will get it, eventually.

A TAX FORUM WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS . . .

2011-10-04T10:17:00.000+11:00

Wayne Swan's ideal moment - everyone focussed on him.

But don't expect anything will actually happen. That would mean doing something and risk changing the status quo.

The trouble is that by doing nothing we actually are making decisions, because of the flow on effects. If you want to spend money on the CDF's salary there won't be enough to pay for musical instruments for military bands, as this column suggests . . .

TAX SUMMIT

There's no need to be alarmed. Or even alert. Although the Tax Summit begins today, the cautionary instincts of our vacillating, nervous Treasurer can almost certainly be guaranteed to ensure that this opportunity to recast the nation's tax system is squandered. The nations happy trajectory, with the rich getting richer, will remain untroubled. At one time Wayne Swan was so outraged about the inequitable division of wealth that he wrote a scathing book decrying this unfair situation. That was when he was in opposition. Now, somehow, it's all become so different.

Over the next two days Swan will struggle hard to ensure that nothing is done to change the situation. The Treasurer appears determined to forego the opportunity for any wide-ranging reform – no matter how desperately it's needed. The problem is that tinkering around the edges will no longer suffice. The way wealth is distributed in Australia is the direct outcome of our tax system. And it stinks.

It's difficult to understand why Swan is so reluctant to act. After all, even though the crisp, rustling notes of his own $288,865 pay-packet might hardly appear modest to the average worker on $67,116 (including overtime and bonuses), it's hardly enough to insulate him from the increasing disparities around him. Incredibly, ridiculously, and stupidly, the Treasurer earns less – far less – than most of the people that work for him; even though he has no job security and has to put up with being the butt of disparaging ridicule such as the bile informing this column. Even Julia Gillard receives (just) $366,366, although her two houses, domestic staff, and never having to put a hand in her pocket to pull out a wallet must help to balance the household budget.

And that's as it should be. Because of her position she's required to entertain. She needs support to do her job because, after all, she is the Prime Minister and so earning somewhere between 5 and 6 times the average salary seems about right. But that's when you compare downwards and nobody is doing that any more. It's far more interesting to look at those ahead of you, to work out where your aspirations might take you or stroke your envy with a bit of rightful indignation at waste and mismanagement.

That's the fun game we've all been playing with Defence. Earlier this year there was a day or two of confected outrage that the Service Chiefs still possessed batmen (or "soldier-servants" in the old parlance). There were immediate public demands (followed within seconds by political edicts) for such antique reliquaries of a bygone age to be dispensed with. Presumably the idea was that, because he'd already practiced spit-polishing his boots for decades, General David Hurley would be able to do without someone who could ensure his brass and buttons are shiny whenever he is called upon to review a ceremonial parade.

That notion is rubbish of course, but this strange attempt to shoehorn the military way of life into a civilian template persists. Last week saw two examples of such stupidity. The first was the announcement the Remuneration Tribunal will enquire into what it obviously considers an outrageous anomaly that has been allowed to develop in the pay of top public servants, like Hurley. It appears he's to be granted an urgent “one-off" catch-up pay rise of about $300,000 (providing a total income of around $800,000) to provide parity with other “senior decision-makers in the corporate world".

The politicians will waive this increase through, because it will, inevitably and swiftly, flow through to them. After all, they are also “people of capacity and standing", are they not? It appears, however, that unless they receive sufficient remuneration they'd never be attracted to the job.

And there’s the flow on. It hardly appears appropriate for Defence’s Vice-Chief to remain on $380,880, even though his salary was boosted to that level just four months ago. After all, this is a gap of nearly $400,000 with his superior. Better boost his pay, too.

As long as we continue to be excited by upward envy this corrosive desire for more and more money (simply to maintain relativities, of course) will eat away at the fabric of society. It makes far more sense to fix remuneration by looking at the relativities downwards. Try valuing General Hurley's contribution against that of a soldier putting his life on the line in Afghanistan rather than weighing it up against the pay of an accountant, even one working for a top 500 company.

Surely it's far more appropriate to try and decide, first, just how many multiples of the average income anyone should receive. Let them keep that amount and then tax the rest.

It's not his fault, but Hurley's pay rise provides an example of the sorts of choices the government is making about how it’s spending our money.

As a young Captain, Hurley was posted to Sydney University Regiment, a reserve unit with a smartly kilted bagpipe band. The skirl of its pipes and the beat of the drums regularly added tradition and spirit to parades throughout the state. That was until last week. HQFORCOMD/OUT/2011/X2304104, is a minute that purports to eliminate official support, “effective immediately", to the three regular and 14 reserve regimental bands.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the Colonel under whose name this particular document was released was apparently too ashamed to sign it. The shoddy thinking behind the instruction is, unsurprisingly, reflected in its composition: it can't even get the names of the affected regiments correct. It refers to 1/15 RNSWR, a mysterious unit that's never graced our order of battle. Perhaps he means 1/15 Lancers, the RNSWL?

The army trades on an enormous amount of freely devoted personal effort to generate the goodwill provided by these ceremonial units. All this is to be brushed away and dispensed with as part of a continuing drive for savings. And what’s the money re-invested in? Bigger salaries for the fat cats.

Once, a very long time ago, Swan actually stood for genuine reform. It will be interesting to see if by this evening Labor has managed to make more than a token effort to stop the obscene greed on display across the country.

JULIA WILL DECIDE THE MANNER OF HER GOING

2011-10-02T08:44:00.000+11:00

Everyone's gotten very excited about the need for Julia Gillard to keep moving forward until she's finally out of the picture.

This column simply makes the point that the delicate balance of parliamentary numbers makes it clear that she will decide both who comes to the Lodge and the manner of their coming.

It also reviews Susan Mitchell's new book on Tony Abbott.

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT TONY . . .

With its subtitle a man's man" and cover photograph of Tony Abbott turning snags on the barbecue, it's quite evident that the author of the latest biography of the opposition leader feels particularly strongly about the man who is in line to become the next prime minister. The knowledge that the writer is Adelaide academic Susan Mitchell, who also wrote a biography of Margaret Whitlam and “Tall Poppies" the stories of nine successful Australian women, indicates that this is not likely to be a hagiography, turning lovingly over Abbott's progress from school, through university and the priesthood, and finally onwards and upwards through the Liberal party.

This is, indeed, a book for the True Believers. It is a cry of anguish from a good, well-meaning person who is horrified at the prospect of Abbott, in particular, leading the country. Turning the pages you can almost hear the screams of torment and distress – is this where, in the second decade of the 21st-century, the forlorn shore on which the country has finally been washed up, like discarded driftwood bobbing aimlessly through the Pacific?

The answer is, of course, that our current latitude and longitude were irrevocably determined the minute the last “politician of principle", Kevin Rudd, urged on by Julia Gillard, abandoned his promise to act on climate change. From that moment on it became apparent that the main aim of our politicians was to grab power. Not so they could wield it to altruistically guide the country to the sunlit uplands beyond, but rather for its own sake. That moment represented the crucial breach of promise with the electorate. Until then Labor's project had been infused with the idea that there was something greater than mere material progress. Politics was about tackling urgent great moral challenges. It was about something more than simply distributing the bounty of advanced industrial society, in an effort to ensure that there are two cars in every garage and plasma screens in every living room.

This is why Gillard's political stocks are flatlining. The polls insist that the more we see of the person who's leading the country, the less we like her. Nothing will turn this around. Labor's so-called “strategists" understand this and have finally recognised that the damage to the brand of retaining the PM will be greater than replacing her. Even installing a revolving door at the gate of the Lodge would be less of a problem than persisting with the current failed experiment.

The only real question in politics today is how this will be accomplished. Just because Gillard doesn't have the political skills to inspire us with her leadership doesn't mean that she is bereft of ability. She alone has the ability over the next few months to determine the country's future. A couple of months ago the PM still believed she could turn things around. It's as if she thought the crisp spring weather would, of itself, clean her image and whisk Abbott's negativity away. Politicians are never lacking in self-confidence, however this has failed to radiate in the electorate. The polls simply recognise her failure. They have now taken on the inevitability of an avalanche. Nothing can turn this around.

The back-room-boys so beloved of New South Wales politics love dealing with the hard world of political reality. This was the environment Bruce Hawker inhabited when he announced this week that dispatching Gillard might, just might, offer the party a circuit breaker it so desperately needs. But when this strategic suggestion comes from one of the electoral Svengalis who are responsible for state Labor's current desperate plight, you know the party is set on a course towards electoral oblivion. The cockroaches inhabiting the darkened spaces away from the political focus are there for a purpose. The apparatchiks are necessary, but they must never be allowed to take over the asylum. That's what happened in Sydney. Here in Canberra it's different – or should be, anyway.

Leadership should be left up to the politicians, the people who love the spotlight. But not everyone is cut out to bask in the centre of attention. Recognising personal inadequacy is always difficult. This week Gillard again attempted to break free of the forces that are pulling her down by giving an inspiring speech about our need to engage with Asia. This is a real issue, vital to the future of the country. It sank like a stone simply because she was the one proffering the ideas and no one believes she will be around long enough to implement anything.

The only thing left for Gillard to shape is the manner of her departure. This will determine her place in history and the way in which she is viewed by the party and the country. The eventual passing of the climate change legislation would mark a natural point for her to bow-out of the premiership. By taking this decision – accepting the inevitable – Gillard will have the opportunity to determine who will succeed her.

If Gillard’s leadership fails Mitchell’s fear is that we’ll end up inhabiting the world she conjures up in her book. She's quite open about the fact that she wouldn't have written a hostile biography if Malcolm Turnbull was still Liberal leader. She sees him as a unifying force: the Abbott that emerges from her pages is divisive and shallow; a man driven by reactionary instincts. And the key to deciphering her work lies in the subtitle – A Man’s Man. For Mitchell, this is what causes the most concern about the alternative prime minister. She believes his approach is firmly staked on a sexist foundation. She suggests this, in turn, is the natural evolution of a particular religious outlook.

For some of us these are ancient battles, long ago resolved and no longer vital. Mitchell worries about the rolling back of hard-won gains, particularly the gains of feminism (such as the right to have an abortion) but also more broadly as well. Some of her judgments’ are one-dimensional and don't mesh with my own personal knowledge of Abbott. Perhaps more unfortunately the work is not informed by recent interviews with the political players. This limits the book, particularly when attempting to analyse a mercurial personality such as Abbott's. It’s great service is, however, to refocus our attention on the person who currently stands to become our next Prime Minister.

LABOR'S PROBLEM

2011-09-26T11:28:00.000+10:00

Late again, I'm afraid, but the message remains valid.

Labor will not find succour while Gillard is at the helm . . .

WHO WILL LEAD?

It would be churlish in the extreme to deny Swan his brief time occupying the pantheon of fame. Unfortunately, by nominating him “Finance Minister of the Year", the magazine Euromoney has simply drawn more attention to the hollow, echoing void at the very centre of government.

This is a ministry without a gospel; a church without a preacher.

If Wayne Swan wants to understand why such bitter cynicysm has greeted the news, he could do worse than read his own book, “Postcode”. In this he outlined the need to move beyond using material prosperity as the measure of all things. It’s a message Labor’s fogotten in government.

Swan did navigate us through the treacherous shoals and economic whirlpools of the Global Financial Crisis. It all could have been far, far worse. Widespread and intense personal misery would have accompanied significant unemployment. This would have inevitably led to declining prosperity and living standards, and this is the one thing that politicians fear more than anything else. They're terrified that if we can't buy enough flat-screen televisions to put one in every room, voters will vent their anger on the government.

But there should be more to life than just material wealth. That’s the message Labor forgot.

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that Cabinet in particular became so tightly bound up in its session in side-stepping the economic downturn that it lost sight of our long-term goals. There should be more to being in government than simply increasing our prosperity. Labor forgot this, and that’s why it’s become engulfed in its successive crises.

As Julia Gillard announced so boldly when she took over from Kevin Rudd, the government had “lost its way". The problem is that she’s still looking around for a road-map. If Labor wants to begin heading in the right direction it will need to unearth the older, moral compass that guided the party to victory back in 2007.

In their book “Shitstorm", Lenore Taylor and David Uren painstakingly detail the way the government (thanks in particular to some excellent Treasury advice) was quick to perceive the dangerous rocks on which the US crashed in 2008. This threatened to engulf Australia but, thanks to the surplus built up under years of coalition government, there was enough money in the bank to finance the stimulus package quickly authorised by the government. Thanks to the accidental earlier, almost unconscious way in which our markets had become more diverse, we weren't immediately caught up in the contagion that beset other advanced industrial economies. And finally, thanks to Asia's continuing demand for our mineral resources, we've so far escaped being pulled back down into the recession that's again buffeting the West.

This is why Swan got his gong. It's not just us, it's them; Europe and America. For the past two years, just like our stock market, the world economy has been going nowhere. Fundamental problems remain. Until these are addressed the stink of economic failure will linger. The problem is that we've become hooked on growth. Our habit has now moved to an unsustainable level. Weaning society away from this addiction will take decades.

Swan understandably (and rightly) basked in the good news when his award was announced – after all, he's the person who's been awarded the accolade of "world's best". The Treasurer did distribute praise to others, nevertheless, it would have been nice for him to specifically name his former Secretary, Ken Henry, as well as the former Prime Minister. Both of these people are at least as responsible as he was for crafting and implementing the stimulus package so swiftly. But politics moves both too swiftly and viciously for that. Additionally, today (although probably not tomorrow) Rudd is a “nonperson". The name of the former leader remains expunged from the pages of ALP history.

But the attempts to whitewash over his image have failed. It's indelible. He looms in the background, overshadowing those who replaced him and making them appear like political pygmies in the process. For all his many faults, it's now obvious that Rudd possessed the one breakthrough political skill that Gillard so evidently lacks. Rudd not only had a story about the sort of country Australia should be, he could communicate it to the electorate and inspire them to believe in his vision.

It’s a story Labor desperately needs to tell.

Rudd’s faults, such as they were, were personal. The didactic, autocratic behaviour. The arrogance and hubris accompanying his utter, insufferable confidence that he knew exactly what to do in any given situation, coupled with prolonged periods of frustrating dithering as he attempted to make up his mind before finally acting.

By comparison Gillard seemed to promise so much; particularly to those who weren't prepared to simply do what they were told, people who thought that they had a policy contribution to make to government as well. People like the politicians who make up the ALP caucus.

The right-wing political machine that had installed Rudd plotted behind-the-scenes. The key detail that still remains unrevealed is exactly when Gillard first got the whiff that the keys to the Lodge might be dangling, ready to be picked up. Her personal failing was no greater than pocketing something that was being pressed upon her, when she knew it really belonged to someone else. One of the failings of modern politics is the absence of genuine friendships and respect for others. Self-centredness is the norm, and those pushing for Gillard to become PM cloaked that ambition securely in altruism. She was acting “for the good of the party" which had “lost its way".

But who cares when Gillard's ambition ignited – the question today is how long it will take her to accept that her premiership has now passed its use by date. The party is directionless, wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. No one should be governed by the polls, but Gillard used them as her compass to overthrow Rudd. She must now accept what they are telling her about her own need to stand down. For the good of the party.

THE HEAT IS ON

2011-09-21T14:14:00.000+10:00

This column (which appeared in the CT yesterday) isn't meant to suggest that Tony Abbott is under any threat from Julia Gillard.

Nevertheless, the demands for some positive policies will continue. As will, I suspect, concern about the way the coalition is being hi-jacked by a small minority of loud extremists . . . the sort of people who deny the science about climate change.

THE ANGER LYING BENEATH THE POLLS

Until recently, Tony Abbott has provided the template for successful opposition leader. Neverthelss, as the weather warms, it’s becoming obvious that he’s only one scorching summer away from a slow and lingering erosion of popular support. If he fails to begin articulating good policy soon, particularly on climate change, he will be forced to watch as the wheels slowly fall off the bandwagon which has brought him so far.

Everyone knows the difference between the long-term climate statistics and the weather we experience around us every day. Nevertheless, if today is overcast and yesterday was cold, it's difficult to remember what it felt like in the middle of a hot, dry summer. There's something intensely human about our natural inclination to privilege direct experience over dry statistical fact, and it happens all the time.

The weather affects our mood and this inevitably transfers itself to our political leanings, although not in necessarily obvious ways. A study of the 2004 election, for example, found a small yet nonetheless statistically significant correlation between good weather and a higher vote for the government. Conversly, in electorates where rain was falling John Howard’s party received greater punishment. It seems that a pleasant day, not too hot and not too cold, makes everyone feel positive. When some voters feel good they're more likely to forgive any government its (many) failings and re-elect the incumbent, regardless of other factors. Not everyone, but certainly some people anyway, even if it’s just just one percent of voters. The thing is that in a hard-fought election this might just be enough to make a crucial difference.

Of course the politicians didn't need a study to tell them this, they've known it for years. Bob Hawke was the last politician who ignored the weather, back in 1987. Labor won, of course, but its success was never really in doubt. John Howard’s first leadership of the coalition had turned into a shambles after his comments on immigration, an infamous recorded car-telephone conversation by Jeff Kennett left the opposition leader further weakened, and finally the improbable ‘Joh for Canberra’ campaign had only just burnt itself out. Despite all these advantages, Hawke didn’t triumph and no-one has ever dared tempt fate since then. That's why the last eight elections have all been held in the pleasant months of spring or, alternatively, March, after the summer heat has evaporated and before the cold winter sets in across the country.

This year may prove to be the turning point. If the summer is hot and dry, leaving the country baking and partched, it may prove the reality of climate change to voters better than any number of stastics. And it will quickly become evident that only one party has any sort of an answer to the problem – at least while the coalition is led by Abbott.

Although global temperatures have continued to increase, yet again breaking the old records set so recently, it's been difficult to accept these scientific findings. The reason is simple. It’s because they haven't reflected our own immediate experience. All the news over the past three months of record-breaking heat waves in the northern hemisphere hasn't made much sense while we've been shivering in the cold. And, after the downpours and floods that have spread across the countryside for two years now, it's been easy to lose track of the long-term warming trend. It's like that old story of the frog in the saucepan. Although it would jump straight out of boiling water, if the temperature increase remains slow and gradual it won't attempt to escape. Until it's too late.

Some people are naturally conservative. They don’t like change. It threatens them. Once they’ve worked out how to get on in the the world they don’t want anybody smart telling them they’ve got to change everything now. This is Abbott’s natural constuitency. They are the people who disrupted parliament last week and the small number of drivers who formed the ‘convoy of no confidence’ last month. But they’re not representative enough to win an election. This is the loud constituency Abbott has captured and inspired through his campaign of protest and anger. His greatest moment of danger is, however, about to arrive. It will come not from anything Julia Gillard does, but rather from his own side. His future now depends on the weather.

Like the frog in the boiling pot, he needs to jump but can't bring himself to make the leap.

There are many problems with the government's legislative plan to curb carbon emissions, but none of these are sufficient to overcome the great triumph the bills before Parliament actually represent. Here, for the first time, is a plan that at least makes some attempt to deal with the greatest crisis facing our world today. Abbott is bereft of anything other than a token covering to cloak his nakedness on this vital issue. His so-called “direct action" plan quickly falls apart the minute it is placed under close scrutiny. The reasons for this are obvious. It doesn’t represent a genuine attempt to do anything. It won’t create water for the farmers and nor will it encourage other countries to cap their emissions.

The opposition leaders greatest asset is at the same time his fatal flaw: the ability to speak honestly, encompassing a broad idea in a tiny soundbite. No one will ever forget his pronouncement that “climate change is crap". These are the words on which he will, inevitably, face his final political judgement.

Abbott will have his tactical victories. With Green support he will be able to scupper the government's wide-ranging attempt to process asylum seekers offshore. At time of writing it seems likely that the Liberals will attempt to restrict the government's ability simply to implement the Malaysia deal. This will demonstrate Julia Gillard's impotence while leaving Nauru on the table. Voters will not forgive the government for its continued failure to deal with the increasing number of arrivals since Labor, under Kevin Rudd, changed the policy back in 2007. This is, however, a second-order issue by comparison to climate change and it is on this strategic issue that Abbott risks being judged a political failure by voters.

CLIMATE CHANGE - THE REAL BATTLE

2011-09-17T18:11:00.000+10:00

The Gillard government has struggled since its formation.

Now the agenda has turned to climate change.

This is the one area where Tony Abbott's weak points are displayed most prominently, as this column makes clear . . .

TONY ON THE DIVING BOARD

Some weeks ago Tony Abbott was dining with a small group of Liberal supporters in Sydney. They were happy enough to contribute financially to the party but at least one of them felt this wasn't enough. He asked what more he could do. “Just keep banging on about the carbon tax", Abbott had replied. “Keep on repeating it's a tax on everything."

The supporter was nonplussed, but as far as Abbott is concerned nothing else matters. The Opposition's simple, destructive message is getting through. And, according to the polls, it's working. Nevertheless, bussing small, unrepresentative groups of people down to Parliament so that they can chant mindless slogans and interrupt proceedings like spoiled children demanding more toys isn't the same as constructing an effective argument to persuade the electorate. Instead of surfing the crest of a wave of popular support, Abbott seems to be caught in the steely embrace of those on the fringes of society. That's never more apparent than when the politics turns to the critical, overriding issue of climate change.

It's not particularly fashionable these days to talk about the meaning of life. No one wants to get to troubled about arguments for the existence of God, let alone his (or her) denomination. This “ live and let live" approach has worked well for society, but it leaves a troubling vacuum in the centre of our existence; it doesn't and serve the enduring question, “why are we alive?" Instead, we successfully manage to avoid the issue by finding the answer in the glibness of a shopping spree; placing consumerism at the centre of our modern industrial society. 'I buy therefore I am'.

Those who don't like change and are happy with things the way they are represent the targets of Abbott's strategy. He thunders warnings Julia Gillard is threatening their way of life. The introduction of a new tax supposedly interferes with their inalienable right to consume more, and more. These people are a myopic crew don't bother with the view from from the highlands, they're too busy threading their way from one Special! to another. They don't want to be bothered by the bigger questions of existence and find change threatening. Unfortunately, whether they like it or not, their world is breaking down.

While they were out on their shopping expeditions they obviously missed the news that the jury has returned and climate change is occurring. There is still some slight argument about how it's happening, but there's no doubt whatsoever about the vast majority of scientific opinion as to why. This comes down firmly (and irrevocably) on the side linking the increased production of CO2 gases with the warming of the atmosphere. More proof of the linkage is coming in all the time, of course, but the evidence about what is happening is unequivocal.

The ANU's Dr Paul Tregoning has actually done a calculation to determine the correct proportional amount of media time that should be offered to the skeptics in a debate. "If [as seems to be the case] there are at least 100 scientists for every climate skeptic, then in order to have a balanced discussion you'd need to listen to a fifty minute documentary on the linkage between carbon and climate change before you heard a quick, thirty second sound-bite from someone who didn't believe in it."

His note of exasperation is perhaps understandable. Tregoning is engaged in measuring, “to the accuracy of 1/10th of a human hair" the changing distance between satellites whizzing through space in order to estimate the gravity field all over the earth. “If the continental ice melts there's less gravity at that location, because there's less mass on the surface. This allows us to measure the loss of water; the highs and lows. Everything from drought in the Murray Darling Basin through to the melting glaciers in the Antarctic". This week it was announced that Tregoning's team will be participating in the science of NASA’s GRACE mission which hopes to reveal more about what's actually happening down below.

“It's an exciting time to be a geodesist", says Tregoning. That all depends, I suppose, on your view of excitement. Nevertheless, another of his assertions can't be faulted. "We take the measurements that show, definitively, exactly what is happening on the earth."

And this is the key to understanding the new political dynamic that's unfolding. This week came further evidence revealing the Arctic ice sheet is shrinking. Ice coverage of the polar regions is already the second lowest we've experienced since measurements began in 1979. Unfortunately, after a wave of heat and aridity blasting across the US it's expected that even the previous record, set as recently as 2007, will evaporate within a couple of weeks.

Everything might be different if you're earning so much money for that you're profiting greatly from the current consumer society. Somehow, observing the little crowd that Abbott had brought in to Parliament the other day, I didn't get the impression that they were masters of the universe. Rather the contrary; battlers doing it tough, nursing angry resentment against those others who have so much. People who are angry. Although, when you take the time to penetrate through the red haze that's obscuring their vision, it's sometimes difficult to work out exactly what they want. Getting them to articulate a positive agenda proves difficult, just as it has for Abbott.

The climate change legislation represents crunch time for the Liberals. By the end of next week it will have passed through Parliament. Abbott will suddenly be transformed from a statesman into a gambler, because he will be betting the Lodge on the hope that voters will believe he can extinguish the legislation. But he won't be able to. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, industry demands certainty (demonstrated by statements made this week by the peak business organisations). Secondly, the actual document itself is a legal minefield. It effectively creates property rights. Attempts to get rid of this will create horrendous financial costs that will have to be borne by the Commonwealth. Finally, the coalition is highly unlikely to get control of the Senate before July, 2014. The permutations of possibilities take too long to run through, but the reality is clear. Julia Gillard has ensured, finally, that the country will take action to combat climate change – like it or not.

Until now the party has supported Abbott unconditionally. That's because his tactics have worked, although one suspects that this is at least in part because of the low degree of difficulty provided by the current government. But the height of the diving board has suddenly been raised. His old-style of plunging in regardless can't be relied on to blast away the competition any more. On both climate change and refugee policy Abbott is being forced to choose between policy and populism.

LEADERSHIP

2011-09-12T20:31:00.000+10:00

Polls, leadership, and policy.

You wouldn't think it's too hard to get the order of importance right. This is my effort to assist our modern politicians . . .

FINDING POLITICAL POLICY

Nielsen normally provides some of the most authoritative polling results in the country. That’s why no one can question the findings of yesterday's report, insisting that bringing back Kevin Rudd would catapult Labor to an “election winning lead". That's true – today. But it doesn't mean that he, or anyone else for that matter, could turn into the party's savior.

While providing vindication for the former PM, there’s absolutely no guarantee that the voters would retain their loyalty to Rudd if he was brought back. Polls represent a snapshot, answering simply the questions that are being posed at that particular time. Experienced analysts (like Nielsen's John Stirton) can interpret the entrails, but a simplistic answer (like replacing Julia Gillard) will rarely work in the real world. This requires harder answers.

After all, what is one to make of another of yesterday's findings? It's difficult to believe, for example, that six percent of Green voters are actually in favor of asylum-seekers being just simply towed back out to sea – and yet that's what the poll asserts. I don't doubt the results; it's just that these people are probably indicating their frustration about the other choices that are being presented by the political parties.

What people want is a solution. Only someone completely stiff-necked could assert there is no merit in some combination of Nauru, Malaysia, as well as onshore processing, and yet neither of the major political parties appear to want to accept this.

That's why polls should remain just a tool to used by political apparatchiks, rather than a method for formulating policy. Perhaps if Labor returned its focus to actually governing properly and effectively, many of its other problems would disappear.

Obsession with the stain of Rudd's assassination has given Gillard the image of some kind of Lady Macbeth. No one would be surprised if she was seen pacing the corridors of the Lodge late at night crying, “out, out, dammed spot" as part of a futile effort to expunge him from the country’s corporate memory. It won't work. The party has reached its nadir. All that can save it is good policy.

Tragically for the Prime Minister, her own personal representation has already been indelibly engraved in the public mind. It's a picture utterly devoid of authority. When Gough Whitlam created the modern party by uniting the workers with the intellectual left, he united the two forces with one key idea: The Leader. It became part of the party's founding myth. The idea was simple. Because the stresses of modern life were pulling in so many different ways it was necessary to have someone above the chaos that could envisage a bounteous future and then guide the country to this Promised Land.

This was the formula followed by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating and, excitingly, by Kevin Rudd right through the year-long election campaign of 2007. Gillard trashed this idea the minute she admitted it was somehow ‘wrong’ of her to begin shifting her own personal knickknacks into the Lodge until the occupancy was legitimised by the people at an election. Then came “real Julia", another disaster all of her own making. The problem was not just the suggestion that we'd somehow got hold of the idea she was someone she wasn't, the issue was the familiarity. She was the common, first name, girl next door. Fine for a date, perhaps, but not someone we could look up to, a Lady Thatcher for our time.

Tomorrow night the ABC will unwittingly continue this relentless assault until the last few remaining shards of her dignity have finally been stripped away. It's far too late to attempt to re-make the product or engage in rebranding exercises. The seeds have been too long germinating. Remember the tooing and frowing on the night Gillard was finally pushed to overthrow her master? She should have stormed into his office, thumped the desk, and demand the primeministership as of right, because she was confident she was the right person to lead the nation. Instead she dithered, wondering whether to strike, giving Rudd time, consulting with the plotters. This planted the seeds of doubt in our minds. Today they have blossomed into flower.

And yet the government cannot afford to cut her down. Instead, in what little time it has left, it desperately needs to refashion its corporate myth. An alternative is readily to hand. It was even used, briefly, by Hawke in the fading days of his government. Gillard needs to forego the attempt to portray herself as anything other than the leader of the board. The only way forward is for her to push good policy to the forefront.

The only way to save herself is by dissipating the focus as quickly as possible, and even that will not be fast enough. When Gillard assumed the leadership she made the mistake of identifying Rudd's three critical failings: mineral resources tax, action on climate change, and an influx of asylum seekers. He bequeathed a legacy she's been utterly unable to solve. If she can find a solution, based on good policy, other achievements of the government will be able to shine.

If Senator David Feeney, for example, makes a contribution it’s usually dismissed as that of powerbroker. That's true. But it also ignores one of the most major structural changes to the Army since the Howard government abolished the Ready Reserve Scheme back in 1996. Back then the force was hollowed out. There were more rifles, but no one to support the troops. The reserves lost focus and funding. The sudden crisis in East Timor exposed the fragility of this structure. The effective result has been the slow cannibalisation of the reserves in order to support our deployments.

Now Feeney’s behind a real push to integrate the different forces. Although problems remain (particularly the financing of the new force) the result is good policy. It highlight’s the opposition’s failure to come up with any dynamic defence policies, reverting to cardboard cutout caricatures instead.

The only way the government can improve its polling is to focus on good policy. It may still be too late, but it will at least offer voters a choice.

THE ONGOING SAGA

2011-09-12T09:54:00.000+10:00

We think of leaders as possessing special attributes. Many do. Others simply occupy the job.

Then there's Julia Gillard . . .

LEADERSHIP

This column is just about people, positions and power. Sometimes it's obvious that individuals are going to shine in a particular job. They seem to instinctively possess the particular skill-set that's needed: the necessary combination of authority, intelligence and personality that will allow them to succeed. Others don't. Sometimes those skills can be acquired and sometimes they won't be. That's when the structure of the institution becomes vital. The support mechanisms – that's the other people who surround and support the key authority figure – are meant to kick in so as to protect the institution and ensure that no lasting damage is done.

In the end though, it's personality that's vital. Whether it's the captain standing on the bridge of his destroyer, a Minister of the Crown, or whoever is managing that particular shift at the local IGA, they won't be able to run the show simply by exerting the “authority" that was built up by the last occupant of the job. At some point they'll reap the rewards of their own investment. That's why bad managers always try to move on quickly before they're exposed. And it also helps to explain why sometimes people can't make the jump to the next level.

Because of the amplification provided by the media, politics is one of the hardest industries in which to shine. Every personal misstep, every failure, is seized upon. That's why politicians have always been expected to be whiter than white. This was true even in rudimentary democracies, like that of ancient Rome. Back in 63 BC, Julius Caesar's wife, Pompeia, entertained a wealthy young man who'd disguised himself to enter the house. Caesar turned the notion that someone remains innocent until their guilt is proven on its head. Asserting that his wife needed to be above suspicion, he rapidly divorced Pompeia.

Today we'd never dream of attempting such distinctions. Quite properly we direct boundaries between the personal sphere and our interactions with others. Yet, perhaps inevitably, these intertwine and they're resolved with the assistance of a simple legal concept – 'burden of proof'. It may, for example, be difficult for Mr Plod to feel he has enough proof to prosecute someone for fraud. After all, Plod (who'd never been particularly good at numbers at school) had always found it difficult to obtain proof that would satisfy the barristers without the assistance of a truncheon and tightly-rolled wad of newspaper. Nevertheless, once it's been un-stoppered the stench surrounding any political scandal will soon re-emerge, and that's for an obvious reason. Anything that raises questions about the integrity of a politician reflects on their capacity to do their job properly. They face a far greater burden of proof. They must not only be clean, they must be seen to be clean.

This is why Craig Thompson needs to take the opportunity to use the coming session of Parliament to clear his name. No one will interrupt him. He can clear his name of the apparent misuse of union funds. Any failure to do this simply invites renewed questioning that would reflect poorly on a government that so desperately requires fresh air.

Politics has been described as the art of compromise. Bending is necessary and can reflect strength rather than weakness, but it's important not to compromise on principles. This must often appear impossible: the party platform says one thing, and yet a politician believes are another. It's implied that Penny Wong, for example, subsumes her personal beliefs about gay marriage in exchange for the party's support on other issues (although it's not exactly clear which these might be). Rubbing up against the ideas of others doesn't have to create friction and it won't, as long as the motivations of all are clearly on display. Trouble creeps in when unfashionable old concepts (like honesty and purity) don't provide the fertile earth for the superstructure resting above it.

The seed of corruption germinates when morality is ignored. Everyone understands that sometimes it's necessary just to make deals. When Julia Gillard struck a bargain to become Prime Minister, it certainly didn't represent the end of Western civilisation. And, despite her own stupidity in announcing publicly before the election that she would "rule out" a Carbon Tax, voters still understood that she was nevertheless supposedly all about reducing carbon emissions. Gillard's mistake, a slip that's unforgivable in a politician, was her inability to convince the electorate that she was doing it because it was (a) necessary and (b) in the interests of the country. This germinated the seed of doubt about her capacity and motivation.

Now this has escaped. Gillard has become reduced, the victim of the strangler fig of Australian politics. This plan begins its life as a tiny seed, often discarded by a bird in the branches of a tree, before its roots creep around the trunk as they spread downward, searching for fertile soil. Eventually the roots grow to envelop and kill the plant that once supported them. The parasite has become the new tree – but its core is hollow.

This is the issue now for the Prime Minister. She can't even control her own image. That rests, today, in the fertile imaginations of ABC comedy scriptwriters. The harm to her “brand" being generated by this supposedly light-hearted skit is immense, and it's got nothing to do with the execution of the programme. The issue instead is that Gillard is reduced to Julia; worse still, the Julia with that dreadful accent, the Julia with the big bottom, the Julia behind the veneer of power and authority who's really just like the rest of us. Nothing could be more calculated to fatally wound the prime minister and strip her of the few remaining shards of respectability and authority. Reality is manipulated in the search for a cheap laugh. Before long the manufactures the image. It alters our understanding of what's happening in the real world.

Perhaps fortunately, Gillard is just one person in the current government. Through the flukes of timing and opportunity she successively managed to be in the right place at the right time. Eventually, others believed that her promotion was necessary and in the interests of the country and the party. Perhaps she believed it herself. Because of the numbers no one can topple her. There's also no obvious replacement. Gillard will need to come to the realisation that she is the problem. The support network that got her to her current position just isn't strong enough to maintain her any more. The central core has become hollowed out until there's nothing left.

It's also difficult to discern any positive agenda whatsoever coming from Tony Abbott. His current pitch for leadership offers no gaurantees he’d be able to confidently exercise authority either.

Immigration Secretary Andrew Metcalfe has been pulled into a sordid political squabble. Both sides have lept on the department’s advice to claim it vindicates their own policies. Both Labor and Liberal continue to treat voters like idiots. If either leader was able to bend their rigid necks even slightly, we might be able to emerge with a workable policy. Pigs might fly, too.

THE HIGH COURT & THE CONSTITUTION

2011-09-06T12:38:00.000+10:00

This appeared in the Canberra Times last Saturday, and should have been posted at the same time.

It is, I believe, particularly important because it details how some people in the government appear not to understand the separation of powers upon which our constitution is based . . .

PRINCIPLES MUST DRIVE POLICY

It's important to understand that the High Court is not involved in some sort of bizarre campaign aimed at giving itself unfettered discretion to rule the country, upsetting Parliament's procedures at its whim. Informed legal opinion is conclusive. Wednesday's decision was absolutely not, as Julia Gillard appears to be seeking to imply, some form of judicial activism. It was a simple interpretation of existing law.

Australia has signed international treaties that guarantee to protect the rights of people seeking asylum. The government constructed a swap deal with Malaysia leaving it unable to guarantee the people affected would retain those rights. The Court pointed out this inconsistency. It does not get much more emphatic than a 6–1 decision. Despite the Prime Minister's completely unwarranted assertion to the contrary, this decision did not represent the creation of new law.

It's as basic as the doctrine of separation of powers.

This was the concept that former Queensland Premier, Sir Joh Beelike Petersen, could apparently never quite get his mind around. Gillard appears determined to join him in the dunce's corner. The job of the High Court is quite simple. It is there to make sure the law is applied properly. If Parliament is unhappy with the court's interpretation, then it's up to the politicians to make some new law to achieve what they want. It's not up to Ministers to arrogate to themselves the arbitrary power to act unilaterally in whatever way they want. The role of the legal system (since the Magna Carta) has been to provide a check on the executive.

Although a couple of the judges did differ (slightly) in their reasoning, the rapid and decisive judgment of the full bench on Wednesday was a simple and definitive interpretation of the law. Gillard has attempted to insist that Chief Justice Robert French “turned on its head" the way the law was understood. Yet yesterday her office declined, under deadline pressure, to provide any specific examples of this. Instead it simply referred to the case presented by the government to the court.

Hours before the decision was released it seems Cabinet was actually provided with a legal briefing intimating that this was the way the court was leaning. The Attorney General was provided with every chance – every possible opportunity – to present a case that could have persuaded the Justices otherwise. He failed.

Instead we had the extraordinary suggestion from the PM that the Court had “missed an opportunity" to tackle people smuggling. Perhaps she should go back and read the constitution again. A statement such as this raises the astounding possibility that she doesn't properly understand the role of the courts. It’s not to make the law; merely to interpret it.

What is outstanding about this result is that it's caught the government so utterly unprepared, leaving it flat-footed and flailing around desperately in an attempt to salvage something, anything from the continuing debacle that asylum-seeker policy has become. Because Gillard nominated the issue as one of the key problems that Kevin Rudd had been unable to deal with, it has rightly provided a litmus-test for her own leadership. The court's decision has simply exposed her own failure for all to see.

The very evening that Rudd was challenged he warned that the party risked being hijacked. He warned of a drift to the ideological right. That night, surrounded by the chaos of his own autocratic style and a disintegrating office, his words were easily dismissed. Today they appear prescient. The problem was that instead of simply dusting off the Howard government's Pacific Solution, Gillard attempted to create her own: first in East Timor, then Malaysia. Domestic political concerns were driving the new PM. She didn't appear worried about either the asylum seekers themselves or our reputation in the region; however nor was she willing to accept the possibility that Nauru might have provided the only way out for her dilemma. It's difficult not to conclude that the government’s motivations acted to force disastrous compromises on its ability to formulate good policy.

This week the High Court simply acted to enforce the words of the laws passed by Parliament into the statute books.

ANU professor Pene Mathew sat through the entire case. She was distinctly unimpressed by the government's argument. “It appeared as if it was hunting around, searching for anything that might plausibly justify an outcome that was primarily driven by polls and politics. A far-fetched case was being constructed to justify a political requirement: this placed an unbearable strain on the law. What we should be doing is using the extensive research that's already been done into this issue to formulate some good evidence-based policy, instead of aiming to do the minimum required to meet our international obligations."

There comes a moment in the life of every government where events suddenly congeal to form a unified picture. This becomes its defining image. It provides the framework for interpreting everything that occurs. Unfortunately for Gillard this weeks events have now cemented those bars rigidly into place. She has trapped herself in a prison of her own making. She could never reach out to voters on the right; Tony Abbott had them in a vice-like grip. Feeling secure on the left, she attempted to woo those in the centre, but in doing so discarded the policy clothes that had once legitimized her actions. She could have risked doing this if the actions of the government had actually been effective. Yet her inability to achieve even those things she had once nominated as priorities has today become self-evident.

There is no way back. Labor's disastrous free-fall in the polls will continue. Gillard's attempt to foist the cause of the failure of her own asylum-seeker policy on to the courts will further alienate those who were concerned about the government but horrified at the possibility of a conservative Liberal, Abbott, becoming PM.

Now, nothing other than humor provides the motivation for Labor supporters to open the papers. A former senior Cabinet Minister in the Hawke/Keating governments recently told me he'd stopped even thinking about the party's woes. Engaging with politics was too depressing.

DAYS OF OUR LIVES . . .

2011-09-06T12:30:00.000+10:00

The ongoing trials and tribulations of the Gillard government continue. No one knows how they will reach the end.

This post looks at their beginnings. Was it all the PM's fault, or does the problem reside deeper within the system?

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER POLL DISASTER

How could it all go so wrong? The easy, simplistic answers stare us in the face and (depending on the strength of your allegiance to the Labor Party) go back either five minutes, or five years.

By the end of 2006 the party was tired of being consigned to perpetual opposition. Many feared that the leader, that old warhorse Kim Beazley, was to lead the party to yet another near victory. It would be close, but not close enough. No one doubted his grasp of policy however it seemed that the country wanted more. When the New South Wales Right finally transferred its allegiance to Kevin Rudd it appeared to be part of a natural shift to youthful dynamism. The thrusting young faces –not just Rudd, but also Peter Garrett and Julia Gillard – were being blocked by the ageing dinosaurs who had dominated the party for ages.

But it wasn't just the NSW branch that was involved in the conspiracy to bring down the leader. Rudd desperately needed Gillard's Victorian supporters; without her his coup could never have succeeded. But big Bill Ludwig supported of Beazley. In the end a deal ensured Queenslander Wayne Swan became Rudd's Shadow Treasurer. We could go on, but you see the point. In 2007 the party decided it wanted power. The critical importance of Labor's media image was understood. Everyone accepted that this was the dimension of victory that had been lacking of years of defeat. Good policy came second.

A relentless focus on image was maintained during those initial months of power. Rudd displayed no hesitation in commissioning detailed studies that would present roadmaps detailed for the government to use as it took the country into the future. Ideas supposedly infused the policy debate. Yet nothing workable ever seem to emerge from the black hole that the Prime Minister's office became. It's relentless focus was on the next headline. But then, occasionally, Rudd would sometimes insert himself to “cut through" arrogating to himself the power to arbitrarily take dramatic decisions.

Such as the National Broadband Network. This may yet prove to be wonderful, however the manner of its genesis and execution has left lingering question marks over the multi-billion dollar project. In the end the decision to build the network was taken by Rudd and Stephen Conroy as they flew in a plane across Australia. It's hard not to suspect the decision to unroll the network in New England has a great deal more to do with Tony Windsor's influence as an independent member of Parliament than it does with the regional (or national) need in this area. The implementation of a good policy has been beset with the rank stink of politics.

This is because, despite protestations to the contrary about the need for intellectual rigour, there were some things that simply remained articles of faith for the party, or individuals like Rudd. One of these was the treatment of asylum seekers. Rudd announced that he was dispensing with John Howard's “solution" to the problem. In an ideal world this should have worked. Yet today not even Labor pretends that the so-called “pull" factors are irrelevant. That's why the government is currently threshing about searching for another island where it can send the sad cargo of the leaky boats that are heading to our shores.

Yet it is still obsessed with playing politics. One single piece of the government Solicitors advice has been dribbled out. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen suggests this “proves" that Nauru is not an option. If you bothered to read the advice you'd find that's not the case at all. And if we can be provided with this one missive, why is the government withholding previous advice on this issue. It's difficult not to suspect that the lawyers had previously advised the government their case for transporting asylum-seekers to Malaysia was riddled with problems, difficulties and inconsistencies. It's just as unfair to the governments own lawyers to tarnish them with the same brush of incompetence that is currently being demonstrated by the government as it is to attack the High Court, safe in the knowledge that none of the Justices will attempt to rebut wild assertions by the Prime Minister. Transparency in government apparently evaporated the minute John Faulkner departed the ministry.

But we have jumped ahead of ourselves in the story of Labor's disintegration. Rudd and Swan understandably used the global financial crisis as an excuse to further centralise decision-making within a tight executive, the gang of four people (although even this was only ever really three-and-a-half; Lindsay Tanner was always relegated to a peripheral role by the others). Thanks to their actions, Australia escaped recession. Nothing should ever downplay the government's success in piloting the economy through the shoals of recession. Equally, using stimulus provided by the cash splash and increased government spending did nothing to address the fundamentally troubling problems that still lie at the root cause of the crisis.

These have reasserted themselves in Europe and have led to the crisis of confidence that's already resurrecting concerns about another global contagion. Rudd's confident rhetoric inspired us all to think he had the answer. Yet, as time went on, it became apparent that instead of trying to find a new way to achieve his rhetorical flourishes and balancing consumer desires against the deeper needs of the spirit, Rudd was trapped in a desperate desire to appease the mythical swinging voters of the Labor heartland.

But, like a young child demanding new toys, such voters cannot ever be satiated by baubles. They could, however, be persuaded to accept difficulties and hardship if the case for doing so is outlined clearly to them. That's what the party had hoped would happen when they switched to Gillard. Instead, as today's poll indicates, the party has finally switched to an empty vacuum. The irony of tomorrow nights debut of an ABC programme about the first de-facto couple in the Lodge is vicious. It should never have been commissioned. Labor's problem, however, runs far deeper than whatever the portrayal of the “real" Julia is like on television. Whether the party has the ability to find an answer remains an open question.

GILLARD'S FAILURE

2011-08-31T08:30:00.001+10:00

A fortnight ago the parliament returned after the winter break. Labor backbenchers still hoped that the clear air might provide a chance for Gillard to turn things around. Two weeks later it's obvious she can't.

The transition, the switch, the 'transfer' will occur, it's simply a matter of time. . .

NOTHING WILL SAVE A BAD PRODUCT

The Gruen Transfer is an ABC television programme seeking to reveal the way advertisers encourage us to prefer their particular product. Every Wednesday night a panel of experts tries to dissect what's appeared on our screens, with humor, and sometimes vigorously debating the ethics (I use the word loosely) of the industry.

The drama comes from a weekly spat between two add-men: Russel Howcroft (who embraces modern materialist society in all its consumerist glory while wearing a tailored suit - no tie, of course) and Todd Sampson (dressed in black T-shirt and presenting an ideologically sound critique of the manipulative techniques of the industry).

The problem for Todd is, of course, that he's trying to pretend something can be what it's not. He wants the good parts of advanced industrial society without the negatives. Each week his idealism clashes, futilely, against Russel's economic realism with its insistence that if something 'works' it must therefore be right. This provides the drama. It's a formulaic panel show, but one for a sophisticated audience. The ineluctable consumer dynamic that drives our society is revealed. But the show also allows us to feel called about ourselves, because we understand how we're being manipulated. By the time the half-an-hour is up, a warm glow of superior knowledge is positively radiating from the television set.

Nevertheless, seems as if we don't much care for an informed critique any more. Although the program is still rating well, it's lost more than 350,000 viewers over the past year. The last season's final show came second in its timeslot; but now it's averaging sixth. Is the problem the formula? Has it suddenly become tired and lost its way? Or can the faltering ratings be blamed on the slowing economy and a growing feeling of concern about the future? Perhaps we are just less “relaxed and comfortable" as a society and less prepared, as a result, for a bit of hard introspection.

It's hard to be certain; perhaps it's a bit of everything. Adapting to the mood swings in our society is a tough job whether you're an advertiser, television producer, or political party. You've got to have a good product. Selling something (and getting repeat business) requires more than just “branding", because no one can shape-shift forever. But striking the right note is vital, especially in politics. It often takes ages before anyone can find out if the politicians have actually delivered what they promised and that's why we place such reliance on the integrity of the individuals who we elect to public office. If we can't trust what they say today, why should we believe their deliberately embroidered vision of a glorious future will turn out to be anything more than a chimera?

Unfortunately Julia Gillard is demonstrating a consistent propensity, whenever she has a choice, to pick the wrong alternative. Back when Kevin Rudd was, surprisingly, uncertain about whether to take his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme to a double dissolution she urged him not too. Then, during the election campaign, she could have used weasel words to allow the eventual possibility of a carbon tax but instead chose to rule it out. Absolutely. That was the sort of thing the real Julia wasn't going to do. Then it turned out she would after all, because she was playing “make a deal" with the independents. In the advertising industry this sort of flip-flopping is called “trashing your brand". But it still wasn't fatal.

Armed with the advantages conferred by incumbency Gillard should have been able to resurrect her prime ministership. She's failed. Utterly. The sort of skills that enabled her to eventually (third time lucky) get preselection for a left-wing parliamentary seat weren't the same as the ones she needed to communicate with the broader electorate. A woman who everyone insists is lively, personable and engaging in private comes across as wooden and rigid in public. It's as if she's unable to reveal her genuine personality to anyone she doesn't already completely trust. This simply creates more barriers, leaving her lonely and besieged.

Now her attempt to counter the assault on backbencher Craig Thompson has left her sullied with her own future inextricably intertwined with his. Gillard had a choice as the sordid details of the affair emerged. She could have distanced herself from him, but instead of using space she turned to the instinctual habits of student politics. Shrilly and with confected outrage the Prime Minister began spraying counter-accusations at the opposition. Even over the weekend her former lover, Craig Emerson, was pressing the case that there was something disreputable about the way the Liberals had prosecuted the case against Thompson.

But something has finally changed. Until last week it had been conventional wisdom that it would be impossible for Gillard to be overthrown. For a start the independents proclaimed their deal was with her, not Labor. The finely balanced parliament with a government majority balanced on the razor of a single vote seemed to dictate her continued occupation of the Lodge. And although the party's primary vote is languishing in previously uncharted territory, backbenchers comforted themselves about their own futures by adding in Green preferences. These are no longer providing enough of a buffer to ensure Gillard continues as PM.

It was different when Caucus believed no one could do better than Gillard. Now that's changed. The working assumption is that no one could do worse.

In the 1st Nielsen poll after she became Prime Minister Labor's primary vote was 47 percent and her personal approval 21 points ahead of Tony Abbott. Last week’s Newspoll put the party on a risible primary of 27, with her own single-point lead well inside the poll’s margin of error. It's impossible to avoid the obvious conclusion. The more people see of the PM, the less they like her.

The Gruen Transfer takes its name from that special moment in a shopping mall where, completely surrounded by glaring lights, blaring music and gorgeous products, the consumer forgets why they came in the first place. Labor’s looking to make its own transfer and hoping it can find its way again.

QANTAS 'THE AUSTRALIAN AIRLINE'?

2011-08-31T08:25:00.000+10:00

This should have been posted on Saturday.

Most Australian's have a love/hate relationship with Qantas . . . as you do with relations you can't get rid of.

The time has again come to ask some serious questions about the airline, and what we expect from it . . .

PRIVATE & PUBLIC

Business is not a social service; it's not about making people happy. Business is about making money.

This urge doesn't necessarily align with other interests. That’s fine. But it’s important to understand what’s motivating individuals, particularly when they’re benefiting from some particular government policies.

It helps to explain where Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce is coming from when he dismisses a $550 million profit (on a $15 billion business) as representing “less than 4 percent return". As a result he wants to double the number of chips he's got on the table to play in the big game offshore, in the hope of winning big-time.

But his interests don't coincide with those of ordinary Australians. Transport is vital and, in a big country, we require an airline. It's a public service. Qantas domestic is making a big profit – it’s being held down by losses on the overseas sectors. Now Joyce wants to pour good money after bad.

Qantas was sold off at $1.90 a share in 1995. Today its share price languishes below $1.60. Anyone who left their “investment" just sitting passively was a mug, because there are always going to be better returns elsewhere. Now an Irish-Australian who's kissed the Blarney Stone is telling shareholders he's got a great idea to take their money and funnel it into a couple of ventures offshore because that's where he thinks there's a pot of gold. Just at the end of the rainbow.

Focused entirely on the bottom line he wants to risk the domestic business to grow the overseas one. And the government dithers; trying to work out where everything went wrong and why the airlines shareholders aren't happy with their measly 4% and why the company's management wants to move offshore to take advantage of cheaper staff.

Just a few years ago a “private equity consortium", the grandly named Airline Partners Australia, made a bid for the airline at $5.45 a share. This included people who had grown fat pretending they understood the industry who thought they could make it pay. With the confident assurance of snake-oil salesmen they blithely asserted that they'd done due diligence and the numbers stacked up. Well, for them anyway, and their own personal remuneration packets. The then chief executive Geoff Dixon stood on the podium with his Chair, Margaret Jackson. Together they happily presented the supposedly “marvelous deal", fuelled by debt, that would've make them enormously rich. This attempt at an internal takeover was put together utilising the supposed expertise of executives who were actually meant to be working for the shareholders at the time. If it had been successful there can be little doubt Qantas would be in bankruptcy today. The burden of debt would have been too great to service.

Someone would have lost money, somewhere, eventually . . . but that didn't mean the deal didn't stack up for individuals or that, even if the airline had gone bust in the wake of the global financial crisis, that APA would have picked up the bill. In the end the tab would have been sent to taxpayers, because of the vital necessity of maintaining air transport links. In other words having an airline is, in fact, a requirement of government after all.

Which takes us back to Labor's original decision – on supposedly unimpeachable economic grounds – to unite Qantas and the old TAA, Trans Australia Airlines. This weeks financial results demonstrate the domestic routes are the cash cow that is financing the offshore expansion dreams. Last year the company made $444 million running the routes within Australia – Qantas International lost $216 million. That's why it's difficult to believe the airline's new five-year-plan for a massive overseas expansion stacks up. In war you'd call it “reinforcing defeat". It’s as odd as spending millions advertising at the same time as sacking 1000 staff. It's as stupid as casually throwing away the “still call Australia home" branding that's taken decades to build up and still provides a warm glow when you hear the children’s choir singing on the big screen. Somehow the prospect of having subsidiary airlines “creating exciting business opportunities [for] premium business travelers" while operating from foreign hubs doesn't engender quite the same spirit.

The blatant deception of the recent full-page advertisements, pretending that somehow the overseas expansion dreams will “bring revenue and profits back to support Qantas jobs and tourism and business in Australia" is as outrageous as it is fanciful. Perhaps Joyce didn't adequately read his own financial statement, because he seems to have missed the fact that the domestic business is thriving. If he were only worried about strengthening the balance sheet he'd be cutting overseas operations – not trying to expand them.

That's because international competitors, like Singapore Airlines and Emirates, operate on a different playing field. They're supported by government. Their home bases are better positioned to take advantage of international travel routes. It’s basic geography. But the competition extends to the age, attractiveness and wages his competitors pay staff. Are the overseas subsidiaries going to get rid of any attendants who fall pregnant, just as their rivals do? The downwards spiral is unrelenting. Why would anyone want to join the race to the bottom?

The new business ‘opportunities’ certainly wouldn't be being considered if government was running the airline. When you change the ownership you change the company objectives. Investors want to make money. They’re not trying to provide a public service. It’s about gouging what you can get. At one time public ownership of airports was considered as obvious as the idea that government should provide roads. Today airports are run by private companies who demand an economic return. This explains why it costs more to park a car for an hour at Melbourne ($12) or Sydney ($15) than in Paris ($4.97) or New York ($5.76). Leaving a car for an hour at Singapore's Changi Airport is just $1.92. Even here in Canberra it’s only $4.40.

In the enthusiasm for privatisation in the 1990’s, selling-off assets was all the go. Unfortunately those in charge of the process – the politicians – didn’t seem to understand the need to align the interests of the newly minted companies with those of the nation. No-one can blame Joyce for his dreams of expansion, just as no-one can accuse shareholders of casting around desperately in the hope something, anything, might make sense of their investment in airlines.

Vale Lockyer

2011-08-23T14:53:00.000+10:00

Sometimes those who contribute most to our understanding of ourselves and the world around us aren't the biggest names or the most highly renumerated in the profession.

The Canberra Times printed this under the apposite heading: FROM BANGKOK TO THE BUSH, A REPORTER WITH INTEGRITY . . .

Integrity

By the time I arrived in Bangkok the ABC house had moved. When Paul Lockyer was based there it was tucked away in a beautiful villa in Soi Sala Daeng, a pretty street behind the Dusit Thani hotel. Two correspondents later my predecessor in the Indochina job was taking me to lunch at a casual little restaurant nearby. He stopped for a second, pointing to a block of flats near the house.

“You see that building", he said. “That was where the notorious mass-murderer Charles Sobhraj lived. Sobhraj was a charismatic man who attracted foreign tourists and drugged them before killing them and disposing of their bodies. No matter how good you are", he muttered, “It just goes to prove that you can't see through walls or understand what's going on behind closed doors."

I nodded, heeding the warning. Lockyer hadn’t needed it. It seemed he was living a charmed life. After Bangkok he'd reported from Washington, then returned to Channel 9. Although - it seemed obvious - interviewing people for Ray Martin's Midday programme couldn't be nearly as interesting as reporting details of the ongoing civil war in Cambodia, in those days ABC journalists could only dream of getting the sort of money the commercial networks were throwing around.

There was something special about Lockyer’s work elevating him above the crowd. What had made a Lockyer's journalism shine was exactly that he clearly understood those professional limitations. So instead he looked, really looked, around him and saw what was happening. Then he reported it, clearly and in detail. Just what was going on. No agenda. No requirement to compress events into some overarching ideological framework labeling what was happening as “good" or “bad". And finally, importantly, Lockyer saw no need to “beat-up" a story. He didn't need to rush to find a sensational angle and use it as part of some desperate attempt to heighten the drama. He was happy to allow events to speak for themselves.

It occurred to me later, after I'd been doing the job for a while, that this was the real key to deciphering what had made his reports from Bangkok so successful. In his reports Lockyer treated what was occurring all around him like a huge diamond. He knew it would be impossible to reveal the full dimensions of everything. The mass of events is so shiny, so massive; we can never hope to understand its real meaning. The only alternative was to display, as accurately as possible, the individual facets of the gem in the hope of getting close to the truth.

This was what Lockyer did so well. He could explain both why some South Vietnamese were so desperate to leave their country they'd hop on a tiny boat and head out to sea, despite the pirates and the knowledge that they'd spend years in a refugee camp, yet still put together a sympathetic story about how the government was attempting to restore some normalcy to this country that had been divided by war for decades.

His desire for accuracy meant that his reports on the horrors wreaked by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia revealed much that had previously been hidden. One particular Australian academic failed to comprehend the extent of the killing fields. Information from others was suspect because of their association with the anti-Communists. Lockyer's reports established the fine detail allowing the eventual reinterpretation of our overarching framework as the full horror of those years was revealed.

This accuracy and balance was occasionally frustrating, particularly most recently. What did (I wanted to know) Lockyer really think about climate change? Did he really have no opinion about the future of the bush and it's environment. If he did, it never colored his reports. Instead he concentrated on showing us what was really occurring; the fine grain of a picture; reporting on what he knew and could see, rather than what he thought or assumed might be the case.

Perhaps this explains, in part, why the sudden death of Lockyer, cameraman John Bean and pilot Gary Ticehurst in a helicopter crash has affected so many people. After reporting politics, being a foreign correspondent and then returning to the absurdities of the Midday show, Lockyer's journalism finally returned to the most enduring facet of life – the relationship of humans to the land that surrounds us. Together with Bean's extraordinarily evocative film and the ability of Ticehurst to put the others in just the right spot at just the right time, the team revealed to many Australians aspects of our land that we normally don't think about. The country is simply taken for granted. The weight of our population tips us towards the sea; what happens inland appears irrelevant to our lives. It's dismissed, and we think it can be ignored with impunity. Together their reports showed us the other side of our country.

But this alone doesn't explain the sense of loss yet let's face it: from the point of view of “importance", Lockyer's journalistic career had supposedly peaked when he was posted to Washington after Bangkok. After all, that was the big story; the main game. It should be easy to dismiss his oeuvre since then as trivial and unimportant. Rural Reporter, I mean, really! So how to make sense of the loss? The answer can be summed up in a single word – integrity.

Lockyer didn't need to find success in the reflected views of others. His reports offered an accurate portrayal of what was happening and the emotions of those experiencing it. This made it powerful, wise and beautiful. It was news in the best sense. He did not sketch an ideal world or demonstrate how ours needs to be reformed so as to make it better. It was up to the audience to draw the appropriate conclusions. If Lockyer did have an agenda, it was to inform and not to bludgeon people into agreement, nor talk down to the audience as simpletons. His journalism was imbued with integrity: his legacy is a lesson that all of us would do well to heed.

STRATEGY & OPERATIONS

2011-08-13T17:12:00.005+10:00

I'm afraid I'm a bit of a nurd.

I get very excited by things like the difference between strategy and operations, which is why I was tremendously interested in a presentation by Hew Strachan at the ASPI Global Forces conference last Thursday.

Here's my take on what was said . . .

FINDING AN end to match the means

The idea is so incredibly obvious, it’s natural we take it for granted. It has become an axiom of business, war; every aspect of life – always begin by determining your objective. It's necessary to work out what your goal is before worrying how to get there.

This week Hew Strachan, Chichele Professor of the History of War at Oxford, turned the old, accepted wisdom on its head. He suggested that possibly – just possibly – focusing on the mission is actually the sign of a declining empire, rather than a rising one. Worryingly, this seems to offer a cogent explanation of the disconnect between the way we’d like the world to be and the way it is.

It's the basic disjunction between ideals and reality, or, in this case, strategy and operations.

Take what's happening in Libya, for example. It’s not difficult work out what the West wants. The allied objective is change; getting rid of Muammar Gaddafi. The strategic goal is clear, measurable and plausible. There are other hopes, of course, and everyone would be happy if a Democratic, pro-western regime took Gaddafi’s place (as opposed to the country becoming a fundamentalist Islamic state). Nevertheless, there's no doubt that if Gaddafi was eventually delivered to face a war-crimes tribunal the leaders of European states would be entitled to feel that they'd really achieved something.

Goodness, even Geoffrey Robertson would be happy. His naive belief in the eventual triumph of legal processes would appear to have been completely justified. He'd undoubtedly completely overlook the prolonged and extended bombing campaign that NATO is indulging in at the moment, because it would have produced a result he could be comfortable with. An ‘ethical and moral’ outcome. The death and massacre of a large number of otherwise completely innocent Libyan civilians could be overlooked and somehow wished away nothing more than a regrettable and sorry upshot, which was nevertheless necessary in order to achieve his of universal legal justice.

This represents a focus on the outcome, rather than the process: the grand strategy, rather than the operational method of achieving a desirable goal. Unfortunately, it now appears this relentless focus on achieving our “mission" may be actually blinding us to a far more important truth.

Achieving our goal might not, ultimately, live in the correct articulation of the mission after all. All the formulations that we practice so carefully to make sure that we have defined and limited objectives might actually be symptomatic of our inability to succeed. The key to this conundrum is understanding the difference between an operational goal and a strategic outcome, and the relationship between the two.

Strachan points out that NATO's problem doesn't actually arise out of its mission statement at all. The West's aim – regime change in Libya –has been clearly and precisely stated. The real question is what operational method can best achieve the desired end. It's at this point that the two arise: either an invasion, or instead just dropping bombs. After the debacle resulting from the invasion of Iraq there is no desire to risk another insurgency in an Arab nation. The possibility of launching an invasion was immediately brushed away. The only tool remaining was to blast at targets of opportunity – dropping bombs from the skies. In effect, the operational method was forced to fit the strategic objective, rather than the other way around. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's failed.

Professor Strachan points out that this isn't the case with dynamic, emerging powers.

Consider, for example, how a much younger America reacted to a similar challenge from the same part of the Mediterranean some 200 years ago. During this period the Libyan coast was occupied by Barbary pirates, who made a profit by demanding cash from any passing vessel. By 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli was asking Washington for a quarter of a million dollars in ‘protection money’. Although the U.S. Navy had only been recommissioned six years previously, the young and vigorous democracy refused his demand, even though it had barely any ability to prosecute a war half a globe away. The Pasha cut the US flag down from outside the legation, throwing it in the dust. The Americans responded by dispatching a small naval and Marine force to the shores of Tripoli. The war wasn’t one sided, but eventually the Africans were forced into signing a treaty and the American ships wear allowed to sail unmolested.

When its interests were threatened, Washington had acted decisively. An expeditionary force was sent halfway around the world to achieve a strictly operational goal. The policymakers realised that they could only accomplish their aim by military action. This required sending a fleet. And that’s what they did, acting quickly and effectively. Operational capacity came first and, perhaps more significantly, it was the operational victory that secured the strategic goal. Although the broader rational was always there, Washington didn't bother articulating and balancing different alternatives, attempting to find a better way of achieving its aim. The US had the operational tool, a fleet, and it deployed it.

Contrast that to the dilly-dallying emanating from Washington today. Barrack Obama insists it's up to the Europeans to take the lead in any campaign to oust Gaddafi. The US forces are only there to ‘support’ the mission. And, although the bombing campaign is continuing unabated, it's unclear exactly what all the explosions are achieving. The regime hasn't been overthrown; if anything, it appears to have increased its control over the country during the past few months.

Gaddafi himself, however, must be living in fear of sudden annihilation. It seems plausible to assume he is considering ways of striking back at NATO. Libya hasn’t extended the war by attacking a European capital, yet, even though this is where his assassination has been sanctioned. No one knows what might happen if Gaddafi were to die. It may be he’s refusing to retaliate because he knows that, if he did, nothing would prevent an immediate invasion: the deployment of Special Forces that would, once and for all, destroy his government.

Yet this possibility of an invasion by an expeditionary force was the exact operational method used by the US in 1805 – so why not today? Strachan posed a similar question at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s conference in Canberra, asking if our obsession with strategy is, in fact, a sign of declining power.

The key to achieving a goal lies in the way we go about trying to make it happen – and not simply in articulating the mission correctly. Travel back in history to the time of Alexander the Great and the primacy of operations is evident. The spearmen of the Macedonian phalanx carved their path through any opponents, creating an empire almost by accident along the way. Victory in battle offered the key that allowed Alexander to do whatever he wanted.

What enabled Hitler to (very nearly) achieve his aim of was a simple operational method – blitzkrieg. Using this tool he successively cracked apart the superior forces that were initially arrayed against Germany. The Western nations pondered different strategies for years, but failed until overwhelming military might allowed their forces to win battles. Without operational success any strategy is domed to failure.

Today, the West attempts to rationalise our inability to accomplish goals, whether in Libya or Afghanistan, by announcing that we’ve decided to carefully limit our objectives. Perhaps the reality is we’re just not prepared to accept the cost of doing what’s required.

FINDING A BASIS FOR DEBATE

2011-08-09T11:30:00.003+10:00

This is not a plea for the centre ground. The 'middle' can be as wrong as the edge. But debate does need to be rational . . .

A REASONED DEBATE

Over the past month the entire defence hierarchy – with the notable exception of the Minister himself – has turned over. All the Chiefs, the Defence Materiel Organisation's boss, the Secretary; it's been, effectively, a complete purge. A spring-clean was always scheduled for this period, but it's been prosecuted with somewhat more enthusiasm than normal.

Even though Stephen Smith may not have made all the changes he originally hoped, it appears likely this presages a new way of getting things done. The appointment of a Secretary who was at Duntroon at the same time as the Chief could, for example, prove an exciting experiment; it will also be interesting to see how effectively the military's finances are kept under control by a non-accountant and exactly how we’ll decide what new equipment we need.

These changes have already encouraged some interesting (and worthwhile) speculation. I too have opinions about what it all might mean and could, perhaps, provide some more worthwhile analysis. It would be hard, however, to do better than Jack Waterford did in this paper on the weekend (or a couple of others elsewhere). Everything is in a state of flux. It'll require time to work out exactly what has happened and how things have changed.

In the past, it was normal to wait and see what happened before pronouncing a verdict on whether something was good or bad. Today the media is increasingly being forced to issue a moral judgement on every event – immediately. Events are labelled either 'good' or 'bad', or even (we leap to use the superlative) 'wonderful' and 'evil'. Hype is generated instead of reasoned analysis. Rants are allowed, even encouraged, to occupy the space of informed opinion and reasoning. It sells.

Competition and reduced sales are placing media outlets under increasing cost pressures. Everywhere in public life the bad is driving out the good. It’s easier for business (and politicians) to search out the lowest common denominator and rush to embrace it, because instinctively everyone knows this will be acceptable. Forget the quality, just look at the cheap price! The ‘No Name’ brand may not have quite the same amount of nutrition, but buy it anyway!

Unfortunately, the downgrading of the quality of informed debate and argument can only go so far before it erodes the fundamental basis of society. Surely life – a fulfilling life, rather than just existence – is about something other than feeding our passion to consume more and more? Whatever the meaning of life might happen to be, the answer won’t be found in the latest ten-second grab from a politician or advertisement on television. Or, regrettably, even opinion columns in the paper. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying, instead of barracking mindlessly for one side or the other.

The role of the critic is not simply to condemn. It's about judgment; expressing and weighing up different considerations logically until you've reached an opinion. Unfortunately, using an ideological straitjacket prevents informed thought. It reduces us to using simplistic slogans of the type parodied so effectively by George Orwell in the novel Animal Farm. The animals are mobilised by the motto, “four legs good, two legs bad", until it drowns out any possibility of dissonant thought. Then, once they’re incapable of analysis, the dictum is changed to “four legs good, two legs better”. Solipsism triumphs.

It's no bad thing to call sloppy or mistaken thinking to account. Or to sharpen the original intention of any idea until it is better fitted to achieve its purpose, exposing the rough edges and pointing out the flaws and why it won't achieve what it set out to do. But that requires thinking and consideration, not immediately jumping to a conclusion and condemning something without being able to propose a better solution.

Although this page is titled “Opinion", this doesn't mean it should provide space for people who have fixed beliefs and are immune to reasoning. Only a brave (or stupid) person could insist blindly that everything this government does is “hopeless". Equally, it is utterly impossible to assert it’s faultless.

No matter what your political views, you don't need to try very hard to find a more egregious example of a complete stuff-up than the way Labor has dealt with the asylum seeker issue. It's not (politely) possible to point out how atrociously the government has mishandled this issue every step along the way, to the very steps of the High Court. But this is what happens when you allow polling and uninformed, knee-jerk opinions to guide the formation of policy. Equally, Tony Abbott’s repition of the phrase “stop the boats” is yet another reduction to base emotions, not a course of action. Unfortunately, bigger and better advertising campaigns are seen as the answer to every problem, from climate change onwards. It’s symptomatic of a dramatic decline in a key institution of our civil society.

The media plays a vital role in facilitating interactions and allowing people to balance ideas before coming to a conclusion. The plethora of media outlets available today seems, perversely, to be increasing divisions. They reinforce particular beliefs and exclude evidence to the contrary. The community isn’t engaging in debate in the hope of reaching a common understanding about issues. Instead our fractured media landscape appears to be reinforcing prejudice and stereotypes. The plethora of pages available on the web have turned into a babel of voices, each one screaming more loudly into the wilderness. Sadly, no one is bothering to listen. They’re all too busy shouting.

Recently Julia Gillard suggested that News Ltd might like to ask itself some “hard questions". The implication was the company was mounting a campaign against her. She then became croquettishly tongue-tied and unable to formulate a single example of wrong-doing. As her erstwhile colleague Lindsay Tanner demonstrated in his book Sideshow, politicians are happy to ride the media dragon while it’s carrying them high. It’s folly, then, for politicians feel aggrieved when the beast shrugs and shakes them off its back, dumping them in the mire. The sludge of simplistic sloganeering is toxic. It smears everyone, equally.

THE MAINSTAY OF DEFENCE

2011-08-08T08:37:00.000+10:00

Incredibly, according to a new book by Ian McPhedran, the Air Force and our defence hierarchy were making decisions that could have left the country without a vital component of force structure.

This column appeared in the Canberra Times on Saturday . . .

Procurement

You have to wade patiently through the first 338 pages of Ian McPhedran's new blockbuster “Air Force" before you get to the bombshell. It's here in the middle of a glossy book extolling the pilots and machines of the RAAF, that the explosion suddenly occurs. The allegation's too hot to ignore; an accusation that our top brass risked leaving the country without a strike aircraft, the mainstay of our defence strategy.

The story can't easily be dismissed because it's backed up. At (quite) some length, McPhedran quotes former Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, who's currently our ambassador to Brussels. It might here be relevant to note that Nelson wasn't known as “rain man" for nothing. He is a master of the seemingly extraneous detail but nothing ever goes to waste. Each and every piece of information is quietly lodged and recorded, somewhere in the back of his mind, and retained until it can be used. Eventually, when the moment comes to complete the puzzle he does so, throwing a myriad of interlocking pieces together until they finally reveal the full picture.

That background buttresses an intricate history that Nelson provides detailing the background to the decision to buy 24 Super Hornet aircraft for the RAAF.

It's important to understand the critical role that the aircraft play in our defence strategy. Although billions are spent on the Army, the reality is that we don't have enough soldiers to provide a genuine deterrent for any enemy force that lands on the continent. Soldiers are important and play a big role in our international commitments in places like Afghanistan, but then not the keystone of our defence. The Navy has a somewhat more important role in protecting the country. The fleet is expected to be able to deter any lodgement by protecting the coastline. But until we are able to put more than one submarine to sea at a time and until they're equipped with missiles, they can't strike back at a potential aggressor. That's the role of strike aircraft.

Back in 2006, when Nelson was Minister, the ageing F–111 aircraft (nicknamed the 'pig') had fulfilled this task. The US air force had ordered these back in the early 1960s, although delays in the cutting-edge technology used for the aircraft meant they didn't arrive for service with the RAAF until 1973. Although they were still (just) capable of carrying out their role, by the end of the last decade the planes were requiring at least 180 hours worth of maintenance work for every hour they spent in the air. The problem was that Nelson's predecessor, Robert Hill, had accepted airforce advice and decided to commit to purchasing the new Joint Strike Fighter. On paper this plane was fantastic. It was designed to achieve all the missions that we required. Unfortunately (and this is key to understanding the massive problem that was about to emerge) it was still on the drawing board. Even if everything had run smoothly, with no hitches in the production of the new aircraft or further problems keeping the pigs running, getting the the JSF's introduction to dovetail smoothly with the of the F–111 was going to be a tight-run thing. This was the problem Nelson became more and more agitated about as he got to understand the workings of Defence.

There's no point going through all the detail – you can do that yourself. Nelson remembers being “reassured on many occasions by senior Air Force officers that there would be no 'gap' (in air combat capability) and that the F–111s and classic F/A 18 Hornets could carry the load well into 2013". But Nelson was getting used to being told that there was “no problem" when all the evidence pointed to the contrary. This reflects the commitment and determination that's instilled in officers during their basic training – achieve the mission, regardless of the odds. Unfortunately, although this ability might be vital on the battlefield, it's not a skill that translates well to the bureaucratic jungle of defence procurement. Nevertheless, even as successive delays and postponements began to plague the new JSF project, the Minister continued to receive positive advice, suggesting there was no problem.

And this is where “rain man" comes into his own. He provides the detail of the relevant conversations; whether it's “returning from the Northern Territory to Canberra on a Challenger VIP jet with the then Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, in April 2006" or other meetings discussing the growing danger that the JSF might not be available when needed. Nelson describes finding “a conspiracy of optimism at play . . . It's part of the character of Defence to say 'we can do it!".

Increasingly, Nelson didn't believe it. He became convinced that the delivery of the new aircraft would not occur as initially scheduled. At the same time he became extremely worried that the F-111's were going to require early retirement. Otherwise, they might simply fall out of the sky. Off his own bat he began to investigate purchasing an alternative jet that could cover the emerging capability gap, long before the Air force had accepted or advised him that this could be the case. That's why we've now got the Super Hornets.

The decision, made by Cabinet after Nelson had presented his own “layman's analysis" of the requirement, cost $6.6 billion. The (then) minister reckons the RAAF didn't want to jeopardise the amount of money allocated to the JSF project and this commitment meant that they weren't prepared to see the major problem that was emerging. The Australian Defence Association’s Neil James confirms Nelson’s account. There’s a story the Airforce Chief was bawled out by the CDF and Secretary for going behind their backs to get the new jets. He correctly protested. It was the Minister’s call.

Unsurprisingly, the recently retired head of the Defence Materiel Organisation, Steve Gumley, was also someone who played a major role in alerting Nelson to the growing question marks over the JSF. Today, many (although not all) of the people involved in the decision have moved on and the department is about to face another new major structural reorganisation. It seems highly doubtful this will achieve anything.

In this regard just note the explosion of growth in senior officer ranks over the past decade. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s compiled the numbers. At the turn of the century we had 110 star-ranked officers in the three services. Today there are 183. In the same time the number of full-time servicepeople has grown by 3,842 (a total of 44,552) It’s more than a new star for every 50 rankers.

Your taxes at work.

POLITICAL PHYSICS

2011-08-02T09:09:00.003+10:00

Ah, politics.

Have you been enjoying it lately?

This column erupted, fully and perfectly formed, after a pleasant lunch with my old university friend Dr Leon Le Leu at that marvellous Thai restaurant in Yarralumla, followed by a violin, piano and poetry recital at the Polish Embassy . . .

A quantum theory of politics

"It's not difficult to understand, really”, said Leon. “Just think of modern Australian politics in terms of quantum physics.” He smiled quietly to himself, before settling back comfortably in his chair. I nodded quickly, but it must have been only too obvious that I had no idea what he was talking about. He began to explain.

“Imagine an electron bumping into a photon", he began, before stopping abruptly. He must have seen the blank look creeping over my face. “Look. A photon is like a tiny part of a beam of light. In some ways it behaves like energy; in other respects it's like a particle. This means it's location is impossible to measure precisely." Another nod seemed the only possible response. Then came illumination. “In essence, the particle appears to exist in two places at the one time."

The light-bulb suddenly switched on. Exactly!

As the Danish physicist Niels Bohr suggested, “anyone who is not profoundly shocked by quantum theory has not understood it”. Our politicians have not simply understood, but are exploiting this theory. They offer some voters one thing while promising something different to someone else. Attempts to pin them down are doomed to utter failure.

What could better explain Tony Abbott's response to the government's climate change policy? As the opposition leader famously said to Kerry O'Brien on the 7.30 Report, his spoken words should be disregarded. “The statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are (the) carefully prepared, scripted remarks" (in policy documents).

As a former seminarian Abbott was well aware, however, that even the Bible has rival interpretations of its mysteries. Perhaps this was why he deliberately chose to refer to the gospels; he knew he’d be safe. The divine mysteries have never been revealed.

Sometimes apparently incompatible beliefs coexist under the same roof, rather like the Liberal leader himself and his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull. At other times his comments seem to come from parallel universes, such as his remark that “climate change is crap". Propelled relentlessly by seemingly inexhaustible energy, Abbott is the photon that cannot be pinned down. The very act of attempting to do so seemingly changes the opposition's policy until it is, quite plausibly, in two different places at once.

But if particle theory illuminates the opposition it also raises questions about the government. Exactly what policy prescriptions is it following? Labor is finally moving to take action to reduce the threat of climate change. No one would argue seriously that Australia is not a fragile continent that has always been particularly exposed to the vagaries of the weather. We’ve always wanted to turn the rivers inland and “climate-proofing" the farms – insulating the country from a succession of bad seasons.

Yet instead of action the government appears happy to allow us to be lulled into a false sense of security. The quantum of our emissions, compared to other bigger nations is tiny. Although we can (and morally, must) do our best to reduce these, this means we do not hold the ability by ourselves to turn back climate change. At this point, you'd expect a forward-looking government to be investigating other ways of protecting (most crucially) our food production.

Central to this is, obviously, the Murray Darling river system. Last year scientists warned that unless between 3000 and 4000 billion litres of water a year was returned to the system, it would be in danger of complete collapse. That's when the government appointed Craig Knowles, a former New South Wales Labor politician and “consultant" to take another look at the work of the eminent scientists who’d reported on the emerging crisis. Perhaps there’s something quite special about the way they teach science at Liverpool Boys High School, or Knowles’ other alma mater, Sydney TAFE College. He quickly ascertained exactly where everybody else went wrong. It seems (according to Knowles) that the scientists were actually measuring in the wrong place all along! This is marvellous, because it means we don't actually need to cut water allocations to anyone. Instead of turning water into wine, Knowles has managed to perform another, better miracle. He's turned dry inland salinity into water.

Yet instead of laughter, Knowles' study will be greeted with relief by this government. It means they won't have to worry about taking hard decisions. The water’s atoms will be made to work more productively, existing in two places at the one time. It's a great game; one it seems every politician is playing. Sadly it's always much easier to generate heat, rather than light. No one's much worried about the science: politics is everything. Sometimes it's particularly easy to believe we're back in the Middle Ages, despite being surrounded by the products of the modern world.

As the horrific conflagration of World War II began, Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz reflected on the Campo di Fiori – field of flowers – in Rome. This square had been packed with vendors, rose-pink fish, wine-dark grapes and laughing girls when he'd visited, not long before.

Back in the year 1600 this was the site of regular public executions. Here the Italian mathematician Giordano Bruno was burnt alive; his apostasy had been to proclaim that the sun was not at the centre of the universe – an illegal heresy, demanding the ultimate punishment. The mob were quickly roused to enjoy the spectacle. Thre centuries later, Milosz witnessed the great illusion suggested by the ‘march of progress’. The mobs were again being mobilised, just as they had always been had been. The hot wind of another war; pogroms against the jews, and fear had caught them in its grip.

Yet it’s unfair to suggest that analysis has been completely banished from politics. Both sides of politics are guided by a particular bit of scientific wisdom. It’s one that’s measurable, accurate and unimpeachable. It’s called polling . . . and today it’s the one, true faith.