Public Transport Shame

How about shame-based ads for our public transport operators and regulators? A red-faced mandarin in a chauffeured limo passes a broken down overloaded tram: "Do you keep your bonus if we get out and push?"

---

Do You Keep Your Bonus If We Get Out and Push?

6:30pm on Monday, 21st of November, 2005.

(Image Courtesy of The Age)

Fear About HECS Isn't Helping

In my frequent encounters with student politicians, I only ever hear one response to the question of paying for academics: tax the rich. Well, guess what! That's exactly what HECS does. Graduates pay a modestly higher rate of tax (typically just a few percent) once they start earning around the average income. If their income falls below the threshold - like when they're backpacking across Asia - the repayments stop. And at no penalty since the loan is (in real terms) interest free.

I worry that young people are frightened out of taking up this great deal because of misinformation about "crippling debt" from well-intentioned politicians and activists scoring political points. Running a scare campaign is no way to effect change in public policy.

Mental Health - More of the Same?

Professor Patrick McGorry's call for "more of the same, but dearer" in mental health (The Age, 24/10/05) sidesteps an opportunity to step back and critically examine the current approach. By any definition, our model of psychotherapy-drug-hospital is failing the people it is meant to be helping. In order to "focus on best buys" and "prioritise capacity to benefit as a key criterion for investment" we need to ask: are psychiatrists the only answer? Can we improve the efficiency and effectiveness of responses by involving other practitioners and approaches? Do psychologists, nurses and counselors have a role in getting out of the diagnose/medicate loop?

Since these questions might break the medical fraternity's stranglehold on the prescription pad and Medicare rebate forms, it is unlikely they will be asked. Psychiatry has had over a hundred years of unfettered control - now we need to hear from other voices.

The Core of Intelligent Design

We should not be too quick to dismiss Intelligent Design as "unscientific" (The Age, 21/10). At its core, ID claims that the complexity of the natural world absolutely requires an intelligent designer - not just that one is convenient or even plausible. In other words, ID states that it's impossible to explain life without introducing supernatural beings (aliens, ghosts or gods). In much the same way that earlier scholars insisted on the existence of phlogiston or the ether, this proposition is falsifiable and hence (in the Popperian sense) scientific.

So IDers have tried finding impossibility with the mammalian eye. They've tried it with winged flight. They've even tried with consciousness and language. In all cases, naturalistic explanations exist (even if unproven), falsifying the IDers claim to necessity.

Absent an example of something "too complex" - such as a giant black obelisk on the far side of the Moon (Arthur C. Clarke) - I'm comfortable sticking with natural explanations.

Productivity and Ideology

As a card-carrying economic rationalist, I've been confused by Howard's claim that dropping the price of labour will increase productivity. How could the output per unit of input (ie each hour of labour) increase when you're just making people work longer for a lower hourly rate? Where's the incentive to invest in proven productivity-boosters like training and technology?

Then Tony Jones, on Lateline last week, quoted John Howard as saying that owners should be able to run their capital investments 24/7, 365 days a year without penalty. That's when the penny dropped: I was thinking like a worker (or economist), not a capitalist.

To an ideologically-driven right-wing politician, the unit of input is a dollar invested, not an hour worked. So, yes, Howard's plan to deliver continuous cheap labour to owners could increase the total output per investment, as the mills and call-centres work night and day. But that's chasing profits at the workers' expense, not lifting productivity!

We need to do more to challenge Howard about the real goals of his reforms.

Time For Australia's Viking King

Now is the time to cut over to the Danish monarchy. With no constitutional impediments, a decent, down-to-earth, middle-class royalty and an Aussie blood line, we'd finally get royal barracking during The Ashes!

Fresh Approach, But Still Blaming Men

I welcome Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward's fresh look at some of the issues that plague society (The Age, 13/10/05). When women engage in personally destructive behaviour such as starving themselves, choosing bad partners, wasting time and money on appearances or putting career ahead of family, we understand this to be the fault of society (read: men).

But when men engage in personally destructive behaviours such as risk-taking, health neglect or emotional withdrawal, it's not down to society: apparently it's men's innate "masculinity" at fault. So regardless of the social ill, it's men and masculinity to blame!

Illiberal Industrial Relations Reforms

The proposal to retrospectively ban unfair dismissal agreements exposes the Government's real IR agenda. All that small-l liberal rhetoric about individual choices, letting "a thousand agreements bloom" and not getting in the way of the employer/employee relationship comes to nought.

Instead of forcing workers to work weekends and longer hours to make up the cut in their hourly rate, what is Kevin Andrews doing to upskill the workforce? At every opportunity he talks about the labour shortage of 300,000 workers, about how employers are clamouring for better quality employees - how are his policies for cheaper labour going to drive productivity? Certainly not through encouraging investments in people!

America's War on Abstract Nouns

America's penchant for declaring futile Wars on Abstract Nouns (Poverty, Drugs and now Terror) is its way of salving the unbearable hypocrisy of lofty ideals and base actions.

Dawn Fraser and Money For Life

Dawn Fraser got paid to help a convicted fraudster fleece the elderly. It's a black day when we can't trust paid endorsements for financial services from someone who swam really fast fifty years ago.

Christians Are Not Immune to Extremism

This is not the time for the ideological smugness shown by Bill Sherriff (Letters, The Age, 4/10/05). Sadly, "Christian beliefs" are entirely compatible with "the cowardly use of hidden bombs". From abortion clinic bombings in the US (Southern Baptists) to the sectarian bombings in Northern Ireland (Catholics and Protestants) to the Phalangists in Lebanon (Maronites), terrorists have been drawn from - and motivated by - all the flavours of Christianity. Indeed, as all religions are susceptible to extremism, it is dangerous and arrogant to claim that any one faith is inoculated against brainwashing.

Buying Labor Party Policy

Maybe Mark Latham is right: getting involved in the Labor Party is a waste of people's talents and energy. After all, who would bother when a tiny clique of factional warlords and union bosses have all the preselections stitched up for a decade?

Happily, Mr Dick Honan, the ethanol sheikh with "a personal fortune estimated at $230 million" (The Age, 1/10/05), has shown us another way: put failed politicians on the payroll as lobbyists. Former MP Con Sciacca used his friendships in the party to arrange dinners and lunches and, magically, Martin Ferguson flips Labor policy on mandatory fuel ethanol.

This is the worst behaviour by a politician under the influence of ethanol since Andrew Bartlett crashed the Liberal's Christmas party.