Brumby's welcome backflip

Victoria's getting an anti-corruption commission. It's about time, and we need to be cautious about getting too excited until the detail is parsed over.

But in the predictable holler of 'backflip' going around, and having earlier had a dig at the Premier's attitude and silly comments about lawyers myself, I think a modicum of credit should be given.

He commissioned a report, it recommended he change policy, and he did. With many years of frustration in the public service behind me, can I say the shame is that this does not happen more often.

Politicians should not be condemned for 'backflipping' in the face of evidence. It is nothing less than proper conduct.

Bring it on.

Civil Fraud? Ellis & the deliberate misuse of childcare stats

The assertion seemed incredibly smelly to anyone remotely connected to the real world of kids and child care (i.e., not Kate Ellis, nor absent parent Kevin Rudd). A surplus of places? Is my suburb, group of friends, favourite parenting discussion board populated by people living in unusual or exceptional pockets of the country?

Or is the Minister telling something a bit slippery & porky?

Well, no doubt on some level she's technically correct, but Susie O'Brien at the Hun has torn any sense of substantive truth out of her assertions, and I felt it useful to share highlights on the remote chance someone who passes here doesn't otherwise come across it.

So anyway...

Rudd Government informed us last week it had dumped a core election promise of building 260 new childcare centres.

...what I still remain to be convinced about...

shameless, dishonest misrepresentation of statistics it employs to justify its decision

....is the idea that...

The figure averages out all long daycare centre vacancies (as opposed to occasional daycare vacancies) and doesn't present any breakdown according to the age of the child and the specific location of the centre. In effect, therefore, it's a total con

...we can never expect...

It's like saying the average Australian household income is $66,000, so there mustn't be any poor people in Australia

...politicians, because of some vague notion that it's needed for politics to work...

What good are places for three-year-olds in Frankston if you are a pregnant first-time mum in Richmond staring down a two-year waiting list

...the kind of vague notion that propped up 'caveat emptor' for so long...

most centres tend to have a larger number of vacancies for older kids, because many children go to kinder instead. But in many Melbourne suburbs you can't get a place for a one-year-old

...an absurd notion, finally on the way out in commerce...

the Government is being deliberately misleading when it says new centres are no longer needed

...anyway that we can never, ever expect them...

Back then, Labor knew the con was on. Labor's Jenny Macklin insisted at least 260 new centres were needed because: "There's no point having a childcare place available for a four-year-old if you have a two-year-old."

...or more particularly hold them viscerally to account (except by the usual love us or leave us, choice of 2, ballot box option)...

In just under three years, Rudd and his ministers have, in effect, become everything they criticised about the Howard government.

...Precisely! Thanks Susie! Sorry, I was saying... to hold them to account for lying or deliberately misleading the people they are trying to sell their political product to.

I do not accept that we have to accept, for evermore, that it is acceptable for a politician to flagrantly set out to mislead us, and that our only recourse comes once every few years at the ballot box.

I don't know the simple way forward, how to calibrate the test, how to adjudicate and enforce, but if we at least seriously questioned the premise, the accepted state of affairs, then maybe one day we can do better than this rot.

And before I have any further digs at Kate Ellis, I must say I have the same inside reservation about this that I have about the insulation fiasco- that it is not the Minister copping the flack who has really made the key decisions....

In just under three years, Rudd and his ministers have, in effect, become everything they criticised about the Howard government.

Ay, it's not just a bacteria that's putting my insides into turmoil at this eleventh hour.

We need to talk about Kevin... Kate Ellis... Labor...

An explosion of ethical and bad policy misfires may not of itself damage voting prospects, but it is giving me palpitations in membership renewal month.

Kate Ellis has proved (who would ever have thought?) that being young and the 'sexiest politician' or somecrap doesn't actually make you good at the helm of national policy. The astonishing broken child care promise is yet more evidence of why not everything should be run from Canberra. Oh, you have stats that show vacancies do you, somewhere out in the nation? How about coming down into the suburbs and finding them so that people like Priscilla Davies can go to work:

The Clifton Hill woman is on the waiting list for five centres, but has been told to expect an 18-month wait, which has forced her to abandon her plans to return to work in June.

18 MONTHS NO WAY YOU LIE, Kate Ellis must be saying. Except, funnily enough, that's the same wait time in most of the surrounding suburbs as well. Including ours.

Good Labor outcome, Kate.

What else is news? Well down in Victoria we don't need a Royal Commission. In case the fact that a gangland boss can be killed while in almost-complete isolation under video surveillance in maximum security when he was a known hit target etcetera, etcetera, got you a bit concerned. Now you know, it is ALL RIGHT.

He denied he wanted to hide anything, and suggested ''greedy leftie lawyers'' were pushing the issue.

Greedy leftie lawyers.

Well, one can understand Brumby's point. After all if you were a very powerful person you might not want your supporters, funders or associates exposed to a greedy leftie lawyer. Just think what Saturday dinner gatherings they might have omitted to mention.

Covered the asylum backflip/kowtow already. Here's hoping this appeal manages to tap some of the judicial clawback embodied in the recent High Court decision of Kirk. Better yet, how about a declaration from that Court to the effect that there can be no ouster of jurisdiction on any land (sea or air) over which Australia claims sovereignty? A little bit of rule of law can only scare people who like breaking it.

Speaking of which, elsewhere human rights have been dumped. Someone, somewhere, felt threatened. And teachers need to shut up now they've been given laptops. And Kev is still proud that he's officially the worst employer in the nation.

No irony, that's the thing I'm getting from all this. Never mind the ethics, or the lustful adoption of policy-based evidence making, there's no sense of irony. No shame.

Damn. So disappointing.

Memo to the Net: 5 years worth of thoughts on blogging and life... A post-script in assorted figments...

I've fallen into hiatus again. It may be the last time. This may be the last post, sans bugle.

Sometimes its nice to vent and talk for a moment about life. Sometimes its nice to live in the moment. Sometimes there aren't enough moments.

You can't do it all on one blog. Funny doesn't want to read dry, dry doesn't want to read teary. You can't help but care.

It's hard getting too close to a movement you aren't part of.

Being flamed by the other side is unpleasant, slightly. Being flamed by your own is sickening, it turns your world on its head, makes you wonder why you have found common political ground with someone like that.

I started poliblogging 5 years ago with a firm belief that my side of politics held most of the decent people. I now hold the firm belief that it holds a marginal majority of decent people. I have come to be suspicious of extremes, I like the line that joins the yin and the yang.

You can't capture the emotions of parenting on a blog, not fully. It's an experience best enjoyed in person.

Men and women, even those who are trying hard, are still a long way from understanding each other. It is worth the effort, but there is still a long way to go. Very few people are really trying to understand the other.

Debates about music and sport are pointless, logically. They can, however, be a great test of the character of both yourself and those you think you respect.

A room full of bloggers is a study in asymetry and disjunct. It is also a guaranteed source of excellent conversation.

Keeping confidences can be hard. When someone has coffee with you and talks about how they're considering joining either Party A or Party B, then joins the latter and within weeks starts virulently attacking Party A and all of its supporters on their high profile blog, you don't break the confidence. But its frustrating, and you learn about the nuance that underpins so much polemic.

The more people you tell, the less you can write about. Anonymity is the friend of fine personal blogging (see my first 10 or so posts...).

Before LOLCATS was big, I gave you Chairman Mao, don't forget it.

An idiotic blog about a talking cat is an amazingly popular idea. A talking cat is a very funny, and telling, way to discover that some of your favourite threads are populated by people with an irony bypass.

It was also my wife's favourite.

A post about a 60 year old bodybuilder will attract daily visits from people who have searched for 60 year old bodybuilders on Google. It will prove to be the post with the longest tail. You will find yourself wondering at the meaning of life. (redux, perhaps?)

The kids are doing fine, thank you. Mitts is walking around holding on to things, taking steps, and Bear is jumping, painting, helping me water our new mini herb garden and still taking no prisoners. Beloved is back at work, enjoying the return to adult interaction. Minh and Mao are enjoying the new house and the greatly increased time spent outside.

I'm on tolerably better terms with my father, and with myself in respect of my father. In his own, emotionally retarded ways, he's been making small efforts. He still isn't being a proper grandfather, but perhaps the worst interpretations I started to put on his actions were excessive. I hope so, disappointed as I am.

Being a parent is complex. Try to listen to the narrative of the person, allow that to sit apart from the narrative you've adopted. For my part, I'm tired of existing narratives. All of them.

The second hardest thing to capture in a post is raw emotion. The hardest is humour.

It will be reasonable to call for an end to anonymous blogging when it is illegal to hold anything a person has said on a blog against them in a place of work. When you see pigs fly, let me know.

I have learned about mutuality and ethics. I learned not to flame, as I don't like being flamed. Something my mummy said about doing unto others springs to mind.

In this and other things I believe blogging has made me a more thoughtful person.

Blogging is often more like talking than the kind of writing we associate with articles and books. The world does not understand this.

As large group and corporate blogs take over the 'sphere, I reflect that the art of the editor, now much maligned, was always at least as important as the art of the writer.

Writing posts is quite easy. It can be done efficiently and balanced with a decent workload. What drains your energy and time is going back to comment threads to see what people are saying about your last assertion.

Godwin's Law is a crock, designed to allow history to repeat itself. It is based on the negligent conflation of two distinct acts: asserting equivalence and drawing analogy. If you see people cracking down on dissent, or touting racial nationalism, or calling for war at the drop of a hat, history is there to remind us of why we find these things so repugnant.

Feed readers, facebook and twitter have all been invented in the time I've been blogging. What does this say about a policy focussed on teaching primary school kids to use laptops?

When I was in primary school, Ataris had just been invented. I wish I'd learned to work one of those Ataris inside out, I'd have been so much better off when I hit the workforce in the late '90s.

People have given me some touching and profound advice on this blog, and shared the most personal and instructive experiences. Thank you, I am grateful. This has been a highlight.

Once you start keeping 'a record', such as things your kids are doing, a blog can become a source of incredible guilt if you are not diligent and thorough.

Long posts that talk about all sorts of unrelated crap are rarely read. I know.

Part of the reason for previous blogging resurrections was a sense of wanting to reconnect with my online peeps. Facebook has now been invented, there was always email. Mine's armagny [atsymbol] gmail DOT com.

The answer to that is, I don't know, maybe.

Work is hard to find satisfying once you've turned down 2 or more opportunities to do jobs you'd prefer. Even if they were on less pay, or in Canberra.

The Oz Blogosphere is ostensibly saturated. But there are major topics that are all but ignored. I'm not sure why, or whether there is value in exploring them, but I do think there is still room for more, well-placed, writings.

Ditto political parties. On a left-right axis the space is largely filled. On a more nuanced, multi-axis analysis, there are some large empty spaces, and they sit surprisingly close to the middle ground.

Australia is an inherently conservative country, and the likes of Tony Abbott or Barnaby Joyce should be treated with the respect that you'd give to a Taipan in a sleeping bag.

Like music, and probably other creative arts I know less about, writing can sap your emotions as much as it can buoy them.

Child hatred is as common as doting parental blogging. Sometimes, when I'm reading some bigot's rant about prams in cafes or pregnant women, I wonder "Do they vote the way I do?" I hope not, but the thought is troubling and not easy to dislodge.

A way to test the true mettle of your favourite bloggers is to experiment by joining in the same old threads under a different ID. See who treats you like an outsider, see the snobbery and exclusion embraced by some of your favourite blogerati. It can feel like the sandpit all over again.

All good posts must come to an end. So must messy, tatty, incoherent ones.

So must messy, tatty, incoherent blogs. I have, after all, given you an engagement, a wedding, 2 cats, 2 kids, and an outstanding reason to explore old Brandy.

Back to hiatus, perhaps not for long, perhaps for ever.

Love yaz all.

A.

Shock News: China isn't a utopian democracy!

In other news the notion that underpinned trade liberalisation through the 1990s in particular, that it should quickly lead to other forms of 'liberalisation', has yet again been exposed as half-baked apologia.

It's big news, this whole 'imprison without trial etc' thing that we've suddenly learned about China. The change is encapsulated in the headline

"Magic Dragon grows into menacing bully "

So before a single well-paid executive who chose to do business in a totalitarian state knowing the risks was imprisoned, it was just a Magic Dragon?

It would clearly be too harsh to describe the following as the actions of a bully:

Threatening Taiwan?

Banning absolutely everything?

Slaughtering minorities of various types?

Killing thousands every year after fauxtrials?

It is the government's job to lobby for Mr Hu as best it can. It should also learn lessons in terms of the lengths China will go to in the name of resource security. It is a national administration that cannot be blindly trusted, and anyone (such as myself on previous posts) who had a flippant attitude towards ownership of Australian assets by Chinese state-owned corporations will be rethinking some of their assumptions.

International relations is a discipline of constant learning and nuancing, and around the world attitudes to China may experience a bit of nuancing after this.

But let's keep perspective: businesses will not stop going there, they are not above sacrificing lives to make money. There are plenty of places on the planet businesses operate at present that put their executives at far greater risk.

If Rio had refused to do business with Chinese Government interests to begin with on the basis of ethics, then this would not have happened. Likewise for the more mundane, business-related reason of the lack of rule of law, allegedly a big factor in attracting investment. China fails both tests utterly, yet Rio incorporated political risk, made decisions, and in this rare case has stumbled across awful consequences.

Other Australians who are charged overseas can end up facing the death penalty, also without anything resembling what we would call a trial, or justice.

Powerful but politically ignorant editors should do a bit of reading up on wikipedia before drafting such mind-numbing headlines.

Political Constructivism and Biological Determinism

Is it a case of ne'er the twain shall meet?

My lack of blogging in part reflects an attempt to focus on my research paper and an ongoing struggle to resolve my preferences within the existing schools of international theory. I am, as far as project 'Gnac is concerned, caught between competing ontologies (Or it is epistemologies? I find the precise demarcation of these tortuous expressions sometimes hard to pin point.).

The problem is that after years of encountering theory in an on-off way through studies in literature, psychology, law and international relations, I haven't found a home. In a nutshell, positivism seems to me extremely simplistic, and the methods of critical theory have plenty of value. However I do not share what I call automatic hypothesis-conclusion reasoning, what I see as a seamless (and in turn uncritical) shift from using critical methods to 'uncover' an alternative reading (or hypothesis) to instantly adopting that reading as a 'true' conclusion. And, to put it simply, I believe a significant portion (though far less than the total) of our personas is biologically shaped, if not quite determined.

At the political level, and even more so at the international political level, I lean towards the existing framework being constructed, something that can be re-thought and changed, while also being convinced that at least some of those constructs, and behaviours of actors within them, may be influenced from the biological level onwards.

The behaviour of supra-societal individuals like Putin, Hussein or Bush JR, for example is not always rational in a sense that fits easily within positivist doctrine. Yet while there is ample room to build theories around how national and international structures, including ideology and social pressures, may have an influence on such behaviour, there seems also to me to be room for considering how inherent factors gone wrong, perhaps even skewed by social or ideological pressures, have also played a role.

Dear blogestrians, do you have a view? And even if you disagree, if you are familiar with academic texts in the realm of post-positivist theory (as I'm sure some of you are), can you point me towards work that seeks to deal with conflicts and potential agreements between these two broad schools of thought?

Grech and the Libs- a tryst that's now public business

On Lateline last night Hockey was squirming, refusing to answer relevant questions and repeating Turnbull's breathtakingly arrogant analogy between their 'special friends' (or is it 'little mates'?) in the Australian Public Service and a journalist's sources. This brings yet another dishonest ploy into the utegate fiasco. The two are clearly different and both Hockey and Turnbull know it.

If politics and journalism rely on members of the Commonwealth Senior Executive Service to breach their contracts, their code of conduct, their responsibilities to the sitting minister and ultimately the public, while being paid at least $150,000 per annum, then this sits in what might be described as a grey area of law and ethics. It is not something to simply sneer and dismiss as a concern in every case.

Whistleblowing in the face of overt concerns about breaches of ethics by others, or manifest public interest, is quite different to merely helping your ideological mates and acting as an ongoing mole. That is dishonest and unethical. For the journalist or politician who receives such information the matter may be less clear, as it is accepted that they use virtually everything they can get their hands on in the course of their work.

However this case is clearly different.

Allegations remain largely speculative and piecemeal, but with the following presently in the public sphere:

- That the email was a piece of fraud, designed as a direct attack on the holders of the two highest offices in this land;

- A strong relationship between the upper echelons of the Liberal Party and Godwin Grech going back years;

- Bucketloads of circumstantial evidence swirling around that suggests Grech may have been involved in the creating or proliferation of the email;

- Bucketloads of circumstantial evidence swirling around that suggests Grech is inconsistent with the truth, and has not met (to put it at the minimum) basic expectations that come with being a very highly paid member of the Senior Executive Service of the APS;

we deserve and are owed a full explanation of why the obvious joining of the dots should not take place.

Turnbull's patronising tone towards the reporter last night was vintage truffles: the arrogant, unrepentant spoilt brat whose contacts, blue ribbon background and sheer bullying prescence have always got him his way.

Surely he looked at that footage later, in the overall context where he is fighting for his political life, and thought: What Was I Thinking? It was as if Latham, a day after grabbing Howard's hand too hard, turned and put Brendan Nelson in a bearhug.

Rudd's decision to avoid a night of the long knives in the APS was in some ways admirable, but this affair has surely damaged the careers of those who want to be able to move between working for the political party of their choice, and working for the public service.

Sinophobia gets a natural break - on SBS

As I sit here, family asleep, flicking through my blogroll, the most blatant and frankly spurious attempt to link a bit of nationalistic business (?) lobbying to the horrific Tiananmen Square massacre just bleated out on the telly. The massacre is a good reason for opposing the Rio Tinto takeover?

This makes no sense. There is no rational link between control of Australian resource companies and human rights abuse. That is not to say human rights abuse should not be vigorously taken up with perpetrator governments, more so than at present. But this is not the context.

This ad appears to be driven by either extreme nationalism, outright anti-Asian racism, or plain business interest. After all, who stands to benefit if the deal fails? I do not know, the tangled web of relevant interests is not in front of me, but it sure isn't the human rights lobby.

The ad just got a second placement as I've been typing. SBS have no doubt sold those placements for healthy consideration, being bang in the middle of the World News and just minutes after a story going over the miseries of the massacre.

But I find that fact, the implicit sell-out of values and the unanswered questions about who would seek or fund such an ad positively creepy. Is it linked to the ad featuring Barny and Xenophobe? Or have we moved further into the catacombs of deep national phobia than even those fruitbats would care to enter?

Postcript: The deal is now off, anyway. As I noted in comments, my tone in this post probably needs a touch of context:

"It came across a bid reds under beds, not as nuanced human rights discourse, but then again let's acknowledge here that I was well into my second shiraz and getting pretty sleepy too, so the post was written in about 4 off-the-cuff minutes..."

Sue Morphett: Cancel her citizenship

Deeply unpleasant. I'm wary of just having a knee-jerk reaction to high executive salaries but if you wanted to capture the eyeball-popping arrogance and contempt displayed by the corporate world at its worst and most unethical then this unapologetic nightmare is your poster girl:

Chief Executive Sue Morphet saw her pay almost triple to $1.68 million after being promoted from general manager of underwear and hosiery to the company's top job. The executives' combined pay jump - from $7 million to $15 million - also included the salary of former chief executive Paul Moore, as well as a $3 million retirement bonus he was given upon departure.

Then the quislings, without apparent necessity (No Mr Carr, thanks all the same but it's not about the money, I just don't like your personality), move thousands of jobs to China. And the arrogant way she scoffed at a question about whether she'd continue to misleadingly use great Aussie icons and trade off so much jingoism and loyalty that has made the brand what it is? Beggars belief.

Don't like conditions in Australia? Move to your great utopia, China, and don't come back.