Prince Charles on the Environment

Prince Charles' edited speech was published in the SMH today - and I thought it makes quite a good ready. Apart from the content, its nice to read some very polished English once in a while.

Angels and Demons

I saw Angels and Demons on Sunday... and thought i'd write a quick review.

The good:
+ Slick storyline
+ Beautiful shots of Vatican City and its buildings (I vaguely remember reading a story about the Catholic Church not letting them film onsite, so it may have all been lavish sets).
+ Excellent action sequences and camerawork. Not afraid to show some gore where appropriate.
+ Ewan McGregor's acting
+ Tom Hank's expressions lending him a professorial demeanor.


The bad:
- Fairly significant changes from the novel
- Significant compressed 'clue hunting' plot. At times it felt like Prof. Langton would jump through so many logical conclusions so quickly, you didn't have time to absorb what was going on. He'd look at something and say "ooh... a obelisk ... therefore, we have to go to (insert church/milestone here) ... and before you know it, he was in a car, cutting through traffic.
- A little bit 'kumbaya' at the end ("Religion and Science can be best friends! No lets all hold hands...)
- Tom Hank's expressions lending hime a constipated demeanor.

All in all, though - pretty good fun. Worth watching at the Cinema's for the spectacle of Vatican city.

Nice work, Miranda

Its not often I agree with Miranda Devine, but this article in today's SMH, is spot on. Good on you - its about time someone called it like it was. Whilst feminism has acheived many great things over the last few decades, its about time they faced up to some of the, what I would describe as socially destructive, side effects.

NRL Good guys

Labor's Chris Bowen has become a regular contributor to the SMH, and I find his articles quite intelligent and well though out. Today, he has written an excellent one about NRL's good-guys. Its about time that the nice guys of the sport (and not just the 'superstars' get noticed. El-Masri, in particular, deserves a lot of credit. He's magic on the field and with the boot, but also puts a lot back into the community.

It can't be easy as a practising Muslim, rising through the ranks of a ... lets face it, stereotypically bogan ... sport. And he's maintained his religious practices (including fasting) whist still keeping up with his training regime. He's gone out into the Islamic community to talk to boys about respect and becoming good citizens.

Hats of to El-Masri and to Bowen for this positive article.

Weekend wrap up

Budgetary matters...
This morning, Treasury modelling shows the increase in the tax on tobacco will no completely cover the cost of reducing the Private Health insurance rebate changes... to the tune of $3Bil. Oops... Better look at that one again, Malcolm. Actually, it seems to me that the Government could adopt the tobacco tax AND push ahead with its changes to health insurance. Surely a couple of billion would help things out (I'm a subscriber to the theory that every little bit counts - particularly when talking about long-term debt).

The Government also needs to more strongly prosecute their case for health insurance changes. Perhaps this is the line to take: We believe in individuals choice, but why should everyone subsidise the wealthy to acquire a service they can already afford. As it stands, its only partially-private health insurance. New figures today also show that the last changes in reducing the rebate cut-off, mooted by the Liberals as focing millions out of private care, have actually seen an increase of people taking up Private Health insurance. I don't believe that people earning of $150,000 are going to change their minds on private care, over $7 a week. Thats 2 coffees a week. Come on!

India's Elections
India's National Congress Party (Gandhi and Nehru heritage) has resoundingly won the elections. This is great news for the country. The main other party is the BJP Ultra-nationalist party... this is a party of insularity, and 'self-reliance' - the same party that shut out international trade during the cold war, and effectively aligned themselves with Russia against the West. It is also worryingly nationalistic and I believe, has inflamed religious tensions in the some states. The Congress party now has more of a mandate to pursue trade liberalisation and economic modernisation - as well as re-engagement in the region. This will better position India to be a second economic powerhouse in Asia and can shape regional politics for the better. Acting as a democratic offset to China, it will definitely be advantageous to the West's engagement with the region.

We was robbed!
What's wrong with the video referee? In Friday night's top-of-the-table clash between the Doggies and St. George, the Dogs ran in a fantastic match winning try with only a few minutes left on the clock. The referee disallowed it due to an alleged obstruction just before Jamal Idris' inspired run. The commentators were calling it a try, the crowds new it was a try... but the eye-in-the-sky disallowed it. I mean, what is a play er supposed to do? 100-odd kilo's of inertia... and they are supposed to what? Disappear into the ground?

What was heartening was that when Doggies fans started throwing bottles onto the ground, Kimmorley marshed a few players and got them to calm down the crowd. Kimmorley is showing himself to be a great leader on the field, and seems to be bringing some much needed discipline and grace to the Doggies.

NRL Scandals

I'm not going to touch this topic much... except to say:

1) The guys in NRL need to realise that this is not normal or acceptable behaviour.
2) Women also need to take some responsibility for the situations they put themselves in.

Not nearly enough

Not good enough Wayne. Not good enough. The GFC was an opportunity to unwind a lot of unnecessary welfare, and you've (to use your word) squibbed it.

... And yet the Tele runs a front page article "Rudd's Razor" - listing in the worst possible terms what people will lose.

Harden up Australia.

Budget Tonight

Yep - the big one... probably the toughest budget an Australian Treasurer has had to put together for quite a while.

Lots of talk about cutting back on middle-class welfare, and good on them I say. Its almost sickening to see the entitlement attitude in middle Australia. People expect handouts for everything. And the apparently conservative Howard Government was king and splashing cash around. The baby bonus - not means tested - was ridiculous. It achieved not social equity outcomes, and I don't believe anyone would swing their decision to have a child over 5 grand - so arguably, no population outcomes either.

The Government needs to cut and cut hard into middle class welfare schemes - and means testing as far as I can see, is the most fair and equitable way. A lot of journalists have written about how difficult the sell will be on this budget, given that they want to stimulate the economy, but at the same time are cutting back on other schemes.

I think the best approach for Wayne Swan is to try and clearly delineate in people's minds, what are temporary stimulation measures, and what are ongoing costs. Thus, he can argue that temporary stimulii (woohoo... I got to use the word stimulii!!!) are about seeing Australia through this economic downturn - but the cutbacks to ongoing schemes are about returning the budget to surplus as soon as possible.

The Howard Government have a lot to answer for in terms of building in ongoing costs into the fiscal cycle - everything based on the assumption that the good times would go on forever (and short-term political gain). Conservatives often criticise welfare because it creates dependance on the government. Maybe its time to look at 'middle' Australia and their outstretched hands for government 'assistance'. Its time to wean Australia off its entitlement attitude - this will server us well both fiscally and socially.

ETS - everyone looks bad

What a muddle. Rudd has put off the once unputoffable ETS by 1 year. To appease Green groups, he's increased the 'maximum' 2020 target to 25% of 1990 levels (up from 15%). Turnbull has shown himself to be more and more irrelevant, once again attacking the Government simultaneously for putting it off, and for trying to introduce it in the first place. The Rudd government has pandered once again to business groups, who are so stuck in short term thinking about this issue. Its really a bad look. I suggest that now, with bad economic times anyway, any short term impact of adjustments to a lower carbon economy would be somewhat masked. And it would position Australia very well to take advantage of the upside once the world economy begins to normalise.

Turnbull, on the other hand, is balancing a resurgent hard-right in his party (Lead by Nick Minchin) - who don't believe in climate change anyway, against the antics of the mercurial Barnaby Joyce - leading the nationals in an 'over my dead body' approach to emissions trading. Turnbull himself, I think, wants and ETS and knows that it would be better sooner, rather than later. But to quell an uprising against him by his party, he must move further and further into the camp of the sceptics.

I'm also surprised that some of the environmental groups (the Greens Party excepted) have come out backing this scheme. They seem pretty pleased about the increase to 25% reductions in emissions. However, this is conditional on a 'strong' international consensus emerging from the Copenhagen conference at the end of this year. Depending on how you define 'strong international consensus' (plenty of wiggle room there), its unlikely this will eventuate. At best, there will probably be an 'in principle' agreement. Also, for the first year, carbon credits will be limitlessly issued, at a pathetically cheap $10 per tonne. So we've put off the decision by a year, watered down its implementation at that point, and increased our 'maybe if the stars align' target. Its pretty sad to see green groups line up to support that.

Ross Gittins wrote an interesting article in todays SMH I agree - no one has come out of this looking very good.

Just coming back to Turnbull briefly... Labor strategists are keen on painting Turnbull as the 'no-man'. He has consistently opposed everything the Government has done. And I think this is begining to stick in the media. More and more reports are focussing on Turnbull's 'no' response to everything, and this will do him serious damage. He needs to take a stand on something. Business groups are getting jack of it too - writing a letter to Turnbull to clean out the masses of deadwood in the Liberal party, or risk losing campaign funding. If they are to stand any chance in the next election, they would do well to heed that call. At this stage, they stand for nothing, having leapt to a more progressive position, then being slowly dragged back to the staid right by the likes of Minchin, Bishop, Andrews, etc. Its time to decide, are they the party of Howard, or have they moved on?