A Great Big New Tax on Everything
Neil Perry: Research Lecturer, University of Western Sydney
The government predicts a 10% increase in electricity prices from the carbon tax which adds $3.30 per week on average to household electricity bills.
Food and beverage prices have been estimated to rise by around $1 per week while the CPI increase is about 0.7% in the coming twelve months after which the effect of the carbon price on price increases virtually disappears.
These figures pale in comparison to the higher household electricity bills, food prices and CPI due to higher network charges.
And of course the government has not compensated households for these increases as they will for low-income earners dealing with the effects of the carbon price.
(Carbon Pricing: A minor shock compared to recent electricity price increases, 5 June 2012.)
Yes, Prime Minister
John Keane: Professor of Politics, University of Sydney
[Tony Blair recounts] his discovery that a pack of top journalists … had been left stranded at a London underground station clogged with New Year’s Eve revellers [on the last night of the millennium. …]
Tony Blair:
Please, please, dear God … please tell me you didn’t have the media coming here by tube from Stratford just like ordinary members of the public.
Charlie Falconer:
Well, we thought it would be more democratic that way.
Tony Blair:
Democratic?
What fool thought that?
They’re the media, for Christ’s sake.
They write about the people, they don’t want to be treated like them.
Charlie Falconer:
Well, what did you want us to do, get them all a stretch limo?
Tony Blair:
Yes, Charlie, with the boy or girl of their choice and as much champagne as they can drink. …
Deterring People Smugglers
Sharon Pickering: Professor of Criminology, Monash University
[From a criminological perspective] the idea that an illicit market, such as people smuggling, can be dealt with through enforcement-related strategies and broad deterrent messages has serious limitations.
Historically, the most effective approaches to reducing illicit markets have been found through regulatory measures and harm minimisation approaches, not deterrence.
There is simply not enough evidence that deterrence works to justify the expense and potential harm of its implementation. …
Deterring irregular border crossings does not necessarily decrease border related deaths.
Evidence suggests in some contexts deterrence can simply displace deaths to another site, or changes the demographics of who dies. …
Rich Man, Poor Man
Mike Pottenger: Lecturer, Statistics & Political Economy, University of Melbourne
Our data (above) showed that BHP CEO earnings fell from around 40 to 50 times average Australian earnings in 1900 to as low as 6 to 7 times average earnings in the late 1970s before rising in to 50 to 100 times the average Australian earnings when measuring just salary and bonuses in the last decade (and 150 to 250 times average earnings when including long-term incentives such as share options). …
Comparisons with data on the top five non-executive directors of Australia’s top 100 companies and with data on average CEO remuneration across Australia’s top 100 companies showed broadly similar trends. …
While BHP executive pay tracks the company’s share price and market capitalisation reasonably closely, the rise in remuneration preceded the boom, and grows almost 7% per annum faster than the mining sector’s gross value added.
(Exec pay in Australia — do the rich get richer?, 26 June 2013)
Would you like to know more?
Contents
The War on Science
Stranded Coal
The Nocebo Hypothesis
Media and Reality
Media and Democracy
Irregular Maritime Arrivals: Punishment as Deterrence
The Conversation
The Conversation
- Psychologist Jordan Peterson says lobsters help to explain why human hierarchies exist – do they?, 24 January 2018.
Leonor Gonçalves: Research Associate in Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, University College London. - The state of the nation starts in your street, 2 February 2017.
Hugh Mackay (1938): Social Researcher. - Universal basic income: the dangerous idea of 2016, 16 December 2016.
Gigi Foster: Professor of Economics, UNSW.
A proposal to throw money at people, while wrapping that proposal in the flags of "equality" and "basic rights," can be argued to be the lazy man’s face-saving response to the complex, entrenched problems of poverty. …
The poor arguably lack access and/or skills as much as or more than they lack money.
[Don’t] assume for one minute that universal basic income is a magic bullet.
Compared to our current system, it is expensive, inefficient, and potentially regressive. - Big Australian media reject climate science, 1 November 2013.
Wendy Bacon (1946): Professorial Fellow, Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, University of Technology Sydney. - Whose views skew the news? Media chiefs ready to vote out Labor, while reporters lean left, 13 May 2013.
Folker Hanusch: Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of the Sunshine Coast. - “Direct Action”: The Coalition’s Voluntary Approach To Environmental Policy.
Neil Perry: Research Lecturer, University of Western Sydney.- Part 1, 27 February 2013.
- Part 2, 10 May 2013.
- Houston panel ignores the evidence on asylum seekers, 14 August 2012.
Sharon Pickering: Professor of Criminology, Monash University.
Melissa Phillips: Doctoral Candidate, University of Melbourne.
[Neither] PNG nor Nauru are transit nations, so their role in responding can only be read as punitive. …
Offshore processing has been proposed as an interim measure without time limits. …
The centrepiece [of the report] is that those who arrive … by boat should have “no advantage” over those that do not.
[Advantage] over whom?
[Those] in transit countries[?]
[There] is no co-ordinated, integrated approach to processing people in Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand.
So this “advantage” is meant to be over rights that actually do not currently exist. …
[At present, dangerous sea] journey is the only option weighed against the alternative of decades in legal and social limbo …
[The] blanket restriction of family reunion will, at least in the short to intermediate term, see greater numbers of women and children, or entire family groups, on the move.
[Women] and children die in far greater proportions in shipwrecks and drowning incidents. …
With actual timeframes and clear strategies for implementation, the threads identified in the report could well be woven into a new approach for asylum seekers that shifts away from deterrence to prevention of deaths at sea.
Until then, lives remain at risk. - Houston report: hard heads deliver $1 billion asylum seeker plan, 13 August 2012.
Charis Palmer: Editor.
Lucy Fiske [Lecturer in Human Rights, Curtin University]:
The [Houston] report purports to address both immediate domestic concern with boat arrivals … as well as progressing a potential regional framework.
However, the report [offers no substantive steps] to move forward regional measures [while being] alarmingly clear on deterrence measures which could be implemented immediately with bi-partisan support …
[This] all but guarantees a resurrection of the [Howard government's] Pacific Solution, a policy framework which [paid] little or no regard to human rights or international law …
The ‘no advantage principle’, while having [populist] appeal, is punitive pure and simple.
[Asylum seekers] arriving by boat will be compelled to wait [on] Nauru or Manus for the same length of time a wait elsewhere might entail.
Where is ‘elsewhere’?
Approved refugees routinely wait years, even decades in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Iran, Kenya.
[The] global efforts of the UNHCR are directed at improving processing times not extending them. …
Rather than contributing to improved regional mechanisms, the ‘no advantage principle’ [serves] to erode Australia’s framework and ensure we offer no better protection than non-signatory neighbours.
The expert panel appears to have paid little attention to submissions made by legal, health, welfare workers or academics with decades of experience in the field.
The [report] remains firmly in a ‘border protection’ framework with little attention [given] to human rights, mental health, legal principle or international relations. - Uncomfortable truths: busting the top three asylum seeker myths, 24 July 2012.
Melissa Phillips: Doctoral Candidate, University of Melbourne. - There’s no evidence that asylum seeker deterrence policy works, 24 July 2012.
Sharon Pickering: Professor of Criminology, Monash University; Editor, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology.
Untested waters
{[The] relationship between deterrence and IMAs still needs rigorous testing …}
[Data] show a period in which irregular maritime arrivals (IMAs) significantly dropped or stopped [is currently being analysed] by the Border Crossing Observatory …
Therefore [current] claims made as to the effectiveness of deterrence strategies (Temporary Protection Visas, offshore processing and mandatory detention) are … not based on empirical research. …
Current policy
… At best there is mixed evidence regarding the impact of onshore deterrence measures made up of TPVs, offshore processing and immigration detention.
[Roslyn Richardson] has documented the unexpected ways deterrence messages (regarding TPVs, offshore processing and immigration detention) were consumed and acted upon by asylum seekers.
[The] incident involving the largest loss of life (SIEV X) occurred after the introduction of offshore processing.
The demographics of the passengers on the SIEV X have been widely regarded as being driven by the exclusion of family reunification as part of the temporary protection visa program.
Putting personnel at risk
… Analysis of the SIEV 36 explosion suggests significant ramifications for customs and the navy for policies which depend on interception at sea.
Such policies are likely to have serious ramifications for personnel involved …
{[For example, on] morale and retention of staff, the politicisation of agencies and deterioration of legitimacy both within and outside of the force.}
[Interception] at sea can lead to heightened tensions [and an] increased risk of harm and loss of life …
[From a criminological perspective] the idea that an illicit market, such as people smuggling, can be dealt with through enforcement-related strategies and broad deterrent messages has serious limitations.
Historically, the most effective approaches to reducing illicit markets have been found through regulatory measures and harm minimisation approaches, not deterrence.
There is simply not enough evidence that deterrence works to justify the expense and potential harm of its implementation.
Would you like to know more? - The Clean Energy Finance Corporation: the purpose and the hypocrisy of industry, 12 April 2012.
Neil Perry: Research Lecturer, University of Western Sydney.
[The] Institute for Sustainable Futures found that in 2005/6 subsidies for fossil-fuel based electricity production amounted to $1.2-2 billion while support for renewable energy and energy efficiency was $0.1-0.2 billion. - Disinformation, No Information, 3 April 2012.
Neil Perry: Research Lecturer, University of Western Sydney. - The Mineral Resources Rent Tax and The Commons, 27 March 2012.
Neil Perry: Research Lecturer, University of Western Sydney. - The hidden media powers that undermine democracy, Part Fourteen, Media and Democracy, 1 September 2011.
John Keane: Professor of Politics, University of Sydney.
Trickery and charm
[Mediacracy] refers to the tangled webs of back-channel contacts and hidden power relations connecting senior politicians and top journalists, helped along by public relations agencies, lobbyists and other figures of public contrivance. ..
Mediacracy’s impact on democracy
What’s needed, for the sake of democracy … are new arguments for open systems of communication and the free flow of different points of view.
Wise citizens
[Where] it exists, mediacracy must be broken up, initially through public [inquiries] unafraid of tackling tough questions, such as whether bodies such as press councils should include a popularly elected component as well as representatives of new, independent media platforms, who themselves deserve public funding.
By enabling the production of communication with spine, democracy is a way of humbling the powerful, rendering them publicly accountable to citizens and their representatives … - Warning: your journalism may contain deception, inaccuracies and a hidden agenda, Media and Democracy, 1 September 2011.
Stephan Lewandowsky: Australian Professorial Fellow, Cognitive Science Laboratories, University of Western Australia.
Ullrich Ecker: Australian Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Western Australia.
Professor Stephen Kull has been keeping track of key beliefs among the American public for many years …
Consumers of Murdoch-owned Fox News were most likely to be misinformed on a range of issues, whereas those who primarily listened to National Public Radio (roughly comparable to our ABC) were most likely to be attuned to reality. …
Those who entered the Fox “matrix” every day were least likely to be connected to reality [whereas] daily listeners [of Public Radio] were typically the best-informed people across a number of studies spanning nearly a decade. …
[In 2009] The Australian's Editor-in-Chief, Chris Mitchell [was presented with] the "JN Pierce Award for Media Excellence for leading the newspaper’s coverage of climate change policy" … by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association.
[The Australian] has recently vowed to … destroy the Greens at the ballot box. …
Recent research at the University of Queensland found that among Australian politicians, the percentage whose views on climate are influenced by scientists … ranges from 44% to 98% across parties.
The party at the bottom, which in its majority rejects science, is the Liberal party.
The party that nearly exclusively prefers peer-reviewed science … is the Greens. - You’ve been framed: six new ways to understand climate change, 5 July 2011.
Mike Hulme: Professor of Climate Change, School of Environmental Science, University of East Anglia. - Climate change is real: an open letter from the scientific community, Part One, Clearing up the Climate Debate, 14 June 2011.
Megan Clement: Editor. - New media player: The Conversation, ABC Science Show, 9 April 2011.
Andrew Jaspan, Megan Clement and Paul Dalgano.
So we then introduced the idea to the group of eight universities [including Monash University, University of Melbourne, University of Western Australia and RMIT University] which [are] responsible for 70% of all research in Australia.
Then we went to the CSIRO who also enthusiastically came on board to support us.
And since then the University Technology Sydney also came on board …
So as a result we've now got the bulk of the big research institutions in Australia supporting us, and obviously their staff, their academics are able to write for us on complex issues.
