Catallaxy Files

The Australian is carrying a report of a speech by Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC, who has declared that those (private) media-organised events, such as the ones at Rooty Hills and the Broncos Club in Queensland, must not be allowed to occur again.

“The events, the venues, the panels, the hosts should be set by a totally independent panel and commonly understood, a year before the date of the election,” Mr Scott told the festival’s New News 2010 Conference.

“In discussion with the campaign directors, it was clear to me that they wanted the reach of free-to-air television and were happy to use ABC talent to host,” he said.

“But finally, there was no way either was going to upset a monopoly Murdoch newspaper in the pivotal swing state three days before polling day.

“The thought of what The Courier-Mail would do to the candidate who didn’t show to their sponsored event was chilling to contemplate.”

But would it not be a bit chilling to contemplate what the ABC would do in the event of one of the leaders failing to show up at one of its “premium” events?

And is it not true that virtually every day of the campaign, John Faine on ABC 774 (Melbourne local radio) made a point of telling us that Tony Abbott was refusing to come into the station to be interviewed by Faine?  Is this somehow acceptable for the ABC but not other media outlets? 

And which media outlet  kept an empty chair that was to be occupied by Mark Arbib on the set of  the Q & A program? Would that be the ABC?  Trying to make a point?

I was interested to read the comments of one of the participants of the Adelaide Q & A program in which Julia Gillard appeared.  He was required to submit his questions and was then only allowed to ask the question that was least critical of the performance of the Rudd/Gillard government.  He queried this direction but was told it was that or nothing. The whole program sounds like a bit of set-up job to me.

The truth is that it was absolutely dreadful coverage of the campaign by the ABC, including the cack-handed way it handled the ‘assasination’ of Kevin Rudd – foreshadowing that a spill was on (good scoop) and then resuming normal programming on the mating habits of endangered beavers in Sussex.  And ABC 24 has turned out to be amateurish, opinionated and boring.  And as for allowing ABC journalists to express overtly political opinions on The Drum website – the mind truly boggles.

Bob Katter has issued his own log of claims, which is an apposite term, given that one of his claims is a return to collective bargaining (note, Bob, - this was achieved in the Fair Work Act on which you voted) and compulsory arbitration. 

He also wants the right of collective bargaining extended to farmers without, it would seem, him realising that this right exists within the Trade Practices Act, again an amendment on which he voted.

At least, he seems to have the grace to accept that all his demands would not be met by either party, so here are the ones that both parties need toss quickly in the policy waste paper bin, bound for the shredder:

• Fixing the dollar and forcing a depreciation (is he kidding? what, improverish us all?)
• Mandating and subsidising bio-fuels (has he caught up with the evidence of the net environmental harm caused by bio-fuels?)
• Removing the independence of the Reserve Bank and the government directly setting interest rates (speechless?)
• Using Future Funds money for ‘nation-building’ white elephants (the Future Fund won’t last long under that scenario)
• Mandatory divestment by Coles and Woolworths, including price controls on retail grocery prices

There’s a rag bag of others but what do you say?

There has been a lot mission slippage in Project Wickenby. It started off investigating tax evasion and tax havens, but quickly degenerated into into tax evasion and any offshore activity – including that well-known tax haven New Zealand.

Robert Agius was allegedly involved in a very simple scheme employing New Zealand banks to engage in round tripping. Clients would end up lending money to themselves and would claim interest payments as a tax deduction.

Under the scheme, Australian customers would transfer money to accounts in Vanuatu and New Zealand, claiming them as a business expense.

The money would then be returned to Australia less commission in the form of a loan, and a repayment would be treated as a tax deduction.

This is illegal and IMHO should be illegal. I have no problem with the tax authorities trying to prevent this sort of thing. Do we really need a special $400 million taskforce to prevent simple crime like this?

The AFP alleged the scheme involved evasion of $13 million in taxes on $100 million of the man’s customers’ business profits.

Mr Agius allegedly received $1.4 million in commissions, through foreign bank accounts, since 2000.

So why bring this up now?

A lawyer for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions is expected today to tell the NSW Supreme Court that the most serious charge against Mr Agius, money laundering, has been dropped. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 25 years’ imprisonment.

Two other charges of “conspiring to defraud” remain, with each charge carrying a maximum 10 years’ imprisonment. Mr Agius will be formally arraigned in court on those charges today.

That’s right – the case against Agius has more or less collapsed.

Bear in mind the scheme that he allegedly operated is very simple; now look at the case against him.

More than 200 witnesses were due to give evidence, with the case expected to last between six months and a year. Tens of thousands of financial transactions had been scrutinised and 420 lever arch folders full of documents had been prepared.

The matters in question were “taking considerable time to prepare” and were described as “enormous” by the lawyer for the crown.

So here is the trade-off; government has a duty to enforce the laws of the land but at the same time shouldn’t pass laws that are impossible to enforce. If the government cannot enforce laws against round-tripping it is going to struggle to enforce laws that attempt to expand the tax base beyond the territorial borders of Australia. That suggests that a source-based tax system is likely to dominate an international tax system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cFkae0j_Ns

There really is some strange stuff appearing on Drum/Unleashed on the ABC website.

Today’s is a piece by Michael Head a law teacher at University of Western Sydney under the title Stoking Fears of Terrorism. The thesis is that the Howard government and the subsequent Labor governments have provoked fear of terrorism “To provide a pretext for anti-democratic ‘terrorism’ laws and to justify its participation in the US-led military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.” A raid just before the election on homes of Kurdish Australians was timed to show that the Labor government was tough on terrorism, we are told.

Head seems to be close to the Kurds in this country and writes:

“the PKK is not a terrorist group, but a political organisation. While the PKK has been involved in actions targeting civilians in Turkey, successive Turkish governments are responsible for the armed conflict. The Turkish military and allied fascist gangs have a long history of terrorism against the Kurdish minority and other political opponents.”

He goes on:

“By the time of the 2007 election, the anti-terrorism laws became discredited by the exposure of a series of frame-ups involving alleged Muslim terrorist suspects, including Mohamed Haneef, Itzar ul-Haque, David Hicks and Jack Thomas.”

Now, we can be uncomfortable about the reach of the antiterrorism laws (I am) but to argue that the PKK is not a terrorist organisation because the Turkish government started the violence and that Haneef, Hicks and the others were framed are views you might expect from a conspiracy-theorising partisan, not a scholar.

Nothing wrong with conspiracy-theorising partisans either, but I don’t believe a university teacher should use his job title when running those theories. I could also say that the ABC website could publish better stuff than this but The Drum/Unleashed (I still don’t understand the difference) is now probably beyond salvage. Leaving aside bias, the quality of the stuff being run would look bad on an amateur blog.

The ALP costing (mind you not including the impact of the Greens alliance).

The Coalition costing.

The Coalition does a lot better in the new future – where forecasts are more likely to be more accurate – and worse in the further furture – where the forecasts are more speculative. In those future years the ALP is reliant on income from the mining tax. If that mining tax income is less than forecast (a very likely outcome IMHO) the budget under an ALP-Greens government starts looking very dodgy.

• Have you checked the difference in the cost of promises made by Labor in the lead up to the 2007 election and the actual cost when implemented? If so, what is the difference?
• Does the fact that an average of 3.9 per cent of electors in your three electorates gave their first preference votes to the Greens compared to the national average of 11.5 per cent give you pause in considering support for a Labor-Greens government?
• Which Government is likely to put less strain on the Budget: a Coalition or a Labor-Greens government?
• Can you point to past statements you have made where you think a Labor-Greens government would be in Australia’s national interest? Can you point to previous comments you have made in support of Greens’ policies?
• With a Labor Government relying on Greens support and with the Greens holding a balance of power in the Senate, is it more or less likely that Greens’ policies will be implemented under a Labor or Coalition government?
• How high a price on carbon do you support?
• Is a Labor-Greens Government likely to be more left wing or right wing compared with the 2007 – 2010 Rudd/Gillard Government?

Catallaxians – do you have any more questions for the three independents?

UPDATE

• Does it give you pause that Labor has nominated as its representative for negotiations with you Bruce Hawker from Hawker-Britton which is at the epicentre of Labor spin-central? While the Coalition has nominated former Treasury economist and former chief of staff to Prime Minister Howard Arthur Sinodinos? May this not be an indication of style versus substance?
• Is it surprising that since Labor had its costings undertaken by Treasury and Finance before the caretaker period that they now match the costings by Treasury and Finance?
• Which Party first proposed a Parliamentary Budget Office to improve the operations of the charter of budget honesty? (Yes, the Coalition in 2009).

I was invited to address the BioProcessing Network at a dinner on the myths of public science. They were looking for a ‘thought provoking’ presentation for their membership.

I based my presentation around three IPA publications Back to basics: Why government funding of science is a waste of our money, The myths of public science and University research: The need for paying customers.
An author in this field well worth reading is Terence Kealey also the VC of the University of Buckingham.

There is a tiny but quite revealing snippet from a small story in today’s Australian by Christian Kerr. It begins first by discussing how the hung Parliament is complicating the lives of the upper reaches of the Canberra public service but then goes on to say:

Their underlings dare not take advantage of the uncertainty and slip out for a long lunch. They fear a Coalition government will trim their numbers and are watching their pennies.

The ACT Chamber of Commerce says Canberra’s restaurants and shops are suffering as public servants slow their spending while they see who will be prime minister.

There is a reason that Canberra is a Labor town, and this is part of the reason why.

The days of the Senate representing the states have long passed. It is difficult for many to comprehend that it was originally established as a States’ house and senators were supposed to represent the interests of their state, not a political party.

So reform of the Senate is overdue.

The House is selected by preferential ballot by electorate, where each electorate is as near as possible equal in population. This seems reasonable – after all it is about representing constituents in the Parliament.

Yet the Senate has a proportional representation system corrupted by a fixed allocation across States.

I propose that the Senate continue to be selected by proportional representation – but across the country. That is, there would be 76 senators selected across Australia according to total votes. If you get 27 per cent of the votes, you get 27 per cent of the seats in the Senate.

As near as possible, using data from the AEC, here is my calculation of the composition of the Senate that would have been elected under this proposal. When the final results are in, I should be able to list the names of the Senators that would have been elected under this methodology.

Coalition: 29

Labor: 27

Greens: 10

Family First: 2

Australian Sex Party: 2

Liberal Democratic Party: 1

Australian Shooters Party: 1

Democratic Labor Party: 1

Christian Party: 1

Democrats: 1

One Nation: 1

Total: 76

Is this better than the status quo?