Occupy London: radical or conservative?

December 5th, 2011

For almost two months now, the Occupy London camp has remained firmly entrenched outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, having been banned from the private grounds of Paternoster Square, where the London Stock Exchange is located. After winning its philosophical “huddled masses” tête à tête with the St Paul’s authorities, the movement is preparing itself to tackle its next challenge: eviction proceedings being brought to bear by the City of London Corporation. The formal hearing is scheduled to take place from 19th December.

It certainly feels that despite its raison d’être being as self-evident as ever, Occupy London is on the cusp of an existential crisis. In the coming weeks and months, the camp will need to fight for the right to maintain its most visible presence in the British capital, one of the world’s international finance hubs. The storm of publicity attracted during the movement’s disagreement with the St. Paul’s hierarchy has died away, and with it, many of its most effective tendrils of engagement with the general public. Amidst all the background noise of day-to-day news and political developments, the debate is slowly and steadily shifting away from the question “are the international Occupy movements right about modern capitalism?” and towards the question “is it time to finally get rid of all those tents outside of St Paul’s?” We all know how hungry the 24×7 news cycle beast can be; it would very much like another dramatic (and hopefully violent!) Dale Farm style confrontation between the authorities and people who purportedly shouldn’t be where they are.

In short, it is difficult to see what the next step for local branches of the global “Occupy” movement should be. Turn radical, and they stand to grab some more publicity and potentially reinvigorate their campaigns for economic justice – but they also stand to turn large swathes of the law-abiding general public off their arguments. The current tack, at least in the London context, seems to be rather more conservative; just last week Occupy London published an “Initial Statement of the Corporations Working Group”, effectively a press release. It sure sounds high-falutin’, but it’s all a tad banal frankly: here are the three key points:

We must abolish tax havens and complex tax avoidance schemes, and ensure corporations pay tax that accurately reflects their real profits.

…

Legislation to ensure full and public transparency of all corporate lobbying activities must be put in place. This should be overseen by a credible and independent body, directly accountable to the people.

…

Those directly involved in the decision-making process must be held personally liable for their role in the misdeeds of their corporations and duly charged for all criminal behaviour.

Laudable sentiments, yes, but hardly visionary ones, and my, what a vague and middling way in which to express them! If the purpose of the Occupy movement was to establish an amateurish tent city of students, interested passers-by and disenfranchised Liberal Democrats, firing occasional uncontroversial missives into the offices of news organisations across the country – they have succeeded. But it’s clearly not the right path.

Occupy London needs to find a new, creative way of continuing to express its message, or risk fading inconsequentially into the background static.

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Ed Miliband’s centre-left: not drowning, waving

October 14th, 2011

Party conference season here in the United Kingdom has come and gone during the last few weeks; the Liberal Democrats kicked off in Birmingham, followed by Labour in Liverpool and the Conservatives in Manchester. There was much grumbling in the media about the cost of sending vast teams of correspondents north to cover the proceedings of each conference on site, amidst a general fuzz of indifference amongst the general public. The raison d’etre of the “party conference” is after all, under siege in the modern era: today’s mass political party does not tolerate serious debate or disagreement. The energy of conference instead tends to be expended on stage-managed set pieces and the gormless totting-out of phrases crafted by snake oil merchants and wet-eared graduates untouched by the realities of modern working life. The appearance of Hugh Grant at all three conferences – despite his very good anti-tabloid journalism motivations – says something a little too poetic about that.

Amongst the liberal media, there was a clear expectation that Ed Miliband needed to “punch through” with his conference speech (video | transcript) in order for Labour to reassert itself as a credible force in Opposition. The Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government has made enemies across the country in the last year and a half, paying lip service to David Cameron’s “Big Society” whilst forcing draconian spending cuts on the public sector and local councils, strangling charities and hoping inanely for the private sector to storm into gear and lift the economy from the doldrums. Labour should be doing splendidly under these conditions, but at best, it is only doing satisfactorily.

There is an endless array of reasonable explanations for Labour’s current woes, from the “honeymoon effect” currently still enjoyed by the Conservative / Lib Dem Coalition, to the sprawling five year terms that bequeath UK governments the luxury of time to plan and deliver, but oppositions only early-term echo chambers that are un-fillable with policy. At some point, of course, it is the leader of the party who must ultimately take responsibility for their party’s performance, and the vultures, if not exactly circling Ed Miliband, have at least spotted him looking a bit bedraggled on the horizon.

Miliband’s conference speech this year was, in a couple of parts, very good. The “quiet crisis” narrative that he wheeled out, quite accurately describes the biggest problem facing modern capitalism in affluent societies:

But you know there’s a quiet crisis which doesn’t get the headlines. It’s about the people who don’t make a fuss, who don’t hack phones, loot shops, fiddle their expenses, or earn telephone number salaries at the banks. It’s the grafters, the hard-working majority who do the right thing. It’s a crisis which is happening in your town, your street and maybe even in your home. It is a crisis of the promises made over the last thirty years. The promise that if you’re in work, you will do better each year.

The promise that if you work hard at school the doors of opportunity will open up to you. The promise that if you teach your kids the difference between right and wrong and bring them up properly, they will get a good job, and a decent home. These crises point to something deep in our country. The failure of a system.A way of doing things. An old set of rules.

Instinctively, most of us living in relative but perhaps not absolute comfort in places like Australia can relate to this. The promise of modern capitalism – the social bargain – is that if you do well in school and work hard, you can make a comfortable life for yourself and your family. It is a bargain that promises much to all, but today, only delivers to some. Today, we all know of people who are brilliant at their jobs –educators, nurses, police officers, people working a trade – who don’t get out of society what they put in. We all know of people who are doing the best they can in life, but for whom buying a home in their hometown necessitates either dumb luck, a large inheritance, 80 hours a week in a “profession”, unscrupulous activity, or a combination thereof. Movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the recent housing crisis protests in Israel seem to be manifestations of this broader system problem, that most political parties and vested interests are predisposed to ignore.

In other parts, the speech was ill-judged. Very, very little was offered by Miliband on the policy front, with one of the few policy snippets offered tanking particularly badly; a limp pledge to reduce university fees from a maximum of £9000 to £6000 a year. Good luck marshalling emotional fervour amongst the student population for Labour’s cause with that pledge! Former RBS chief Fred Goodwin was personally hoisted up once again as a kind of political piñata, and thrashed about in a way unbecoming a prospective national leader. Miliband’s characterisation of himself as an “outsider” trying to shake the tree of the “insiders” had some promise, but come out sounding a bit grandiose, as his speechwriters tried desperately to connect who their man is with who and what he is fighting against:

What’s my story? My parents fled the Nazis. And came to Britain. They embraced its values. Outsiders. Who built a life for us. So this is who I am. The heritage of the outsider. The vantage point of the insider. The guy who is determined to break the closed circles of Britain.

But perhaps the clincher, at least for me? Listening to Ed Miliband read a conference speech is like listening to an excited prefect with a headcold hold court at school assembly. It sounds shallow (and is), but this is democracy in 2011, and your ability to capture and hold an audience matters. Even if Labour’s leader manages to orchestrate some good policy formulation with his team over the next 12 to 24 months, it is very difficult to see him punching through and connecting with ordinary voters.

At least for the time being, under “Red Ed”, Labour are pinning their hopes on the Eurozone crisis and fiscal bloody-mindedness of the Tories running the economy into the ground. They’re not going to win on their own merit at this rate.

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

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Up philanthropic creek with a funny paddle

September 13th, 2011

Early this evening London time, Little Britain’s David Walliams clocked off after a mightily impressive feat, swimming 140 miles of the toxic Thames over eight days in aid of Sport Relief. In the process he has managed to raise over £1,000,000, which will be invested by UK charity Comic Relief in a number of worthy causes, including mental health, refugee and asylum seeker support, and local community programs. Along the way he has had to contend with Thames tummy, some typically mediocre British Autumn weather, and even managed to save a drowning Labrador. If he has successfully managed to avoid sustaining some serious health problems as a result of his swim, he can probably count himself lucky.

The whole venture speaks eloquently to some of the challenges facing charitable organisations and governments in the twenty-first century. The usefulness of the collision between charity and celebrity certainly bears some consideration. It is difficult to envisage any ordinary person or any politician managing to achieve the level of media coverage and attention that Walliams has managed to reel in for Comic Relief through his superhuman aquatic efforts. Yes, it was a stunt, and it has been a little self-aggrandising, but frankly this is the sort of public-spirited self-aggrandisement that both the United Kingdom and Australia could do with a lot more of. As wrong-headed as some of them may be, the least a celebrity can do with all their stardust and whimsy is to set some of it aside for some worthy causes.

The flipside in this particular case, of course, is that the amount of money Walliams has managed to pull in arguably could and should have been much greater. £1,000,000 is a lot of loot, but considering the extraordinary pools of wealth many individuals and corporations have at their command in the United Kingdom, it feels like a slightly understated amount. Perhaps it is a function of this “age of austerity” that we live in, but it seems in this case the rigour of the stunt has not been outweighed by the amount donated. Playing the devil’s advocate for just a moment: why not just get together with a bunch of other wealthy celebrities and businesspeople, donate £100,000 each and achieve the same result?

The fiercest irony? In the same era that boring old democratic governments with their unexciting processes, procedures and “rule of law” are being pestered by much of the public to lower taxes and withdraw from society – a comedian swimming up a shit-addled river is able to extract some willing silver from all our pockets. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…. the future!

You can support David’s Sport Relief efforts here.

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End days for dead paper and “Murdochracy”?

August 1st, 2011

The intensity may have reduced since James and Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks appeared before the UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, but the crisis besetting News International is still burbling along in the background, bunted doggedly onwards from time-to-time by The Guardian and the BBC. As the embarrassing allegations continue to slide out, one gets a clear sense (as Kim has observed) that things will never by the same for the tabloid press again – in the UK, at least. The saga has been that rare civil society event that unites everyone from all walks of life in moral outrage (whether real or confected) – from Nick Griffin’s BNP and David Cameron’s Tories, through to Ed Miliband’s Labour, the Greens, and everyone in between, even including the Murdochs themselves!

There are a few key interlinking threads here that I think invite some serious discussion: the state of the Murdoch brand, the UK media context and finally the Australian media context.

The News International media brand, in the United Kingdom at least, has been positively smashed, perhaps irrevocably. When News of the World published its final edition, with all proceeds going to charity, it had trouble finding charities willing to accept its money. The details of recent formal and informal meetings between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer with members of the Murdoch family are now being pored over with genuine distrust and disdain in the public, rather than the indifference that is typical. James Murdoch, the youngest Murdoch scion (strangely relatively unknown in Australia), has had his character brutally tested and his reputation as an executive dragged through the mud by all the allegations of wrong-doing on his watch. Rupert Murdoch’s image has morphed instantly from the powerful media mogul to end all media moguls into a tottering 80 year-old man who you wouldn’t be overly surprised to find in your local nursing home. Corporate dynasties suddenly seem just a little “last century”, relics of a more feudal, slightly more despotic capitalist era. If I were a financial advisor or a stock market activist, I would have some serious concerns about the transparency of the dealings of the various family members perched around the top of the News hierarchy, and advising my clients accordingly.

In the UK, the phone-hacking scandal has emerged in an age where circulation is in decline and newspapers seem on the fast track to extinction in their current form. Prices are being forced down (The Sun is just 20p!) and so is quality. Travelling on the underground in London, it quickly becomes apparent that the majority of people who bother to read a newspaper read the Metro, a free rag churned out by Associated Newspapers, who own the right-wing Daily Mail. Dead paper is – let’s face it – nice on a lazy weekend, but in this age of portable, wireless technology, really quite dumb. Personally, I’ve just subscribed to the Guardian Kindle edition – and boy does it make massive sense: cheaper than the paper edition, more convenient (downloads automatically each morning, readable on a packed train), and so much more environmentally friendly to boot. Is this the future of news?

If indeed it is the future of news, from what I can gather (admittedly from several thousand miles away), it might take Australia more than a little time to catch up. Australian newspaper circulation is of course also in long-term decline. Evolution in the Australian publishing market is also restrained by its diabolical levels of concentration; Fairfax and News Limited dominate the scene to such an extent that their half-life as newspaper publishers in the traditional sense is probably going to exceed that of their UK counterparts. I am not getting the sense that the Daily Telegraph or the Herald Sun are suffering from any significant amount of backlash from the exploits of the News of the World (please correct me if I am wrong in the comments!).

Will this saga be the watershed for publishing and the media/political nexus in Australia that it seems it will prove likely to be in the UK?

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

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Johann Hari’s interview “augmentation”

June 29th, 2011

Most readers at some point will have come across the writings of Johann Hari, a freelance journalist who writes regularly for The Independent here in the UK. Hari has a distinctive, uncommonly direct writing voice; he is known for his strident left-wing views and for speaking out in the international media on a wide range of issues, from the immorality of some aspects of capitalism through to climate change, gay rights and the war on drugs. He is also known for his compelling interviews with global players.

It is this latter oeuvre that has landed Johann Hari in hot water. In the last twenty-four hours, it has emerged that the methodology he employs in conveying the responses of his interviewees may leave a little to be desired. Blogger Brian Whelan has discovered that some verbatim passages from Hari’s interviews attributed to the interviewees are textually identical to previously published quotes. Co-incidence? Well, no, as Johann bravely and perhaps a little naively decided to clear up himself on his blog:

When I’ve interviewed a writer, it’s quite common that they will express an idea or sentiment to me that they have expressed before in their writing – and, almost always, they’ve said it more clearly in writing than in speech. (I know I write much more clearly than I speak – whenever I read a transcript of what I’ve said, or it always seems less clear and more clotted. I think we’ve all had that sensation in one form or another).

So occasionally, at the point in the interview where the subject has expressed an idea, I’ve quoted the idea as they expressed it in writing, rather than how they expressed it in speech.

The debate has since exploded on Twitter, (#johannhari, #interviewsbyhari), with many or most contributors seemingly allowing their political views or sparkling Twitter-wit to addle their judgement. Editor of the Indy Simon Kelner has been forced to weigh in but has so far declined to act decisively, somewhat meekly noting that he has not received any complaints about Hari in the decade for which he has written for the paper. CJ Schuler has contributed a blog to the Indy website that also somehow manages to miss the point, neglecting to mention Hari’s confessional blog post.

Is Hari a great writer and iconoclast of the left? Yes. Can his occasional “rewording” (sans explanation) of the responses of his interviewees be justified, whether in the interests of clarity and flow or for any other reason? Not a chance. When I read an interview, I should have the right to assume that what it has been reported that the subject contemporaneously said is what they actually said. It is surely a prime obligation of the interviewer to make clear to the reader where any obfuscation or alteration in their presentation of the remarks of their subjects has taken place. I don’t necessarily need to read the subject’s “ums” and “ahs”, but what is conveyed to the reader needs to align as closely as possible with what they actually said. If it is permissible to substantively diverge from this for stylistic reasons, the whole point of conducting conversational interviews is called into question. What is the point – so that a hyper-edited amalgam of the subject’s best ever quotes can be published together with a bit of journalistic “over lunch”, “he shifted in his chair” wrapping?

It’s not for me to judge what The Independent should do, but I would be very surprised if the paper didn’t move immediately to implement guidelines explicitly banning this sort of practice. Johann’s interesting but ultimately self-destructive mea culpa on his blog surely would probably not have warmed the cockles of his various editors, publishers and professional colleagues. Given how unedifying this episode has been for all these folks and arguably the broader journalistic profession, one would have to think that a firm public reprimand is in order for Hari, together with some further organisational consideration regarding the rights and responsibilities of journos who blog.

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

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Violence, democracy and the mass media

June 9th, 2011

It can hardly be denied that violence has a peculiarly vicarious allure in the modern mass media environment, regardless of whether we are talking ratings, book sales, ticket sales, clicks, or good old-fashioned circulation. Think James Patterson, the “world’s best-selling author”. Consider the amazing proliferation of “acronymy” crime dramas (CSI, NYPD, SVU, …) showing in primetime across the globe, the drooly critical praise for programs like The Sopranos and The Wire, and of course the Underbelly phenomenon in Australia. We might not “like” violence; indeed many or most of us despise it, but it sure does tend to get our attention. As notionally interesting as the latest deliberations of parliamentary sub-committee D31 are, we can’t expect our [yawn] elected representatives to seriously compete for our time and interest with this week’s fictional serial killer, can we?

The supremacy of violence (perhaps rivalled only by sex) as an attention magnet in today’s information-saturated world poses some serious questions of old-fashioned peaceful protest in the democratic tradition. Arundhati Roy, speaking to Stephen Moss in The Guardian about her ties to Maoist guerrillas in India, sums things up quite succinctly:

Does she condemn that violence? “I don’t condemn it anymore,” she says, “If you’re an adivasi [tribal Indian] living in a forest village and 800 CRP [Central Reserve Police] come and surround your village and start burning it, what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to go on hunger strike? Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience?”

Violence attracts audiences. When up to 500,000 people marched peacefully through the streets of London in opposition to the Conservative Government’s cuts agenda in March this year, most people outside the UK only heard about it because of the violent actions of a tiny minority of self-styled anarchists and thugs. And whilst peaceful protest has underpinned most of the populist movements of the so-called Arab Spring, violence has clearly had a role to play, from Mohamed Bouazizi’s defining act of self-immolation in Tunisia, through to the mortar attack on President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s compound which looks likely to prove decisive in Yemen. The magnetism of violence has arguably even created a perverse imperative for protest movements to “bait” governments into responding disproportionately, in order to attract the attention of the “great and the good” and the global mass media. Only escalating violence forced the global community’s clumsy fist to swing in Libya, and sadly it appears that only comparatively violent escalations in places such as Bahrain and Syria are likely to provoke serious, co-ordinated global responses there.

It is a paradox that in the largely peaceful, meticulously ordered societies most of us live in today, individual acts of violence are proving to be as effective a tool for attracting attention as they have ever been. Perhaps in retrospect, following 9/11 and the culmination of a decade-long international obsession with Osama bin Laden, this really shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us.

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

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The alternative vote (AV) referendum

May 9th, 2011

Here in the United Kingdom the nation is waking up on Thursday May 5th, the day of the alternate vote (AV) referendum and some would say, judgment day for the political career of the Liberal Democrat Deputy PM Nick Clegg. The referendum was arguably the most politically important concession extracted by the Lib Dems from David Cameron’s Conservatives as part of their coalition agreement. Victory for “Yes” case proponents will deliver meaningful and overdue electoral reform, together with a substantive apologia to the British people for the oft craven capitulation of the Lib Dems to the Tory policy agenda. Victory for “No” case proponents will leave many Liberal Democrat supporters baffled as to just how their party has profited from their “deal with the devil”, and progressives more pessimistic than ever about serious democratic reform in the United Kingdom.

Recent polling strongly suggests that the latter scenario will come to pass, with likely serious implications for the health of the coalition agreement and Nick Clegg’s already comatose leadership. The “No” campaign has been heavily backed politically by the Conservative Party and financially by regular Tory donors, and the Labour Party is offering only partial support. The Labour leadership under Ed Miliband supports the “Yes” case, but many influential “Old Labour” figures have sided with the Tories and are urging a “No” vote. In short, the lack of broad, bi-partisan support for change which arguably killed off the majority of referenda put to the Australian people since Federation looks set to do the same for the alternative vote in the United Kingdom today.

For me, the AV campaign was summed up by a single image yesterday. The Conservative Party’s headquarters is located at Millbank Tower at 30 Millbank, a short, languorous stroll south from the House of Parliament in Westminster. Walking past it on my way home from work yesterday, I was a little surprised to observe outside a bright purple open-top double-decker bus, emblazoned with “No 2 AV” slogans. The open top of the bus was filled with a rabble of young Tories (presumably supplied by party HQ), waving signs emblazoned with checked boxes in support of FPTP, and making a cacophonous and indistinct noise. The bus proceeded to drive slowly up Millbank towards the Houses of Parliament, as the Tories onboard desperately tried to attract attention, cheering when the occasional passing motorist sounded their horn, whether in support or opposition.

Passers-by seemed to be scratching their heads. It was a classic case of sound and fury signifying nothing, wholly representative of the sort of meaningless froth and colour that looks set to seal victory for the “No” campaign, which lest we forget, has been orchestrated from go to whoa by the Conservative Party.

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

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The biggest, most destructive drinking game of all

April 13th, 2011

There is a ubiquitous, wildly popular pink elephant in the room. The “bad news” about alcohol keeps rolling in, but boy oh boy, it’s a whole lot easier to ignore it. In November 2010, The Guardian reported the results of a study produced by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs and published in the Lancet. The study suggested that alcohol was “the most dangerous drug in the UK” by a fair margin, more holistically destructive than even heroin, cocaine and tobacco. Late last week, research conducted by the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition Project (EPIC) was released, finding that some 13,000 cancers each year in the United Kingdom are likely traceable back to people’s drinking habits. As Sarah Boseley reports, even small or moderate levels of consumption (e.g. 2 daily drinks for men and 1 for women) appears to significantly increase the risk of cancer, particularly in the mouth, oesophagus, voicebox and pharynx.

Clearly, the prisms through which governments, societies and indeed individuals across the world view drugs are incredibly distorted. It’s not over-egging it to suggest that triple or quadruple standards are in play. In the red corner, we have dangerous, illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine which are almost universally considered globally to be “bad” drugs, with stiff legal penalties imposed for both possession and trafficking. About the length of a good jab away, we have cannabis: still an illegal substance in most jurisdictions, but broadly becoming acceptable for medicinal purposes, and widely viewed as a much less dangerous drug than so-called “Class A” drugs, as they are known in the UK.

Taking a few more drowsy steps across the ring, we have tobacco; once upon a time, a wildly popular, publicly accepted drug, but now suffering from pariah status. It’s widely accepted that prohibition is not a reasonable or workable solution, so instead governments across the world have sought to educate people about the dangers of smoking and to incrementally legislate tobacco towards the margins of society, through advertising bans, usage restrictions, and even, more recently, packaging controls. There is a general sense in the public that governments are doing the right thing in engaging in these sorts of “soft touch” draconian measures. Of course, when it comes down to it, smokers are effectively being instructed that they are only allowed to poison themselves and others in a strictly regulated environment according to certain conditions – which in a more straightforward world, wouldn’t pass the laugh test as a final solution to a public policy problem relating to a specific product. Let’s not even get started on government’s implied preference for smoking over euthansia.

In the blue corner, finally, we have alcohol: the widely available, gloriously advertised, practically unrestricted opiate of the masses. The short-term health implications of alcohol usage are negligible, but the long-term health implications and indeed the sociological implications are very slowly coming to be understood as disastrous. We have to assume, given its ubiquity, that alcohol touches many more people’s lives negatively than either heroin or cocaine. It’s the questions that we don’t really know the answers to, or don’t really care to know the answers to, that provide the kicker. What proportion of assaults, domestic violence cases, thefts, killings, rapes and car accidents have alcohol abuse at their root? What is the annual cost to the health sector of treating patients who have suffered one of the wrongs mentioned, developed liver disease, or indeed a form of alcohol-related cancer? How can we ever hope to measure or quantify the distress and pain caused by people (particularly in struggling socio-economic areas) who abuse alcohol and make decisions that emotionally or physically damage their friends, families, and communities?

I am sure that in the heyday of tobacco, during the middle of the twentieth century, the idea that one of the world’s favourite substances would eventually be unmasked as a “bad drug” would have been laughed off by many. It’s hard not to wonder what the next fifty or sixty years will bring for the alcohol industry, given the pressures being applied to governments across the world to be “tough on crime” whilst also reducing public spending, impacting areas of public policy like health and policing. These pressures directly collide with the enormous popularity of alcohol and its acceptance as an everyday recreational substance.

If the somewhat rapid stigmatisation of tobacco is any guide, today’s blockbuster alco-dollar ads and “drink, drink, drink … spew” popular culture could eventually recede into the annals of human history; just another of those crazy, stupid things that people did back in those days before they knew any better or society chided them into behaving differently.

No, (sadly) I’m not holding my breath either… er, drink?

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo

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NSW election: New beginnings at Sussex Street?

March 29th, 2011

At long last, after all the slightly nutsy talk in the media about “recall elections” and what seems now like an endless litany of scandals, the people of New South Wales have spoken. Save for at the margins, what they had to say wasn’t surprising, but that’s because the performance of the government induced them to scribble down their rightful invective on speech cards several years ago. It is difficult to recall an election campaign in recent Australian political history that has been quite so one-sided, quite so predictable. The obvious conclusion to the election hung heavily in the air during the campaign, with the major players saying their pieces to camera knowingly, like trainers before a horse race agreeably fixed in advance.

Following on from Kim’s initial round-up then, what next, for NSW Labor? Rank and file supporters of the party in New South Wales have been repeatedly slapped around the head by the state parliamentary party during the course of the last few years. We’ve been left on a hiding to nothing, often vainly defending the practically indefensible. Despite the fact that a number of good, hard-working MPs have been unfairly swept away in the carnage, it’s hard not to feel a sense of closure and relief in the election aftermath, as if the gloriously democratic detox that has long been needed has finally arrived. The people’s doctor has arrived in Sussex Street clutching a kit bag full of tennis ball-sized suppositories, and although what has ensued hurts, bloody hell, they sure are needed.

Let’s first consider the state of play. Yes, Labor has been routed in the Legislative Assembly, and stands to hold just 21 of the chamber’s 93 seats at best – around 22% of the house. The good news is that some very talented people have been retained: Linda Burney is safe, and at this stage it seems relatively likely that both Carmel Tebbutt and Verity Firth will keep their seats for the party. John Robertson is a somewhat polarising figure, but there is little doubt that he the kind of person capable of cutting through in his attacks on the O’Farrell Government. Nathan Rees and Kristina Keneally, despite their strong association with the problems of the last four years, are clearly capable political operators and the electorate holds no great personal disdain for either of them.

The question of who will lead the party will no doubt dominate the media shortly (it is likely to be Robbo), but strangely enough I don’t think who leads is particularly important. What is important is that the party makes an honest and open effort to reflect on the mistakes that it has made during the last eight years, perhaps through a public consultation process, involving both rank and file members and indeed the general public. The image that many people have of Sussex Street at the moment is a kind of malignant kleptocracy; this image needs to be smashed and remade through a transparent program of reform. If not now, with plenty of time to play with and nothing to lose by embarking on a period of controversial change, then when?

Former Assistant General Secretary Luke Foley MLC and Bob Hawke have already indicated a worthwhile starting point for consideration: the 2010 ALP National Review Report delivered by Bob Carr, Steve Bracks, and John Faulkner. The NSW branch’s very young, worryingly malleable General Secretary, Sam Dastyari, has already hinted that the reform of the party structure in New South Wales is needed, including the factions. All three are on the money, but need to go in quick and hard on internal reform: building a united policy front can wait. Contrary to what Tony Burke has suggested, policy doesn’t matter a fig right now. It is irrelevant. If NSW Labor wants to have any hope at all at even being competitive in 2015, it needs to first make a fist of the hard internal reforms that are long overdue, while the wounds inflicted by the electorate are still fresh and the polls don’t matter.

More broadly, what I would like to see is the party actively asking for the public’s involvement in setting in train its internal reform program. This physician is clearly incapable of healing itself alone. Whoever is eventually anointed as Opposition Leader should extend a hand to the people who have just rejected them, and humbly ask for their help in reforming the party, in rehabilitating a party organisation that is spluttering and wheezing under the myriad pressures being brought to bear on mass political parties in the 21st Century. The membership “amnesty” suggested by Dastyari is hardly going to bring anybody back: the party clearly needs to reach out to new people. It sounds incongruous and unlikely, but as part of a program of “new beginnings”, I think the time could well be ripe for a party membership drive, perhaps with reduced-price memberships and more of an emphasis on having the sorts of candid “by-the-barbie” interactions that this party desperately needs to start having more of with ordinary folks.

In short, there has never been a better time for reform and renewal within the NSW branch of the Labor Party. A rebranding of Sussex Street is only going to work if the product being sold to the people over the next four years is fundamentally different; more of the same “faceless men”, big party miasma just won’t cut it with people anymore.

ELSEWHERE: Shaun Carney rather optimistically heralds the end of “Richo-style” politics and Eddie Obeid has a retrograde crack at defending the indefensible.

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

Posted in Labor Party, NSW Politics | No Comments »

Schools funding: beyond the dog’s breakfast?

March 10th, 2011

The funding of schools has for over fourty years been a source of strident debate and sectarian conflict in Australia, the subject of a seemingly inexorable blame-game fought between the Federal and State Governments, and a fight for resources waged by mostly well-meaning advocates from both the government and non-government school sectors. It is a conflict inflamed by the reality that the education of Australia’s children – the people who will eventually forge the nation’s future – is what is at stake. Terrorism, climate change and crime might be the topics du jour that tend to be splashed across the front pages and in the commercial news, but it is arguably the national response to the challenges facing our education system in an increasingly globalised world that can make the most substantive difference to Australian society in the coming decades.

It is in this context that Julia Gillard, as the former Minister for Education for the Rudd Government, announced the commencement of a Review of Funding for Schooling back in April 2010, with the aim of defining an approach for funding schools beyond 2013. The terms of reference for the review are fairly broadly-defined, and are available here [PDF]. This review is scheduled to report before the end of 2011, and public submissions to the review close at the end of this month, on Thursday, 31st March 2011. You can make a submission to the review online here.

As the most significant public review of schools funding in Australia undertaken since the epoch-defining Schools in Australia report delivered by the Whitlam Government’s Australian Schools Commission Interim Committee in 1973, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the results of this review really matter. The review process represents a once-in-a-decade opportunity for the Federal Government to shake off the policy squibbing of recent decades and embark on a program of serious educational funding reform.

Such reform, if it is to be serious, must deliver a needs-based funding model that has equity at its heart, and it must also consider the prospect of constitutional change. The “elegant” silence of Australia’s creaking Constitution regarding who is explicitly responsible for doing what has laid the foundation for the dog’s breakfast of schools funding arrangements that we enjoy today. The Federal Government finds itself by convention responsible for the majority funding of non-government schools, whilst providing GST revenue to the State Governments to majority fund public schools across the country. It is a system ripe for political manipulation, fostering an environment in which anyone with a gripe about schools can blame anyone for anything, and everyone can, in a manner of speaking, still be right.

Timed as they are, the recommendations of the review panel seem likely to prove a formative influence on Gillard Government’s re-election platform heading towards 2013. Collectively we can only hope that the review panel proves bold enough to make fair and far-reaching recommendations, but certainly as individuals we can all do our bit by having our say based on our frustrations and our personal experiences with the nation’s schools before the end of the month.

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

Posted in Education | No Comments »

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