Catallaxy Files

Alan Jones this morning spoke to the AMA about the impending investigation of the Medical Super Clinics by the Auditor General. Bits and pieces of this wasteful program have been reported, probably in the disgraceful Murdoch media and maybe this will be a comprehensive study. 

Please allow for slackness on details (it was early in the day). It seems that  much of the $200M to date has been spent in very strange ways. Many cases were cited. For example in marginal electorates that are not areas of medical need, competing with existing services that could use support, not competition.

But then what is $200M compared with Billions for renewable energy projects?

BoltA advises that Paul Kelly, author, journalist and commentator, has discovered that the ALP is tainted by self-interest  to a point that is no longer acceptable.

It is a party that puts its own self-interest before any standard, principle or institution… It is about staying in office and doing whatever is required to stay in office. This narrative suffocates any other Labor message and is killing the government.

Paul, this is not something that happened overnight. It has been coming since the 1970s when a the new class of politicians and camp followers turned up to use the ALP as their vehicle for their ambitions and aspirations.

You should know, you were there over the whole period. In fact you are effectively one of them, one of  the camp followers, setting the tone for the current generation of journalists and media people who are almost all rusted on ALP supporters. The Party has reached its current state of corruption behind a smokescreen of partisan reporting by the press. Even moderately competent investigative journalism would have headed off  the scandals that have wrecked the economies of Victoria and NSW, not to mention the serial debacles of the current administration.

To your credit you keep your ALP bias under control most of the time, but not when elections loom up and it is time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.

And to your credit again, the party has at last exceeded the limits of your tolerance.

How come it took so long? I suppose it is the “frog in the saucepan” effect. You were there from the time the water started to warm up and it had to get scalding hot before you woke up. So where do you go from here?

Are you prepared to wear some of the responsibility for the slipping of  journalistic standards? What are you going to do to counter the half-baked and biased commentary by the new generation of journalists, trained by the people who have become prominent in the crusade against free speech?

Update. An interesting comment at Bolt’s site

Anton Lang in a guest post at Jo Nova’s place  explains that even when all the good children are asleep the Base Load is still 60% of the Peaking Load.

I didn’t realize our electricity needs were so high at night. The lowest power use each day is still as much as 60% of the peak. That’s the base load at 3am, and solar panels and wind farms just can’t provide it. We can burn the odd $500 billion building hundreds of solar plants, but even then, we would have to go “medieval” for about 8 hours each night. Candles anyone?

The logistics of solar and wind don’t add up

Base load is 18,000MW, so we  need at least 360 best case CS plants. They cost around $1.45 billion each, so around $520 billion for construction — and still you have an average of 8 hours in every day without incoming power to run Australia.

Wind power can provide some power throughout the day, but their average 8 hours a day of maximum delivery is usually not the right 8 hours. In eastern Australia, the total power delivered by the 23 wind plants with 965 huge towers is still only 600MW, or around 3.3% of Base Load.

While there are people who will tell you that concentrated solar and wind power can power eastern Australia, it looks impossible once you dig down to the details.

Jo Nova has put up some stats on Government spending on warming-related activities in recent years, suggesting that they are outspending Heartland by a factor of about ten thousand. Apparently more needs to be spent in western Sydney where penguins disrupted a Flannery PR exercise. (Penguins like warming?)

And in Queensland. Not an ALP seat in the House?

And a focus of the fury:

Only 25 per cent of voters supported the carbon tax and 72 were opposed, the poll found.

Jo Nova reports some discussion stirred up by The Heretic, a play that addresses climate issues, on stage in Melbourne this week.

Golly, but The Heretic is a play that appears to be genuinely useful art, something that actually challenges the paradigm. Brice Bosnich reviews it ( see below), Andrew Glikson rails against it (see, it must be useful).

Glikson says, rightly: “Opinion and “belief” are no substitute for evidence. Those who doubt the basic laws of nature and empirical data are always welcome to submit research to peer review journals…”

“The framework is not appropriate” Jac Nasser on the IR system.

“That is why we have a review of the Fair Work Act”  Wayne Swan.

“The truth will normall do” Bill Kelty on why the ALP is struggling for credibility in the electorate.

Discuss.

Apparently the executive of HSEeast passed a resolution… 

Further, we direct the executive president not to attend any meeting of the HR Nicholls Society on the grounds that its objectives include undermining unionism, collective action and the legal framework that protects workers’ rights at work.

The HR Nicholls Society has issued the following press release.

16/5/12 

HSU EXECUTIVE ATTACKS FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ASSOCIATION

 The motion by HSUeast to prevent Kathy Jackson from addressing the HR Nicholls Society conference dinner is an attack of every Australian’s right of freedom of speech.

 Ms Jackson should not be muzzled simply because she has brought to light the seamy actions of some members of the union’s management.

 What is needed is public airing of the underbelly of some of union practices that that have tarnished the whole of the union movement.

 By preventing Ms Jackson from freely speaking HSUeast becomes part of the problem of cover up and scandal that has been exposed in the FWA 1100 page report.

 It must be made clear that the HR Nicholls Society does not oppose unions: just the power they have been given and their attempt to act as a quasi-monopoly and the restriction they place on their members.

 In this particular case that means restrictions on freedom of speech.

 Further it may well be that the HSUeast may be in breach of the adverse actions provisions of the Fair Work Act by attempting to nobble Ms Jackson.

 In its motion HSUeast stated “Further, we direct the executive president not to attend any meeting of the HR Nicholls Society on the grounds that its objectives include undermining unionism, collective action and the legal framework that protects workers’ rights at work.”

According to Fair Work Australia’s website “A person (such as an employer) must not take any adverse action against another person (such as an employee) because the other person has a workplace right, has exercised a workplace right, or proposes to exercise such a right.”

‘Workplace rights’ has a very broad meaning. For example, a person has a workplace right if he or she has an entitlement under an award or agreement or a workplace law, is able to initiate a proceeding under a workplace law or is able to make a complaint or inquiry in relation to their employment.”

That right could also include freedom of speech.

HSUeast is not only attempting to stifle free speech but it may well also be in breach of the Fair Work Act by doing so.

It contemptible and should be condemned.

Further information:       Adam Bisits  0438 405 527

                                                  Ian Hanke      0407 841 957

At the Purple Goanna in Redfern yesteray, to meet Rob Leeson from Uni of WA and the Hoover Institute who is editing a book of essays on Hayek. We discussed my chapter on William W Bartley and Hayek. Across the road a cattle dog and a pig were tethered to a parking meter near an ATM. When the owner was done at the ATM the man, the dog and the pig walked off, side by side. This was a first for me, a pig in the street. Very pretty too, sandy with black spots. Sadly no camera in hand. Pigs are among my favorite animals. We kept them on the farm to dispose of the skim milk after the cream went off to make Duck River Butter. “From the rich pastures of the Far North West”. Jersey cows are pretty as well!

Tim Andrews was going to meet at the same venue but he had to cancel.

Why the Purple Goanna? That was Rob’s choice but it was only for coffee, we did not sample the cuisine.

One Line Opinion is inviting people to submit pieces on the theme of how this ALP administration (third longest in our history) has changed Australia.

I will probably offer something, including the observation that the incoming government will inherit an unholy mess that will take many years to fix, like the situation in NSW. A big PR effort will be required to explain why that is the case, because you can bet the media hacks will do their best to conceal the truth.

Can you imagine the media storm if the Abbott administration undertakes a serious investigation of the trade union movement. One of the unions has already launched a preemptive strike on Abbott for remarks about standover tactics by one of the trade unions which are common knowledge in some circles  How come everyone is not well informed about these matters?

In a book about higher education focussed on the constraints on free trade in ideas imposed by various kinds of academic cartels and rent seekers Bill Bartley commented that academics like to think that the world of business, trade and commerce is a really dirty, no holds barrer arena of conflict and exploitation. He cited ample evidence to demonstrate the downside of academic politics and practice. It was probably the economist James Buchanan who suggested that academic politics is extra vicious because the stakes are so low (by world standards, you know, size of office, parking). In the same vein Kevin Rudd went on about the “brutopia” of  democratic capitalism.

BoltA has an interesting post on the way the business community has been blindsided by the Government. I think he is suggesting that they are naive. Maybe they are just fundamentally decent people with a lot of things to think about in their busy days who have trouble coming to grips with the extent of dirty play in politics

Business is surprised the government is still pursuing a carbon tax.

Business is surprised it won’t amend the Fair Work Act. Then on Tuesday, business was surprised at the non-arrival of the promised company tax cut.

Business people are supposed to be clear-thinking and hard-headed, yet bosses and their associations fall for the government line time and time again.

Of course in business there are laws to control the use of force and fraud. What controls the use of force and fraud by Governments?