'The Australian' & Melbourne Institute's Road to Recovery Conference apparently was a doozy

The Melbourne Institute currently has the The Road to Recovery: Restoring Prosperity After the Crisis 5-6th November 2009 conference program (along with speech and presentation downloads) available on its website.
Almost everyone who is anyone in the field of economic and social policy appears to have been there.
Below is a slide that Access Economics put up during the presentation Will the Budget recover alongside the economy?
Now it's been obvious for a while that Chris Richardson loves to craft statements which toss a live one to the meeja, but this is getting a bit over the top even for him:


















Oh, and thanks Malcolm for that universal tweet alerting all us plebs to this conference - from Richardson's power points to your next sound bite I'm guessing.

Australia 2020 - thinking glib

The Australia 2020 summit logo - something else Rudders asserts he owns.

Words the 2020 summit initial report tries not to use

So quickly after the final session closed yesterday was the Australia 2020 summit initial report (with pictures) posted on its website that one has to wonder if some of the pages were typed in anticipation of workshop outcomes.

 

The 40-page initial report covering the official 10 topics is here.

 

Using Acrobat Find to count, it is remarkable for those words it seldom uses or uses not at all, across these forty pages which cover everything from the economy to an alleged call for a republic.

 

democracy used twice

democratic not used at all

equality    used once

equity       used once as a financial term

justice       used once as in 'justice system'

fairness     used once

fairgo        not used at all

rights        used seven times, but two of these as in 'property rights'

welfare      used three times

humanity   not used at all

freedom(s) used three times   

protection(s) used twice

share(ed/ing) used eleven times, but eight of these referred to data/information sharing or sharing priorities/topics/aspirations 

caring       used three times

disadvantage used seven times, but once was as a paragraph heading

regional     used twenty-four times, but seven of these were as international descriptions

 

The people who supposedly decided on the language are here.

Based on simple maths they are each responsible for about 0.04 parts of one page.

Australia 2020 summit not shaping up well

Australia 2020's moral policeman Rev. Tim Costello is in trouble, with the gaming industry pointing to a briefing paper he had prepared for the Strengthening Communities, Supporting Families and Social Inclusion working group which contained factual inaccuracies.

 

The 2020 website now posts all the background papers which disappoint for their lacklustre approach.

 

Longterm Health Strategy - a little gem which describes Australia's health system as "a sophisticated public-private and federal-state blend."

 

Strengthening Communities, Supporting Families and Social Inclusion - Tim hasn't corrected his allegedly faulty statistics.

 

The Future of Rural and Regional Australia - someone discovers that the "agricultural sector is an important source of income in rural Australia" and that "shortages of services and skills exist in rural and regional areas". But the real eye opener is this piece of wishful thinking; "But the agricultural sector is in a strong position to address the challenges of climate change."

 

The Future of Indigenous Australia - has this unique view of Australia's general indifference and underlying racism; "Mainstream attitudes towards Indigenous disadvantage are generally constructive, but the public is not well informed."

 

Governance - sit back and let flawed newspaper polls set government policy, because "Mass media not only relay information to the population. Opinion polls are one way in which they close the feedback loop in providing information about public opinion back to governments."

Understates the number of Australian political blogs - but then it uses The Australian as a source.

 

Full list of available 2020 topic downloads here.

George Bush uses backdoor to reward Friend John

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research has announced that it will be giving John Winston Howard the 2008 Irving Kristol Award for, wait for it, having made "exceptional intellectual or practical contributions to improved government policy, social welfare, or political understanding."

Almost choked on my wheeties laughing at this institute, which has close ties to the Bush Administration and US Republican Party.

Went to its website to find out more and discovered that "John Howard is one of the world's most successful democratic politicians."  Which made my laughter turn almost hysterical.

My mirth became paralytic when I went on to read that Howard had been "retirement by the voters in last November's national elections." and that "After September 11, 2001, Prime Minister Howard forged a strong alliance with the United States and Great Britain in the global war on terror, sending Australian troops to Afghanistan and later to Iraq."

Only in neo-con America could such an contrary, autocratic political bully be described in this manner.

I don't usually put links in my posts but everyone deserves to enjoy the joke.

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.27308,filter.all/pub_detail.asp