Sarah Mahew - grab on to what is true

I was quite excited (and, kind of touched) by this video:



But, I am confused as to what "Nokia Responsiveness" is.

I'm happy to see the inclusion of this story here - but what exactly is the point of Nokia Responsiveness and its attempt at civic "conversation starting"? Can anyone enlighten me?

But - actually, just replay the video... and listen to that inspiring question at the end... "do we have the courage to let go of our beliefs in order to grab on to what is true?"

Conroy already filtering his own site

Would I sound paranoid if I said Stephen Conroy's website is deliberately concealing users' searches for "ISP Filtering"?

Well the evidence is on the page itself:

//Customise the tag-cloud to display what shows up
if (unique[i] == "ISP Filtering")
{
continue;
}

Basically, this piece of code simply says "if the value in the List you are displaying is 'ISP Filtering' leave it out". It's there in plain code, in the HTML of the page you download from his site. However many searches anyone makes on "ISP Filetering" it will never be displayed in the list of users' searches - therefore giving a false impression of what people are actually searching for.

It claims to give you information on what users are interested in then specifically alters that information for, what can only been assumed to be, Senator Conroy's own purposes.

It is also a very blunt solution that obviously wouldn't catch values such as "Web Filtering" or "ISP Censorship". Not only is it surprising behaviour - it's also an ineffective, amateurish and clumsy solution to a problem (that he shouldn't have been trying to solve in the first place).

The worst thing about this is - if Senator Conroy doesn't understand what the difference between this and properly removing the results (on the server side) is, then he is an embarrassment to his portfolio and doesn't deserve the role... if he does understand the difference and can't be bothered fixing it "properly" (so you and I can't simply see it ourselves) then he simply doesn't think this is an embarrassing thing to do.

I think the former is more likely - but either way - he just doesn't get it.

More details - news.com.au article on the subject.

Budget '09 Roundup

Every year my best friend (who shall be, from here on, referred to as "C4") and I get together for a special event. One year, as there was no television at my house, he drove a television over to my house, in the car, especially.

No it's not the State Origin, or the World Cup (der, obviously - that's on every 4 years... isn't it?).

It's the budget. That's right, we get together... to watch... the budget.

As the major and most publicly anticipated political event of each year - we both find an embarrassed nerdy pleasure in making the time to watch it.

The main frustration in previous years has been wanting to comment in the middle of the speech - and rewind in order to catch details. This year (along with the beer, wine and cashews) I came to the party armed with note-pad and pen, so I could jot down points of interest without interrupting the flow of the speech. I needn't have bothered, however, as, low and behold, this year C4 brought his DVD recording system to the party so we could pause, discuss and rewind - what a revelation! Someone should tell someone... I don't know... maybe, sports fans, or something, might like this kind of thing too.

Every year I am inspired to write a roundup. So this year...

On top of this, however - C4 was kind enough to point out the discrepancy between the name of my blog and the regularity with which it's updated... perhaps my "ramblings" have not been quite as "incessant" as I would have hoped...

What better time to pick up the pace with my posts again!

So now, for the roundup:


The Roundup


Initial Thoughts

So - once you get past the contemporary need for a "catch phrase" or a sound bite:

"and tonight's budget is brought to you by the expression 'Nation Building for Recovery'"

the first issue with this budget is the fact that it was billed as a "tough budget". In his opening preamble, Wayne Swan says that "economic leadership is about making the tough decisions, no matter what the political consequences might be".

That may be so - but if it is, then this budget does nothing to prove Labor's commitment to economic leadership. Quite the opposite - they have obviously made some less "tough" decisions in order to minimise the political consequences in their most contested constituencies, and other "tough" decisions have been made precisely because there were no political consequences to speak of.

Yes of course - expecting politicians not to be political is like [insert drole comparison of two oxymoronic concepts here]. But still, to claim the actual decisions within this budget as anything approaching "tough" is simply taking the piss. Wayne Swan claimed that "We couldn't raise the pension without hard choices elsewhere" - but apparently... he has.


Pension Payments

• Increase in withdrawal rate
• Increase in qualifying age
• Decrease in super concessions (some temporary)
  

for pensioners; all of these things are savings. But they could hardly be defined as "tough" or "hard choices". All of them are outweighed by increased payments to singles and couples.

Now, don't get me wrong. I support all of these measures. All of them seem fair and right. Or, at least, more fair than the previous system. But none of them should be defined as "tough".


Paid Maternity Leave

All this talk brings me to one of major problems in this budget - the plans for paid maternity leave.

Let's look at some of the big numbers:

• $22 billion - Infrastructure
• $4.7 billion towards a $43 billion PPP Broadband Network
• $5.3 billion - Tertiary Education

Amongst all of this, the government has made one of their "tough" decisions regarding paid maternity leave and postponed it for 18 months.

Now the TOTAL spend over 5 years for the introduction of a Paid Parental Leave system is $731 million - and yet the government sees the need to postpone this until after the next election.

The savings are minimal, and yet the potential cultural benefit so great.

Lets make this clear - we are in a club of 2 (along with the US) as the ONLY OECD countries who have no paid maternity leave. If they were worried about the effect on job security, in a time of economic downturn - they could have found a little extra ($731 million isn't much compared to the rest of the budget) to compensate (small?) businesses for some of the extra costs involved in back-filling staff.

The last thing we want to encourage people to do right now, is to hold off on having more children - and yet that's what this decision does. It's a small price for a great gain - and there's no reason, in my mind, to hold a carrot to the electorate and say "vote for me again - or you might not get paid maternity". In fact I find that insulting.

Does the Rudd government believe in it as a policy or not? Not enough to introduce it - apparently.

You could imagine that this might push some of the Labor faithful towards voting Green... and amazingly enough, this shift is borne out in the latest poles - where Labor have lost 5 or 6 points, and the majority of them have been picked up by the Greens.

"But wait", I hear you cry, "didn't you say the problem was the budget isn't tough enough? Isn't that at least a small saving for tough times?"

And this brings me to to my comment for the budget as a whole.


The Big Problem

The problem with this budget is not the fact that it isn't a tough budget.

The problem for this budget is that it was sold as a tough budget.

In trying to come up with some good "tough" measures that the government could have introduced at this budget - I came up with nothing.

The problem is, anything broad-based enough, tough enough and big enough in total value, to actually be defined as "tough" is, at the same time, dangerously deflationary. And deflation isn't a game we want to risk getting into in this climate.

The truth of the matter is, we missed the opportunity to save as much money as we should have, under the last government. They gave it all back in tax cuts, which were an inflationary measure in boom times. Now we're stuck trying to avoid deflationary cuts in bad times.

It's much like the frustration with the first Swan budget.

There wasn't actually enough difference between the Rudd government's position and the Howard government's. While still in boom times, the Rudd government handed back most of the boom time money in personal tax cuts (only slightly less tax cuts than the Liberals wanted to introduce - but let's take a moment to imagine how much worse the current budget would look if we had introduced the Liberals tax cuts).

So... the problem isn't that this budget isn't tough enough - on the contrary... we need to admit that, what we don't need right now is a tough budget. We need to support spending in key areas - in order to avoid deflationary pressures. And we need to (which this budget does) plan to pull back on that accelerator once things are looking good again.

I actually support much of what this budget puts in motion.

After a period of short-term injections, we now need some medium-term plans to increase productivity and support jobs.

There's money for Health and Education and some areas of Social Security (interestingly not Unemployment or Single Parents).

But - in holding off on introducing the Paid Maternity Leave measures until after the next election, the Rudd government has snubbed its nose at its heart-land voters. The argument, presumably, is "well, who else are they going to vote for?".

The Greens? Well, again, Labor may be hoping that all those votes will come back to them in preferences. And they may well be correct.

But - after years of barracking for Kevin Rudd, in response to this (and his last) budget - my current hope for the next election is that we can find dense enough collections of "Left swinging" voters to make a real splash for the Greens.

For some reason (call me naive), I still believe the Greens will push through policies that represent their core constituencies, and not just the people who might be swayed at election time.

This wasn't an "election budget" - that's coming next time. Rudd will have to do a lot more "voter pleasing" next year. This was his opportunity to introduce some real and valuable "Labor style" policies - and, from my perspective, he missed it. I understand that you need to stay in power - but if you don't take the opportunity to introduce some strong policies when the opportunity is there, what's the point in being in power at all?

Unless of course, he thinks this is an election budget? Just how much does he predict we might be heading for a double dissolution...? Hmmmm...


References:

• Transcript of the 2009-10 Federal Budget, second reading

Phony Pope Mobile Fined

It's been a little while since I posted on offbeat news... well, it's been a little while since I posted on anything. I will be back to the political affairs soon - but in the mean time.

A protest Popemobile, built by Sydney activists as a protest against the Pope's visit in July, was issued with a Defect Notice and put off the road. It's driver, Ian Bryce was booked and fined for "having a roof ornament likely to distract motorists".

Details of its adventures, photos, and a video, are linked from the website worldTRUTHday.org.

On top of this, in related news, we now learn that the Government's bill for World Youth Day has come in at more than $100 million over-budget.

World Youth Day - No New Powers, Just Old Ones

I am more than pleased to report that the new laws, allowing police to detain people or fine them $5,500 for annoying or inconveniencing World Youth Day attendees... for the obvious reason that they could be misused to infringe on people's rights.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/15/2304138.htm

I may have joked about making the laws less unfair by expanding them - but in the end, in all seriousness, sense has prevailed.

Unfortunately it took an appeal to the Full Bench of the Federal Court to realise this outcome - and all the associated costs and fuss that comes with such an appeal... but at least it happened.

Under-funding Public Broadcasters - the problems and pitfalls

In my recent post on under-funding the ABC, I outlined how much the ABC has had its budget cut over the last decade or so... and Kevin Rudd's official reply on the matter.

I have since contacted the minister in question (Senator Conroy) to remind him of the promises made before the election.

But today, Crikey! released their assessment of some of the symptoms of under-funding that are beginning to show themselves.

I can't say it much better than them... so here's the link:

The ABC: outsourcings "R" us

World Youth Day - New Powers

New powers, effective today, have been introduced to allow police to perform partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites - and to allow police to arrest and fine people for "causing annoyance" to World Youth Day participants.

The SHM report.

Critics say that the new laws have the potential to make a crime of wearing a T-shirt with a message on it, undertaking a Chaser-style stunt, handing out condoms at protests, riding a skateboard or even playing music.

I say - these laws haven't gone far enough!

Yes, they are prejudiced against people who aren't participants of World Youth Day.

But the answer isn't to restrict the laws - or repeal them. The solution is to broaden them.

Let's remove the prejudice from these laws by extending their powers to everyone.

World Youth Day causes me great annoyance. Why not fine everyone of the participants for every WYD t-shirt they wear.

All participants of WYD should be strip searched upon leaving any of the "declared areas". People leaving them should be subject to vehicle and baggage searches that require them to remove jackets, gloves, shoes and headwear if requested. And reasonable force should be allowed to make sure they stay inside their "declared areas" if, for any reason, they do not permit the search.

Kristina Keneally is reported as saying "bag checks are a sensible safety precaution which any young person who is going to a major event in Australia … would expect". So, the participants should be expecting them.

The president of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, Cameron Murphy, said the broad meaning of "causes annoyance" had the potential to encompass any activity.

Great! So, basically, if extended to pro-WYD behavior as well as anti-WYD... it would cover any religious singing, all speeches and sermons performed as a part of WYD... and most especially, anything carrying the motto "For the time of your eternal life"!

Bring it on. Let's fine every last one of them for all the really annoying things they're going to subject us to.

Don't shun the idea - use it.

Bring on the new laws... just get rid of the prejudice in them, and we can all join in the game.