Post-Budget thoughts on things economic from around the traps

The Howard years were basically a time of the economy falling off a skyscraper, enjoying the thrill, and yelling "I've fallen 20 floors and feeling fine".

Balneus blog on 14th May 2009

Swan's trick of not even mentioning the size of the deficit/surplus is a first, well almost.
As for the forecasts, they may well turn out to be right, or not. What will happen as the economy recovers is fairly forecastable. When that will happen is pretty unforcastable.
It could be next month, it could be next year, it could be in three years' time.
Your guess is good as Treasury's - probably better.
Peter Martin on his blog, 13th May 2009

The Panel's key finding is that the three-pillar architecture of Australia's retirement income system — consisting of the means tested Age Pension, compulsory saving through the superannuation guarantee and voluntary saving for retirement — should be retained. The retirement income system is facing increasing challenges as the 21st century unfolds which will test the sustainability, adequacy, acceptability and coherence of the system. The three‑pillar architecture is well suited for a balanced and flexible response to these challenges. and

However, there is some need for adaptive change to calibrate the three pillars so that the retirement income system serves its purposes and retains its strengths.

From the media release and cover letter to the Henry Report initial findings released on Budget night 2009.

Kevin Rudd on ABC radio this morning stated that the budget would protect Australia's AAA rating, according to Standard and Poors. Read here Standard and Poor's own admission as to why they rated Lehmann Brothers as A at the time they went bust, and make up your mind as to whether S&P AAA ratings are worth a cracker.

Mark Crosby over at Core Economics blog on 13th May 2009

LAST night the Australian Government handed down its budget for the coming financial year. The centre piece of planned spending on the environment is $4.5 billion for "clean energy". This is defined as energy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost employment.Most of the money, $2.4 billion, will be used for the development of low-emissions coal technologies. This announcement could be interpreted as an attempt to appease the coal industry and unions – it is certainly unlikely to benefit the environment.

Jennifer Marohasy at her blog of the same name on 13th May 2009

If you judged by press releases, you'd reckon this was the greenest budget ever. And it is indeed good in parts, though not nearly as good as you might think. The first thing to note is that the CPRS targets and the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target haven't changed, so emissions won't change at all (though it may mean we buy fewer permits overseas), nor will the fraction of our electricity generated from renewable sources. What the funding in this budget might do is change the technology mix available to us to achieve those targets.

Robert Merkel over at Larvatus Prodeo on 13th May 2009.

KEVIN Rudd's silent war on the NSW Government has moved to open hostility, with Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday effectively blaming the Rees Government for Sydney's infrastructure snub. And the Prime Minister warned he was not prepared to invest "billions" of dollars in Sydney projects until the NSW Government got the planning right.

The Daily Telegraph, 14th May 2009

The Federal Government has been warned that it will need to rethink some elements of its Budget superannuation package in circumstances where long-serving politicians and senior public servants appear to have emerged unaffected by changes to the contribution caps for high-income earners.

The apparent oversight was acknowledged by Deloitte superannuation partner John Rayner, who said that in the interests of equity among higher income earners, the burden needed to be shared by everyone.

The only acknowledgement of the problem in the Budget is to grandfathering arrangements that apply "to certain members with defined benefit interests as at 12 May, 2009, whose notional taxed contributions would otherwise exceed the reduced cap".

The problem confronting the Government is that public servants and others are enjoying contributions of as much as 22 per cent to their superannuation, compared to the standard 9 per cent provided by the superannuation guarantee and then topped up by people in defined contribution schemes.

Mike Taylor at Money Management on 13th May 2009

THE ABC will produce edgier TV drama and invest in more feature films, but will have to abandon plans to establish more digital radio stations as a result of the 2009-10 budget. "We're delighted with this outcome -- in this economic climate, it's a good outcome," said ABC managing director Mark Scott.

According to The Australian on 14th May 2009

The rural health care sector has applauded Budget measures aimed at improving access to medical services in the bush.
The Government has made changes to the pharmaceutical and medical benefits schemes to allow nurse practitioners and midwives to prescribe subsidised drugs and let their patients claim back services under Medicare.
Helen Gosby from the Australian College of Nurse Practitioners says it is great news for patients in remote areas.
"Now we'll be able to give them the full range of care so they don't have to wait for the flying doctor to come back into town," she said.
The Government will also spend $134 million boosting payments to lure medical staff to the bush.

ABC News on 13th May 2009

It was a Goose Waterloo

The geese have met their Waterloo. Defeat was absolute and humiliating and it couldn't have happened at a better time.

Just when they had become totally overbearing and their confidence level had reached its peak, disaster struck in the form of Black Neck Storks or Jabiru as they are locally known.

Each year around this time the storks fly in with the newly-fledged young from their nearby nesting sites.
This year the parents arrived with two youngsters that small they still had their L plates on - the landing was not pretty.

The adults then wandered down the swamp for a bit of quality parent alone time, while the kids played in the shallows.

The geese obviously did not see the whole family arrive but they soon spotted the two youngsters, so en mass they marched down to put these intruders to flight.
The plan was going well, the geese had them surrounded.

The name calling was in full voice when one of the stork parents decided that the barnyard bullies had over stepped the mark and walked back from down the other end of the swamp.
It was no contest, the stork walked through the ranks of geese which fled in all directions.

A small group of geese tried to regather in the middle of the swamp.
This was the chance the black swans had been waiting for; two pairs of swans executed a beautiful pincer movement from the sides that sent the geese straight into the area where the storks were waiting.

This time the youngsters decided that it was their turn to chase the geese which they did with glee.

The geese ended up in the shed paddock, they have been there for two days.
Their dreams of farm domination in tatters around their webbed feet.

Previous post in the Geese Saga:
Worrying times under this feathered fascism
Goose stepping in all this rain.....

Rudd-Conroy internet censorship trial generates new error message

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Click on image to enlarge

Mainstream media stung by sociology student - blogosphere tut tuts

Dilbert cartoon from Dilbert.com

Adding my penny's worth on the state of mainstream media.

Ars Technica reports on sloppy media practices:
"According to the AFP, the hoax traces back to Shane Fitzgerald, a student at Ireland's University College Dublin. Upon learning of the death of the Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre, the student modified his Wikipedia entry, adding a completely fictitious post that was nicely designed to fit perfectly into any obituary. "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear," the added material read in part.
Fitzgerald was apparently curious how far his hoax would spread, and expected it to appear on a variety of blogs and similar sites. Instead, to his surprise, a search picked it up in articles that appeared at a variety of newspapers. Fitzgerald eventually removed his own fabricated quote and notified a variety of news outlets that they had been tricked, but not all of them have apparently seen fit to publish corrections or to ensure that their original stories were accurate, even though fixing a webpage shouldn't be a challenging thing.
Of course, it shouldn't be a surprise that journalists use Wikipedia as part of their research—especially in this case, as Jarre's entry comes out on top of the heap in a Google search for his name. However, the discovery that so many of the writers apparently failed to find an additional source on that quote comes at a rather awkward time for journalists in traditional media, who are facing a struggle to stay above water as the newspaper industry is sinking and the line between traditional journalism and casual reporting gets ever blurrier.
A key part of the argument for maintaining traditional journalism is that its trained reporters can perform research and investigations that the untrained masses can't, and the content they produce is run by editors and fact-checkers. The revelation that their research is often no more sophisticated than an average Web surfer's, and that the fact checking can be nonexistent, really doesn't help that argument much."

Comments on article

More GM lobby machinations?

Times Higher Education earlier this year:

A charity has come under fire for failing to declare all industry affiliations of the experts it enlisted to compile a booklet explaining genetic modification to the public.
The pamphlet was produced by Sense About Science (SAS), a charity that claims to promote scientific reasoning in public discussions.
According to anti-genetic modification campaigners and academics, it failed to mention links between some of the experts who wrote the booklet and GM firms.
For example, the guide's biography of Vivian Moses, emeritus professor of microbiology at Queen Mary, University of London, and visiting professor of biotechnology at King's College London, does not mention that he is also chairman of CropGen, a GM lobby group that receives funding from the biotechnology industry.
It says only that he has been "a full-time researcher in biochemistry and microbiology" and is now "primarily concerned with communicating science to the public".
Critics also argued that the guide should have noted that the John Innes Centre, where eight of its 28 contributors are based, received funding from biotechnology companies.
Michael Antoniou, a geneticist at King's College London, described the omissions as "outrageous".
He said: "GM is a sensitive issue. People have been extremely suspicious because of its industrial connections. So it is imperative that they declare these in this context, as in a journal publication."
Dr Antoniou, who himself provides technical advice to anti-GM campaign group GM Watch, speculated that SAS had not disclosed Professor Moses' directorship because it was afraid of arousing public suspicion.

GM Watch tells us that there are even more 'scientists' hidden in the woodpile:

The pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science (SAS) has been caught with its pants down by Private Eye. The famous satirical magazine has obtained a confidential draft copy of SAS's recently published GM guide which shows it had a "ghost writer" that SAS failed to declare. Here's the article.
Private Eye No. 1232, 20 March - 2 April 2009, Books and Bookmen (p.26)
A spat has broken out over a Times Higher Education article highlighting the failure of a new guide to GM food, 'Making Sense of GM', to disclose its industry connections. Tracey Brown of Sense About Science, publisher of the guide, condemned the T.H.E. article as "mischievous" and "rude" and claimed it relied on "tortuously indirect links" between the authors and the GM industry.
But the Eye has a copy of an unpublished draft of the guide - and it seems it wasn't just the industry links of some of its authors that didn't appear in the final published version. One of the guide's listed authors, Andrew Cockburn, is also missing. Who he? None other than GM giant, Monsanto's former director of scientific affairs, and a figure so controversial that when former PM Tony Blair invited him to author part of the government's official GM Science Review, it led to questions being raised in the House and the resignation of one of the expert panellists. No wonder Sense About Science felt erasure was the better form of valour.

*Sense about Science issued a statement to the effect that in the end Cockburn did not review its GM guide.

In addition,this month MADGE blew the whistle on Graincorp:

AUSTRALIANS will soon be eating genetically modified food whether they like it or not.

The nation's major grain handler, Graincorp, announced this week that genetically modified canola will be mixed in with the main crop in this year's harvest.

Anti-GM groups say the decision means canola oil and a large amount of commonly bought processed food made with canola will now be genetically modified.

They say staples that will become genetically modified include baby food, potato chips, biscuits, frozen vegetables, crackers and pre-prepared meals.

They claim the move is premature because GM food has yet to be tested properly.

"All GM food has been created randomly. The DNA of these plants has been altered and no one really knows where it will go," said Madeleine Love, spokeswoman for Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering (MADGE).....

Graincorp corporate affairs manager David Ginn confirmed the two streams of canola will be mixed together this year after the October harvest.

Meanwhile, GMO bananas are being trialled in Queensland and can be now added to North Coast Voices' March 2009 GMO watch list.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

LOLing over Q&A political definitions

Thanks to Mark Newton's tweet for this heads up about ABC TV's Q & A Political Dictionary

Some prime examples:

Abbotomised (adj) to abbotomise (verb): quasi medical procedure to stimulate the faith based areas of the brain. by Q&A

Apple zealot (noun): A person who always complains of a 'PC bias' from moderators. These people obviously do not like PC's. They prefer macs. by bjorn989

Asprin Election (adj): A double dissolution of parliament. by bjorn989

Buswell (verb): To cause a humiliating blow to yourself.
eg. "He was doing alright until he Buswelled himself." by Kevin 11

Garretted (adj): to have ones views silenced by the system. for example when a strong icon of a certain movement enters a political party and is Garretted into taking the party line. by generationwise

Heffernistic (adj): pertaining to the tendency to forcibly interrupt a rival's press conference to make a political point; also the ability to engage in furious public argument with those ostensibly on your side (see Joyce, Senator B.) by Q&A

Joyceful (colloquial): as in "I've had a joyceful…" often muttered by Bill Heffernan in times of stress. by Q&A

Kevined (verb): as in " all I asked was a simple question and suddenly I found myself kevined" - ancient chinese art of lulling political opponents into paralysis by reciting mysterious and incomprehensible jargon without drawing breath. Can be fatal. by Q&A

Neal (verb): to cause sudden and extreme injury. Eg: his career was going well until he was Nealed in the iguanas. by Q&A

Turnbully (adj): to attack people for being like yourself. by Matthew O

2009-10 Australian Commonwealth Budget Overview: key initiatives and document links

KEY INITIATIVES OF THE 2009‑10 BUDGET

• $3.4 billion for roads
• $4.6 billion for metro rail
• $389 million for ports and freight infrastructure
• $4.5 billion for the Clean Energy Initiative, which includes $1.0 billion of existing funding
• $2.6 billion in projects focused on universities and research from the Education Investment Fund
• $3.2 billion in projects focused on hospitals and health infrastructure from the Health and Hospitals Fund
• Partnering with the private sector to build the $43 billion National Broadband Network
• A pension increase of $32.49 per week for singles and $10.14 per week combined for couples on the full rate
• A crucial boost of $2.7 billion in funding for tertiary education, research and innovation
• $1.5 billion for the Jobs and Training Compact, providing education and services to support young people, retrenched workers and local communities
• A 50 per cent Small Business Tax Break for eligible assets
• Extending the First Home Owners Boost for an extra 6 months

Budget Overview 473KB

Budget Overview is an overview of key budget aggregates and the Government's budget priorities.

Appendix A ‑ Australian Government budget aggregates
Appendix B ‑ Assessment against the fiscal target
Appendix C ‑ Real gains for households
Appendix D ‑ Increased pension support
Appendix E ‑ Major initiatives in the 2009‑10 Budget
Appendix F ‑ Major savings in the 2009‑10 Budget
Appendix G ‑ Australian Government taxation and spending
Appendix H ‑ Detailed economic forecasts for 2009‑10 and 2010‑11
Appendix I ‑ Historical budget and net financial worth data

Chartpack 5.6MB (Zip)

Pensions Overview ‑ Secure and Sustainable Pensions 1.4MB

Infrastructure Overview ‑ Nation Building for the Future 5.5MB

Education Overview ‑ Universities, Innovation and Education Revolution 1.2MB