Catallaxy Files

Update I: John Coochey in comments below.

I feel I can throw some light on this matter as I am undoubtedly the person who is alleged to have shown my gun licence to people at the dinner. That is not accurate. At the mediocre dinner on the first day I was approached by Dr Maxine Cooper, then the Commissioner for the environment, who recognized me as someone involved in the kangaroo culling program in the ACT which occurs each winter. After politely asking if she could sit next to me she asked me how I had gone in the recent licence test which is challenging. I told her I had topped it with a perfect score and showed her my current culling licence, not gun licence, to prove it. The conversation around the table then drifted around the benefits of eating game meat v the poor fare on offer.

Update II: Noodle emails through a report describing the events of that fateful weekend – see especially page 9 footnote 13).

It should be mentioned that two participants departed the process at the conclusion of day 1. One sceptic left because of the stress involved with dealing with the different perspectives and the way in which some participants initially interacted with those perspectives. Another, deep climate sceptic left the process without providing a reason, but apparently did so because of a perception that persons’ particular perspective was not getting enough of an airing as a minority view. Nevertheless, a number of climate sceptics remained to participate in the forum and, following a number of robust exchanges within particular sections of the group, a greater level of tolerance and reciprocal understanding of those perspectives was finally achieved.

No mention of death threats in that account.

Original Post: The ANU has released the ‘death threat’ emails – The Australian coverage is here. The emails themselves are in a zip-file from here. Let’s just remind ourselves how the ‘death threats’ were reported.

an incident in Australia earlier this month when university researchers were rushed to a secure location after receiving death threats.

Sounds very serious.

One of the ANU emails refers specifically to an incident relating to a gun licence. The email is dated June 2, 2010.

While not wanting to trivialise the incident there doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency in that email. Also note the first sentence.

Looks like we’ve had our first serious threat of physical violence.

If Graham Readfern’s post on the timing of the events is correct

He said: “I and my Climate Change Institute staff were moved to more secure quarters around March/April 2010 because of concerns my staff had about the very open and accessible premises we had at that time. I had a duty of care to my staff to respond to these concerns. The move was taken in consultation with the Vice-Chancellor and with the ANU security office. This, of course, is well before the Jan-Jun 2011 period that the FOI request is concerned with.”

that ‘first serious threat’ occured after the ANU staff were moved.

(HT: Noodle)

Yesterday the opposition tried to suspend standing orders in order to debate a motion that would see Craig Thomson suspended from the Parliament for 14 days and then have to make a statement to the Parliament explaining himself. Anthony Albanese said yesterday that this would be a dangerous precedent. Today Julia Gillard said the same thing. Despite all their protestation that they were looking carefully at the situation and considering their options blah, blah, blah, both Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott voted with the government. The motion to suspend standing orders was defeated and the suspension motion not even be debated. Not debated and then failed – not debated.

It is a dangerous precedent, a very dangerous precedent. We don’t want a rampant majority in the parliament disfranchising sections of the electorate by excluding their elected MPs. But at the same time the arguments Albanese used yesterday are also dangerous.

People stand in front of tanks to get that system of government. It is called democracy. It is called a separation of the state from the judicial system. It is called a separation of politics and number crunching from proper judicial processes. I make no judgment. It is up to someone else to make judgment and it is not for this parliament. This is an extraordinary proposition that has been put forward.

That sounds all good – right up until we get to “I make no judgment.” We are not asking Albanese to decide whether Thomson has broken the law or not – note Thomson has denied all allegations made against him. That is a decision for others – but we can look to Albanese and all his colleagues to make a moral decision. We are now invited to believe that our elected representatives cannot form an opinion as to the poor behaviour of one of their own. (Actually two of their own – and no doubt many others too). Is the lack of a conviction in a court of law the new benchmark for appropriate behaviour? I hope not.

Stephen Smith was able to make a moral decision as recently as March this year.

I might be old-fashioned but I won’t countenance that

Well he wasn’t old-fashioned yesterday. Neither were any of the others who voted in favour of Thomson yesterday.

Each and every one of those individuals should be asked the question, “Do you think a private sector employer would stand down an employee accused of using a corporate credit card to procure the services of prostitutes? If so, why doesn’t the Parliament do the same?” Nobody would accuse the private sector employer of prejudging – even Stephen Smith did it in the ADFA case – so why now all of a sudden is it dangerous for the Parliament to make that same determination?

Every time I look at the paper it looks like you’re gone … but you’re still here, just like me.

(HT: A lurker)

(Source. HT: Marginal Revolution)

Clive Hamilton just can’t help himself with the Holocaust analogy. Here he is ranting about a play that challenges the global warming consensus amongst theatre goers.

Perhaps Richard Bean’s next project will be The Heretic 2, another “funny, provocative and heart-warming family drama” in which the maverick academic David Irving, lone defender of the truth, uncovers definitive evidence that the Holocaust never happened. Sent to Coventry by his fellow historians — a spineless lot who have for years been manipulating the evidence to protect their funding and their reputations — David is in the end vindicated; the Holocaust was a Zionist plot after all.

Would that be fiction? Semi-fiction? Non-fiction? Wishful thinking perhaps; much like the Keating play where he wins the 1996 election? Does Hamilton want unchallenging theatre? Is this the AGW equivalent of Piss-Christ; ‘Piss global warming’ has a ring to it.

Anyway. Citizen Hamilton has form in this area.

Even critics of the sceptics are careful to distance themselves from the implication that they are comparing climate denialism with Holocaust denialism for fear of being seen to trivialise the Holocaust by suggesting some sort of moral equivalence.

Quite so. Trivialising the Holocaust in the same mocking tone Hamilton adopts in his Conversation piece would be highly inappropriate.

That didn’t stop Hamilton then or now.

Instead of dishonouring the deaths of six million in the past, climate deniers risk the lives of hundreds of millions in the future. Holocaust deniers are not responsible for the Holocaust, but climate deniers, if they were to succeed, would share responsibility for the enormous suffering caused by global warming.

Then we read

climate deniers are less immoral than Holocaust deniers, although they are undoubtedly more dangerous.

What is Hamilton’s solution to these dangerous people?

If Australia’s security services are not closely monitoring the activities of denialist activists then they are failing in their responsibilities.

As an aside The Conversation have violated their own disclosure rules. Hamilton claims

I have no conflicts of interest.

No. Hamilton stood as a candidate in the seat of Higgins for the Greens.

(HT: Andrew Bolt)

The Budget Papers have a section (BP 1: 5-42 to 5-45) documenting the forecast errors they have been making over the past few years. We discussed these errors last year. My estimates of forecast errors are different from their estimates but that could probably be explained by using different bases.* Here is the figure I posted last year.

Then here is the graph published last night.

So how does Treasury explain the forecast errors?

The receipts forecasting error may be split into three underlying sources: errors in economic forecasts that underpin the receipts forecasts; errors in translating the economy to receipts forecasts; and miscellaneous factors such as post-Budget policy decisions, court decisions regarding tax law interpretation, changes in compliance activities of the ATO, and revisions to historical economic data.

Treasury also point to timing issues – okay.

Of those three sources of error, the first and third are understandable. Forecasting is difficult – accurate forecasting even more so. Similarly forecasting policy changes and decisions that impact on revenue collection – it just can’t be done. Mind you, I’m not convinced it is a huge source of variation either.

The second source of error – errors in translating the economy to receipts forecasts – is a problem. As I argued last year

So what is going on here? I can’t be sure, but here is some speculation – especially relating to corporate income tax revenue.

Let’s start by defining tax revenue as the tax rate multiplied by the tax base. Getting an idea of expected revenue means forecasting the expected tax base – clearly they know what the tax rate is. So the problem is in the tax base.

Wayne Swan made a comment recently that tax revenue was growing slower than expected because of the mining boom – he was alluding to the massive depreciation allowances that miners get. I thought this comment to be a bit strange because the government should know that miners have depreciation allowances.
…
It looks like Treasury is not modelling the actual Australian tax base, they are modelling something called Corporate Gross Operating Surplus. Perhaps there are good reasons for doing so, but if Treasury is not modelling the actual Australian corporate tax base it is very likely that forecast tax revenue is going to be wrong.

We saw this last night in the discussion about mining tax.

Treasury is modelling corporate GOS, not the tax base, and making big mistakes. Just to remind ourselves what the Treasury knows about the difference in the tax and GOS.

As a consequence of these differences, it is misleading to compare trends in company tax collections to trends in GOS …

I don’t know why Treasury doesn’t model the actual tax base – maybe it is too hard.

* I’m sure some kind lurker will clear up the differences by email or in comments below.

The Budget Papers has a section on ‘The mining sector and tax’. It shows a chart of tax paid to Gross Operating Surplus.

Then we have a great footnote:

Taxes include company tax, PRRT, and MRRT but do not include state royalties. Although GOS is conceptually different to taxable income (Clark, J, Pridmore, B and Stoney, N (2007), ‘Trends in aggregate measures of Australia’s corporate tax level’, Economic Roundup, Winter), it is the component of profits in GDP and is therefore the most appropriate economic base to analyse movements in the tax-to-GDP ratio.

It includes MRRT? That tax hasn’t come in yet. As it turns out I’ve read the Clark, Pridmore and Stoney paper. I don’t think it actually says what the Budget Papers claim (emphasis added).

Corporate profit is the relevant economic income base for measuring the effective corporate tax rate because it is the conceptual base upon which income tax is levied. Corporate GOS is commonly understood to be a measure of the profit of the corporate sector, however, the two measures of economic income are conceptually different.

Then we read (emphasis added)

As a consequence of these differences, it is misleading to compare trends in company tax collections to trends in GOS, unless corporate profit holds constant as a proportion of GOS. It will be shown below that this is not a good description of the data because of structural change in the factors listed above.

So why do the Budget Papers show tax to GOS ratios and not tax to taxable corporate income ratios? This is what it would look like if the comparison was made to taxable corporate income.

Speech here.

Strong Economy and Fair Australia
The four years of surpluses I announce tonight are a powerful endorsement of the strength of our economy, resilience of our people, and success of our policies.
Read the rest of this entry »

Sportsbet has a number of markets of interest. I’m picking out just two.