(We) can do better

There once was a Canadian couple who lived in denial. They believed they could live the Californian dream with a Green conscience too, retro-fitted with snug windows and thick insulation and equipped with solar panels and air conditioners positioned at high settings. He was a developer, but a “progressive” developer if you must know. He had learned that he could push through almost any development if he tacked the word “sustainable” on the end of it. So he was closing deals all the time. Attending meetings all the time. Meeting with local and regional politicians all the time. So it was important to make a good impression. To be smart, he must look smart. That is where his “suit” fetish came in. He made a habit of buying a new suit almost every day. Soon the closets of home filled up with suits so that there was no space left over for anything else but his suits. What was his wife’s response? As a member of the Sierra Club, it was congenitally impossible for her to tell him to simply stop growing his wardrobe. Growth is inevitable. Her philosophy was “growth management”. So she went out and bought closet organizers. Again and again. She would buy them to compress the inventory of her husband’s suits, and then weeks later, more compression was called for, and the cycle would be repeated. Voila! Smart growth. Alas, it was evident her strategy would not work ad infinitum. Her stress level was rising. Eventually she was ripping out the R50 insulation, sending it to the dump and replacing it with some of her husband’s suits. Sensing her frustration, her husband proposed that they buy a bigger house in a better neigbourhood. One with more closet space. She countered that as an environmentalist, she would have no part of it. The energy problems we have today, she argued, issued out of the fact that very large homes were being occupied by too few people. So she was going to proceed with her plans of having a third and fourth child. After all, as far as the environment is concerned, it is as Ontario Green Party leader Frank de Jong said, “population is a red herring”, because as his federal leader, Elizabeth May remarked, it is not how many people that live in Canada that is important, “but whether they live like Bill Gates or Ghandhi.” So just keep them comin’. More and more suits. More and more babies, more and more immigrants, lets just find smarter ways to pack them all in like the men with white gloves who push commuters into Japanese subway trains. Green living habits of conserve, recycle and reduce feed the obsessive compulsive disorders of those who feel the need to fixate on the trivial in order to avoid the facing the truly lethal dangers of over-population in our society. This neurotic wife of the pack rat forms the template for urban planners across the continent.

On September 5, 2008, Victorian newspaper, The Age, ran an article by Cameron Houston and Royce Millar, under the screaming headline, 'City of 8 million 'unlivable'.

On September 5, 2008, Victorian newspaper, The Age, ran an article by Cameron Houston and Royce Millar, under the screaming headline, 'City of 8 million 'unlivable'.

The article reported the latest population projections from the Australia Bureau of Statistics. These frightening projections were reported as if they were actual predictions. The article should have generated a number of printable letters to The Age almost immediately.

Surprisingly, on September 7, no reader responses had been published questioning the rapid size and rate of immigration fuelled population growth.

This is disappointing and it is hard to believe that The Age did not receive any critical letters worthy of being published on this issue. On a number of occasions The Age has exhorted the federal government of the day to implement a 'population policy'. People who follow the Age closely in such matters know that the Age always wants higher population. And, what the Age means when it calls for a 'population policy' is higher immigration.

Now that there are almost daily reports of social and environmental symptoms of overpopulation in Victoria, and consternation about rising population, The Age is silent on calling for public debate on population policy. With its false alarm about 8 million for Melbourne (more than twice the current population of Victoria), The Age looks as if it is intentionally attempting to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, at great risk to the quality and safety of the lives of the people of Victoria and future generations.

It is no secret that Fairfax digital owns www.domain.com.au and thereby benefits from the overheated housing industry, in addition to the benefits it derives from kilos of pulped forests weekly in Age newspaper ads for real-estate.

The population-growth-dependent international real-estate market for Australian land and housing has become big business and Fairfax press are big business.

On 11th June this year, John Sutton from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), stated that it was 'Time for a Genuine Migration Debate'. After all, 56% of Australia's net annual population is derived from overseas migration at the discretion of the federal government . In the course of his statement John Sutton said '... the Rudd Government should take the steering wheel off the big business lobby and ensure Australia's environment,community and worker's interests are all taken into account' . While the economic and demographic benefits of Australia's current net annual migration intake are equivocal, the adverse environmental and social impacts are unequivocal. The fact that the ABS projections are not predictions, particularly on migrant intakes - needs to be emphasised and repeated. The settings can and should be changed.

(Additional comment: Candobetter Editors note that on 8-8-08 a letter criticising the article's failure to differentiate between statistical trends and predictions was published in the Age, in simplified form.)

Arthur Bassett

Those Australians uncorrupted by the ubiquitous US media, are gobsmacked by the utter tastelessness that passes as attractive in US presidential candidates. Sarah Palin, the latest republican candidate for USA Vice President, epitomises this trend.

Championing selected human rights, apparently prepared to sacrifice her own daughter to a public shot-gun marriage, she seems like a high-tech cartoon of a religious reactionary. It is chilling to realise that the violent religious right are among the few which the press and corporations want to motivate to vote in the US client state. The rest of the American voters are largely kept very bored with the notion of exerting some say in their own fates.

Not just tasteless; malice and stupidity caught on film:

I was bemused, impotent - until I saw this film. Then I realised how bad Sarah Palin must be, how bad the US situation must be - politically and for wild as well as domesticated species - tortured and harassed the way they were in Roman circuses and for the same political ends.

This three minute video about Sarah Palin's appallingly cruel record on wildlife also tells us about the beautiful Alaskan wilderness.

A rare chance to speak up for wildlife and be heard world-wide

The world is watching Sarah Palin.
Please don't give into apathy here, because the high profile of this ignorant woman, gives those of us with an ounce of decency, an opportunity at world-wide level, to show the US Republicans that shooting animals whose habitat is already beseiged by US overpopulation and economic greed - for sport - goes way beyond the bounds of decency.

The situation and the values appear to be quite depraved. The bible bashing that accompanies this grand-scale human bullying is nauseating and frightening. How widespread is this emotionally blunted contempt for nature and blindness to beauty or compassion in the mainstream religions?

Time now for religious leaders to rise up and condemn and ostracise this woman and the entire party which endorses her, or forever be condemned by their already long record of silence on such things.

On top of her apparent absence of normal compassion, this woman who according to my values is insane, actually models the brutal execution of wildlife using technologically intensive weaponry from petroleum-guzzling small airplanes. This is frightening ignorance of here and now petroleum costs and scarcity in a world where the US has actually gone to war for more petroleum. This is oil-profligacy in a political context where even her own party is advocating reducing foreign oil dependency. For every drop of oil, how many drops of human and other blood and sap in our turbo-vandalised natural world?

Is Right to Life a political mechanism to draw energy from reasonable people?

It makes you wonder if Right to Life is just an impossibly confusing, diabolically effective smokescreen to cover up total immorality, utter selfishness, blind, driving ambition, compulsive wastefulness and money-worship in the US political Right. Are the religious right of the Republicans its moral orcs?

Big money that endorses Republican cruelty should withdraw it or face consumer consequences

And, for those of us who spend nearly all our lives fighting against the needless, heart-breaking suffering which proceeds at an industrial rate, how appalling is the information that big money backs this suffering and keeps it accelerating and amplifying. If that money were to be taken from Sarah Palin and the Republican Party which has endorsed such unspeakable acts, how much kinder, overnight, the world would become.

I hope that someone will write an article about those organisations which have funded Palin and the Republicans so that we on candobetter can name their CEOs and associate them with these deeds.

Like a gothic fairy-tale

Sarah Palin is actually the Governor of Alaska. For more about this woman and for a very interesting comparison of economic benefits of passive wildlife observation vs violent rampaging and Palin's lack of interest in the first, have a look at this Alaskan website, Grizzly Bay Org. According to Grizzlybayorg, her parents guided her values in this.

Photo-source: http://www.grizzlybay.org/SarahPalinInfoPage.htm

It seems like a bad fairy-tale, doesn't it?

Roger Schlickeisen, of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, writes that acceptance by Sarah Palin of the Republican nomination for Vice President puts her second in line to be President of the United States. He says that he needs help "... to let America know where she stands on the brutal and needless aerial hunting of wolves and bears. He asks that people "Watch our new video on Palin’s awful record and share it with everyone you know who cares about wildlife." He warns that the "video is extremely disturbing. It contains graphic images of aerial hunting of wolves," and he adds that this is "a brutal and needless practice that Governor Palin has fought hard to promote and expand."

Palin targets wolves and bears from aircraft; offers costly bounties

Schlickeisen states that, "Despite strong scientific, ethical and public opposition to aerial hunting, Governor Palin has:

* Proposed paying a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf.
* Approved a $400,000 state-funded propaganda campaign to promote aerial hunting.
* Introduced legislation to make it even easier to use aircraft to hunt wolves and bears."

He asks, and I reiterate, "If you care about wildlife, please watch this video right now -- and then share it with every friend, neighbor, conservationist and wildlife lover you know."

Please share this video

"Please also share our video on blogs, social networks and elsewhere. I’ve pasted the link to the video below to help you spread the word: http://actionfund.defenders.org/palinvideo "

Original source of information about the film was 4-9-08 : Rodger Schlickeisen, President of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund: Subject: Video: Sarah Palin's Shameful Record on Wolves

Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund
Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund provides a powerful voice in Washington to Americans who value our conservation heritage. Through grassroots lobbying, issue advocacy and political campaigns, the Action Fund champions those laws and lawmakers that protect wildlife and wild places while working against those that do them harm.

Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund can be contacted at:
1130 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
or at www.defendersactionfund.org

See also:
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin Wins 2008 Rubber Dodo Award in biologicaldiversity.org of 17 Sep 08, Sarah Palin's record on environment is abysmal in seattlepi.nwsource.com of 5 Sep 08 by Rick Steiner and readers' comments,
New Orleans: The City That Won't Be Ignored in The Nation of 3 Sep 08 by Naomi Klein. How Democrat Barack Obama has incredibly surrendered critical ground to McCain in New Orleans, in which the the Rebublican Bush administration scandalously mismanaged the relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Media Release: 4 September 2008

Murray-Darling chaos: the final straw

National coordinator of Fair Water Use (Australia), Dr Ian Douglas has responded to today's statement by the Federal Water Minister that the commonwealth is not in a position to purchase major irrigating agribusiness enterprise, Darling Farms, in the absence of support from the State Government of NSW.

"It merely confirms what has become increasingly clear to Australians over recent months: that current arrangements with respect to the governance and administration of the Murray-Darling Basin are dysfunctional and self-defeating, and are clearly failing to maintain this vital river system for the benefit of us all", Dr Douglas said.

Fair Water Use has today submitted documentation (attached) to the Secretary of the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee, which is coordinating submissions to the Senate Inquiry into water management in the Coorong and Lower Lakes and the Emergency Water (Murray-Darling Basin Rescue) Bill 2008.

These documents call for and define the terms of a declaration of a State of Emergency (pdf, 67K) and the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry (pdf, 69K) into the management and governance of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Contact: Ian Douglas: 0416 022178

Authorised by: Ginny Brown, Media Coordinator,
media [AT] fairwateruse com au, +61 (0)414 914248

Fair Water Use (Australia), www.fairwateruse.com.au
+61 (0)8 8398 0812, PO Box 384, Balhannah, South Australia 5242

See also: National Water Commission: No plan - no future for Murray-Darling.

Source of Bass Penguin photo: http://www.holidaymagazine.com.au/bassgippsland/img/main-image-home.jpg

Originally published on www.yourwateryoursay.org on 20 Aug 08.

Your Water Your Say Media Release, 20 Aug 08

The Your Water Your Say Action Group (www.yourwateryoursay.org) is heartened to see that 12 months after the State Government announced it is to build the largest desalination plant in Australia on the Bass Coast, they have finally published the environmental assessments of the project.

After the Government, the DSE and numerous consultants have spent 12 months working on the assessments, the public will have only 5 weeks to review over 1600 pages of highly technical and complex documents.

YWYS President, Andrea Bolch says that this highlights the absolute inequity in this process. "The public, who have to do this in their spare time and at their own expense have only 5 weeks to review this enormous report that has taken full time, highly paid consultants, 12 months to prepare." The system is totally biased and does not allow the public to fully and properly engage in the process.

To emphasise this point, the public is being charged around $250 for a full set of the documents in hard copy. Given this is, at minimum, a $3.1 billion project with consultants already paid millions of dollars, this is an insult to be pinching pennies from the public.

Ms. Bolch says "The Government designed EES terms of reference specifically narrow to get the evaluations and outcome that they wanted that would simply support their decision. The EES does not include any evaluation of the water augmentation options available to Melbourne and there is no doubt this report does not include costing information for the public, who will pay for this plant, to really understand what the real cost will be."

This is a process intended to make it look like the public is involved but it is a farce. The EES is not designed to determine "IF" the project should go ahead but has become the blueprint for the tenderers to build the plant. It will no doubt set out a number of conditions that will simply need to be met by the contractors when developing their submissions.

Construction of the project has already begun without any environmental assessments being released. Expressions of Interest to build the main plant have already been completed without any knowledge of the environmental impacts it will have. The Brumby Government has said from the day the plant was announced that "it will be built" and this was without knowing its environmental consequences.

When the EES process was established 30 years ago it was set up to ensure that decisions were taken with full knowledge of the environmental consequences. This Government has turned the whole intent of the EES process on its head by making the decision with no information on the environmental consequences, designing a scope of reference to get the outcome they want and then using that information to support their decision.

The EES has been reduced to being nothing more than a highly stage managed process that enables the Government to stand up and say they have the assessments that support the decision they took 12 months ago.

YWYS is still in limbo with the Government as yet undecided as to whether or not it will pursue the organisation for court costs. How can we legitimately participate in a process with a sword hanging over our heads that could stop us from properly participating and contesting the EES.

For more information contact:
Chris Heislers, 0419 556 381, heislers [AT] netspace net au
Andrea Bolch, 0400 065 253, abolch [AT] austarnet com au

A report in Melbourne's "The Age" newspaper August 25th 2008 tells how Mr Ted Baillieu the rather affable, reasonable sounding leader of the Opposition in Victoria howled down members from his Sandringham branch of his party who voiced a concern about Melbourne's massive population growth - about 1,500 people per week The Age quotes Mr. Baillieu as saying to a meeting of 700 . "Be very careful when you discuss these things. Don't allow anyone to say we are opposed to population growth, or that we are going to point fingers at migration. If we put out the stop sign then we are sending the wrong messages, and this economy will suffer long-term." He went on to say that Melbourne's problems with train services and the lack of water resources was due to lack of planning by the current state government. of greater Melbourne." (Melbourne's dams are are at a lower level than were this time last year despite recent rain and of course we have about 60,000 more people!)

According to The Age - the amended resolution, that council "recognises a deteriorating quality of life inherent in the ongoing increase in the population" was then passed. Mr Baillieu accused the Premier of poor planning and scapegoating immigrants after Mr Brumby this month warned of the stresses on services caused by Melbourne's high rate of population growth.

The following letter by me was published in The Age on the 26th August:

It's about people, not politics, Mr Baillieu

HOW disappointing to read the Victorian Opposition Leader, Ted Baillieu's, reaction to sensible policy proposals from the Sandringham branch of the Liberal Party and also to a recent responsible warning from Premier John Brumby regarding the high rate of Victoria's population growth ("Blame it on Labor, not migration: Baillieu", The Age, 25/8). Mr Baillieu seems to carry a child-like belief that correct planning can cope with any level of population growth.

Just as some sanity is emerging in his own party and from our Labor Premier, the Liberal leader panics and silences his party members, who are pointing out that the emperor has no clothes - we cannot keep growing at this rate and maintain our quality of life. It seems Ted scolded the naughty children and silenced their well-founded concerns.

In fact, Victoria's population cannot keep growing at any rate and be compatible with long-term survival - but I was not at the Liberal Party meeting and I'm not sure if anyone pointed this out.

See also: Blame it on Labor, not migration: Baillieu by Paul Austin in the Melbourne Age of 25 Aug 08, City of 8 million 'unliveable' by Cameron Houston and Royce Millar in the Age of 5 Sep 08

After the documented loss of 4,152 US servicemen and 90,000 Iraqi civillians killed in the Iraq War and a cost to the US budget, so far, of US$574 billion, Republican Presidential nominee John McCain reveals that he knows how "to get Osama bin Laden". So, why didn't Republican Senator John McCain pass on that knowledge to the Republican Bush administration earlier?

Seven years too late !!!

Senator McCain proclaims, "President Clinton had opportunities to get Osama bin Laden. President Bush had opportunities to get Osama bin Laden. I know how to do it and I'll do it." [3 September]

If he knows how to do it, if bin Laden is truly high-priority, Number-One-Wanted, then why doesn't McCain focus on pursuing bin Laden right now? McCain asserts that he has the credibility and influence to make this happen, even if he cannot give the orders.

I mean, if McCain is the patriot he claims to be, if he loves American as he professes, if he "know[s] how the world works [and] how the military works" [paraphrasing McCain], then McCain abdicates his patriotic responsibilities by not pursuing bin Laden, by not leveraging his knowledge of the world and military, by not persuading the decision-makers and enabling what's required to accomplish this seven-year-old mission.

In fact, McCain prostitutes his knowledge, experience, and self-proclaimed patriotism for millions of dollars and the expectation of millions of votes, instead of lobbying, cajoling, marshalling the information and resources to enable Bush to "get" bin Laden.

Words are cheap; they make great sound-bytes. And McCain's words are seven years too late!

Judy Bamberger,
O'Connor ACT

See also: McCain says knows how to capture bin Laden (Reuters India, 4 Sep 08)

Judy Bamberger		+61-2-6247-6220 (work and fax)
Process Solutions		+61-2-6247-4746 (home)
		bamberg [AT] eaglet rain com

A copy of the article One Year After the Publication of The Shock Doctrine, A Response to the Attacks was included in the Naomi Klein newsletter (www.naomiklein.org/contact-naomi-klein) which I received today. There was almost complete silence from the right wing think-tanks exposed in The Shock Doctrine for many months following its publication. In Australia, I nearly always encountered total silence from the ideological co-thinkers of Milton Friedman in online discussions, that is, until very recently when, in an Online Opinion forum discussion Winning the War In Iraq , I encountered posts, the content of which seemed to originate from a paper The Klein Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Polemics published by The Cato Institute on 14 May. Klein's article is a response to this and to a similar article Dead Left by Jonathan Chait in The New Republic of 30 July 08.

This article exposes conclusively how these articles employ various dishonest debating including doing precisely what the accuse Klein herself of doing, that is taking quotes "out of context". As Klein writes she doesn't have time to comprehensively refute every falsehood in these articles. Her "full rebuttal is the book itself."

However, there is one other criticism that Klein has yet to respond to, that is her failure to take a stance against high immigration and her implicit depiction of all groups opposed to high immigration as reactionary anti-humanitarian and xenophobic. I have sent three e-mails so to either Naomi Klein or Debra Levy (debra [AT] naomiklein org) her chief researcher on this and have yet to receive a response. These concerns are also discussed in the article Why is Naomi Klein uncritical of mass immigration to the First World? of 27 July 08 by Sheila Newman.

However, in spite of this serious blemish, The Shock Doctrine remains a groundbreaking and indispensable work and her ongoing journalistic activism remains an immense service to humanity. - James Sinnamon

See also: Online Opinion discussions in which The Shock Doctrine is discussed: NSW power without pride and Winning the war in Iraq.

One Year After the Publication of The Shock Doctrine, A Response to the Attacks

By Naomi Klein, 2 September 2008, orignal article at www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/09/response-attacks.

Contents: Sorry Boys, Milton Friedman Supported The War, Ignore the Reporting, Attack the Author, Grasping at Straws, A Massacre of Straw Men, Go to the Source

Exactly one year ago, I set off on a book tour to promote The Shock Doctrine. The plan was for it to last three months, quite long by publishing standards. Twelve months later, it is still going http://www.naomiklein.org/meet-naomi/tour-dates . But this has been no ordinary book tour. Everywhere I have traveled- from Calgary, Alberta to Cochabamba, Bolivia - I have heard more stories about how shock strategies have been used to impose unwanted pro-corporate policies. I have also been part of stimulating debates and discussions about how the current round of crises - oil, food, financial markets, heavy weather -- can be transformed into opportunities for progressive change.

And there have been other kinds of responses too. The Shock Doctrine is a direct attack on the intellectuals and institutions that have disseminated corporatist ideology around the world. When I wrote the book, I fully expected to get hit back. Yet for eight months following publication, there was an eerie silence from the 'free-market' ideologues. Sure, a few dismissive reviews appeared in the business press (www.naomiklein.org/articles/2007/10/business-press-unrequited-love) . But not a word from the Washington think tanks that I name in the book. Nothing from the University of Chicago economics department. Even The Economist magazine, which used to attack me gleefully and with great regularity, never mentioned the book in print. An American television producer, who was trying to find an opponent to debate me on-air, confided that she had never been turned down so consistently. "They seem to think if they ignore you, you'll go away."

Well, the silence from the right has certainly been broken. In recent months, several articles and reports have come out claiming to debunk my thesis. The most prominent are a 'background paper' (www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp102.pdf (663K), www.cato.org/pubs/bp/html/bp102/bp102index.html) published by The Cato Institute, extended into a full length book in Swedish (!), and a lengthy essay www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=69067f1c-d089-474b-a8a0-945d1deb420b in The New Republic by senior editor Jonathan Chait.

Several readers have written to this site (www.shockdoctrine.com) asking me to respond to these attacks, if only to help them defend the book more effectively. I resisted at first (clinging to my summer vacation) but I appreciate the feedback and several points do need correcting. Since the reports by Cato and The New Republic - though purporting to come from radically different points on the political spectrum - share some marked similarities, I've decided to tackle them together. Here goes.

Sorry Boys, Milton Friedman Supported The War

Both Jonathan Chait and The Cato Institute claim that the late economist Milton Friedman was a staunch opponent of the invasion of Iraq. The Cato paper states of me that, 'She claims that Friedman was a 'neoconservative' and thus in favor of an aggressive American foreign policy, and she argues that Iraq was invaded so that Chicago-style policies could be implemented there%. but nowhere does she mention Friedman's actual views about the war. Friedman himself said: 'I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression.' And this was not just one war that he happened to oppose. In 1995, he described his foreign policy position as 'anti-interventionist.''

Similarly, Chait accuses me of not knowing the difference between libertarians and neo-cons and chides me for never mentioning -- 'not once, not anywhere' -- that Friedman 'argued against the Iraq war from the beginning.' Apparently Friedman's anti-war stance should be 'morbidly embarrassing' to me.

I am not the one who should be embarrassed. Despite his later protestations, Milton Friedman openly supported the war when it was being waged. In April 2003, Friedman told the German magazine Focus that 'President Bush only wanted war because anything else would have threatened the freedom and the prosperity of the USA.' Asked about increased tensions between the U.S. and Europe, Friedman replied: 'the end justifies the means. As soon as we're rid of Saddam, the political differences will also disappear.' [Read the whole interview in German (www.focus.de/finanzen/news/wirtschaft-lasst-erhard-auferstehen_aid_196501.html) and our translation (www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/milton-friedman-war-iraq).] Clearly this was not the voice of anti-intervention. Even in July 2006, when Friedman claimed to have opposed the war from the beginning, he remained hawkish. Now that the U.S. was in Iraq, Friedman told The Wall Street Journal, 'it seems to me very important that we make a success of it.'

All of this has nothing to do with my book, however. In The Shock Doctrine, I describe the invasion and occupation of Iraq as the culmination of Friedman's ideological crusade because he was America's leading intellectual favoring the privatization of the state - not because he personally supported the war, which is irrelevant. For more than five years Iraq has been the vanguard of this radical privatization project. Private contractors now outnumber U.S. soldiers and corporations have taken on such core state functions as prisoner interrogation.

Furthermore, I never said Friedman was a 'neo-conservative' and I discuss, at length, how difficult it is to find terms to describe the corporatist project that are acceptable to all readers. On page 17 (all page numbers refer to the Picador paperback) I write:

'In the attempt to relate the history of the ideological crusade that has culminated in the radical privatization of war and disaster, one problem recurs: the ideology is a shape-shifter, forever changing its name and switching identities. Friedman called himself a 'liberal,' but his U.S. followers, who associated liberals with high taxes and hippies, tended to identify as 'conservatives,' 'classical economists,' 'free marketers' and, later, as believers in 'Reaganomics' or 'laissez-faire.' In most of the world, their orthodoxy is known as 'neo-liberalism,' but it is often called 'free trade' or simply 'globalization.' Only since the mid-nineties has the intellectual movement, led by the right-wing think tanks with which Friedman had long associations-Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute-called itself 'neo-conservative,' a world view that has harnessed the full force of the U.S. military machine in the service of a corporate agenda.'

The significance of the 'neo-con' label gaining currency in the mid-nineties is that it was then that the Republicans, under the leadership of Newt Gingrich and backed by the think tanks I mentioned, swept Congress promising a 'Contract With America.' At this point, the label 'neo-conservatives' was not a reference primarily to hawkish foreign policy positions but to harsh economic ones. Back in the mid-nineties, many of the people most associated with the neo-con label today - David Frum and William Kristol and much of the Weekly Standard crowd - were squarely focused on demanding Friedmanite cut-backs and privatizations inside the United States. Frum, for example, first made his name in the U.S. with Dead Right,, his 1994 book exhorting the conservative movement to return to its free market economic roots. After Bill Clinton embraced much of this economic agenda, several of the key neo-con warriors narrowed their focus to American dominance on the world stage, a fact that has allowed their keen interests in Friedmanite economic ideas to be largely overlooked.

Ignore the Reporting, Attack the Author

Both Chait's essay and the Cato paper are marked by a stubborn refusal to wrestle with the evidence quoted in my book. For instance, Chait dismisses out of hand my suggestion that there were economic interests behind the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo (though he grudingly admits I never claim that economics was the sole motivator). I do write that there were other factors motivating the war besides Slobodan Milosevic's egregious human rights violations. I base this claim on the post-war analysis provided by Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State under U.S. President Bill Clinton and the lead U.S. negotiator during the Kosovo war. In a 2005 essay (quoted on page 415), Talbott wrote:

'As nations throughout the region sought to reform their economies, mitigate ethnic tensions, and broaden civil society, Belgrade seemed to delight in continually moving in the opposite direction. It is small wonder NATO and Yugoslavia ended up on a collision course. It was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform-not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians-that best explains NATO's war.'

Instead of explaining how the words of a top-level U.S. official could so clearly coincide with my argument, Chait chooses to completely ignore the Talbott quote. Again and again, readers of The New Republic are left with the distinct impression that The Shock Doctrine is a work of opinion journalism, rather than a thesis based on research and reporting.

When Chait and the Cato Institute do acknowledge my reliance on facts, they accuse me of manipulating them to fit my thesis. Interestingly, the first time Chait quotes my work, he does just that. To explain to his readers what kind of an extremist he is dealing with, he quotes my first book, No Logo. In it, I allegedly described the world as a 'fascist state where we all salute the logo and have little opportunity for criticism because our newspapers, television stations, Internet servers, streets and retail spaces are all controlled by multinational corporate interests.' If he had let the quote continue for one more sentence, his readers would have known that I went on to dismiss this worldview as overly caricatured. The next sentences read: 'there is good reason for alarm. But a word of caution: we may be able to see a not-so-brave new world on the horizon, but that doesn't mean we are already living in Huxley's nightmare... Instead of an airtight formula, is a steady trend... but riddled with exceptions.'

This is just the first of countless instances in which Chait twists my words to fit his thesis. When manipulation fails, he simply takes my points and passes them off as his own, without attribution. (I am well aware, for instance, that both Marxists and Keynesians have exploited crisis and disaster, which is why I explore left-wing disaster opportunism on pages 21-25, 65-70, 283, 316-317.)

Grasping at Straws

The Cato paper does, at times, acknowledge that there are facts in my book, but faults me for failing to provide sources for my statistics. This is a bold charge to make against a book with 74 pages of endnotes. The one example mentioned is the statistic 'that between 25 and 60 percent of the population is discarded or becomes a permanent underclass in countries that liberalize their economies.' I did not provide a source for this stat because it is an amalgamation of stats I had already cited and for which I had already provided multiple sources. This is standard practice: once a statistic has been sourced, it can repeated (for the sake of brevity) without repeating the source. So here are those stats on which the 25-60 per cent amalgamation is based, with their sources, straight out of The Shock Doctrine endnotes:

• Unemployment in Bolivia was between 25% and 30% in 1987 (page 186. Source: Mike Reid, 'Sitting Out the Bolivian Miracle,' Guardian (London), May 9, 1987.)
• 25% of Russians lived in desperate poverty in 1996 (page 300. Source: Russian Economic Trends 5, no. 1 (1996): 56-57 cited in Bertram Silverman and Murray Yanowitch, New Rich, New Poor, New Russia: Winners and Losers on the Russian Road to Capitalism (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), 47.)
• Unemployment for black South Africans more than doubled from 23% in 1991 to 48% in 2002 (page 272. Sources: 'South Africa: The Statistics,' Le Monde Diplomatique, September 2006; Michael Wines and Sharon LaFraniere, 'Decade of Democracy Fills Gaps in South Africa,' New York Times, April 26, 2004.)
• Unemployment in Poland was at 25% in some areas in 1993 (page 241. Source: Mark Kramer, 'Polish Workers and the Post-Communist Transition, 1989-93,' Europe-Asia Studies, June 1995)
• 40% of young workers were unemployed in Poland in 2006 (page 241. Source: Andrew Curry, 'The Case Against Poland's New President,' New Republic, November 17, 2005)
• 59% of Poles had fallen below the poverty line in 2003 (pages 241-242. Source: Przemyslaw Wielgosz, '25 Years of Solidarity,' August 2005.)

Elsewhere, the Cato paper claims that, 'Klein never provides the reader with any data over a longer period. She% never once admits that Chile is the social and economic success story of Latin America and has virtually abolished extreme poverty.' In fact my economic analysis of Chile covers a 34-year span and I provide facts and data that directly challenge the claim that the country is a free market success story. Here is a relevant passage (pages 104-105):

'The only thing that protected Chile from complete economic collapse in the early eighties was that Pinochet had never privatized Codelco, the state copper mine company nationalized by Allende. That one company generated 85 percent of Chile's export revenues, which meant that when the financial bubble burst, the state still had a steady source of funds%. By 1988, when the economy had stabilized and was growing rapidly, 45 percent of the population had fallen below the poverty line. The richest 10 percent of Chileans, however, had seen their incomes increase by 83 percent. Even in 2007, Chile remained one of the most unequal societies in the world-out of 123 countries in which the United Nations tracks inequality, Chile ranked 116th, making it the eighth most unequal country on the list.'

A Massacre of Straw Men

Most of the attacks on The Shock Doctrine involve manufacturing claims, falsely attributing them to me, then handily tearing them down. For example, Jonathan Chait telescopes my point about Donald Rumsfeld's holdings in the Disaster Capitalism Complex like this: 'Donald Rumsfeld maintained his stock in Gilead Sciences, which holds the patent for Tamiflu, even while serving as defense secretary. Get it? Rumsfeld would stand to profit from a flu pandemic. But surely you don't have to be an admirer of Rumsfeld to doubt that he would engineer an outbreak of a deadly virus in order to fatten his stock portfolio.'

Actually, that is the plot of the movie V for Vendetta; it has absolutely nothing do with my book. What I do write about is how the Pentagon, under Rumsfeld's leadership, stockpiled Tamiflu and Rumsfeld stood to profit as the value of the stock increased by 807 per cent. On pages 394-395 I write:

'For the six years that he held office, Rumsfeld had to leave the room whenever talk turned to the possibility of avian flu treatment and the purchase of drugs for it. According to the letter outlining the arrangement that allowed him to hold on to his stocks, he had to stay out of decisions that 'may directly and predictably affect Gilead.' His colleagues, however, took good care of his interests. In July 2005, the Pentagon purchased $58 million worth of Tamiflu, and the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would order up to $1 billion worth of the drug a few months later.'

There are many more straw men propped up in the Cato Institute paper. Most involve vastly inflating the role I attribute to Milton Friedman. And no little wonder. Other than the University of Chicago economics department, Cato is the institution most intimately aligned and associated with Milton Friedman's radical theories. Among other tributes, every two years, Cato hands out the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, worth half a million dollars. (This year it went to a 23-year-old Venezuelan student activist to further his opposition to the government of Hugo Chavez). Since Friedman continues to serve as Cato's patron saint, it has much to lose from a diminishing of Friedman's reputation, as well as a direct interest in exonerating him of all crimes, real or imagined.

Here are a few more examples. The Cato paper claims that I put the entire blame for Pinochet's economic policies on the shoulders of Milton Friedman - then 'proves' that his direct involvement was minimal. Once again, I make no such claim. I do devote considerable space - roughly 60 pages -- to describing the impact of a U.S. State Department program that brought more than one hundred Chilean students to the University of Chicago as part of a deliberate effort to export free-market economic ideas to Chile. This is the program that gave birth to the infamous 'Chicago Boys' of Chile, several of whom were actively involved in planning the Chilean dictatorship's economic program before the 1973 coup even took place. Amazingly, the Cato paper makes absolutely no mention of this academic program in its effort to exonerate Friedman personally. The writer either missed 60 pages of my book, or deliberately chose to ignore them.

The greatest challenge in responding to the Cato paper is the scope if its dishonesty. Consider this one passage:

'Klein also blames Friedman and Chicago economics for the actions of the International Monetary Fund during the Asian financial crisis and the Sri Lankan government's confiscation of the land of fishing families to build luxury hotels after the tsunami. Yet the fact is that Friedman thought that the IMF shouldn't be involved in Asia, and he held that governments should be forbidden from expropriating property to give it to private developers. Of course, Klein could argue that Friedman was in some sense a source of inspiration for those policies, even though he was opposed to them. But she doesn't do that. She pretends that he agreed with them, and that that is what he and other Chicago economists wanted all along.'

Absolutely everything in this passage is wrong. I never say Friedman favored the IMF bailout in Asia, quite the opposite. On pages 335-336, I report that, 'Milton Friedman himself, now in his mid-eighties, made a rare appearance on CNN to tell the news anchor Lou Dobbs that he opposed any kind of bailout and that the market should be left to correct itself.' In what way could this constitute 'pretending' that Friedman supported the bailout?

I also freely acknowledge the fact that Friedman opposed the IMF on principle. However, as with Pinochet's government in the seventies, I also document that the IMF, at the time of the bailout, was packed with ideological Chicago Boys - a very different point than claiming the IMF was taking orders from Friedman. On page 202, I directly address this apparent contradiction:

'Philosophically, Milton Friedman did not believe in the IMF or the World Bank: they were classic examples of big government interfering with the delicate signals of the free market. So it was ironic that there was a virtual conveyor belt delivering Chicago Boys to the two institutions' hulking headquarters on Nineteenth Street in Washington, D.C., where they took up many of the top positions.'

The Shock Doctrine has room for this kind of complexity because it is not - despite what Cato claims - a book about the actions of one man. It is about a multifaceted ideological trend that has successfully served the most powerful corporate interests in society for half a century.

Furthermore, I never wrote, as Cato claims in that same passage, that Friedman had anything to do with 'the Sri Lankan government's confiscation of the land of fishing families to build luxury hotels after the tsunami.' His name does not appear once in my 25-page chapter on the tsunami. Once again, to write that I 'pretend' that Friedman is advocating these policies is pure fabrication. Furthermore, all of these inventions and misrepresentations appear in a single paragraph. The Cato background paper is 20 pages long and is comprised of dozens and dozens of equally dishonest paragraphs. Subjecting them all to this kind of rebuttal is simply too time consuming; my full rebuttal is the book itself.

Go to the Source

Thanks to a fantastic team of researchers, especially my incredible research assistant Debra Levy, The Shock Doctrine has withstood a year's worth of intense media scrutiny in dozens of countries. It is not unscathed, but it has emerged in better shape than I dared hope. When errors are discovered, we immediately correct them in future editions and post a correction (www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/corrections-clarifications) and an explanation on the book's website. So far there has been only one significant error discovered, related to the profits earned from Dick Cheney's Halliburton stocks. It was immediately corrected. Readers of The Shock Doctrine know that this is but one of many examples that make the same point about conflicts of interest in the Bush Administration; indeed I devote an entire chapter to the topic. And this is the benefit of a methodology that is grounded not in anecdotes but in thousands of sourced facts and figures: the thesis does not rise or fall on any single example.

As to my critics' charge that I am selective in my use of quotations, that's a danger for any writer. It is also why Debra and I launched the 'resources' section (www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/chapter-resources) of the book's website. On this page, readers can access dozens of original reports, letters and studies that make up some of the key source material for the book. If you are concerned that I am exaggerating Friedman's support for the brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet, read a letter Friedman wrote to Pinochet http://wwww.naomiklein.org/files/resources/pdfs/friedman-pinochet-letters.pdf . If you are suspicious that I am making disaster capitalism seem more conspiratorial than it is, read the minutes www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/part7/chapter20/pro-market-ideas-katrina from a meeting that took place at the Heritage Foundation just two weeks after the levees broke in New Orleans. It lays out 32 'free market solutions' for Hurricane Katrina and high gas prices, many of which have been championed by the Bush Administration.

The thesis of The Shock Doctrine was not born of whimsy but of four years of research. Debra and I put these documents online because we want educators, students and general readers to move beyond an admittedly subjective version of history - as all histories are -- and go straight to the source. We invite you to explore these documents, send us ones we missed, and come to your own conclusions.

Illustration: Self-storage city by Sheila Newman

ABC Radio National's By Design program of 30 August ran a story which seemed to depict the growth of the 'self-storage' industry as somehow positive. The fact that so many of us can no longer store our accumulated possessions where we live and must, instead, resort to paying, in the case of program presenter Alan Saunders, AU$200 per month to rent the space necessary to store those possessions is yet another indicator of our declining standard of living. Undoubtedly, the economic activity entailed in the provision of a service that few of us once needed is counted in our country's Gross Domestic Product and, hence, as adding to our national prosperity.

The featured guest was Mark McCrindle of McCrindle Research. He appears to be a promoter of population growth, although one of the documents (pdf, 1.8M) on his web site is frank about one consequence of our population growing to an estimate 24 million (which would have to be an underestimate and must pre-date the announcement in May by Immigration Minister Evans of an increase in immigration) from 21.2 million some time this year. It states:

By 2020 energy consumption will have increase by one third and based on current technologies, greenhouse gas emissions will be 20% higher than today.

I posted the following comment to the By Design Guest Book

The fact that most of us no longer have enough of our own space to store our accumulated possessions is yet more evidence of how our standard of living has declined largely as a consequence of population growth.

Those of us who can't afford $200 month to store our possessions, as in Alan Saunders' case must either endure unacceptable clutter. Throwing out possessions is not always an acceptable solution either. I have come to regret having thrown out possessions including books and magazines.

Interesting that Mark McCrindle pointed out that more of us are renting and that we change jobs every four years. As one who has been made involuntarily to change my job a number of times in my life, I don't see either these statistics as indications that our society is moving forward.

Postscript: The above comment was read out (in essence) in full by Alan Saunders roughly half way through the By Design of Wednesday 10 September (repeated Sat 13 September). There is no one page for that program, but the components were Trends in Lighting, The humble brick, The shrinking office and Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack and the Bauhaus in Australia. The audio file (25MB), which will be available until roughly 8 Oct 2008 can be found here. - JS 16 Sep 08

Waratah Coals proposal for a massive mine, railway and Shoalwater Bay Coal port could be given the red light if Environment Minister Peter Garrett uses his existing powers and declares it clearly unacceptable under the provisions of the EPBC act (Section 74 B)

Outraged environmental groups, regional residents and the Australian Greens have all called on the minister to act to protect Queensland's beautiful Shoalwater Bay from the environmentally damaging project to avoid a long and expensive EIS process.

Shoalwater Protection Society spokesman Steve Bishopric said, "There is massive condemnation throughout Australia and locally to this ludicrous proposal. It is unprecedented that one project can trigger 6 out of 7 assessment criteria under the act (only lacking the nuclear component) and it is clearly unacceptable. People need to act immediately as time is almost out for this stage of proceedings. It is critical that those concerned contact the minister to voice their requests for him to declare the proposal unacceptable."

The 1994 Commonwealth Commission of Inquiry into Shoalwater Bay stated the values of this area and risks posed by enviromentally damaging developments in this pristine wilderness.

Specifically it stated:

The area's terrestrial and marine environments represent large and relatively undisturbed habitat areas for significant floral and faunal assemblages, including populations of rare and threatened species. The estuarine and marine sections of the Area contribute to important regional commercial fisheries. The area has a high level of Biodiversity and contains the catchment of the fresh water supply of the Capricorn Coast.

The geomorphological attributes of the eastern dunefields of the Area and the Clinton Lowland contribute significantly to the values of the area and to the Area's National Estate values.

The Area is the largest coastal area with high wilderness values on the East Coast of Australia south of Cooktown and, as such, is regionally and nationally very significant.

The whole of the Area's marine environment is included on the World Heritage list and on the Register of the National Estate; and the majority of it is included in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

People do have the right indeed an obligation to advise the minister of what they want for Australia. They should use his contact form on line at www.petergarrett.com.au/8.aspx
Or phone him on 02 62777640 or Fax 02 62736101.

Further information
Steve Bishopric
Spokesman, Shoalwater Protection Society
E-Mail info [AT] shoalwaterbay org
www.shoalwaterbay.org

Twelve months ago, John Corboy, co-convenor of Foodbowl Unlimited (www.foodbowl.com.au), ex-Chairman of SPC and strong proponent of the Victoria’s north-south pipeline, went on record as stating that the future for agriculture in the Goulburn Valley was “not all gloom and doom” as Australian farmers stand to benefit from the impact of two ecological time-bombs: the impending collapse of the largely ground-water irrigated agricultural sector in Northern China, home to around half of the country’s population of 1.3 billion, and the ever-worsening degradation and pollution of river systems in India and China.

In his speech to the Foodbowl Unlimited forum in September 2007, Mr Corboy also welcomed the reduction of global agricultural output as a result of increased biofuel production, saying this will “bring supply and demand into balance”. He indicated that by 2040 there would be 3 billion more mouths to feed on this planet and urged that agribusiness take “full advantage” of such opportunities: a degree of economic rationalism that would be hard to surpass.

Fair Water Use will leave it to others to comment on the moral calibre of such statements, but would like to inform Mr Corboy, and all those who seek to exploit the dwindling resource that is Murray-Darling water, that there is no need for him to travel as far as China or the Indian subcontinent to see rivers whose waters are unfit for human consumption as a result of mismanagement. A trip to the lower Murray will provide him with the opportunity to sample water with salinity levels in the region of 20,000 e.c., around eight times higher than the maximum salt content of potable water, and view large areas of what is described by the CSIRO as “monosulfidic black ooze”, acidic mud with a pH often less than 4.

There are great concerns that, under the terms of the Victorian Water Plan strongly supported by Mr Corboy, the Brumby Government will be able to “borrow” billions of litres of water from the environment and redirect it for industrial and domestic use.

Unless all those currently driving the water-privatisation agenda are called to account, the Murray-Darling Basin risks experiencing socio-ecological collapse similar to that anticipated by Mr Corboy in Northern China and India.

See also Fair Water Use media releases. For information on a related topic, see articles about the threatened privatisation of NSW's electricity assets.

Thursday 9th August readers of the Italian papers were awakening to 'wonderful' news: the 'crisis' of the empty cradles is coming to an end, at least in the industrial area of Lombardia, north/west of Italy.

Men also breed

In spite of the economic crisis, women have started to breed again. By the way, I don’t understand why we refer only to women, as men are extraneous to births. Maybe we should rather refer to : couples ?

The news, which I want to share with you all, is that storks have been very active between July and August this year: there’s’ been an unexpected influx of babies. The official statistics counted 4000 new babies, fortunately boys more than girls (have we contracted the Chinese syndrome?). It’s a record! The feared demographic decline is yesterday’s history: now we can look forward to a more crowded future.

Another hole in demographic transition dogma

Contrary to the prevalent dogma, the new trend is concurrent with a depression in the economy, which should- in theory- give rise to a mode of pessimism not conducive to breeding, which is an optimistic sort of activity. Statistical analysis concur in concluding that young people cannot find jobs or housing, prerequisites for create families and prefer to take the last advantage of the willing Mama’s care.

Muslim immigrants barred from education

Well, immigration helps to explain the upward trend. The disparate ethnic groups that animate our urban landscapes, have one unifying trait: a tradition of large patriarchal families, which preserve the role of womanhood as breeder. Indeed, the Muslim wives, who are the most numerous ethnic group, have no life outside the home and have no use for learning Italian as any form of education is barred from them.

Besides, immigrants found better opportunities in the new land and see in the birth of children the fulfillment of sacrifices and hopes.

Indeed, in 2007 in the northern city of Milano, there were 9156 Italian children and 2709 from immigrant parents. The more numerous of them are Egyptians, Philippinos, Chinese. And the wealth of such variegated multi-ethnic society is represented by 65 nationalities.

Italian birth rate affected by immigrant competition?

Maybe spurred by competition or the forces of example and imitation, Italian households are also participating in this newfound fecundity. Economic recession, social difficulties, the costs of raising a child, were presented as factors that lately have limited the Italian fertility rate, ignoring previous theories ( the demographic transition) which explained that couples, dazed by the lure of wealth and sexual liberation, choose to produce fewer children.

It may be time to deviate from concentrating on a purely economic vision for human behaviour. The new demographic growth may reflect different needs: deliverance from material constraint and the the search for affective relationships .

Economists optimism misplaced

I do not share the demographers, politicians and various commentators’ optimism for the current demographic growth.

It has more than one negative result: beside the inexorable environmental damage imposed on an already hyper-dense landscape, whose ecological degradation dates back to the first human settlements. It will mean social/cultural and economic consequences. It will create on the one hand a fractured society, and on the other, a growing demand for more government – assisted measures: bonuses, more nurseries, flexibility of working hours for women.

Do not get me wrong, I have nothing against immigrants. There are numerous criminals among them, but the majority are hard working people, more so than the locals. I am not impressed either with different skin colour.

And I have nothing against children: I love them, I am a sucker for the smile of little babies.

These are brave and generous sentiments.

Invasion by any other name, such as Babel

But a massive, though peaceful, invasion of people, who have diverse hygienic habits, customs, ethics, degrees of instruction, etc., differ not only from us, but also from each other, and cannot be easily absorbed into the fabric of the receiving society. God, so the story of the Babel tower goes, destroyed an ancient civilisation by confounding the languages, (Confusion of Tongues) to the point that nobody understood what the others was saying, and therefore couldn’t live together.

This is a powerful metaphor, used by the language critic George Steiner, for incommunicability of culture, which reflects the cultural and social disintegration of Italian society– and perhaps in a not-far-off- future, the whole of Europe . It is not the fault of the immigrants. After all, if you think that your life would be better off somewhere else, why the hell should you worry if your arrival is disrupting someone else’s life, so long as yours is comparatively improved?

It is up to the Italian government to regulate this disorderly influx reminiscent of a new Babel Tower, where not only languages are at odds with each others, but the thought processes which these languages define are out of line with our millenary culture. It is a sort of cupio dissolvi, a death wish, that inspires confused Italian legislation. The Government is not sure if and when and how it should accommodate such a growing number of immigrants.

Ancestor amnesia and Levi Strauss

Sadly, it seems that we do not believe anymore in our cultural heritage. The revolution of political correctness has swept away layers and layers of awareness and pride . The anthropologist Levi Strauss’s influence has successfully brainwashed us by tales that our Western civilisation is no better than the customs of a primitive tribe. The education of our children has become a shameful, perfunctory exercise, where programs change continually, teachers are badly paid and below standard, discipline inexistent and teaching is no more the way of connecting the past with the present. The interpretation of globalisation, as a sort of badly digested accumulation of generalised knowledge cribbed from the Net, where even the language has undergone a standardisation of vocabulary and syntax, is culminating in a void: we do not know who we are. On top of this dissolution of national identity, we receive industrial doses of institutionalised jargon and clichés. The unregulated arrival of people, who know nothing about our past traditions, is disastrous in a country like Italy, which, after many colonisations, already has such a weak sense of identity.

To be more specific: What will be the fate of our monuments and works of art, in the hand of semiliterate incomers of such alien backgrounds ?

Decline of teaching standards and rewards

Of course, everybody has a potential educability; but there are classes, as in the Milano hinterland, composed by a majority of children of foreign origin, and the Italian teachers themselves have no confidence in the value of own culture, confused between the notion of preserving the children’s ethnic diversity, and the need to prepare them to be Italian citizens: what will happen next ?

Secondly, the other dangerous development of the baby boom is the ever-expanding request for state-help in the “free” choice of motherhood.

Feminism

Here I step into another minefield, even hotter than the subject of immigration - feminism.

We have been told – another tale- that women who work do not make babies. Female education was presented as having triple benefits: 1) it liberated them from inferior status and offer them the same intellectual freedom , 2) it was good for the economy ( Okay, old-style economy) ,3) and it was the best contraceptive. According to these views: ” … a high return to a female market world generates high participation, a lower demand for children and higher attainment for these children” (Population Matters, Oxford University Press).

Unfortunately, the reality is different, because the state has decided to interfere in the working of the “invisible hand”.

Statistical evidence contradicts such beliefs. In France, for example, the high participation of women in the workforce – 60,6% of women are working- has resulted in a bigger contribution to the demographic growth. The equation is: more births = more women at work. Sociologists and demographers are banging their heads over this phenomenon, which contradicts all received ideas. Finally they found out why: France’s government spends for the family 2,8% against only 1% by that mean Italian government. Entire pages of Italian newspapers are dedicated to this discovery, which represents a humiliating set back for Italy in the rivalry with its neighbour, which has achieved the record among European countries of 800.000 newborns a year. It doesn’t matter if half of the children are born out of wedlock- this is a problem for later, when the cute babies, reach adolescent status and start rioting, taking drugs and wielding knives.

The 'international' Anglophone press, posing as if they were actually relaying official EU policy, have for some time pretended that a democratic competition is underway among European countries, concentrating on who gives the best deal for working women, as such policies will result in puffing up their GNP and a parallel increment of the future workforce.

They imply that the European Union has one stated objective: two mandatory children per woman. In Italy we have finally reached 1,34 (thanks to immigration!). This corporatised media complains that we are still at a primitive stage, as regard support of working mothers. We want the same French treatment: long paternity and maternity leave, nurseries a gogo’, fiscal deductions according to the number of children, more deductions for education , A godsend. A child becomes a family business, a financial investment. But a burden for the State and its citizens. I do not know why I should pay for other people’s expenditure, which as result, will only damage the environment where I live.

If having babies is a free choice, it is the responsibility of those who made them, not mine.

A child is not a toy or a status symbol. It is a job imbued with absolute dedication to the emotional formation and happiness of a human being The first years of a child’s life cannot be delegated, especially not to a state-paid practitioner, because the child’s sense of belonging and affective development will suffer. Children’s experiences last a lifetime and parents have the duty of caring for them, during the most vulnerable period which takes place before six. Those are most critical years for neurological development.

Baby brains

Australian psychologist Steve Biddulph, author of Raising Babies: Should Under 3s Go To Nursery? advocates that parents should stay home with their kids for as long as possible, because the brain grows in response to love and affection.

If a woman will find that to stay at home looking after a small child is not her calling, if she feels frustrated, bored, and it is not able to see the beauty and interest inherent in her function, she should not have children. If the government offers her all sort of facilities, in order that she can have her cake and eat it, well, the result is that we will have more and more children. Children relegated in nurseries across the country, looked after by other women, maybe from immigrant minorities that offer themselves at low wages, in an endless circular motion of mothers-children-mothers of other children who are looked after by other mothers … the whole economy expanding and swell at the cost of a child’s psychological deprivation.

Il Fattore D

In his new book Il Fattore D”, Maurizio Ferrera, professor of Political theory of Milano University, lays down the economic program for female workforce expansion: the GNP. Every woman entering the labour market will create another 15 places in the sector of family help and correlated functions. Other women, of course. The employment of 100,000 women will create therefore another 15,000 more employees, and at the same time it will inflate the GNP by 1/3. Has anybody thought about all the series of consequences derived by certain profound social changes ? The law of the unexpected consequences is always at work.

Now, I know that many will object: poor women won’t be able to have babies. I suggest some stay-at-home voucher for poor families who would devote themselves to bringing up a child for the first years of its life, in exchange for further part time education of the mother, after the child is at school.

Instinctive

But the urge to reproduce is instinctive and doesn’t need too many incentives.

Lately, Robert Engelman of the Worldwatch Institute wrote a book, with the hopeful title: “What women want”: hopeful because it assumed that they wanted fewer children. But what if they want more of them ? A man never knows. In old Europe, already full to the brim and soon to be overflowing, it looks like we will see the awakening of that dormant impulse, which will dumfound all the sages’ predictions.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

NSW Greens leader John Kaye defends Opposition leader Barry O'Farrell. O'Farrell and the NSW Opposition are now under concerted attack by the corporate sector and their newsmedia for having blocked Treasurer Costa's privatisation legislation in accord with the wishes of over 80% of the NSW public last Thursday.

See also: Iemma dodges his own $42 billion debt bomb (SMH, 1 Sep) by Barry O'Farrell, Mike Baird should make his move now - Online Opinion forum discussion about pro-privatisation state Liberal MP Mike Baird, now the darling of the corporate newsmedia.

What you can do: Join FaceBook site Support Clean Energy NOT Privatisation of NSW Electricity run by NSW Liberal MLA Peter Debnam. Peter Debnam's statement on privatisation can be found here and is also appended to this article.

O'Farrell pointing in right direction on sell-off while Baird losing plot

Media release: 31 August 2008

NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell's decision to stop the privatisation of the electricity generators is sound public policy, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.

Dr Kaye said: "Even from the standpoint of the Coalition's economic philosophy, passing NSW Treasurer Michael Costa's power sell-off legislation would not have been in the public interest.

"While Mr O'Farrell is being attacked by his friends in the business lobby, his focus on managing electricity demand would result in lower household energy costs and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

"Unfortunately the Opposition's Energy and Finance Spokesperson Mike Baird appears to have fallen for the myth that this state needs more baseload generation capacity.

"Even though Mr Baird is now lining up behind the Opposition's official stance opposing the sell-off, he has clearly failed to understand that the Iemma government has been badly misleading the people of NSW.

"He should cast a critical eye over Treasurer Michael Costa's arguments.

"Whether it is to balance the state's books or to attract private capital into baseload power, whatever today's rationale for the sell-off is, it does not stack up.

"Mike Baird should also take a closer look at Mr Costa's declaration of war on the public sector.

"The power sell-off is only the opening gambit in a plan to devastate the delivery of public services and infrastructure in this state.

"Not only will this receive a deeply hostile reaction from the voters but it also makes no economic sense.

"Treasurer Costa is completely out of control and headed on a collision course with common sense.

"Mike Baird should do his duty as an Opposition spokesperson. He should join with the Greens, rebel Labor MPs, the union movement and the majority of his own party to block this potential disaster," Dr Kaye said.

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455

See also: Iemma dodges his own $42 billion debt bomb (SMH, 1 Sep) by Barry O'Farrell.

What you can do: Join FaceBook site Support Clean Energy NOT Privatisation of NSW Electricity run by NSW Liberal MLA Peter Debnam who resigned from the Liberal Front bench because at the time he considered that the stance by Opposition Leader against privatisation was not sufficiently strong. Peter Debnam's statement on privatisation can be found here and is also appended to this article.

Appendix: Electricity privatisation statement by Peter Debnam MP - 12th may 2008

Original statement published on www.peterdebnam.com.au

I have been opposed to Michael Costa’s Electricity Privatisation and despite lacking the numbers in Parliament to stop it, I’ve argued for the Coalition to take a strong stand against the privatisation and in favour of clean renewable energy. However, in my view, the conditional acceptance announced late last week by the Coalition effectively surrenders to Costa’s Privatisation.

Given my strong views, it is untenable for me to continue as the Shadow Minister for Energy and remain on the frontbench simply biting my tongue. As a result, on Friday I advised Barry O’Farrell that I will sit on the backbench when Parliament resumes this week and I understand Barry will today announce frontbench re-arrangements.

While stepping down from the frontbench, I will continue in Parliament until at least the 2011 state election and I will do everything I can over the next three years to aggressively hold this hopeless Government to account and get rid of them.

I will also work to expose the fraud of Costa’s Electricity Privatisation and, whether the Privatisation proceeds or not, I will promote the enormous opportunity for NSW to embrace and export the technology of Clean Renewable Energy – especially solar.

I describe the Privatisation as Costa’s because it is not a Labor Plan and the Premier is little more than an occasional mouthpiece for Michael Costa on this issue. Most of the grassroots Labor Party (not just the unions) oppose Costa’s Privatisation. They along with the community of New South Wales have been betrayed.

As I did, Morris Iemma went to last year’s state election, assuring the community that electricity would NOT be privatised. It was clear at that time there was no need for privatisation. It is only since the election, we have the seen the Premier and Treasurer’s increasingly hysterical claims that electricity must be privatised or the sky will fall in. The reality is that nothing has changed since the election other than the votes are in the ballot box for another term.

But less than a week AFTER the election, while I was still Opposition Leader, I was being lobbied by sections of the media to support Michael Costa’s electricity privatisation.

During the election campaign, I confirmed on several occasions that the NSW Coalition would NOT privatise electricity and noted there are more pressing issues other than ownership to be addressed - including the structure of the industry to attract private investment (not simply flog off current assets) and the need to transform the industry to clean renewable energy and to pursue energy efficiencies.

Indeed, we proposed significant changes in our 2007 Election Policy “For Future Generations – A Plan to protect the Environment and tackle Climate Change.” That policy included not only a 20% Renewable Energy Target by 2025, but also investment in solar water heaters for homes and schools and funds to support the development of Australia’s first large-scale solar generator in northern NSW. Those initiatives were well received.

I remain opposed to Costa’s fire-sale of assets which is simply to find more money for the Iemma Government to splash around in the next election campaign - with the added expense of handing over more than $100 million in fees to merchant banks participating in the Costa Privatisation.

August 28, 2008
Media release by Earth News, a project of Ecological Internet
Dr. Glen Barry, +1 (920) 776-1075
Originally published on 28 Aug 08 on forests.org.

(Earth) -- Rainforest Action Network (ran.org) of San Francisco has long been one of America's leading rainforest campaign organizations. Yet in July their campaign to protect Ontario, Canada's boreal forests doomed half this vital global ecological system to industrial destruction. In return, RAN and other proponents received vague promises of protections over a decade from now, but no protected area boundaries or protection plans.

Canada's boreal forests are home to hundreds of sensitive species of animals including polar bears, caribou and wolverines. Boreal forests are some of the world's largest carbon storehouses, with holdings equal to decades of global emissions from fossil fuels, while continually absorbing new emissions. The boreal region is also the world's largest reservoir of clean fresh water.

"Just how much longer do you think environmentalists can strike deals that give up half of large wilderness ecosystems to industrial development for vague promises of protection? Simply, more ecologically attuned folks know no more natural habitats can be lost and expect to survive climate change," explains Ecological Internet's President, Dr. Glen Barry.

Neither RAN, WWF or even Greenpeace realize that there is no longer any acceptable reason to industrially destroy or diminish an intact natural ecosystem -- not if falsely FSC certified, not to briefly alleviate poverty, and not because indigenous people are in favor. The state of the Earth is so grim, and the needs to protect and restore natural ecosystem so large, that only sufficient campaigns seeking to end industrial cutting and burning are worthwhile any longer. The rest is greenwash.

It is unknown if 50 percent protection -- of unknown strength and placement -- will be enough to fully sustain Ontario's biodiversity and ecosystem services. Future protections will likely center on the sparsely populated and largely unthreatened northern boreal, while with its promotion and endorsement of the vague plan, RAN has greenwashed intensified forestry and mining in the already heavily fragmented southern boreal.

"The only meaningful forest protection is to work to keep all ancient primary forests standing, and to meet needs for forest products from secondary forests regenerating into old-growth. There is no chance of achieving global ecological sustainability until ecological destruction ends, what remains is fully protected, and restoration begins," explains Dr. Barry.

Further developments

This is the second time in recent history -- the other being in British Columbia, Canada's priceless Great Bear temperate rainforest -- that RAN has been a driving force in continuing industrial loss of the world's most important remaining large, intact forest wildernesses. Greenwashing millions of acres of industrial wilderness destruction in the name of indigenous rights is not doing these people or the environment any favors. Thankfully, RAN now does little tropical rainforest campaigning, so they may be safe. With more victories like this, soon there will be no ancient forests or an operable climate.

RAN's slide from a force for forest good to a force for forest greenwash must not go unchallenged. This is particularly difficult for Ecological Internet, as President Dr. Glen Barry is a RAN rainforest award recipient, and has worked collaboratively with them for decades. Yet RAN's string of blunders -- also including occupying campaign offices of Al Gore to protest oil investments (which Nader also had), possibly swinging the 2000 election -- cannot be forgotten nor forgiven, particularly while ill-informed appeasement continues. RAN has censored those questioning these policies on their blog.

Dr. Barry laments, "You can?t present yourselves as cutting edge, selfless and knowledgeable forest protestors and be routinely cutting deals to turn over millions of acres of ancient forests to fatcat loggers and minders. We need to focus on how many ecosystems are necessary to maintain the Earth's habitability, and reaching these levels of protection and restoration, not upon what can be indelicately and easily negotiated.

RAN is called upon to get on board protecting all ancient forests and working to restore mature, old-growth forests; or they, like so much of the mainstream environmental movement, are part of the climate and biodiversity crises. "Giving up on half of Canada's boreal forests for a pocket full is mumbles is not the role of the Rainforest Action Network, members or donors. They have no authority or expertise to be pursuing such deals."

---

Dr. Glen Barry is a leading global spokesperson on global forest and climate policy. Ecological Internet provides the world's leading climate and forest web portals at www.climateark.org and forests.org. Dr. Barry frequently conducts interviews on the latest environmental policy developments and can be reached at: glenbarry [AT] ecologicalinternet org (note confirmation email response required) and +1 (920) 776-1075.

(Original source: http://problemsoftheworld.com/archives/tag/painted-girls/; uploaded by bgn59)

Wall Street money talks while the Lips of Barrack Obama and Jack Layton move in sync.

It all makes sense now. Why a socialist. Oh, I’m sorry. Why a “social democrat” from the frozen north, Canada, would come down to the Denver convention of US Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama to roll over on his stomach and bark at his feet. They both stand for the same things. But not quite in the way Canada’s Jack Layton, leader of the leftist NDP, says they do.

He said, “Democrats here are talking about the same kind of change we’re talking about in Canada.” Layton’s correct there. Democrats are talking about turning a blind eye to runaway population generated by both illegal and legal immigration. He continued, “Whether it’s real action on climate change, forging trade policies that work for working families or standing up for jobs and better health care, there is a real desire here to put the concern of the kitchen table head of the board room table.”

That must be news to Wall Street, Jack. They bought and paid for Obama, and now this socialist from the north has come down to Colorado and told everybody that their nominee is concerned about ordinary people. But, hey wait. Democrats have been doing that for decades. They talk like Robespierre and govern like Louis XIV.

In assessing a politician it is best to cast rhetoric aside and look at who is bank-rolling his campaign. Follow the money trail. The true alignment of the Democratic Party with corporate interests can be vividly illustrated by referring to The Centre for Responsive Politics (CRP). http://www.opensecrets.org Bluntly put, the big banks, financial firms, corporate law firms and private equity companies on Wall Street pay the pipers of both parties. But Jack Layton’s comrade Democrats are their clear favourites as the figures will show. Let’s cite some examples of the more prominent corporate contributors.

The Financial/Insurance/Real Estate Industry gave 51% of their $51 million in 2008 to Jack’s friends, the Democrats.

The Information Technology sector gave 67% of its $27 million in contributions to the Democrats in 2008.

This year the Democrats have received almost $24 million from Agribusiness, representing 41% of their influence-peddling.

This is interesting. Wall Street law firms have sent 75% of their over $140 million in political contributions to the two-faced Democrats.

Listen to this. The Defense Industry gave 52% of its 8 million in donations to Jack Layton’s allies, the Democrats, in 2008. As Canadians know, Layton is a fierce opponent of the war in Iraq. I suppose if the Defense Industry had given its money to the Republicans it would have been referred to as “the Military Industrial Complex” once more. The electronics sector of the Defense Industry gave 55% to the Democrats.
Wall Street promotes the candidates who serve its interests and the Democrats have delivered for them since their November 2006 victory. Democratic leaders buried a proposal to tax the massive incomes of hedge fund operators at normal rates, allowing billionaires to claim most of their income as capital gains taxed at a far lower rate. Obama also refused action on the subprime meltdown that would have threatened big financial interests.

Barack Obama took in $102.1 million for all of 2007 and by February 22, 2008 had raised $138 million, including a million from private equity firms and $9 million from corporate law firms. And hold on to your seat belt. By the August 28/08 Barrack Obama had raised $389,423,102. Friends, that money most assuredly did not come from cab drivers, hairdressers, carpenters, supermarket clerks, gardeners or the working families sitting at the kitchen table that Jack Layton’s rhetoric conjures up. It came from ordinary, down-to-earth corporate goliaths like AT+T who gave $168,613 to Obama. And City Group who gave him $389,989. And Microsoft who gave him $274,375.

Now why would Microsoft give a candidate like Obama a political donation? Their donation is explicable by an Obama policy statement that maintains support for “improvements in our visa programs, including the H-1B programs, to attract some of the world’s most talented people to America.” But the most talented people in the world are already in abundant supply in America. The only problem is, Obama’s corporate IT benefactors don’t want to pay them the salaries they command. Better to flood the market with Asian visa workers who can be paid at 60% of that rate. Buying a pliable President and congress for even $1 billion in campaign contributions would be bargain for the IT industry.

Upon reviewing their take, one must say that for a progressive party of the downtrodden, the Democratic Party of the United States of America has done pretty well for itself, as did Mr. Obama, holding out a tin cup on Wall Street and doing their panhandler act.

I just loved their spiel too. “Please Mister, could you spare me a million, when I am elected I’ll open up the floodgates to more cheap labour, destroy another five million middle class jobs, expand the visa programs, displace jobs, depress wages, replace Canada as the country with highest population growth rate in the G8 and accelerate green house gas emissions, ruin the environment. Please Mister. Please. I won’t let you down sir..’

Now, it’s true. Organized labour has deployed 91% of its donations toward the Democrats and this has offset the corporate influence. But the scale is so pitifully small as to be compared to a peashooter firing back at a cannon. But then, if Big Labour did have the same financial clout, how would they wield it? The answer is not encouraging.

Until 1993 it was understood by trade union leaders that a tight labour market was a workers best friend. As the Democratic Socialist leader of Vermont, Bernie Sanders put it, “If poverty is increasing and if wages are going down, I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are now.’

Obviously Bernie Sanders is not Jack Layton’s kind of socialist. Nor was J. S.

Woodsworth, the founder of the CCF, the precursor to Mr. Layton’s New Democratic Party, since Woodsworth favoured restrictive immigration policies during his tenure as leader before the war. Layton is intent upon “jacking” up Canada’s immigration intake another 70-80,000 people immediately to achieve his arbitary goal of an annual quota equivalent to one percent of whatever of the country’s population level is. He maintains a steadfast ignorance of any study that undermines his rationale for growth. Studies like the C.D. Howe report that revealed that pensions could not be indefinitely supported by increasing immigration unless immigration was multiplied 28 times its existing level. Is Mr. Layton prepared to process over 7 million immigrants a year just to support pensioners? It would be interesting how his “Green Agenda” held up after a population hike like that after five years. Not to mention his plans to cut GHG emissions. And then there is that inconvenient Statistics Canada report of May 2007. The one that showed that immigration has depressed Canadian wages. That’s good news for the people who sit at the board room table. Bad news for the people who sit at the kitchen table that Jack claims to speak for.

In America, the voice of organized labour, the AFL-CIO, is singing in harmony with Obama’s Democrats. But the song is not “Solidarity forever”, its “Money, Money, Money”. In 1993 the AFL-CIO made a shocking break with its past by attacking the critics of illegal immigration. Three years later it joined a coalition of business, agribusiness and Christian conservatives to kill provisions of bill to limit refugee admissions and verify social security numbers of newly-hired workers to discourage illegal workers. But the landmark moment came in February of 2000 when it was announced that the AFL-CIO would “support expanded immigration, lenient enforcement of immigration law and the legislative agenda of immigrant advocacy groups.” Translation: The AFL-CIO was abandoning American workers to champion legal and illegal immigrant workers in their greed to recruit and harvest a larger dues-paying base.

Organized labour in Canada, as represented by the CLC, and its parliamentary wing, Jack Layton’s NDP, has precisely the same attitude. Xenophiliacs who love strangers within our gates more than the workers born right here. Some would call this a Christian attitude. Perhaps they should refer to 1st Timothy 5:8. There are many translations. But essentially, charity begins at home, and if you don’t begin at home, you aren’t practicing Christianity. I would prefer to call it an attitude of selfish condescension, one easy to accommodate if you are a trade union bureaucrat with a degree in Labour studies or economics sitting in an office insulated from layoffs and passing judgment upon “ignorant” blue collar workers who are obviously guilty of “false conciousness” because they don’t see the world as you do. Tougher though if you are on the front lines of competition, mopping a hospital floor for a subsistence wage and you’re in danger of losing your job because it might be contracted out to a cut-throat company that uses illegal immigrant workers. The ones the CLC says enrich our culture.

The reality is that although Jack Layton and Barack Obama may be talking about the same things, the populist script they are reading from is carefully crafted to decoy our notice from their corporate obligations. We may hear their rousing speeches, but it is money that is doing the talking, and it has an agenda. Its agenda is not American or Canadian. It is globalist. And it will do anything to have its way. It plays dirty. It doesn’t care about equality, but if it needs to, it will play the race card. It doesn’t care about migrant workers, but if it needs to, it will pretend to care. It doesn’t care about cultural diversity, but if needs to build up a constituency among Hispanics to gain support for amnesty and a bigger labour pool, it will. And it doesn’t care about the environment, but when there was a danger that the Sierra Club was going to return to its former policy of favouring restrictive immigration policies to stabilize the country’s runaway growth, a billionaire stepped in with $100 million to ensure that it didn’t happen.

Wall Street money talks. And if it keeps talking, in four decades, thanks to corporate mandated manic immigration, one half billion North Americans may be alive, or dying, to hear, the sound of a silent spring and a dead continent.

Thanks, Jack, for your role in making it happen.

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
August 29/08

Thousands of whales lethally "researched" by the Japanese has allowed them to draw the most startling conclusion; that "Antarctic minke whales are fast growing thinner"! The massive exploitation of krill as a protein source and as an animal-feed additive may now be jeopardizing recovering whale populations dependent on krill as a food supply. Since the 1970s the numbers of krill have declined by 80 percent, largely due to global warming. Fishing operations are adding to the depletion. These tiny crustaceans eat carbon-rich phytoplankton near the surface of the water, and thereby help remove carbon dioxide. After dark these amazing little animals send waste - which includes large amounts of carbon dioxide from the Earth's atmosphere - toward the sea floor and thereby removing the equivalent annual carbon dioxide emissions of 35 million cars! If krill are essential to a healthy ocean ecosystem and the processing of greenhouse gases, the Japanese should cut back on harvesting krill instead of killing the victims of their decline - the whales! Any Japanese criminal whaling fleet entering the Australian Antarctic Territory should be arrested, and their fleet impounded.

Iemma's arrogance drives power retail workers to strike action

NSW Greens Media release: 29 August 2008

The United Services Union has called its members working in call centres of Energy Australia, Integral Energy and Country Energy off the job in protest against Premier Morris Iemma's 'plan B sell-off' announced late yesterday.

Greens NSW MP Dr Kaye said: "The Premier has treated electricity retail workers with complete contempt.

"Morris Iemma's sulking refusal to accept the will of the parliament has brought him into open warfare with the unions, his own party, and the people of NSW.

"Retail workers know their jobs are on the line. Private owners will ship call centre operations overseas as a cost-cutting exercise.

"The strike action also highlights the importance of maintaining public ownership of electricity retailers for the state's economy, household finances and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"Privatisation will undermine important opportunities for demand management that can control increases in electricity bills and reduce NSW's carbon footprint.

"NSW deserves a Treasurer and a Premier who put the needs of the community and the environment ahead of the greed of big business.

"The Greens support the electricity retail workers' strike action.

"It is in the state's interests to stop the sell-off," Dr Kaye said.

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455

John Kaye
Greens member of the NSW Parliament
phone: (02) 9230 2668
fax: (02) 9230 2586
mobile: 0407 195 455
email: john.kaye [AT] parliament nsw gov au
web: www.johnkaye.org.au

See also: Iemma unethical, says ALP backbencher, Torbay urged to fire up in power debate

Contents: Power retail sell-off plan punishes households and environment, Costa, Iemma must resign over back-door sale move, Costa's cowardly retreat from stunt gone wrong, speech by Dr John Kaye, speech by Sylvia Hale.

Power retail sell-off plan punishes households and environment

NSW Premier Morris Iemma's refusal to accept the will of the parliament and people of NSW is undermining the state's ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.

Dr Kaye said: "Public ownership of electricity retailers is just as important as the generators.

"In a time of rising wholesale energy prices, privately-owned retailers will treat households as cash cows.

"Privatisation will destroy important opportunities for demand management that can control increases in electricity bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"The Premier has treated the people of NSW and their parliament with complete contempt.

"He has allowed himself to yet again be bullied into an unpopular and undemocratic move by his Treasurer.

"NSW is in the grip of climate sceptic Michael Costa and his obsession with privatisation.

"At a time when reducing emissions is moving from being a personal commitment to becoming a national imperative, selling off the retailers will make it much harder to share the burden of climate change fairly.

"It is not surprising that the big business lobby has invested heavily in peddling privatisation.

"They are not just pushing the sell-off to help their mates in the banking industry skim off massive profits from the sale.

"They are making sure that when prices do rise, the costs will be born by households, not the big commercial and industrial consumers.

"NSW needs a Treasurer and a Premier who put the needs of the community and the environment ahead of the greed of big business," Dr Kaye said.

For more information:

NSW Greens Media release: 29 August 2008

Contact: John Kaye 0407 195 455

Costa, Iemma must resign over back-door sale move

The eleventh hour move by Morris Iemma to sell off electricity retailers after privatisation had been declared 'dead and buried' is a complete abuse of parliament, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.

Dr Kaye said: "The Treasurer has misled parliament. Michael Costa has no credibility and must resign.

"Michael Costa directly told the NSW Upper House that any sale would be determined by the parliament.

"He and his Premier have dishonoured the Westminster system.

"Premier Iemma’s manufactured excuse for the back-door sale is ludicrous. The so-called crisis in credit ratings comes from nowhere and is not believable.₁

"The capital markets should know that the Greens will work with the unions to undo this commitment to sell the retailers.

"The Premier has swapped excuses in midstream. This was supposed to be about encouraging investment in power generation. Now we are told it is to solve an alleged credit crisis.

"The government has no mandate to sell the state’s electricity assets.

"The utter contempt they are showing for parliament, the people and the democratic process has brought NSW politics to a new low," Dr Kaye said.

(NSW Greens Media Release: 05:12 pm 28 August 2008)

For more information John Kaye 0407 195 455

Costa's cowardly retreat from stunt gone wrong

The move by the Iemma government to delay the inevitable defeat of power privatisation after squandering money on a parliamentary recall will destroy its credibility, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.

Dr Kaye said: "Michael Costa has condemned his privatisation to a coward's death.

"The Treasurer's henchmen in the Legislative Council manipulated the parliament process because they know the lies and propaganda behind his privatisation push would not withstand scrutiny.

"The community will be furious that the Iemma government has squandered their money on a parliamentary recall that achieved nothing.

"When parliament reconvenes in late September the Greens will ensure that the Treasurer's sell-off plans receive the scrutiny they so richly deserve.

"We will work with the Coalition and responsible Labor MPs to deliver the final defeat to Costa's privatisation legislation.

"If this government tries to bring in privatisation by the back door using ministerial powers then the community will come after them.

"The obligation is now on Morris Iemma to tell the people of NSW that electricity privatisation is dead on arrival.

"Michael Costa should now do the right thing and resign," Dr Kaye said.

(Source: NSW Greens Media Release: 02:53 pm 28 August 2008)

Speech to NSW Parliament by Greens MLC Dr John Kaye on the issue of Privatisation of Electricity

*Dr JOHN KAYE *[1.22 p.m.]: I join with the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in opposing the motion for adjournment. It is an act of total cowardice to avoid debate on a central plank. Treasurer Michael Costa and Premier Morris Iemma have said that the vote on the electricity industry privatisation legislation was the most important single vote to be taken in this Parliament. But what did the Labor Iemma Government do? It ran away from the vote, and it seeks to hide from the inevitable defeat that this bill would have inflicted. Why did the Government do that? It knows that 80 per cent of the New South Wales population is opposed to electricity privatisation. The Government knows that 80 per cent of its own party is opposed to electricity privatisation, and it knows that every sensible and independent observer of the electricity industry agrees.

Handing public assets into private hands would be a complete and total disaster. To adjourn the debate is simply an attempt to avoid inevitable humiliation. It must be accepted now that the Costa-Iemma electricity privatisation is dead in the water. And it is dead in the water without appropriate debate and vote, and they have inflicted a cowardly death on the legislation. I note that Minister Kelly is now leaving the Chamber; he is embarrassed by what he had to deliver for the Costa-Iemma Government, and embarrassed by his failure to allow the bills to be debated appropriately.

The underpinning of privatisation was the Owen inquiry. The Chamber has not had the opportunity to debate the Owen inquiry, or the opportunity to determine whether the State needs new baseload capacity. The Chamber has not had the opportunity to test the presumption that we cannot afford to buy new baseload capacity, or to test the assumption that the private sector will not invest in the New South Wales electricity industry as long as it is publicly owned. As long as those assumptions are not tested in this Chamber, the Owen inquiry remains a document of propaganda and ideology. The Government lacks the courage to allow that document to be subjected to the scrutiny of the New South Wales upper House. In doing so, the Government denies the people of New South Wales the debate that Michael Costa and Morris Iemma promised them.

For the past 12 months, Premier Iemma and Treasurer Costa said that there would be debate on the privatisation of the electricity industry, but that has now been denied us. If Premier Iemma and Treasurer Costa sneak away from this Chamber and try to privatise the industry behind closed doors, this Chamber will go after them as will the New South Wales union movement---the activists who have campaigned long and hard against privatisation---and 80 per cent of the New South Wales population who are opposed to it. We will find whatever rock they will hide under, and we will make sure that they pay the price for selling off assets.

It is time this Chamber had a debate about privatisation. We will make sure when the Chamber resumes that that debate is held; it has to happen. The Government cannot run the propaganda and lies in the media that have been heard from Michael Costa and Morris Iemma and not conduct that debate in this Chamber. Adjourning the Chamber now will not avoid debate at a future time. The Government has extended the agony for itself. The Government does not have the majority in this Chamber---the media and the people know that. People who have campaigned against privatisation know that, and Government members know that full well. Running away and hiding will not destroy the evidence that power privatisation was always going to be bad for the people, bad for households, bad for the economy and bad for the environment.

It remains absolutely true that the Government cannot continue down the path of spreading myths from Tony Owen that have been propagated by the Business Council of Australia, the Alliance for a Better New South Wales, the business lobby and the Premier and the Treasurer. The Government cannot keep relying on those myths unless it is prepared to hold debate in this Chamber; if it is not, it will have no public credibility. By hiding from this debate, all it has done is guaranteed that the people know what is really going on. The Government will not stand up to the scrutiny of this Chamber; and it cannot, because what it is doing is a complete and total tissue of lies. If debate on this matter is not listed for when the Chamber resumes on 23 September 2008, we will have to take matters into our own hands to ensure that it is held. The Greens oppose the adjournment.

Speech by Greens MLC Sylvia Hale to NSW Parliament on issue of Privatising Electricity

Ms SYLVIA HALE [1.32 p.m.]: Two years ago this Government attempted to privatise the Snowy Hydro scheme. That time it was saved from itself by a statewide campaign of opposition that made it clear that privatisation was unacceptable to the community. Protests and opposition started in the Snowy region and spread across the State, from village to town and into the cities. The State Government tried to tough it out, but ultimately the Federal Government's withdrawal from the process forced the hand of the State Government, which then withdrew from its attempted privatisation of Snowy Hydro. That decision was significant in saving the Government at the subsequent State election in March 2007.

Unfortunately, the State Labor Government has wilfully chosen not to learn from its mistaken attempt to sell Snowy Hydro. In 2008 the New South Wales Labor Government is determined not to save itself. It is so determined to thumb its nose at the people of New South Wales who overwhelmingly oppose privatisation that it took the extraordinary step of recalling Parliament to try to push through its bills. It has now taken the extraordinarily cowardly step of adjourning Parliament rather than face a defeat on the floor of the House. The Government has lost its commitment to the best interests of the residents of New South Wales, its ability to read the electorate, and its instincts for self-preservation. In the face once again of statewide community opposition, the Government appeared initially determined to push ahead with a privatisation proposal for which it has no mandate and to which the vast majority of the people of this State is opposed.

In the face of overwhelming opposition from the community, from the trade union movement and from its own rank and file members, why is the New South Wales Labor Government so keen to tread this self-destructive road? Many people in New South Wales will look at what has happened today and wonder what the Labor Party has become and whose interests it now serves. It appears that the leadership of the parliamentary Labor Party has determined that the future of the New South Wales Labor Party is as the party of big business. It has deliberately turned its back on its own members, on the trade unions and on the community generally in order to embrace the agenda of the State's large corporate interests.

It was instructive this week to see the pro-privatisation urgings of the corporate sector being led by the so-called Alliance for New South Wales' Future. This is the latest front group set up by the head of the Property Council, Ken Morrison, and his corporate lobby group mates. The last such group Mr Morrison fronted was the Coalition for Planning Reform. That was the group whose wish list formed the basis of the Government's deeply unpopular changes to the planning system—changes that, like the privatisation proposal before us, pretty well every Labor candidate in the upcoming local council elections is trying to disown. All these various coalitions and alliances that Mr Morrison fronts are supposedly motivated solely by the best interests of the residents of New South Wales, and their members become deeply offended by any suggestion that they are merely pursuing the financial interests of the corporations that make up their membership. They may claim public altruism, but there is no doubt that they are really lobbying in the financial interests of the big end of town. That is fair enough; it is what their corporate sponsors pay them to do.

What is disturbing, however, is the extent to which the so-called Labor Government has embraced the agenda of these corporate interests. One can hear the eager, servile capitulation of the Premier, the Treasurer, and the Minister for Planning: "Rewrite the planning laws the way you want them? Certainly, Mr Morrison. Hand the State's electricity assets over to the corporate sector? Of course, Mr Morrison". I do not know why Labor does not simply appoint Ken Morrison as Premier and cut out the middleman! The policy outcomes would be the same. The relevant bills were introduced in the lower House on the same day that Frank Sartor introduced his developers' wish list of a planning bill. This demonstrates clearly and finally for all to see that Labor's parliamentary leadership has turned its back on its rank and file members and its trade union base in order to fall into the loving embrace of the corporate sector that now funds its election campaigns and sets its policy agenda. As with Snowy Hydro, from the outset the Greens have opposed the privatisation of the State's electricity assets. We are united in our condemnation of the Government's pro-privatisation agenda.

Footnotes

1. ↑ On pages 257-259 of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" there is a narrative of another manufactured credit crisis in Canada in 1993:

In September 1995, a video was leaked to the Canadian press of John Snobelen, Ontario's minister of education, telling a closed door meeting of civil servants that before cuts to education and other unpopular reforms could be announced, a climate of panic needed to be created by leaking information that painted a more dire picture than "He would be inclined to talk about". He called it "creating a useful crisis."(p259)

See also: NSW electricity privatisation can be stopped!, Open letter to NSW state Opposition members urging a vote against electricity privatisation, Open letter to NSW Labor parliamentary caucus members to urging a vote against electricity privatisation

Upper House Liberal leader Michael Gallacher's speech against electricity privatisation

See also: comment below and Duncan Gay's speech

The following speech has been copied from the NSW Legislative Council Hansard of 27 August 2007.

The Hon. MICHAEL GALLACHER (Leader of the Opposition) [12.44 p.m.]: The Government has had 13 years to get the important issue of this State's future power generation right and, as members will shortly hear, it has got it wrong. The New South Wales Liberal-Nationals Coalition will not support the Iemma Government's Electricity Industry Restructuring (Response to Auditor-General Report) Bill and the associated cognate bill. The Liberal-Nationals Coalition does not take this decision likely. There are three key reasons for our dissatisfaction with this proposed electricity industry restructuring: the continued uncertainty surrounding the Commonwealth Government's emission trading scheme; the current state of capital markets is not conducive for the sale of such a valuable asset; and the Iemma Government's history of financial and infrastructure delivery mismanagement and incompetence. Underpinning all three reasons is the fundamental issue of trust. The community does not believe that the Government can be trusted to get this privatisation right. The community does not believe that the Iemma Government can be trusted to spend the proceeds of the sale in a transparent and honest manner. The community also does not believe that the Iemma Government can be trusted to put public interest ahead of the Labor Party's re-election plans.

The community's concerns are well founded. The 2007 State election did not deliver the Iemma Government a mandate to embark upon the sale of this State's electricity assets. In fact, the Iemma Government issued emphatic denials that any such sale would take place. The arrogant dismissal of concerns held by the Government's own members and its party, whilst contemptible, is not surprising. The Government's failure to put the question to the people of New South Wales demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is a Government out of control, out of step and out of options. Mr Iemma betrayed the trust when he refused to reveal his true plan about the future of electricity prior to the 2007 State election. By opposing this legislation the New South Wales Liberal-Nationals Coalition will ensure that the people of the State are not betrayed.

The Treasurer's ever-shifting position on the privatisation of electricity portrays him as a political opportunist. As an executive member of the Labor Council he opposed the privatisation of electricity. On 12 February 1998 as Acting Secretary of the council he moved the following executive recommendation:

That …the Labor Council reaffirms its opposition to the Egan Electricity Privatisation Proposal.

At a Labor Council meeting on 21 October 1999, in his position as Secretary of that council, he moved the following executive recommendation:

That …the Labor Council continue its campaign against contracting out of Government employees' work and jobs.

As well as opposing electricity privatisation the Treasurer has also spoken of the need to put social concerns above market fundamentalism. In his inaugural speech to this House in September 2001 he spoke of what he imagined as a better world:

While it is true that I respect the power of the market mechanism, I reject market fundamentalism, which places all market outcomes above social concerns … Societies structured on markets that do not deliver social outcomes supported by the majority of the community are doomed to failure.

Perhaps the Treasurer should have considered his own advice before bringing this legislation to the Parliament. In addition to those sentiments in his inaugural speech, he said:

Barrie Unsworth advised me that this inaugural speech was an important speech because it provides a public benchmark to judge one's contribution to public life. I hope that at the end of my time in this House I will be judged as having contributed to prosperity, opportunity and fairness.

As I said earlier, the Treasurer is a recent public convert to the "privatisation at all costs" agenda. As late as before the last State election—in this House on 23 November 2006—the Treasurer said:

There is no energy crisis in New South Wales … In fact, New South Wales has surplus energy.

A month out from the State election, on 20 February 2007, he was reported in the Australian Financial Review as saying:

There are no plans to sell our retail electricity businesses.

Yet here we are in an extraordinary sitting of this Parliament, having been recalled at great expense to the taxpayer, to pass legislation to privatise the electricity assets.

That I stand shoulder to shoulder with my Coalition colleagues, the Nationals, and accuse the Government of betrayal is not political rhetoric. The Government's Ministers pledged that they would not sell our State's power in any restructure, but not 12 months later, in a backflip, they and announced that they would. That is a betrayal. The Treasurer does not have a monopoly on opportunism when it comes to electricity privatisation. In the other place on 9 May 2007 the Premier said, when referring to the Owen review:

The Government goes into this review with an open mind, and only two things will be ruled out. The first is nuclear power. As I have stated previously, there will be no consideration whatsoever of nuclear energy for New South Wales. Second, there will be no sale of electricity generation, transmission or distribution. On all other matters I am yet to be convinced and will await Professor Owen's expert advice.

The Premier even has been accused of lying to Unions NSW. In a Sydney Morning Herald article dated 25 May 2007 he was reported as stating in a letter to Unions NSW:

The privatisation of the State Government-owned energy companies is not on our agenda. In fact, the NSW Government's commitment to this sector is stronger than ever … with record investment in new and upgraded electricity infrastructure.

I reiterate: This represents a betrayal of trust. It is a lack of trust that underpins the Coalition's opposition to these bills. While such significant uncertainty surrounds the creation of the proposed emissions trading scheme, New South Wales's taxpayers cannot be confident they are receiving full value for their assets. My colleague the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in this House, the Hon. Duncan Gay, will further outline our concerns regarding the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme.

The great disappointment in all of this is that rather than engage in a constructive conversation with the Rudd Government, Michael Costa has wasted time threatening Labor rank and file and berating the Opposition. When the bills are rejected by this House, responsibility will fall squarely at the feet of the Treasurer. From the outset he misled the community, isolated his colleagues and politicised the process. The Treasurer has failed to show leadership. Leadership is about engaging the community in open dialogue, leadership is about asking the hard questions, and leadership is about inspiration and bringing people along on a journey toward a desired outcome. At no point has the Government engaged the New South Wales public in anything resembling leadership consultation. Conversely, it has betrayed and engaged in spin, and in this House it will pay a hefty price for its hubris.

The proposal to privatise electricity does not meet the public interest test. In so many ways Australia's capital market conditions are not conducive to a positive outcome for the people of New South Wales. Since the release of the Owen report in 2007, Australian stock markets have fallen significantly. The Australian All Ordinaries fell almost 20 per cent, and the Australian utilities sector index fell almost 30 per cent. The impact of falling markets is clearly evident in the Hon. Michael Costa's consistent downward revision of the value of the assets. In December 2007 the Treasurer described a $15 billion price tag as conservative. In June 2008, he estimated the price at "around $10 billion". If a public company mysteriously lost $5 billion off the value of an asset in the space of six months, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission would declare an immediate audit. I point out that $5 billion is equivalent to the cost of 5,000 hospital beds or 130 new schools.

Importantly, the negative impact of capital markets will not be limited to initial public offerings; it will also affect trade sales. Market multiples will be used as a part of any basic valuation for a trade sale. Furthermore the global credit crunch makes it more difficult for companies to secure debt funding. My colleague in the other place the member for Manly estimates that the cost of underwriting $10 billion in current market conditions is $400 million more than at the same time last year.

The Iemma Government has spent the last week trying to make the future of its electricity plans all about the Opposition. The Treasurer has made numerous claims about why the Opposition should support the legislation—claims that simply do not stand up to scrutiny—and says that the Owen report found that $15 billion needs to be spent on electricity infrastructure. However, he is yet to explain why spending on electricity assets has been so neglected and why allegedly we need to come up with $15 billion by 2013. We reiterate that even as late as before the 2007 State election on 23 November 2006 the Treasurer stated in this House, "There is no energy crisis in New South Wales … In fact, New South Wales has surplus energy."

Responsible government is about planning for the future and anticipating the need for the replacement and ongoing maintenance of assets, particularly major assets such as power stations, hospitals, schools and police stations. The Treasurer claims that the details of the Commonwealth's emissions trading scheme will be clear by the end of the year, but what he does not point out is that, just as the New South Wales Government does not control its upper House, the Rudd Labor Government does not have control of the Senate. There is no way the Treasurer can be assured that legislation for the emissions trading scheme will be in place by the end of the year or that that legislation, even if it is amended or passed, will operate as intended.

The Treasurer also believes that financial market conditions, now or indeed at the end of the year, will be conducive to the sale of our State's electricity assets. Nobody, not even the Treasurer, knows what the market conditions will be at the end of the year. What we know now is that since the release of the Owen report in September 2007, the Australian stock market has fallen significantly. As I have said, the Australian All Ordinaries fell by almost 20 per cent and the Australian utilities sector index fell by almost 30 per cent. International rating agency, Fitch Ratings, stated:

The final valuation of NSW's coal-fired generation assets will be affected by the details of (the) carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) due to be introduced in 2010. Uncertainty over how the CPRS will affect the electricity generator's cashflows and of the present state of credit markets are likely to affect the value of proceeds.

It should never ever be forgotten that the only reason the Government faces defeat is that it has failed to secure the votes of its own caucus members. This predicament is entirely of the Government's own making. The Coalition's approach to electricity privatisation was never about ticking boxes or meeting deadlines. It has always been about what is in the best interests of the New South Wales community. Our approach to this legislation has not been about the father-knows-best politics of the Australian Labor Party. From the outset, it has been about doing what the people expect of us.

My colleagues in the other place each represent more than 40,000 voters in their respective electorates. The Leaders of the New South Wales Liberals-Nationals involved each and every one of those 40,00 voters in formulating the Coalition's final position. The Hon. Michael Costa and his leader cannot say the same. The Auditor-General's Report and the Rural Community Impact Statement have played an important role in our decision. We also considered a range of factors, including external economic conditions and the current state of flux in the energy sector. The process has involved wide consultation with groups ranging from business interests to energy sector employees and of course the general community.

Ultimately the Coalition decided that the Government cannot be trusted with the privatisation of electricity. Let me echo the words of the State's Leader of the Opposition, Barry O'Farrell, who confirmed this morning that the New South Wales Liberals-Nationals will have an energy policy to put to the people of New South Wales before the next election. Our policy will include the principle of private sector involvement where it meets the public interest. It will consider the broadest range of methods that deliver to the public the best outcomes in electricity. What our electricity policy will not be is the singular agenda of an individual member of Parliament who is intent on rushing through a fire sale of the State's most valuable asset.

Much has been said in the press concerning the effect that this decision will have on the Coalition's relationship with the business community. Irrespective of what some business groups might think about the role of private enterprise in electricity generation, most members of the business community would agree that the Government cannot be trusted with even the most basic economic endeavours, let alone something as substantial as electricity privatisation.

Ultimately, the key stakeholders in the proposed sale of the State's electricity assets do not sit in New South Wales boardrooms; they sit in lounge rooms. They open a power bill every three months. They will watch as market forces, both external and internal, affect the retail price of power generation. Some of them will be renters, some will pay mortgages, some will have children, and some will live on a pension.

While the Iemma Government decides how to divide the spoils of its sale across marginal constituencies, these people will decide what to cut from the family budget as the cost of living in New South Wales continues to increase. It should never be forgotten that if this legislation fails today it will be because the Labor Party has split. Two parties with conflicting agendas now run the New South Wales Government. I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with my Coalition colleagues The Nationals in condemnation of these bills and the manner in which they have been introduced. Today we oppose legislation that puts Morris Iemma and Michael Costa's interests and quick-fix financial gains above the interests of the people of New South Wales. The Opposition opposes this legislation.

Editor's comment on speech above

Although I am elsewhere highly critical of many other Liberal Party politicians, I found this speech by NSW Upper House Opposition Leader Michael Gallacher to be brilliantly incisive and informative. Thanks to Sheila Newman for having drawn my attention to it. Site visitors should also take the opportunity to read Treasurer Michael Costa's speech in support of the Electricity Privatisation bill in order to form their own judgement. It can be found on the Parliamentary web site. We intend to publish it here when time permits.

Readers should also contrast the damning case against Treasurer Costa and his Government presented here with the craven pro-NSW-Government coverage of electricity privatisation by virtually all the mainstream press, including that given by the supposedly independent ABC.

Why is it that newspapers, such as Rupert Murdoch's Australian which postures incessantly about its struggle to supposedly defend Your Right to Know so rarely report to the Australian public important basic facts about issues - like that of electricity privatisation - which can be readily found in the Parliamentary Hansards of almost every sitting day of the year?

The NSW's State Opposition's stance against privatisation is, unfortunately, not absolute. Ironically though, the NSW public and NSW unionists owe Michael Gallacher, Peter Debnam, Barry O'Farrell, Andrew Stoner and the whole NSW state opposition an enormous debt of gratitude. This is because the state opposition informed the NSW public of the truth about privatisation and the Labor Government record. The opposition then put its words into action. Of course, credit also rightly belongs to the Greens, the minor party and independent members, and those Labor members who defied the unprincipled stance of the Labor Caucus majority to vote against privatisation. Also credit is due to the trade unionists and community grass roots activists who campaigned so hard against privatisation. - James Sinnamon

Uppper House Nationals Leader Duncan Gay's speech against electricity privatisation

The Hon. DUNCAN GAY (Deputy Leader of the Opposition) [1.16 p.m.]: Today we have witnessed the contrast between two leaders: one leader who divided the party and another leader who brought two parties together. Never before have we seen greater contrast in this State. We have a political party that wants to hide in the back rooms of this State and not take decisions to the people. Its members do not want to walk up the front path to the front door of a house, knock on that door and say to the constituents in that house, "This is what we want to do." That party has defied the people's house of New South Wales and has not gone into the Legislative Assembly where the elected members of this Parliament represent the electorates of New South Wales.

We have seen vicarious cowardice on the part of the Premier and his tyrant Treasurer, who is probably already out there with the failed Babcock and Brown hunting for a job. Never before in this Parliament have we seen a greater contrast between those who are willing to listen to the people of New South Wales and act in the community's interest and a group who refuses to do so. That particular group unwisely spent taxpayers' money to recall the Parliament to debate a flawed scheme. The Parliament was offered one option, a flawed option that does not add up with the trading schemes yet to go before the Australian senate.

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The balance of power in the Senate will be held by a small group of Independents, including the newly elected South Australia Senator, Nick Xenophon, the Family First party and the Greens. Who knows what cost that will put on power generation in New South Wales? The Treasurer, in a rare bout of honesty in this House, indicated that cost could be as much as $3 billion. No-one knows what that cost will be out of Canberra. No-one knows what the competing cost will be out of the current fire sale at Babcock and Brown, as it divulges similar interests into the markets in this country.

Yet, we were given one option: to support the sale, or nothing! Today in this House, questions must be asked: What has the Government been doing for the past 13 years? Why is it suddenly Barry O'Farrell's fault? For 13 years the Government has had a chance to fix this problem. For 13 years former Treasurer Michael Egan and Treasurer Michael Costa have told Parliament that the New South Wales taxpayers have had a surplus through the good financial management of the Labor Party. Treasurer Michael Costa told New South Wales taxpayers before the last election that they had nothing to worry about. One reason why the people of New South Wales and the Opposition cannot support this legislation is because the Government's Ministers cannot be trusted. Their word is not what they stand for.

The Government promised to fix the roads, it promised to lower hospital waiting lists and it promised to provide extra police, but it has not delivered on one of those promises. Not one Government promise has been fulfilled. The electricity legislation that was introduced today is dead in the water, because the Government did not consult with the people of New South Wales and it gave a flawed plan. The Government has reaped its own revenge. The Government has lost, and it deserved to lose. The contrast is stark—we will go to the people with a proper plan. [Time expired.]

See also: Open letter to NSW state Opposition members urging a vote against electricity privatisation of 28 Aug 08, Open letter to NSW Labor parliamentary caucus members to urging a vote against electricity privatisation of 27 Aug 08

Promising new approach to restoring respect for kangaroos

The Kangaroo Trail map (pictured left) is a bold initiative from the persistently performing Australian Wildlife Protection Council.

We read often in the mainstream news distressing stories about how kangaroos are too numerous and need to be culled. In fact the evidence for these statements, and for the cruel and bloody actions that follow them, is extremely poor. Definitions of how many is too many are circular. Kangaroo population statistics which ignore immigration and emigration are useless. Statistics which infer population numbers from rising road-kill without factoring in the spread of development which is driving more animals onto the roads in search of food and water should be exposed for the rubbish that they are, but are accepted instead without question.

Stooping to aphrodisiac wildlife trade depraves Australia

Do Australians really want this kind of 'productivity' or the kind of leaders who encourage it?

Wildlife in general and kangaroos in particular get a really rotten deal in this country. Apart from the usual carnage promoted by our government at all levels, it seems that some businesses will stoop to any depth to make a dollar. Despite the invention of Viagra, the extinguishing of rhinos for their horns and tigers for their penises goes on. One of the most recent abjectly flogs ground up kangaroo testes in capsules at Australian Products Info, in NSW, and I quote:

"Essence of Kangaroo is made from Australian Red Kangaroo Testis. This large, powerful animal is the most magnificent of all the Kangaroos. It can leap up to 3.6m into the air and has a top speed of 65 km/hour. It alone illustrates the Kangaroos amazing strength and vitality. The research has found that male Kangaroo produces twice as much semen as a bull. The research has also proven that Essence of Kangaroo is extremely potent as it is rich in natural hormones, proteins, zinc and iron, which are able to increase physical strength and enhance the sexual energy. (...) Suggested Serving: Adults only. Take 1-2 capsules with meals per day or as directed by nutritionist."

Kangaroo trail tourist map restores respect for beautiful and gentle wildlife

So it is with relief and admiration for a group which punches a lot higher than its weight - the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) that I am able to report on a magical new idea to improve the public, business and government perception of kangaroos.

It is the Kangaroo trail tourist map. This is a beautiful colour pamphlet with images of the fifty kangaroo species located in their regions on a map of Australia. Around the map is additional information about these animals and where to see them, how to see them.

The Kangaroo Trail Team produced the Kangaroo Tourist Brochures. Map and illustrations are by Australian artist, Neil Williams. Main photographers are Juri Lochman, Michael Williams, Bill Corn, Uli Kloeke. Text is written by the kangaroo trail team leader, Dr David Croft, from the University of New South Wales, who is passionate about kangaroos and whose career has been devoted to learning more about them and educating others.

AWPC President Maryland Wilson deserves our support for leading the way

Maryland Wilson, President of the AWPC, and Kangaroo Trail Team manager, brought the project into life and is promoting it. Wilson's extraordinary energy and dedication to the shining cause of getting Australians to defend the kangaroo's right to live in its own land and to be loved and appreciated as a complex, beautiful and social creature defies nearly every prevailing trend and shows the kind of courage that is necessary in standing up to institutional cruelty.

(pulp mill effluent image on front page is from http://www.surfrider.org/srui.aspx?uiq=a-z/pulp_mills)

Population numbers
Decidedly, the Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, is proving a substantial disappointment on some major environmental group concerns. As President of the Australian Conservation Foundation he infuriated Australians who were concerned about too much population growth in this country by heading an organisation which refused to voice their concerns and failed to uphold its own constitutional policy on population, but would act as if it was representing the Australian public and ACF constitutional values in this matter.

RAMSAR Wetlands
Since becoming Environment Minister, Garrett has outraged the Blue Wedges, a substantial environmental movement in Victoria, centred around the health of Port Phillip Bay because of what they see as his abject failure to protect the bay, including its RAMSAR wetlands areas, and his failure to meet his obligations under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC) Act to consider sustainability principles – including intergenerational equity.

Intergenerational Equity

"How," asks Blue Wedges, "can it be equitable to future generations of humans - and all other species for that matter- to leave a legacy of a toxic dump in the Bay, 60 times larger than the Hattah Nowingi site near Mildura? It is worth remembering that in 2006, the Mildura site was rejected, first by the community and then by an independent planning panel."

EPBC Act
Australian wildlife campaigners had hoped that Garrett in government would intervene to make the EPBC Act more effective. Instead he has relied upon its inherent weaknesses to support more development in and destruction of important environments around Australia. Environmentalists, many who elected him, have found his performance bitterly disappointing. (The Act had never been very strong but had been further watered-down by the Howard Government in 2006 amendments.)

Murray Darling Basin

And his failure to intervene in the Murray Darling Basin South Australia crisis has provoked disgust. Here, as with Port Phillip Bay, RAMSAR wetlands and fragile marine ecosystems are threatened.

The Arts

Yesterday, The Age reported that Garrett, as Minister for the Arts has let down the arts community badly, defending the Rudd Government’s 3.25% funding cut to small public sector agencies, such as the National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia and the Australian War Memorial. See: http://news.theage.com.au/national/cultural-institutions-get-enough-money-20080825-41xf.html

Broad agreement that Garrett is a dud

In short there is broad agreement that Garrett is a dud – although calling someone a dud is likely to have one ejected for the House of Representatives (ABC PM tonight – 26-8-08) …..It seems even parliamentary privilege is no protection for robust criticism any more - So much for freedom of speech in this fair land!

Green Senator denied CSIRO research report on Gunns Pulp Mill

On the 21st of August, Senator Christine Milne strongly criticized Garrett’s failure to supply her Freedom of Information request for a CSIRO research report from a member of an independent expert group which has the task of reviewing material submitted by Gunns pulp mill.

Query about pulp mill effluent dumping

According to her press release of 21-8-08, Senator Milne believes that the report relates to “Gunns’ intention to dump 64,000 tonnes of effluent into Bass Strait per day and the probabilities of it exceeding the allowable effluent concentration.”

Garrett's department mired in process?

On 22 August, Garrett, in an ABC Radio National Breakfast interview with Fran Kelly Garrett seemed basically to be saying that his department would not release the report Milne was complaining about because the material in it had not been verified and because there was a process whereby Gunns could be asked to supply more information to clarify the material in the report. One wonders if Garrett was being circumspect because of the possibility that Gunns (famous for having pursued 16 individuals - including Green MPs Bob Brown and Peg Putt - and four green organisations - including the Wilderness Society - for a total $6.3 million damages arising out of protests and campaigns against the company) could sue for defamation if a report led to financial losses and could be shown to be knowingly premature or incomplete.

Senator Milne seems to be indicating in her complaints, that she believes that the report must already be adequately informed.

Deadline for Gunns

In the interview with Fran Kelly of the ABC it was made clear by Garrett that Gunns has until October 4, 2008, to finalise its input into the Government's assessment process. It sounded like Garrett might well give Gunns more time if it requested this.

Both Senator Milne, in her 21 August press release, and Fran Kelly in her 22 August interview with Garrett, described Gunns' as if they were in severe financial difficulty and as if the question of the amount of discharge they might be contemplating was the focus of much speculation in the business community.
Senator Milne: “With Gunns stock in freefall, and rife speculation in the investment community as to the content of scientific studies, this is not the time for the Government to prioritise Gunns’ commercial interest over the public interest."

Fran Kelly: "Yesterday, shares in Gunns were at an eight year low, in fact placed in a trading halt while the company goes out seeking this funding. In the last few weeks doubts have been raised about the future of the pulp mill. Leighton Holdings boss, Wal King, says it will never be built and there are some reports that even the new Tasmanian Premier, David Bartlett is sceptical."

This kind of comment about Gunn's financial situation should, one would think, tend to alleviate any anxiety Mr Garrett might have about the possibility of defamatorily prejudicing Gunns' business outlook by the release of more information.

Milne: Since when does an environment minister protect the interests of big business over those of the public?

Garrett's close-lipped approach on this matter does seem to lend weight to the relevance of Senator Milne's question:

“Since when has the Commonwealth Environment Minister seen himself as the protector of the interests of big business at the expense of the environment and the public interest?"

Changes to defamation laws

For many years it was extremely difficult for the Australian press to report clearly on financial matters because of Australia's defamation laws, which did not support truth in reporting and which could lead to extraordinary costs in court. In those days, even if what you said about a company was true, if that company lost money over your revelation, you might lose any case they brought against you for defamation. This problem is well treated at the end of Trevor Sykes, The Bold Riders, Allen and Unwin, Australia, 1996, for anyone who would like to know more. (Trevor Sykes writes for the Financial Review as Pierpoint.)

Since 2006 these state laws have been largely harmonised and made much more reasonable, with truth a very strong defense and the public interest a non-qualifier or at most a minor qualifier. There are also limitations on costs and processes (articulated or implied through precedent) to increase motivation to mediate rather than to sue. The very unpopular Howard Government immigration minister, Philip Rudd, was responsible for placing pressure to free up these laws in favour of public expression.

Article written by Sheila Newman with Jenny Warfe

Lou Dobbs interview on US population explosion

The following transcript is instructive for its revelation of the globalist mentality of mainstream environmentalism. In this case represented by Robert Engelman of Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org). Engelman, the good environmentalist that he is, takes the safe, easy way out. He opposes population growth alright. On a global front. The Worldwatch Institute says it's a bad thing and Engelman has written a book saying all the politically correct things. You know, "Women don't want more children, they want more for their children", so let's empower women. Fine.

It's when you start talking about population growth at home that environmentalists get nervous. And as soon as you mention "immigration", they get more than nervous, they get a panic attack. They start thinking about losing their donor base, especially that donor whose initials are D.G. and who gives $100 million every year on condition you don't take a stand on immigration. If you press them too hard and win the argument, well then you are a racist and the discussion is over.

What do folks like Engelman do? As you will see in the transcript, he blames the population increase on more people having babies. Environmentalists are very comfortable about discussing a "woman's right to choose" but apparently not a whole people's right choose how many shall become citizens. What Engelman doesn't want to face up to is that the fertility boom America is experiencing is driven by immigrants. And even if it wasn't, isn't there something perverse about an environmental movement that a)ignores population growth as an agency of environmental degradation and b) ignores immigration as an agency of population growth when in Canada and the US it accounts for 70% of such growth, irrespective of the children of immigrants?

The environmental movement can be likened to a police force that sets up a road block to arrest drunk drivers but allows the drug impaired to drive on through. It is prepared to arrest unwanted pregnancies but mass and illegal immigration can just drive on through.

The transcript was circulated by Bill Ryerson. I highlighted the juicy parts and inserted some annoying comments. Tim Murray

This is the transcript from Lou Dobbs' CNN program segment on U.S. population growth broadcast on August 21, 2008. For the entire program, see transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0808/21/ldt.01.html. Be sure to send Lou Dobbs your comments on the program and encourage him to do more programs on population issues at loudobbs [AT] cnn com .

Dobbs: The population of this country is expected to grow, get ready, by 135 million people in just the next 40 years. That growth is driven principally by immigration, both legal and illegal, and not by birth. There are serious concerns whether this country's national resources can keep up with and support such an outright explosion in our population.

Joining me now are three experts on population growth. From Washington, D.C., Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute (www.aei.org). Norm, great to have you with us. Norm is co-author of "The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track."

Robert Engelman is vice president for programs at the Worldwatch Institute. Good to have you with us. Robert is the author of "More: Population, Nature and What Women Want."

And that is one of my favorite titles. And here in New York is Jane Delung, president emeritus of the Population Resource Center (www.prcdc.org). Great to have you with us.

Let's begin. We're talking about an outright explosion. Almost 50 percent increase in our population over the course of the next four or five decades. That's crazy.

Jane Delung, President Emeritus, Population Resource Center: It is an explosion. For every two people that are in the United States today, there will be a third person. And this explosion is occurring both because of immigration and descendants to immigration. All respective experts say that it's between 60 and 75 percent of that growth will be driven by immigration. No one talks about this.

This is the hidden elephant in the room in the United States. We will have immigration reform discussions and debates next year. And it is beyond me why the American public is not willing to talk about what size do we want to be and how fast are we going to get there? We're growing from 300 million people to almost 450 million people in 40 years. Three million additional people a year.

Dobbs: That's incredible. To put that in some context, that growth rate is in excess of 10, 15 percent greater number than the entire number of people living in this country in 1940. That's nuts.

Delung: It's double the population in the 1960s. We hit 200 million in 1967. We're going to hit 450 million in 2040. It's an extraordinary growth rate.

Dobbs: Robert, let me ask you this. The environmental impact -- at a time when this country is being criticized for consuming so much of the world's resources. At a time when we are finding ourselves running into limits in terms of this country's resources whether it be for building, for the production and manufacture of products and goods, whatever it may be, what is the environmental impact?

Robert Engelman, Worldwatch Institute: Well, first of all, it's probably worth pointing out that these projections sometimes change. This is actually an increase in what the census was projecting just a few years ago. Probably more because of increases in births than actual increases in immigration. (Nonsense! What Engelman fails to note is that much of the current baby boom is attributable to illegal Hispanics exploiting the 14th amendment that allows citizenship to anyone born in the country. "Anchor babies". Hispanics in the US are having more children than they did in their home country. Population growth is driven by immigration. Other factors are peripheral.-Tim)

But let's assume the number is more or less accurate, it's going to be fairly close to that. It's interesting that this discussion is occurring at a time when everyone from President Bush on down has recognized that one of the reasons Americans are paying more for gasoline, more for food, is increases in demand. Demand matters and we're starting to lose confidence that I think we used to have that we can always produce more, we can always find more of everything we might need, so it doesn't matter how many people are consuming.

It clearly does matter and what we're seeing in America is a high consuming country that will need to consume about 50 percent more of the energy of housing. Whether it's John McCain's numbers or our own individual houses. We're going to be consuming more living space and more transportation. All of these things that we're worried about right now will need to find a lot more of.

Dobbs: So where is - where are the environmentalists on this? The impact is tremendous on the environment, on water supplies, on air. It's extraordinary and we're not hearing any discussion at all of what is a critically important issue from the environmental sector. (They have been bought out my friend. Google David Gelbaum. $100 million will make the "P" in the "IPAT" equation go away. Then all of America's environmental problems become ones of our sinful over-consumption.-Tim)

Engelman: I think the whole topic of population has become very sensitive. It's scary, it's very difficult for the environmental movement as a movement to take on. And it's one of the difficulties with a lot of things we face.

Dobbs: Sensitive and scary. Why should any American in any quarter ever be scared?

Engelman: People like to have safe conversations at least when they're not on television.

Dobbs: On this broadcast, we would like to have honest conversations. We want to tell everybody in this country who watches the broadcast, it's OK talk straight. We don't have to be politically correct. We don't have to be bound up with some silly orthodoxy on the left or right, some partisan nonsense. And it is all nonsense, coming from the right or left in this country. Feel free.

Engelman: Fine, I do. But for those who are trying to raise funding, for those who are trying to gain members, when you're looking at a phenomena that's basically about births and immigration, it has a lot to do with sex. It has a lot to do with contraception, touches on abortion.

Dobbs: You mean life itself?

Engelman: Yes, it can sometimes be sensitive and that's one of the difficulties of population. It's not like technology in just saying if we put up enough windmills, we'll be OK.

Dobbs: Let me put this in an expression of one of my daughters. Is the environmental sector about ready to man up on this issue?

Engelman: I don't know if I would put it that way. But I think we're going be forced more and more to examine where we're going demographically, because it is so important. At some point, we're going to have to decide whether we're going to cap our greenhouse gas emissions. Then it will get very interesting as our population keeps growing.

Dobbs: To me, it's already interesting, Robert, to be honest, and troubling. Let me turn to you, Norm. The idea as Jane just pointed out that we're not having a conversation. We don't hear from John McCain or Barack Obama, despite all of their nonsense on the campaign trail, we're not hearing from either of them about what the country will look like, how should our country function. What should we be thinking about in terms of the resources we will demand for the population one or two generations out? We're talking about finances on some levels at the margin. But we're not talking in any real terms about population growth, environmental impact, scarce resources, all of the tough issues.

Norm Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute: You know, it's almost inevitable in a political campaign that you look at short-term driving things. Right now, it's $4 a gallon gasoline. You mentioned the word that I think is an absolutely critical one, Lou, which is water. There will be an international water shortage. Safe potable drinking water, for other purposes that will make the oil crisis look pale by comparison.

And we really need to have a discussion of this. It's not going to happen in a political campaign, I'm afraid. We're going have to have a discussion about transportation. As more and more people move to exports, how are we going to afford to or find the vehicles or ways to get them around? And it's certainly great to have this conversation now.

You know, I might add one other thing, though. Keep in mind that as we look at our projections, in Europe the projections are exactly the opposite. They're going dramatically falling birth rates. They're actually going to have fewer people. They're going to have a whole lot more older people with very few young people to pay for the services that they've grown used to having. There's going to be crises in a lot of different ways and a lot of places, Lou.

Dobbs: We're going to don't talk about just exactly that when we continue with our panel here. Stay with us, we'll be right back. We're going talk about how in the world is the planet going to support over 9 billion people in the next four decades. Stay with us.

(Commercial break)

Dobbs: Jane, let me turn to you first quickly. The projections here for population growth. Do you believe that we're going to be growing faster than the rest of the world? Is it possible that it would even be growing even faster than these projections?

Delung: I do not think we're going to be growing faster than the rest of the world. But as Bob said, there's a real possibility that we will actually grow faster than these projections. I believe we will. The last population projections were in the mid-1990s. These projections have us with 45 million more people than they did in the mid-1990s.

Dobbs: So we continue to underestimate.

Delung: The growth has accelerated. We are underestimating the population that we're going have.

Dobbs: That's even more troubling. Robert, the environmental impact here, the political correctness issue, the sensitivity if you will as you described it here, there's a point of which, when we look at the issues of clean water, the energy demand that is resulting, natural resource demand. Why in the world would the environmental groups not now coalesce around this issue and start dealing with political issues that are going to have to be made in this society?

Engelman: Well I think one of the things that we need to communicate better is there are reasonable choices to make. One of the big factors in this that doesn't get talked about is the high level of unintended pregnancy in this country. If we had universal health care, and I might say if we had health care that was accessible to people who are not documented here as well as people who are undocumented here so that everyone, whether you're legally here or not, could at least get access to good family planning service, we could eliminate a large proportion of the pregnancies and thus the births that are occurring in this country. That's something we don't tend to talk about, environmentalists.

Dobbs: So it's politically incorrect to discuss illegal immigration, but it's politically correct to talk about substituting the national birthrate for immigration.

Engelman: I'm not sure which is politically correct.

Dobbs: We'll have that debate later. I want to turn to Norm very quickly. Norm, the choices that are here. We're talking about political choices. How do we get the political choices involved with exploding population growth on the national agenda?

Ornstein: You know, we're going to have to among other things hope that we can have more than three structured presidential debates. Have a different way to focus on all of the policy implications that flow from larger population. Some are positive. We're going have young people who at least can pay into a social security system and perhaps provide some of the resources to pay for health care for the elderly population and a whole lot of others that aren't.
(Unbelievable. The old Population Pyramid Scam. And who will pay for their health care when they reach old age, another billion immigrants? Young people cost more to care for than the elderly.-Tim)

Dobbs: You make them sound like social security slaves that we can bring in for the great entitlement plantation.

Ornstein: For our age, that's something we've got to think about, Lou.

Dobbs: Well, I didn't dismiss it out of head. Norm, thank you very much. Robert, thank you. Jane, thank you. So much, all three of you for being here to help us examine this. Come back soon, please.

Tonight's poll results: 98 percent of you say the Rhode Island bishop would be better served by calling upon the Mexican government to exercise morality in providing for its own citizens rather than encouraging them to break the law and enter the United States.

We thank you for being with us tonight. Please join us tomorrow. For all of us here, thank you for watching. Good night from New York. "THE ELECTION CENTER" with John King begins now -- John?

The recently released NSW Auditor-General's report supposedly gives the green light to the NSW Government's electricity privatisation legislation. NSW Premier, Morris Iemma, has seized on this and has announced that he may recall the NSW Parliament as early as next week in order to rush through the privatisation legislation.

The actual words from the report (pdf, 354K), which NSW Premier Morris Iemma claimed as a "stunning endorsement" of his government's plans were "... nothing has come to my attention that causes me to believe that the Government's strategy for the transfer of assets to the private sector ... is not appropriate for maximising financial value for taxpayers."

These read like weasel words, intended to satisfy the political needs of the Iemma Government whilst maintaining a facade that the Auditor General has fulfilled his responsibilities to hold the Government accountable to the NSW public.

A condition imposed by the Auditor-General, which superficially appears to pose a hurdle to privatisation, is that a confidential reserve price for each electricity generation asset to be sold be arrived at. If, for any one asset, the bids fail to exceed that asset's secret reserve price, that asset's sale is to be scrapped. One "of the factors used to determine the reserve price for each transaction" is to be the asset's 'Retention Value'. The report doesn't specify what other factors are to be used in determining the reserve price.

The A-G's report describes the 'retention value'.

The Strategy Document outlines the intended approach to be adopted to estimate the value of the businesses under continued Government ownership. This approach values the projected future dividends from the businesses and projected corporate taxes paid by the businesses which are ultimately received by the State under the Tax Equivalent Regime. The projections should reflect the expected performance of the businesses under continued Government ownership taking into account any impact of Government ownership on the businesses’ growth strategy, capital structure and performance. The projected future dividends and tax payments should be discounted at an appropriate cost of equity reflecting the risks associated with the projected cash flows.

From the point of view of accountability and the public interest, there are a number of problems:

• The 'retention values' were unspecified.
• What is to stop the NSW Treasurer from applying 'factors' other than an asset's 'retention value' in order to reduce the reserve price?
• The process requires, on the one hand, concealing from the NSW public the calculated retention values, whilst, on the other hand, relying on those managing the sell-off to keep that knowledge from the intending purchasers.
• The 'retention value' is defined only in the narrowest financial terms. For example, it appears to accept shifting of costs, previously borne by publicly owned corporations, onto the public as a legitimate means to favorably assess comparative performance of the privately owned utility. One example of cost-shifting typically employed by privatised corporation is the reduction in on-the-job training of its staff.

In other ways, the report helps expedite privatisation. It states:

... it is in the interests of investor confidence and bearing in mind the long lead times for developers to physically obtain generation equipment, that any uncertainty relating to the proposed restructure should be removed as soon as possible.

The report also takes issue with the five year employment guarantee to current NSW electricity employees:

Based on information provided by Treasury, the planned measures for the proposed employee protections are generally consistent with other privatisations and Government restructures, except for the employment guarantees. A five year employment guarantee for certain Generator employees exceeds such guarantees in previous privatisations and restructures, which were for three years or less.

From the A-G's objection to the five year employment guarantee which he implies is excessive, we can see that he unquestioningly accepts the prevailing economic orthodoxy which is that the greater propensity of private owners to shed jobs is a factor in favour of private ownership.

Whatever can be said of the report, it fails to clearly demonstrate, as the NSW public who paid for the report are entitled to know, whether or not privatisation is in their best interests. It admits that its parameters are confined to dollar projections in the narrowest sense, and does not consider factors beyond this - notably democracy.

The fate of NSW's electricity assets, paid for over recent decades by the NSW public with taxes and through electricity bills, should not rest on such an obviously limited and deficient report.

Democracy disregarded

The NSW public, the rightful owners of the electricity assets, have consistently and emphatically shown their opposition to the sale. In the 1999 elections where they resoundingly voted against the NSW Liberal/National opposition which stood on a platform of full privatisation. The latest poll showed 79% opposition to the sale. An earlier poll showed 85% opposition. The NSW state Labor Party Conference, wholly consistent with the feelings of the broader community, voted 702 to 107 against privatisation, but was subsequently ignored by the NSW state Labor Parliamentary Caucus.

The plans to privatise were never put to the NSW public during the 2007 elections. As it is impossible to believe that privatisation had only occurred to Iemma and Costa since the election, it would appear that they deliberately concealed their intentions, knowing that they would have been rejected.

If democracy in this country is to have any practical substance whatsoever, then the NSW government has no mandate to proceed with the sale.

Given that the Iemma Government may well have the numbers on the floor, how is it possible for the NSW public to prevent this brazen theft from proceeding?

The public have already made it clear they don't support privatisation of electricity

As the Vietnam Moratorium and many other popular protest movements have demonstrated, Parliament does not always get its way when it is so far removed from the will of the public.

The most effective way to block privatisation would be for the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), members of which stand to lose the most should it proceed, to carry out their threat of industrial action. In all likelihood the ETU would not even need to carry out its threat. If it were simply made clear to the Iemma that, unless privatisation is abandoned outright, or the legislation put to the NSW public either through a referendum or at the next election, it will proceed with industrial action, it is hard to conceive of how this could not enjoy the overwhelming support of the NSW public and and it is hard to concieve of how Iemma, faced with such an ultimatum could see any alternative but to agree.

Whether or not the ETU decides to pursue this course, all parliamentary representatives must be held to account for their actions. As hardly any who have voted in Parliament for privatisation, least of all the Labor representatives, are acting in accord with the will of their constituencies then their constituencies have every right to have them replaced by others who will. In the case of the NSW Labor Party, whose will has also been ignored, simply supporting those few Labor members who have voted against privatisation is hardly sufficient. They should not hesitate to disendorse each and every member who have voted for privatisation, starting from Morris Iemma and Michael Costa. Given the generally appalling record of the Iemma Government and its abysmally low popularity, this would seem, in any case, to be the only realistic chance that Labor would have of retaining government in NSW in 2011.

If the public don't endorse the sale it can be revoked later on

However, the most important measure that should be adopted by those now fighting privatisation is to clearly warn those intending to buy NSW's electricity assets that they have no right to do so and be resolved to both remove from office all those who are pushing privatisation and to renationalise those assets.

All those who intend to buy NSW's electricity assets in open defiance of the will of the NSW public must be told in no uncertain terms that once a government, which is representative of the NSW public, comes to power, that they, and not the NSW public, will be made to bear the cost. Whatever costs, which were were illegitimately imposed on the NSW public in the course of privatisation and whatever further costs are necessary to renationalise those assets should be discounted in full from the money paid for the repurchase of these assets.

If this were stated clearly now, then they won't be able to say that they weren't warned.

One impact of Georgia's nose-thumbing Russia has been for the US and Europe to take a step backwards, away from it. This leaves Georgia, not only vulnerable to a Russian take-over, but it also frees Georgia to succumb to Russia.

See also: Russia Never Wanted a War by Mihkail Gorbachev in New York Times of 19 Aug 08 for a view critical of Georgia's role in the conflict.

The US invasion of Iraq was identified by many oil 'peakniks' as the first of the oil depletion wars. Hostilities around Ossetia between Georgia and Russia, identify this region as the second of the oil depletion warzones.

The World’s longest oil pipeline runs through Georgia

Illustration source: http://www.american.edu/ted/ice/ossetia.htm
South Ossetia is a Georgian state, north of Tbilisi, Georgia, where the world's longest oil pipeline - the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline - runs through on its politically and geographically circuitous route to the Mediterranean from the Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea is the largest closed body of water in an ancient fiery region full of legend, bordering central Asia. It is also an international wildlife preserve,[1] with many threatened species, including the near-extinct Caspian sturgeon (source of caviar and little sturgeons).

(Photo of Caspian Seal from Wikipedia)

The entire pipeline is underground and fascinatingly high-tech,[2] to cope with the climate, seismic, and gravity features of the regions it tunnels through as well as the high wax content of the oil. It is patrolled by US trained Georgian soldiers. [2] The crude comes from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field in the Caspian Sea, which has slowly been coming on line since 2005 with Gunashli only beginning production in May 2008.

There has been for a long time conflict as to whether the inland body of water known as the Caspian Sea is a sea or a lake. The political difference is that, if it is a lake, then the hydrocarbons (oils and gases) it produces belong to the countries bordering its shores. These are, clockwise from the port of Baku: Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran. If it is a sea, however, such products are divided up by median lines.

Caspian oil and gas

Much has been hoped for from the Caspian's oil and gas reserves.

Their location, however, for many reasons, makes profitable oil extraction especially difficult and probably impossible in many cases.

Source: http://www.martinhovland.com/mud_volcanoes_files/garadag2.jpg
The highest density of mud volcanoes occurs in Azerebaijan and in the Caspian Sea

Conditions make the region sound like a strange and hostile planet, scorching in summer and frigid in winter. Caspian oil has a super-dangerous high sulphur content which means that workers need to wear oxygen tanks to avoid hydrogen sulphide during exploration and extraction. The water is often ice-bound. The winter climate, as well as wet and freezing, is stormy with severe winds. The site of the most important oil reserves off Kazakhstan, in Kashagan field, are located in shallow water which is hard to navigate, and the deposits are in pockets, inconveniently separated by rock layers, 4.02 km or 2.5 miles below the seabed at pressures around 500 times sea level. It has been necessary to build special platforms and equipment. An offshore gas platform and plant for Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz project was costed at $10 billion plus.

Even if the reserves in the Caspian do prove to be huge, and it becomes possible to extract a good portion, the amount of petroleum and other fuels and materials expended in order to do so mean that the margin for profit is much smaller than with wells in the past. This is just one of the reasons why oil is becoming so dear; the easy to get supplies were taken first; now only obscure and difficult deposits remain. On top of this, demand for an ultimately finite supply is rising daily along with population numbers and economic activity.

Geopolitics

Although it is true that the pipeline avoids "using tanker transport along the Black Sea and the highly congested Bosporus, "[2] which a shorter pipeline through Russia would have led to, other, more political reasons, have been highlighted by the August Georgia-Russian confrontation.

It is largely these political associations which caused the pipeline to be much longer than it might have been, adding an estimated $3.20 per barrel to the cost of transporting the oil.[2]

Russia is the big power in the area, yet it has been left out of the pipeline in question. What is more, there are several more pipelines in the … um… pipeline and none of them involve Russia. Prior to this one there was the Baku-Supsa pipeline, which transports oil from Azerbaijan to the Black Sea coast of Georgia. Sohbut Kabuz reports that there is a preliminary agreement for construction of a pipeline to ‘connect Romania's Konstanza port to Italy's port of Trieste.” There is another planned to link Ukraine's Odessa-Brodi pipeline to Poland's Gdansk port in the Baltic Sea, and another to transport Azerbaijani and Turkmen natural gas to Europe via Romania and Ukraine. “All give key roles to Georgia,” Kabuz says. [3]

But Russia obviously believes that the countries around the Caspian, and their product, should be within its hegemony. Unsurprisingly, it is suspicious of US 'democracy' missions and gifts and influence in the area. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is not just an insulting symbol, it is actually siphoning oil out of the area beyond the reach of Russian taxes, and more like this are planned.[3]

Logically, a pipeline through Russia and Iran would have made more sense.
On the face of it, the pipeline took a very strange route when there was a much shorter one available with less geologically unstable terrain (high seismic activity). But that route went through Russia or Iran. Although Russia's oil supply appears to have peaked, the US supply peaked ages ago (in about 1973), but the US is a glutton for oil. Obviously the US does not want to deal with Russia any more than it has to. Not surprisingly the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline was the outcome of US influence in the region. The US paid Turkey something like one fifth of the construction costs ($823m) and has been extending its influence via NATO in the area for some time. The pipeline was designed to accommodate an oil throughput of one million barrels per day, which is around 1/87th of recent daily world demand. (EIA stats)

Colin Campbell, thought that the US invasion of Iraq might have indicated that US expectations may have diminished in the light of the many difficulties associated with extraction and transport in the Caspian region.[4] This disappointment factor might explain, in part, why the US cavalry did not come galloping to Georgia's rescue in the latest hostilities.

Sharing the Caspian coastline, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan gained independence following the fall of the Soviets in 1991. Campbell writes in his superbly informed article on this complex subject, “The Caspian Chimera,” that Dagestan and Chechnya reluctantly remain part of federated Russia but “still seek independence, in a vicious campaign attended by many acts of terror. (...) [adding that] “Tehran, the capital of Iran, lies only 100km from the Caspian shore, so its role in the future of the region cannot be ignored." [4]

The position of Iran vis a vis the Caspian Sea (or lake) also explains some of the US interest in that country. Both Iran and Russia were obviously excluded from any participation in the construction of the pipeline.

China has been negotiating now since at least 2004 with Kazakhstan to build a 750 km extension of the Atasu-Alasankou oil pipeline to connect with the Kenkiyak and Kumkol oil fields, which are operated by China National Petroleum Company in Kazakh. CNPC stated that it expects to obtain about 5 per cent of its current requirements from the pipeline – 400,000 barrels a day. China's interest in the area could overshadow Europe's because the projected growth in demand from China is greater than Europe's.

Azerbaijan and Georgia receive gas from the Shah Deniz project in Azerbaijan. Interruption of supply forced Georgia to purchase gas at very high prices from Russia between January and July 2007. Georgia was desperate to lose its energy — and political — dependence on Russia and hopes that Shah Deniz may allow her to do this for a while. In the current petroleum gas and oil supply scenario, any country which has a reliable supply for a few years into the future becomes a potential magnet for development or for exploitation, and, in this region, US support.

Europe currently relies on Russia for a quarter of its gas supplies. More diverse supplies would be desirable.

Russia has developed a reciprocal relationship with Venezuelan oil in supplying oil to different customers.[5] Chavez in Venezuela has a strong relationship with Cuba and is a strong promoter of Latin American oil and solidarity with non-US states, especially in the third world. Not insignificantly, on 5 August, Putin announced that Russia ought to "restore [its] position in Cuba and other countries." This was after a visit to Cuba in July from Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin. It is well-known that Latin America has good reason to fear interference by the US in its politics and its oil. [3]

Sorbet Khabuz feels that Russia percieves its old allies as disloyal when they cooperate on oil-ventures with the EU or the US. He says that Putin objected strongly to Kosovo's independence and "was unhappy that the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil pipeline (AMBO), extending from Bulgaria's coastal city of Burgaz through Macedonia and ending at Albania's Vlora port, would pass through Kosovo." [Referring to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyan pipeline], he notes that, "The pipeline project in question is being actively supported by the EU and the US with the goal of carrying Azerbaijani and Kazakh oil to the Black Sea via Georgia." [3]

Why did Georgia rattle its sabers?

On the face of it, it seems very unlikely that Georgia would have picked a fight with Russia if the Georgian president had not believed that he would receive backing from the US and Europe. Neither the US nor the EU have the means to enter into serious new wars, however. The US is already involved in Iraq and Afghanistan because of its own dwindling oil and gas supplies. Russia does have a reasonable supply of oil, coal and lots of gas and the capacity to defend itself. It can be very tough about managing its oil exports and it can form alliances with other oil exporters. It has also been suggested that Russia would not like Iran to develop nuclear capabilities and that this would provide a common point with the US.

One impact of Georgia's nose-thumbing Russia has been for the US and Europe to take a step backwards, away from it. This leaves Georgia, not only vulnerable to a Russian take-over, but it also frees Georgia to succumb to Russia.

Of course, Russia has evacuated, for the time being. If, however, we treat the recent (tragic for the civilians who have been victimised) events as a dress rehearsal, we now know that no-one is going to stop Russia from taking Georgia. A respectable ostensible reason may be to unite Georgian South Ossetia with Russian Northern Ossetia. From there it would be but a small step for Russia to assimilate Georgia. This would then solve Russia's problem of being kept out of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyan pipeline and the Baku Supsa pipeline and all the planned pipelines.

Russia has oil and gas, but it has probably passed its oil peak. If Russia were to acquire Georgia it would then control the BTC pipeline and become oil-rich as well as gas-rich. Although the US and the EU won't like buying the oil from their pipeline in Georgia from Russia, they have already shown that they don't intend to go to war over this prospect. The incentives for Russia to take Georgia and the pipeline are enormous; face-saving and energy securing in a region and a world where most powers are receding in their capacity to fuel daily business, let alone wars.

Historic precedents

There is an historic pattern of Russia taking over Georgia in exchange for protection from regional enemies, particularly Persia (old name for Iran) and Turkey. From 1810 to 1878, beginning with Western Georgia, most of Georgia was annexed to the Russian Empire, in an association which, after an initial unsettled period, was not too uncomfortable for the land-owning aristocracy of Georgia and probably made little difference to the severely ill-treated serfs. (Georgia freed its serfs even later than Russia did.)

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia declared independence from Russia. In 1921 the Red Army occupied Georgia and, Georgia remained a Soviet Republic (state) until 1990.

Historically the Caucasus oilfields were one of the main objectives of Hitler's invasion of the USSR in August 1941, but the German army and its allies failed to reach them. Georgia furnished the Red Army 700,000 soldiers (of which 350,000 died). There were, however German sympathisers who formed the Georgian Legion and fought with the Germans.

Political tension in Georgia prior to the Ossetia incident
There have been many historical tensions within post-soviet Georgia, principally from ethnic separatists in South Ossetia. The country has a history of corruption, even in Communist times by Russian standards.
In November 2003 the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia carried pro-Western Mikheil Saakashvili to power. Georgia accuses Russia of fanning separatism in Abkhaszia and south Ossetia in order to undermine Georgia's government. Russia has accused Georgia of spying and vice versa. Russia maintained or maintains two military bases in Georgia, scheduled to be withdrawn in 2007 and 2008. The United Nations has been involved in Peace Keeping in South Ossetia for some time and there are thousands of displaced people in Georgia. In November 2, 2007 Georgians demonstrated against the government, protesting that President Mikheil Saakashvili's government was corrupt. [6]

Also, if we know the United States, their versions of economic reform and democracy carry very heavy penalties for ordinary people. Wikipedia reports that

"The Georgian Government is committed to economic reform in cooperation with the IMF and World Bank." "Saakashvili is still (2006) under significant pressure to deliver on his promised reforms. Organisations such as Amnesty International have serious concerns over human rights [3], and discontent over unemployment, pensions and corruption (...).Georgia's relationships with Russia are at it lowest point in modern history due to Georgian-Russian espionage controversy and related events."

Sounds like the usual privatisation and asset-stripping drill that accompanies friendships with the USA to me. See review of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine

All in all, it might be very hard for Georgia to remain friends with the US if Russia and many of its own citizens did not want it to. Such sentiments are expressed here in a pro-Russian page. And the US doesn't seem all that keen either. One hopes not to see a re-run of situations like the one where the US encouraged the Kurds and Shi'ites to rise up against the Iraqi goverment, but left them to be slaughtered. And was Hussein set up by the US when he asked diplomat, April Glaspie, if Kuwait was important to the US, and she said, "No," and then he invaded, presumably believing that the US would turn a blind eye. After this the US went to the UN and the UN authorised force to get Hussein to withdraw his troops. Hussein agreed to withdraw, but the US seems to have used the opportunity then to attack his troops anyway.[7]

Alternative to war

Instead of war, there may be a different outcome, as oil-writer, Mark Jones suggested [6]:

"It should be borne in mind that the changeover from declining to ascending hegemony can happen - and has historically - not by means of war but with the consent and active participation of the declining power (...) Since the 1939–45 war, the US has in fact made a practice of co-opting present and potential rivals into junior partnership. It has done this not only to Britain, but also to Germany (1960s), Japan (1970s and 1980s) and latterly even to Russia (from 1991).(...)

Of the US situation, he observed,

"If the US has to compete on a level playing field with the rest of the world, then it may find that its urban infrastructure is just as uneconomic and unsustainable as was the Soviet Union’s loss-making effort to base itself on the industrialization of the Urals and Siberia. The US currently uses twice as much energy and raw materials per capita as the EU-15 average, and more than ten times that of China. It is desperately uncompetitive. When the dollar has to be backed up by real values, US per capita GNP may fall by half in just a few years, as in the Great Depression. Under these conditions it is hard to see how the US can hope to maintain its global reach and present hegemonic position. (...)

And, in the case of global war:

If, on the other hand, we are set on a course of global war, which was the outcome for “classic” economic depressions before 1914, and again through 1929–36, then Americans have only a very small window of opportunity (like Hitler enjoyed in 1939) before their military advantage evaporates." - Mark Jones, Battle of the Titans in Sheila Newman, (Ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto, UK 2008.

See also: Russia Never Wanted a War by Mihkail Gorbachev in New York Times of 19 Aug 08 for a view critical of Georgia's role in the conflict.

Sheila Newman is the editor of Sheila Newman, (Ed.)The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, UK, 2008 which is due out around August 27 in Australia and round about the same time in the US. It should already be available in Britain. It is a collection of scientific, economic and political articles about oil depletion and other fuels and new technologies, including fission, fusion, geothermal, cellulosic biofuels and terra preta, by ten different authors.

ENDNOTES

[1] The Caspian Sea is considered an independent zoogeographical region due to the diversity, specificity and endemism of its fauna. Waters of the Caspian Sea house 400 endemic aquatic animal species, including the Caspian seal (Phoca caspica) and sturgeons (90% of the world catch). The sea coast provides important sites for many nesting and migratory birds such as flamingoes, geese, ducks, gulls, terns, swans. Many multinational companies are exploring the region for oil and gas. Source (with interesting descriptions of geophysical features and wildlife: http://www.worldwildlife.org/wildworld/profiles/terrestrial/pa/pa1308_full.html

[2] "Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Caspian Pipeline" at Hydrocarbons Technology com, http://www.hydrocarbons-technology.com/projects/bp/)

[3] Sohbet Karbuz, “War stirs energy corridor in Georgia,” in Today’s Zaman

[4] Colin Campbell, "The Caspian Chimera," in Sheila Newman, (Ed.)The Final Energy CrisisSecond Edition, Pluto, UK, 2008.

[5] Sheila Newman, “Venezuela, Chavez and Latin-American oil on the world stage,” in Sheila Newman (Ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, Second Edition, Pluto UK, 2008.

[6]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Georgia_(country); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Georgian-Russian_espionage_controversy;

[7] "Please cast your minds back to 1990. We must remember the complete history of James Baker, the aristocratic Secretary of State to Bush 41. He instructed our ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspy, (remember her?) to tell Saddam Hussein that we had no interest in his fight with Kuwait. Saddam was itching for war with Kuwait whom he accused of slant drilling into Iraq's oil fields. Right after receiving Baker's message sent through Ambassador Glaspy, Saddam invaded Iraq. From that moment on Mr. Baker left April out there turning slowly in the wind. He denied all knowledge of her conversation. (Someone please tell me what lowly ambassador writes their own portfolio?)" Source: Re: Philip Klein's Talking with the Enemy, "Baker's World", The American Spectator, http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10496

[8] Mark Jones, Battle of the Titans in Sheila Newman, (Ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, Second Edition, Pluto, UK 2008.

The Business Council of Australia says that the current design of the Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will force closure of at least three major business, cause four to "fundamentally review their operations", and force others to find ways to cut expenses. It claims to have surveyed 14 businesses over sectors including minerals processing, manufacturing, oil refining, coal mining and sugar milling.

Whilst the problem is real, there is really no avoiding it.

Whilst the problem is real, there is really no avoiding it. The fact is that the kinds of industries and clients that the BCA and similar groups represent cannot expect to survive in their current form. Neither can the tertiary industries that rely on them, such as expensive law firms, frenzied global stock-exchanges, advertising corporations, high-flying consultants and millionaire-salary CEOs.

"Propaganda about a ‘dematerialised economy’ makes it hard to establish the reality that material industrial productivity is not actually less reliant on burning fossil fuels than it was in the 1970s, and that drawdown on fossil fuels has in fact been multiplied by the needs of much greater populations. Similarly the obvious still needs to be pointed out that increasing productivity means burning more fuel and outputting more pollution, accelerating petroleum depletion and adding more greenhouse gases."[1]

We have to face reality. Business and economic structure and expectations have to change.

The Business Council of Australia writes in its recent news release of "The ‘truly dreadful
problem’ of the emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries." It says, "Professor Ross Garnaut, in his review of emissions trading, accurately describes what he calls the ‘truly dreadful problem’ of EITE industries: so-called ‘carbon leakage’. If we price emissions fully in Australia, emissions-intensive activity might simply relocate overseas. Rather than eliminating emissions, Australia’s regime would move the source of the emissions offshore, most likely to jurisdictions with less stringent environmental standards. Thus a well-intentioned Australian regime could produce the truly perverse effect of actually increasing the level of global emissions."

It is all very well threatening to go overseas, but this will be a very temporary measure; as these industries try to continue to process and sell massive amounts of industrial product, they are going to run into the long-anticipated problem of not having any customers left in the industrialised 'richworld' to sell to, since the people in those 'first world countries', unburdened of corporate accelerated profit-making, will simply slow down and relocalise their activities. Big business will finish up mired in the poverty which it has sought to exploit in its offshore victims.

It adds that, "This problem affects a substantial slice of Australian economic life. The EITE industries contribute 16 per cent of Australian business investment, 51 per cent of exports, 15 per cent of gross value add and employ nearly one in 10 working Australians."

What to do about mass unemployment with the decline of mass production?

Val Yule often says, that it isn't that there isn't any work. It is that the work that needs to be done isn't done because of all the work we do that doesn't need to be done in paid employment which uses up our time and energy.

If we stop working to feed the profit machines, which only expend most of the profits we make for them on more growth, creating more needs for more growth, and less time for everyone, we could, instead, work according to our needs and desires, rather than the hypertrophied needs and desires of a small sector of global power-freaks.

Political commentator and climate activist, Clive Hamilton, writes in Growth Fetish,[1]

Reduction in working hours is the core demand for the transition to post-growth society. Overwork not only propels overconsumption but is the cause of severe social dysfunction, with ramifications for physical and psychological health as well as family and community life. The natural solution to this is the redistribution of work, a process that could benefit both the unemployed and the overworked.

He remarks that

“Moves to limit overwork … directly confront the obsession with growth at all costs,” and talks about the liberation of workers “from the compulsion to earn more than they need.”

Because growth is sustained by a constant ‘barrage of marketing and advertising’ Hamilton wants advertising taxed and removed from the public domain, and television broadcast hours limited so as to

“allow people to cultivate their relationships, especially with children.”

The era of big profits, big business and big government is in terminal decline

The problem is that, with rising fuel costs, the margins for profit are declining. Add this to costs for carbon emissions, and you are looking at a profound challenge for the growthist economy of profit.

We industrialised humans have to change the way we do business and the pace of business.
We are facing global climate change; futures of very unpredictable wind-speeds, temperatures, crop productivity and water availability. We are facing continuous declines in agribusiness productivity because of the decline in availability of fossil fuels. Permaculture will be better able to provide than agribusiness as fossil fuels decline and it will provide better socially as well. See Antony Boy's delightful "Photo essay of a rural Japanese city," for an excellent and entertaining discussion of the problems and solutions.

It is normal for the Business Council and for the Government to be worried, because the necessary changes threaten their systemic hegemony and the whole notion of profit.

If we attempt to go on as we are, Australia faces monolithic power production and government systems, in the effort of the current elite to retain a profit-oriented society, from which the elite themselves are the overwhelming social and financial beneficiaries, at the cost of the greater population. There will be continuous attempts to find finance for huge nuclear power plants to keep up ever less viable industries and giant cities.

The Nuclear route (...) implies total electrification, synthesising, using complex technology, the pattern of settlement and transport which arose from exploitation of the natural endowment of petroleum. It requires massive investment, and in Australia’s case, the investment sought is likely to be private. This implies ongoing loss by citizens of control over the country’s energy systems and all that flows from that – the future of work, the state of the environment, natural amenity. It implies the reshaping of Australian society by corporations with profit alone in mind, for the benefit of a small dominant asset-rich class, with the electorate a mere captive market.[2]

This is a truly unsustainable battle; it will just bring us into feudalism and a much deeper economic depression than a relocalising of all our systems will.

Not only do we not need all the goods we produce for consumption at home or abroad, we do not need the income they bring, and their acquisition is a poor compensation for lives given to industry. Wonderful jobs are few and far between. No-one wants to give those up. Some people also derive much of their social life from work but they would derive similar benefits, and perhaps more status and satisfaction, from other community activities. And plenty of people reach a stage of maturity where childlike obedience to workplace regimes in the cause of producing more and more widgets in different colours, or processing more and more customers a day, with unflinching subservience, challenges every natural instinct.

Instead of those complicated international agreements about percentile reductions in emissions over the years to come, which are hardly enforceable or even measurable, remaining mostly in the control of the corporate emitters, the solution lies much closer at hand, and could ultimately be controlled at grass-roots levels by the masses themselves. Relocalisation is obviously the best way to develop the solidarity and self-sufficiency to reorganize work.

It should be obvious that the slower we work, the more fuel will remain, the less greenhouse gas will be emitted. If the populations which have ballooned to unimaginable proportions since the 1950s were allowed to return (through natural attrition) to more natural sizes by 2050, and the economy permitted to slow, it would take the heat off the planet and us as well. With so much less effort we could make such a positive difference to the planet and to our personal effectiveness.

ENDNOTES

[1] Hamilton, Clive, Growth Fetish, Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2003 and Pluto Press UK, 2005, last chapter, especially, pp.218-220

This article contains extracts from :"101 Views from Hubbert's Peak" in Sheila Newman (Ed.) and from "France and Australia after oil," in Sheila Newman (Ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, Second Edition Pluto Press, UK, 2008 (Available in Australia in late August)