John Quiggin

I’ve made this point before, but I’m constantly reading articles about the rising share of “protest” votes going to “minor parties” in which the set of minor parties excludes the National Party. The reason is, of course, that the Nationals are a long-established party which, with a few state-level exceptions, operates in permanent coalition with the Liberals.

But, for all practical purposes, the same is true of the Greens. Roughly speaking, Labor and the Greens are in the position the Liberals and Nationals (and previously the Country Party) were for most of the 20th century. They fight three-cornered contests, often bitterly, and do a lot of agonising about preference swaps, coalitions and so on. But, when push comes to shove in terms of forming governments, they almost always line up together, whether in a coalition, with a formal agreement, or with informal support.

The most important difference between the two is that the Greens get more votes from a wider range of electorates. The difference that drives the spurious analysis of “protest parties” is that the coalition between Labor and the Greens is less formal and more fractious than that between the Liberals and Nationals.

If you count Labor and the Greens as a coalition, then the rise of protest parties in Australia appears primarily as a crackup of the political right. We’ve seen a profusion of rightwing protest parties, with only
the Xenophon group in the centre, and nothing much at all on the left. That differs from the situation in some other countries, where social democratic parties have embraced austerity and collapsed (Greece, Netherlands) or where the established leadership has been pushed aside (UK and possibly soon US also). I have some ideas about this, but I’ll have to write about them later.

But, coming back to the main point, a consistent analysis should treat both the Nationals and Greens as minor parties, or else neither of them.

There’s been a fair bit of buzz about an article in New York Magazine with an apocalyptic picture of climate change over the next century. I’ll for a more complete response later. But as it happens, I was already thinking about a much more optimistic post.

From the Climate Change Authority, of which I was a Member until recently, here’s a set of emissions trajectories consistent with a 67 per cent probability of limiting warming to 2 degrees.

There’s a pretty good case to be made that we are on the blue trajectory, and that, with decent political outcomes, we will be able to go below it and hold warming to the Paris aspirational target of 1.5 degrees. That would still have plenty of negative effects, for example on coral reefs, but it would not be an existential threat to humanity.

The points that are critical in the blue trajectory are a peak in emissions, right about now and a drop to zero net emissions by 2050. The first looks to have been achieved. As for the second, we are already seeing commitments to this goal from developed countries and jurisdictions, and there’s every reason to think it can be achieved at low cost.

As an economist, this is about the outcome I would have expected given a global commitment to an emissions trading scheme with a carbon price on a rising trajectory to $US100/tonne or so. In fact, we’ve seen nothing of the kind. There has been no real global co-ordination, and where carbon prices have been imposed, they have been low and limited in scope.

Instead, we’ve had a series of favorable technological surprises of which the most striking have been the plummeting cost of solar photovoltaics, and advances in battery technology allowing both low-cost electricity storage and affordable electric vehicles. There’s no reason to think these advances have run out, or that any of the remaining problem areas (air transport, cement manufacture and so on) will prove insuperable.

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Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Labor is launching court action with the objective of having a government minister disqualified from holding his seat in Parliament.

The opposition believes Assistant Health Minister David Gillespie may have an indirect financial interest in the Commonwealth – grounds for disqualification from office under section 44(v) of the constitution [which bans anyone who “has any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth”

As revealed by Fairfax Media in February, the Nationals MP owns a small suburban shopping complex at in Port Macquarie and one of the shops is an outlet of Australia Post – a government-owned corporation.

This is an absurd technicality, and I hope the High Court throws the case out. The Parliament is full of people on both sides whose main interest in holding office is in building up contacts for their future careers as lobbyists, bank sinecurists or both. If we can’t do something about this disgraceful situation, the idea of disqualifying someone for an obviously honest transaction with no potential for corruption adds insult to injury.

The seventh in my (almost) weekly email series is over the fold.
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I concluded my post “Against Epistocracy” with the question “Who gets to decide who is well-informed? And who gets to decide who gets to decide?”. This is, I think, a fatal flaw in any system proposing to replacing democracy with rule by a well-informed elite, or any kind of putative aristocracy. But even in a democratic system, we have to make decisions about who should decide things. In many cases, we would like to call on expert advice, and that brings us back to the question “who, if anybody, is an expert on a given topic”. I don’t have a complete answer, but I think it’s helpful to distinguish between experts and pundits or, better, between expertise and punditry.

Update: I just saw this review of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Tom Nichols which is obviously relevant. A crucial requirement for a successful defence of expertise is that we avoid defending authority based on mere punditry.
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That’s the title of my latest in The Guardian. The write-off sums it up nicely.

What we are seeing is the inevitable chaos that follows the collapse of a dominant orthodoxy. But we shouldn’t see it as a new dawn of socialism

A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

My latest report: The Economic (non)viability of the Adani Galilee Basin Project

and, news that Adani is blending more domestic coal in the fuel for its Indian power plants to cut costs. That makes high-ash Carmichael coal even less appealing.

Here’s my latest weekly email. If you want to be added to the recipient list email me at [email protected]

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That’s the conclusion of a recent depressing report from the Wentworth Group. There is, of course, an “unless”, but having spent decades of my professional life on this issue, I can’t say I’m hopeful. Certainly, there’ll be no progress under the current government, as this issue is now part of the culture wars. Whether Labor will do any better, I don’t know. Here’s the comment I provided to the Australian Science Media Centre.

The depressing outcomes reported by the Wentworth Group are the inevitable result of the policy decision to abandon buybacks, that is, the voluntary purchase of water entitlements from irrigators who are willing to sell those entitlements. Buybacks are by far the most cost-effective method of securing additional water for the environment as well as providing a direct benefit to farmers, who can use the proceeds to reinvest in dryland agriculture or to assist a transition out of agriculture. The abandonment of buybacks, combine with a failure to address the needs of irrigation-focused communities in the Basin represents the worst of all policy worlds.

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

I’ll be talking to the Fabian Society in Melbourne on Wednesday night, looking at the failure of neoliberalism and options for a new “New Deal”.

A few weeks ago, Queensland Premier Palaszczuk and Adani’s Australian head, Jeyakumar Janakaraj opened the company’s new Regional Headquarters in Townsville. It was announced that “Townsville will benefit from about 500 jobs in Adani’s regional headquarters and about half of those should happen within weeks”. “Within weeks” can mean anything, I guess but the obvious interpretation is that things ought to be happening about now.

If so, it’s hard to detect from afar.

Update A Townsville reader informs me that Adani’s sign is still adorning its new HQ, though it’s unclear whether there’s anything more than a sign. Also, Adani has reannounced a jobs portal that has been up on its website since January.
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As a part of my work on the Adani mine-rail-port project, I’ve been providing economic input to a project with Kristen Lyons and Morgan Brigg at UQ aimed at supporting the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council (W&J) in their attempts to assert control over their traditional land. So far we’ve produced an initial report, a summary of which has appeared in The Conversation.

My general aim in this work is to examine more sustainable economic models than coal mining for both indigenous and non-indigenous people in the North Queensland region. More on this soon, I hope.

Here’s my latest weekly email. If you’d like to be added to the list, email me at johnquiggin1 at mac dot com

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I’ve finally been got around writing something about US philosopher Jason Brennan’s arguments for “epistocracy”, that is, restricting voting to people who are well-informed about the issues. For a long time, I assumed that such an idea would be ignored, and fade into oblivion, as most academic ideas do. But it’s popped up here in Australia. And, with democracy under challenge all around the world, it’s obviously not enough to say that it’s self-evidently a Good Thing that everyone should have the right to vote, and exercise it. So, I’ll try to offer some more specific objections.

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Not quite, but the OECD has finally recognised that globalisation isn’t currently working to deliver improved living standards for everyone, a fact implicit in the title of its latest report Making Globalisation Work: Better Lives for All, I have a piece in Inside Story, headlined: The OECD joins the backlash against unfettered globalisation looking at a recent report they’ve issued. The subheading is

But can an organisation that has promoted a globalised world economy take on the massively powerful finance sector?

(Hint: Probably not).

I’ve been flat out for the last couple of weeks, and haven’t had time to post. But I’ve finally found enough time to read the Finkel Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market (NEM). There are four inter-related points that come out of the report

1. The NEM has failed in its own terms, that is, with respect to the objective of providing reliable and affordable electricity. The Review recommends a variety of tweaks to the market rules, but the core measure is a shift to central planning by a new Energy Security Board, which effectively overrides the multiple existing market bodies. Not surprisingly, given the political environment the Review ignored my submission calling for renationalization of the Grid, but the logic is the same.

2. We need a carbon price, in one form or another, if we are to reduce emissions in line with our commitments. Given that all economy-wide options have been ruled out, we may as well start with an electricity specific policy. Within electricity, the existing Renewable Energy Target is a crude kind of price mechanism, with only two prices, one for renewables and the other for non-renewables. But, if we tweak that a bit, we can replace the largely irrelevant notion of “renewability” with emissions-intensity, and we have something like a carbon price. I pointed this out a couple of years ago. The Clean Energy Target Finkel Review doesn’t quite get there, but it goes most of the way.

3. The only way to get lower wholesale electricity prices is to expand renewables and let the owners of coal-fired power station take a corresponding hit to their profits.

4. Policy uncertainty has been at least as big a problem as bad policy. This was most obviously true of the Abbott government’s attacks on the RET, which stalled investment in renewables, while doing nothing for coal. Abbott is correctly blamed for many of our current problems. The implication is that a bipartisan compromise is better than holding out for the right policy, only to see it reversed after the next change of government. Whether that judgement stands up remains to be seen. If Turnbull does indeed face down Abbott, Abetz and the rest, and can reach an agreement with Labor, the arguments of the Review will be vindicated. And, with the denialists sidelined, it will become obvious that we need and can easily achieve more ambitious targets.

A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

A couple of days ago, Gautam Adani made the long awaited announcement that the Adani board had decided to proceed with the Carmichael mine-rail project in the Galilee Basin. As usual there was an asterisk. Construction work won’t start until Adani can get financial backing. This was previously supposed to in June 2017 (that is, within weeks) but has now been deferred until 2018. Still, Adani has opened a head office in Townsville, promises to hire up to 250 staff and is also saying it will begin pre-construction works like land clearing in the September quarter.

But on the same day, unnoticed by almost the entire Australian press, with the exception of Peter Hannam at the SMH, the board of Adani Power, the putative buyer of Carmichael Coal, made a much more consequential decision. They are spinning off the 4GW Ultra Mega Power Plant* at Mundra, along with a huge load of debt, into a subsidiary, provisionally called Adani Power (Mundra). The plan it seems is to sell majority ownership, hopefully to the government of Gujarat, and thereby leave the slimmed down Adani Power with a manageable debt load, while it shifts further away from coal and into renewables.

But without Mundra, Adani Power won’t have nearly enough coal-fired plant to take up the output of even the first stage of Carmichael. And this “mine to plug” model was crucial to the viability of the project. Even if the modest recovery in thermal coal prices over the past year were sustained, Carmichael couldn’t cover its costs by selling on the world market.

So what is Adani up to? I’ve thought about a bunch of hypotheses and now I have one that I think makes sense. Adani doesn’t want to write off the $2 billion or so it’s already put into acquiring the mine site, but it also doesn’t want to throw good money after bad. Suppose that, Adani gets $1 billion in loans from the Turnbull-Canavan Northern Australia slush fund to build the rail line, which is owned by a separate Adani company in the Cayman Islands. They could use that money to get started on the rail line, while discovering yet more reasons not to start spending their own money on the mine.

That would buy them perhaps a couple of years during which something might turn up. The price of coal might go up a lot. abd the Hancock-GVK Alpha project might somehow be revived. If so, the rail line could be viable even without Carmichael.

And, if nothing did turn up, Adani would have bought a couple of years breathing space before writing off the losses that have already been incurred, without spending a significant amount of its own money. Adani (Caymans) would slide gracefully into bankruptcy and the Australian public would be left with a half-built rail line to nowhere and a billion dollar hole in our collective pockets.

Of all the explanations I’ve tried out, this is the one that makes most sense to me right now. Comments appreciated.

* I love this grandiose name, redolent of the great days of Soviet-inspired central planning. The UMPP program was started with great fanfare a decade or so ago, but has now collapsed almost completely.

I have a piece in the Guardian headlined ‘Asset recycling may look new and exciting. But it’s the last gasp of a failed model‘ which pretty much sums up the piece. Also, in the Monday Message Board, commenter stockingrate points (via Yves Smith) to a much more comprehensive analysis by Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair of the Economic Policy Institute. To get a feel for the way this is playing in the US debate so far, this article in the Washington Post, where I’m quoted very briefly, is a good starting point.

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

The Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has announced legislation to allow the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to fund coal-fired power stations using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), often called “clean coal”. Although there has been plenty of criticism, this is actually a Good Thing.

If it worked at low cost, CCS would solve a lot of problems, particularly for Australia. We could burn coal, and store the resulting carbon dioxide underground, fixing much of the climate change problem without changing anything else. The ease of this (hypothetical) solution is why CCS plays a big role in lots of climate change scenarios.

Unfortunately, cost-effective CCS doesn’t exist, and isn’t likely to. So, barring some great new discovery, the change in CEFC rules is purely symbolic.

What makes the announcement a Good Thing is that avoids the “bait and switch” used by Frydenberg and others in the past, where clean coal is described in terms of CCS, then shifted to included “High Efficiency, Low Emissions” (HELE) coal plants. This term refers to the fact that plants constructed today are indeed more efficient, and therefore have lower emissions per unit of electricity, than those built thirty years ago. But they are still far worse than gas-fired plants let alone renewables or (if it could be made to work) CCS.

Here’s the third of my planned weekly emails. If you want to be on the recipient list email me at [email protected] (preferred) or put in a request in the comments section. If you expected to get an email and didn’t, please contact me.

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Looking at news coverage and the emails I’m getting from climate action groups, it looks as if I may have misinterpreted the Queensland government’s move on royalties (or maybe I posted before the decision process was complete). The latest news is that the state government will take no part in processing any loan to Adani from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund. I’ll try to post again when I get a clearer picture on this.

What remains clear is that Adani is having a lot of trouble finding bank loans or equity investors to invest in the Carmichael mine project. Given the poor economics of the project, any money lent by Australian governments is likely to be lost, leaving the publci with a stranded and useless asset.

Update 31/5/17 The Guardian reports that https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/30/adani-reaches-mine-royalty-agreement-with-queensland-government to defer nearly all of its royalty obligations for the first five years of production under the new deal, with interest charged on anything owed to the state above that. Almost certainly the interest rate would be well below what a commercial lender would charge, given the risk of default.

More noteworthy, I think, is the following

That would be the trigger for what the company has flagged would be $100m to $400m of preliminary works. But the deadline for financial close, the securing of bank backing to build the mine and rail to haul coal to the coast, is early 2018

As has been true for the past several years, the date when the project actually starts still seems to be at least a year away.

We’ll see at least some money on the table if the “preliminary works” start on the supposed schedule. But my guess is that the scale of the work will be less than meets the eye. I wonder, for example, whether the expenditure figure includes work done before Adani mothballed the project back in 2015.

A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.