Jobs, jobs, jobs — it’s all we ever hear about. But what’s it really like to be a miner, childcare worker or scientist? Our occasional series sends Troy Henderson down the tunnel and into the lab to find out. Behind the rhetoric and beyond the boom — Matilda Snapshots is a warts and all picture of working life in Australia.

John Reynolds is a bear of a man with close-cropped silver hair and an impressive moustache. He grew up in Huntly, a coal mining town south of Auckland, where his father introduced him to the mines as a teenager. He trained as an electrician but went back to mining in 1989, spending 11 years in the Queensland coalfields before relocating to the Illawarra in NSW. New Matilda joined the 49 year-old miner for his regular 6am to 6pm Saturday shift at NRE No. 1 Colliery in Russell Vale.

The colliery has been mined for over 120 years. In 2004 Gujarat NRE, India’s largest producer of metallurgical coke, acquired the mine and invested $270 million in upgrades and expanding production. In 2008 NRE announced a further $500 million in planned investment to bring annual production up to 6 million tonnes by 2015.

The company’s executive chairman, Arun Kumar Jagatramka, has worked overtime to build links with the local community, leading to his being named Illawarra Person of the Year 2009. But concerns over the impact of the carbon tax saw the company’s share price slump in 2011 — perhaps explaining Jagatramka’s extravagant claims that the tax could lead to $60 schooners and $20 loaves of bread.

The 40-odd men on the morning shift change into their overalls and gumboots, collect their hardhats, headlamps, Kevlar gloves and oxygen flasks and head over to the muster area for the daily briefing at 6.15am. John knocks off a can of Mother while he waits. "Right guys shut up," says the shift manager, before giving a quick update on the state of play, and then announcing that Col would be in charge of the barbecue to mark the start of mining the economically vital long-wall. "Col!", says John. "Fuck! Hope he washes his hands, the c–."

Around 6.30am we pile into the drift runner, a sort-of troop carrier, that sends us flying in through the mine mouth and down into the tunnels. The walls and roof are covered in steel mesh, ducts, pipes and cables that hang down like tree-roots from the ceiling. We arrive at the crib room, an underground mess hall with tables and benches, mine maps, and a board where the miners hang their ID tags. The Deputy, Steve Preen, shows me the compressed air breathing devices and the lifeline that leads you back to surface in an emergency.

John is part of an eight-member team comprising six operators, a "lecky" (electrician), and a fitter. John operates the Sandvik MB670 Continuous Miner and works back-to-back 12-hour shifts on the weekend and a six-hour shift on Monday that starts at 5.15am. His team is doing "development" on the deep Wongawilli coal seam — opening up new sections of the mine in order to create a "network of rooms" that will allow for more rapid extraction.

John’s regular breakfast is a meat pie, which he finds gives him the energy to see him through to lunch. After breakfast the crew takes the short walk to the coalface, but the Continuous Miner has a busted hydraulic hose. John is clearly unimpressed at the delay. An all-too-regular occurrence, he says, as we trudge back to the crib room.

The technical hiccup gives us a chance to chat while John eats a bowl of cereal. He tells me he enjoys the hands-on nature of mining, the variety of tasks, and the fact that a shift goes quickly when you’re cutting coal. He earns around $125,000 a year before tax, but could make a lot more in QLD. The main attraction of working at the Russell Vale mine is improved lifestyle; John lives with his wife Michelle and four kids — three from his wife’s first marriage and one of their own — rather than being stuck in an isolated miners’ camp.

We’re interrupted by good news: Ra, the energetic fitter, has fixed the hose! We head back to the coalface, wade through the mud, and climb up onto the Miner. The coal bands alternate between matt black and diamond glitter and the smell — a hint of phosphorous — is strong without being overpowering. John rips off the yellow "Broken" tag, fires up the MB670 and we’re ready to mine some coal! Or so we thought. "Just when you think you’re right you’re fuckin’ not", says John. He can hear something — an oil leak in the apron. "Get Ra here", he says. The leak seems serious: looks like we’re out for the shift.

Back in the crib room John is even more disgruntled. We were well set up to make good metres. Our talk turns to politics. John is vice-president of the local branch of the CFMEU and speaks highly of district vice-president Bob Timbs, but he wouldn’t describe himself as a very political man. He’s not impressed by Julia Gillard ("couldn’t hold a candle to Helen Clarke") or Tony Abbott ("complete idiot") and despite his labour roots, would probably vote National if he had Australian citizenship. Like many, he can’t understand why Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd in the first place. John is less concerned about the carbon tax than he is about ongoing issues with equipment and maintenance and whether the company can make a return on its large investment.

Steve Preen, the Deputy, doesn’t think much of our national leaders either but prefers Malcolm Turnbull to Abbott. On climate change, Steve’s a believer, and says "I guess that makes me a hypocrite being a coalminer". But, at the same time, mining has given him a 33-year career and allowed him to stay in the region he grew up in and still loves. He’d like the young guys at the mine to have the same opportunities.

Mr Fix-it Ra has done it again. We head back to the coalface and the Continuous Miner lives up to its name. John moves the Miner forward, sets the parameters for the coal cutter and puts the MB670 to work.

The cutter looks like a giant, spiked rolling pin as it crunches through the coal which crashes onto the floor. The coal is scooped up, transferred to the back of the Miner and poured into the waiting shuttle which transports each 10-tonne load to a crusher before being carried by conveyor belt up to the surface. Then it’s stockpiled and trucked to Port Kembla. As the MB670 moves forward the operators work quickly to stabilise the newly exposed roof and ribbing with steel mesh and 6 foot long steel rods that are bolted into place.

I notice just one operator wears a face mask while he works and, while an exhaust fan sucks out most of the dust and gas, it’s hard not think about how much dust the men breathe in as I look at each blackened page of my notebook and wipe the clogged up tip of my pen. An operator tells me it’s not a very physical job, but it’s no office job either. The steel rods are heavy, conditions are cramped on the Miner, and wading through knee-deep mud in a dark tunnel isn’t for everyone. Teamwork and personal responsibility are also clearly important. If one person stuffs up it can have serious consequences for themselves and others. And then there is the danger, the rare cases where a gas outburst or a collapsed roof claims a life.

The men continue to work quietly and efficiently. The cutting, loading, drilling and bolting fall into a rhythm and within a few hours they’ve cut six metres of coal — about 120 tonnes — and the shift is over.

We pile back into the drift runner and speed up to the surface, trading one darkness for another. The miners return their equipment, wash their boots, and head for the showers to scrub off another day’s grime.

Outside the full moon lights up the Pacific where at least a dozen coal ships wait patiently for the cargo that they’ll carry from the southern coalfields of NSW to the coke ovens of China and India. John Reynolds will drive home to his family, have dinner and try to get to bed by 9pm.

Albury-based Trio Capital went under in 2009, leaving a trail of financial destruction in its wake. A Parliamentary inquiry into its collapse found that more than 6000 Australians invested in Trio and its web of related companies. All lost their money (though some have been compensated). Some lost their life savings. More than $176 million disappeared — most likely stolen in a clever trans-national fraud that saw super funds transferred to a British Virgin Islands account and then spirited away into the underworld of organised crime.

The inquiry says that unlike the collapse of investment firms Storm Financial and Westpoint, Trio was not merely caused by incompetence and financial mismanagement. Trio was a carefully calculated and highly lucrative fraud.

The implications for Australia’s superannuation industry and the agencies that regulate it are uncomfortable, to say the least. The inquiry has found that the two key regulators, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), were asleep at the wheel.

Trio’s auditors also signed off on a set of accounts that should have raised huge red flags. Financial planners recommended a product which, if they had bothered to look closely, was obviously too good to be true. This lack of due diligence from planners and advisors ended up costing their clients millions. And Trio’s appearance of being a reputable superannuation fund — it had the necessary paperwork from APRA and appeared in ratings from Morningstar — helped deceive investors too.

The details of the Trio fraud are fascinating. There were all the usual features of high-level financial fraud including tortuous paper trials, tricky name changes, off-shore special purpose vehicles, overseas hedge funds, failed Wall Street merchant banks and $2 shelf companies headquartered in known tax shelters.

The report states that "significant monies from these schemes were invested in the British Virgin Islands in hedge funds controlled by a Hong Kong-based American lawyer, Mr Flader. When these hedge funds collapsed, Australian investors’ funds disappeared. The committee understands that Mr Flader is well-known to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)". Oops.

Many of the victims of Trio invested after Trio was recommended to them by their financial planners and advisors. In a masterpiece of understatement, the committee notes that "the evidence suggests that their recommendations were influenced by the high commissions paid by Trio." Well, who would have thought?

Trio was largely the master plan of three men: Jack Flader, Paul Gresham and Shawn Richard. Richard, who had his name on many of the legal documents as the Australian director of Astarra Strategic (one of the many inter-related companies involved in the fraud), is the only one to have faced criminal charges. He went to jail for two and half years — a term many would consider rather light on, considering he was intimately involved in one of the largest financial frauds in Australian history. But Flader, allegedly the mastermind, is not being pursued.

Perhaps the biggest scandal of all was the way that Trio’s fraud came to light. Was it due to watchful regulators pouncing on incriminating evidence? A brave whistle-blower within the organisation? Disgruntled investors?

No, Trio first came to the attention of the authorities because John Hempton at Bronte Capital received a tip-off from a reader of his blog. That tipper, Dominic McCormick, noticed that the people involved in Astarra had links to companies involved in previous scams in the UK. Hempton also noticed the obvious Ponzi-like characteristics of the Trio group, which had been hiding in plain sight. He wrote a blog post about it, and also a letter to ASIC Chairman Tony D’Aloisio. Hempton took "about 40 minutes" to discover the following:

"What attracted me to Absolute Alpha [Absolute Alpha changed its name to Astarra later] in the first case", Hempton writes, "was the CVs of the principal players."

Those CVs, listed on Astarra’s publicly available material, included Eugene Liu, named as "chief investment strategist". Liu listed his involvement with the firm Pacific Continental Investments, which went bust during the global financial crisis. This Guardian article from 2008 calls Pacific Continental "possibly the UK’s most notorious firm of stockbrokers." Shawn Richard, the since-jailed CEO, turns out to have been a manager with Pacific Continental in Taiwan, although he didn’t list that on his bio at the time. 

Once alerted, ASIC did swing into action, sending Trio and Astarra a series of notices and enforcements. But the inquiry says that it failed to coordinate its activities with the ATO and ASIC. As a result, precious months elapsed, time which the overseas conspirators used to spirit away the money supposedly held in a shalf company in the British Virgin Islands.

Eventually, Trio was investigated and fraud detected. Trio was wound up and Richards charged. But the investigation was hardly copybook. The inquiry says that ASIC and APRA was regularly uaware of each other’s activities: for instance, "when ASIC commenced its active surveillance of [Trio] in June 2009, it did not seem aware that Trio was not providing the prudential regulator [APRA] with basic facts about the existence of assets and their value".

The record of the regulators before John Hempton wrote to D’Aloisio is discouraging. APRA supposedly conducted five prudential reviews of Trio between 2004 and 2009. Nothing was uncovered. Their record since is just as concerning. The inquiry notes that "there are no ongoing criminal investigations into the conduct of Mr Flader or others involved in developing and implementing this scheme." The committee describes Shawn Richard as "only … the
local foot soldier of the scheme."

There is plenty more blame to go round. Auditors WHK — the same guys who signed off on the Coalition’s 2010 election costings, which were later found to be billions of dollars in error — failed to ask any meaningful questions, when serious red flags should have been raised.

But the real worry is what the Trio case suggests about the structure of Australia’s retirement savings. As Hempton notes in his original blog post, Australia’s superannuation system is effectively privatised social security. For those investing their own savings in self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs), the opportunities for a total wipe-out of their life savings are all too evident.

Unlike industry or retail funds, self-managed super is not regulated by APRA, but instead the ATO. As the inquiry notes, "The ATO’s focus is on the SMSF’s compliance with superannuation and taxation laws, not on prudential safeguards." Because they are not APRA-regulated, SMSFs are not insured against fraud or theft.

SMSFs represent a large and growing pool of money that seems particularly vulnerable to shonky financial planners and dodgy investment vehicles. According to APRA, self-managed super funds accounted for around one-third of all Australia’s superannuation assets last year: a total of $407 billion in 2011. SMSF’s are also the fastest growing type of super fund, probably because of the tax advantages they confer.

The opportunities for frauds and shonks are only too obvious — as are the weaknesses in the current regulatory regimes. Self-managed super can be a wonderful vehicle for saving for retirement. It can also be an opportunity to throw away your life savings. For mum and dad investors, it may be that the complexities and pitfalls of managing their own super are far more dangerous than many realise: certainy more dangerous than the associated returns justfiy.

The performance of the regulators also provides a direct counter-example to the view that Australia survived the GFC because of our superior financial regulation. That may be the case in the banking industry, but what about super?

Without far tighter regulation of the SMSF sector, Australia may be at risk from a domestic financial crisis brought on by a big failure in the superannuation industry. That’s a sobering thought.

The National Front of Marine le Pen and Greece’s jack-booted Golden Dawn both had strong showings in recent elections. Both are also mentioned in the manifesto of Anders Breivik, Norway’s Christian jihadist, as part of the European bulwark against the expansion of Islam and multiculturalism. Although much has been said about whether the mainstream Right is responsible for Breivik, the European elections have now demonstrated that reputable politicians are happy to use the same talking points.

Marine le Pen in particular uses language strikingly similar to Breivik’s manifesto. She rails against Muslim immigration from the Middle East and North Africa, saying that France is being swamped. Even halal meat is dangerous. Le Pen snarls about multiracialism and multiculturalism irretrievably altering the Hexagon’s Gallic integrity.

From Breivik there is this, "You cannot defeat Islamisation or halt/reverse the Islamic colonization of Western Europe without first removing the political doctrines manifested through multiculturalism/cultural Marxism".

Or this: "A modern cultural conservative (nationalist), anti-Jihad right wing alternative is emerging in Western Europe".

Le Pen herself has said she has "de-demonised" her party. Where her Fascist father Jean-Marie was prone to anti-Semitic outbursts, his daughter, whom he once described as a, "big healthy blonde girl … an ideal physical specimen", has made it acceptable to vote for the National Front.

Anders Breivik too knew the extreme Right had to abandon its storm-trooper rhetoric, even recommending that publicly racist members should be thrown out of the party. He wrote that, "By doing this we will gain the support of the masses and not end up as a marginalised and excessively demonised insignificant organisation."

Cutting down on the anti-Semitism also makes the extreme Right palatable to Zionists.

"Nevertheless, time is of the essence and it is imperative that the European Jewish community without delay take a stance on the ongoing Islamisation. Neutrality on this issue is not an option. The only way of doing this is to back the new right wing (anti-multiculturalism, pro-Israel) groups and political parties (also manifested through views such as by moderate Jewish writers Daniel Pipes and Bat Ye’or)."

And finally a confirmation that, the enemy of my enemy is my friend:

"A majority of Western European right wing groups are all anti-Islamisation and pro-Israel. They wish to include the Jews in our fight against multiculturalism and the Islamisation of Europe. Israel is at the forefront of global Jihad."

That accords with Israel, allowing Geert Wilders from the Dutch, anti-Islamic Freedom Party to visit the Holy Land in 2010. Breivik and Wilders were singing from the same songbook. "Israel is a lighthouse and the only democracy in a dark and tyrannical region," Wilders declared. "It’s part of us, of our European identity. Israel is fighting our war."

Israel has indeed played host to several extreme right wing politicians from Europe and Breivik has an explanation for what would have been unconscionable just a decade ago.

"Jews will in a much larger degree start to support the ‘new right’ (just like everyone else), who oppose multiculturalism as a means to stop Islamisation, at least this is my hope. In the back of their minds they realise that a Muslim Europe will be more anti-Semitic than a Christian Europe."

Breivik also found plenty of material when he looked to Australia. In his long list of like-minded political parties, I found the Australian Protectionist Party. While he didn’t endorse the Liberal-National Coalition, he quoted Quadrant’s Keith Windschuttle, a culture warrior appointed to the ABC Board by the Howard government, Ross Cameron, a minister in the Howard government and former Treasurer, Peter Costello.

Breivik made this assessment of former Prime Minister John Howard himself:

"Luckily, not all Christian leaders are appeasers of Islam. One of the intelligent ones comes from Australia, a country that has been fairly resistant to Political Correctness. They have taken serious steps towards actually enforcing their own borders, despite the predictable outcries from various NGOs and anti-racists, and Prime Minister John Howard has repeatedly proven to be one of the most sensible leaders in the Western world."

One of the most sensible leaders in the Western world? Many Australians would agree with the mass murderer of Utoya Island, a sentiment one might have found in the opinion pages of the Australian newspaper, which Breivik references extensively as source material.

While you may think these matching opinions were born of fear, at the zenith of the War on Terror, I have seen viewer comments to websites which indicate these beliefs are widely held today. This in April 2012: "We better wake up and see that our Australian "boat"(way of living as we knew it) is sinking, or the Muslim boat people will take over. Do not believe them that they are a peaceful and innocent religion. They are not!"

The solution to the Islam "problem" is where most mainstream politicians and Anders Breivik part company. He has drawn up a comprehensive list of traitors in each European country:

"We are in the process of flagging every single multiculturalist traitor in Western Europe. We will ensure that all category A and B traitors, the enablers of Islamisation and the destroyers of our cultures, nations and societies, will be executed and your property expropriated."

According to Breivik’s reckoning there are approximately 400,000 Category A & B traitors, ranging from just 322 in Iceland to 82,820 in Germany.

"The thing is that many of our political and cultural elites, including politicians, NGO leaders, university professors/lecturers, writers, journalists and editors — the individuals making up the majority of the so called category A and B traitors, knows exactly what they are doing. They know that they are contributing to a process of indirect cultural and demographical genocide and they need to be held accountable for their actions. The truth needs to come out."

Anders Breivik didn’t calculate the number of traitors to be executed in Australia but his ideas have some support here. This 9 May comment was obviously posted in anger and frustration at the domestic political situation. I hope it’s only a rhetorical flourish made to reinforce his point.

"Hi. Let me tell you something……..if Labor in Norway did what this Labor is doing to us……….Norway has a hero in Brevik! Just to mention this idiots try to bribe voters…they are worse than communists…they should let Brevik come to Australia!"

Anders Breivik doesn’t need to come to Australia — his ideas are already here, albeit not yet written on the banners of a major political party as is the case in Europe. Only time will tell how many Australians believe, as Breivik does, that "We are in the very beginning of a very bloody cultural war, a war between nationalism and internationalism and we intend to win it."

East Timor’s new president Taur Matan Ruak will be officially sworn into office on 20 May, the same day the nation celebrates 10 years of independence, marking the start a new era for the country.

José Maria Vasconcelos, known by his resistance name Taur Matan Ruak meaning "two sharp eyes", will be the third president and part of a new generation of leadership in East Timor. Over the last decade, the positions of president and prime minister have rotated between three men, Jose Ramos-Horta, Mari Alkatiri and Xanana Gusmao.

With the nation preparing for the withdrawal of international troops and the UN after more than four years of peace, Ruak will inherit a vastly different set of challenges to those of his predecessor José Ramos-Horta in 2007.

Photo courtesy of Meagan Weymes

While on the international stage Ruak holds a low profile, the 55-year-old received more than 61 per cent of the vote in the second round of the presidential elections and gained the official endorsement of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.

Ruak and Gusmao share a history dating back to the Indonesian occupation, where they both fought as part of the resistance. When Indonesia invaded in 1975, the then 19-year-old Ruak fled into the mountains and joined the resistance army Falintil.

He spent 24 years in the jungle, moving up Falintil’s ranks and travelling across the country. Like many of his fellow resistance fighters, he was captured by the Indonesian forces in 1979 and spent 23 days imprisoned before escaping back into the mountains to fight.

After East Timor voted for independence in a UN organised referendum in 1999, Ruak replaced Gusmao as Commander of East Timor’s military (FDTL). Then in late 2011, after more than a decade in charge of the military, he unexpectedly quit the post to announce he would move into politics, running for the position of president.

Photo courtesy of Meagan Weymes

One of his controversial policy platforms during the election campaign was the introduction of compulsory military service. Ruak told New Matilda the policy would help to tackle the problem of unemployment and what he describes as "an erosion of the value system which is traditional and secular in this country".

"We need to prepare the youth with a strong sense of patriotism, of ownership of our country, of responsibility for its future and, above all, citizens who are engaged in serving the country and the people."

Technically, introducing such a policy is beyond the powers of the president, but the former military commander says he will advocate the policy to new government.

Poverty is another challenge facing East Timor, and Ruak told Timorese NGO La’o Hamutuk before the election his plan for tackling poverty involves reducing dependence on foreign imports and building up local industries like agriculture and tourism.

The majority of East Timor’s state spending comes from a US$9.9 billion government oil fund, fed by reserves in the Timor Sea. Ruak insists one of the biggest problems with this is "corruption of the oil money".

"To get out of petroleum dependency, Timor-Leste should invest strongly in human resources, increase the capacity of the private sector and other productive sectors."

When it comes to international relations Ruak has made general commitments to building regional relationships but appears to prioritise domestic problems over international issues.

Ruak says he appreciates the relationship of respect between East Timor’s neighbours, Indonesia and Australia, but says this relationship should be raised from a relationship of good neighbours to that of allies.

"I truly believe that it will benefit the peoples of our three countries, our states and the region."

East Timor is currently seeking membership of ASEAN, which Ramos-Horta has repeatedly stated is one of the most important priorities for the nation. Ruak says he supports ASEAN membership, but has made no commitment to prioritise the issue.

"There is so much we can gain and learn from ASEAN member states and the organisation. Whether as a member of ASEAN or not, (East Timor) is irretrievably part of the region."

Photo courtesy of Meagan Weymes

On the issue of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field, subject to an ongoing stand off between Australian company Woodside and East Timor’s government over how to extract the gas, Ruak is non-committal.

The current government has stated it will not approve a development plan for the gas field that doesn’t include a pipeline to an LNG plant on the south coast of East Timor. In a provocative move, Prime Minister Gusmao yesterday unveiled a section of pipeline which he says could be used to carry gas from the disputed field into East Timor.

Ruak would not reveal whether he supported the current government’s policy of building a pipeline to East Timor.

"The most important stance that Timor-Leste may take to is to dialogue with all parties involved," he said.

Upon being sworn in, the new president will take on one of his most important functions, appointing a new government, which is likely to involve some form of coalition with either Gusmao’s CNRT party or the nation’s biggest political party Fretilin.

Until then, Ruak says the priority is to make sure the parliamentary elections, on 7 July, run as smoothly as the presidential elections, a step that will "reinforce the maturity of democracy in East Timor". 

For weeks now the Australian public has been assailed with lurid stories about the travails of Peter Slipper MP, the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been forced by circumstances to be temporarily suspended from discharging his duties.

Much has been made about the integrity of the position of the Speakership in the Westminster system during the hullaballoo that has accompanied Slipper from his appointment to James Ashby’s accusations. A lot of this rhetoric has focused on the venerability of the Speaker’s role, going back to the time before the British Civil War and execution of Charles I by the British parliament in 1649 when being the Speaker was a dangerous past-time.

As the official conduit between the King and the Parliament, the Speaker could become the focal point for the power struggle going on between the two institutions. Beating up or even executing the Speaker was one way of displaying disapproval of the Crown’s unwillingness to heed the Parliament, and an army with heavy weaponry evolved to defend the Speaker from unruly members.

Today, the Sergeant at Arms and the Mace are relics of the Speaker’s private army, and to this day those successfully elected to the position feign reluctance as they are dragged to the chair in a ritualistic homage to the Speakers of ancient times who were at the forefront of the battle between the Crown and the Parliament for the right to exercise the authority to govern.

The position of Speaker in the "lower" (as in lower class) or popular or representative chamber in a Westminster parliament is steeped in this tradition as well as being one of the officially recognised positions of prestige and importance in the parliamentary system by virtue of the role the Speaker plays as the chairperson responsible for the function and conduct of the house.

In an interesting Australian quirk, the Speaker of the House of Representatives is actually recognised in the Australian Constitution. Electing a Speaker is the first thing the House of Representatives must do before it can proceed with its business (Section 30).

This contrasts with the position of Prime Minister, which does not appear in the Constitution at all but is thought to apply by way of convention because the Australian system of government replicates the British system.

Section 40 notes that motions before the House of Representatives shall pass on the attaining of a simple majority of those present without the Speaker exercising a deliberative vote. This section allows the Speaker only a casting vote in the event of a tied outcome.

In a House of Representatives in which the numbers are nearly equal and a minority government depends on the vote on cross-benchers to get its legislation through the parliamentary lower house, the governing party’s position is made more precarious when it provides the Speaker.

To improve its ability to get its program through the House and to reduce its dependence on the cross-bench, the Labor party decided to put a member of the main opposition party in to the Speakership, and Slipper appeared willing to turn his back on his party to oblige them.

Turning one’s back on one’s political party (also known by the colloquial term as "ratting") is rare, although not unknown in Australian politics. The consequences can be quite dramatic, however, and the perpetrator is almost always vilified.

Slipper’s disloyalty to the LNP has been complicated by the perception, inherited from Britain, that the Speaker of the House of Commons is considered to be detached, fair and non-partisan. The government and Slipper have tried to portray the ascendancy of the former LNP man to the chair as a manifestation of some antipodean manifestation of this British tradition.

This is patently not the case in Australia, however. In Britain, the impartiality of the Speaker involves the consent of all the parties and is given practical application by the opposition party guaranteeing to not run a candidate against the Speaker in their electorate in exchange for the Speaker resigning from their party.

This doesn’t happen in Australia, although it may be the case that the Speaker will observe the protocol of not attending party meetings. Like everything about Australian politics, partisan party considerations are uppermost in the election of the Speaker.

The Australian Speaker will seek to at least give the impression of lofty independence and will be mindful that interpretations of the standing orders (or rules) by which the House operates that grossly offend the opposition today may bite the governing party in years to come should it find itself on the opposition benches tomorrow.

The quickest way to end one’s career as Speaker, however, is to apply the rules or run the House in ways as to disadvantage, constrain or otherwise earn the ire of the Prime Minister.

Try saying this phrase out loud: "carbon capture and storage is the potential solution to coal-fired power internationally". An incredulous smirk might appear on your face, but saying the phrase is simple enough. It certainly did the trick for Martin Ferguson, who rattled off the line on Monday.

Talking up the promise of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is easy. Actually making it happen is a different story. Politicians and the fossil fuel industry have promised that CCS is on its way, but they can’t enjoy the benefit of the doubt forever. Proof is required to show that we’re talking about a concept that has real merit as a large-scale energy option and not just a cheap political excuse.

Greenpeace has released a new report called "Dead and Buried: the demise of carbon capture and storage". It shows how attempts to demonstrate commercial-scale CCS have been marred by failure. Community opposition, economic and technical difficulties and a lack of serious private investment have meant that every attempt to build a commercial-scale CCS power station has fallen over. As a realistic option for future power generation, CCS only exists as rhetoric.

CCS is a very expensive political excuse, paid for by taxpayers. Billions of dollars of public funds worldwide are currently tied up in programs designed to support CCS, when this money could be used to enable real, clean, renewable energy solutions that have already been available for years. Australia’s own $1.68 billion CCS Flagships program is one of the most absurd attempts to justify CCS.

A Victorian company called HRL has been trying to build a new power station that runs on gasified brown coal. HRL’s project, Dual Gas, has been dubbed "clean coal" because it would use technology that makes brown coal burn with the emissions of black coal.

Surprisingly, HRL also describes Dual Gas as a CCS project, which doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. HRL just want to commercialise their gasification technology and aren’t really bothered with CCS. When they first applied to the Howard government for funding in 2006, their proposal didn’t include CCS.

After being prompted by the government to include CCS in their plans, HRL re-submitted their application and made a "plausible argument" for capturing CO2. They subsequently won a $100 million grant.

Three years later, HRL applied to the EPA for works approval. But all their CCS plans amounted to was a claim that the plant would be "capture ready" and space would be set aside on the site of the power station to accommodate CCS, should it ever materialise.

A pre-feasibility study into pre-combustion carbon capture was done last year, but it wasn’t the result of HRL’s effort. The $3.5 million study, referred to in HRL’s works approval application, was in fact paid for by the taxpayer.

Perhaps the clearest indication that HRL aren’t bothered about CCS is the fact they have indicated a desire to get out of the project after one maintenance cycle (which would be about four years after it is built).

Despite this distinct lack of enthusiasm for carbon capture and storage on HRL’s part, Dual Gas is now a part of CarbonNet, a Victorian Government effort that has been included in the Federal CCS Flagships program.

CarbonNet intends to create pipeline infrastructure that can transport up to a million tonnes of CO2 per year. Its first challenge is to actually be relevant. That means having new sources of CO2 to take and transport. The three million tonnes of carbon pollution HRL’s project would generate makes it a perfect match for CarbonNet.

In fact, Dual Gas has been dubbed "the most promising emissions source for the CarbonNet project", even though another document acknowledges "the carbon capture component of the project is not a high priority at this stage".

At the time, it probably made sense to reinforce the purpose and value of two speculative projects by attaching one to the other. But after Dual Gas made a statement on 16 April that work on the power station project was to be frozen, attaching Dual Gas to CarbonNet might prove as strategic as a struggling swimmer tying themselves to a passing submarine.

Let’s hope it happens. Between HRL’s Dual Gas and the Victorian Government’s CarbonNet, over a quarter of a billion dollars in taxpayers’ money is set to be sunk into project that will deliver little more than a dirty, expensive and unnecessary power station, and a great big pipe stretching right across Gippsland.

Climate change is far too urgent for this. We don’t have the time or money to fritter about with the coal industry’s pipe dream. Calling CCS dead and buried could be just what we need to redouble our focus and efforts on real, renewable energy solutions to climate change, and stop hoodwinking our coal communities into believing that coal can ever be clean.

Over a year after the earthquake that devastated swathes of Japan, the branches of Tohoku region’s cherry blossom trees remain bare. Layers of snow, metres deep, line the mountain roadsides. A bitterly cold winter has meant the hotly anticipated sakura season has come late this spring. Although Japan’s recovery is underway, the late blossom is a symbol of a region still struggling to attract the foreign tourists upon which it relies.

Each year tourists flock to see the blossoms appear as spring sets in, but this year international arrivals plummeted. Domestic tourism has bounced back, as has the business sector, but international numbers are staying away still, worried about radioactive risks and general damage to the region.

Last March’s earthquake killed more than 15,000 people and displaced 340,000 more as their homes were destroyed or rendered dangerous by the combined impact of the quake, the subsequent tsunami and the damaged nuclear reactor at Fukushima.

The country’s wounded economy is struggling to recover. The winding lanes of Zao ski resort in Tohoku’s Yamagata prefecture are almost deserted. Taking in views of the mesmerising snow dusted mountains, only two solitary black dots dart expertly down the otherwise empty slopes.

It’s a stark contrast to the months just before the earthquake when arrivals to the Tohoku region from Japan’s number one ski market, Australia, hit new heights, rising 451 per cent on the year before to 8120.

Figures are yet to be confirmed for the full year following the earthquake, but Yamagata prefecture tourism chief Yasuhiro Nagasawa told New Matilda that this winter, the region’s ski resorts have been virtually abandoned by Australian tourists.

Even those still tempted by Japan’s famed powder are heading to better known Niseko and Nagano, far from the perceived damage of Tohoku, he says. People are still worried about radiation risks from the nuclear reactor at Fukushima.

Last year saw foreign visitor numbers to the Fukushima prefecture plummet 77 per cent to 20,190, Nagasawa says. The government has now introduced 2,700 Geiger counters across the Fukushima prefecture’s tourist attractions and public spaces to reassure visitors that there is no nuclear threat.

Fukushima tourism department executive Nozemi Takeda admits the measurements showed the area directly surrounding the plant remained in the danger zone, but she insists that other parts were considered safe with readings well below worrying levels. Some areas have actually recorded levels lower than some of the major cities in the world, she claims.

"Please tell everyone in Australia that Japan is safe," she says.

Meanwhile, the devastated Fukushima and Miyagi provinces remain barren. Much of the debris has now been cleared, leaving a wasteland with little sign of life. The people whose homes were damaged by the quake have now been absorbed into other areas.

Tour bus driver Michio Takahashi’s home in Yuriage, the most damaged area of Natori City, was written off after the first floor was wrecked by the tsunami.

On the night of the quake, he was unable to get back to his home because the roads were closed, so he and his family took shelter in one of the buses from his work. They lived there for 10 days before the family was rehoused in a rental apartment.

He received financial support from the Japanese government, but it came nowhere near the cost of a new house. Nonetheless, he remains optimistic.

"At least I have a job," Takahashi told New Matilda.

"We had always known about tsunami but we never imagined that could be so big — it was beyond our imaginations."

Japan’s tourism officials admit the road to recovery will be a long one, despite progress made in the 12 months. The Japan Tourism Agency concedes reconstruction over the last 12 months had been "not easy" due to the extent of the damage to Tohoku’s coastal regions.

But it insists that advances are being made. The government has allocated a budget of 18 trillion yen to the recovery effort, and has created a reconstruction agency headed by a dedicated minister.

However, foreign tourists remain wary of visiting Tohoku, plenty are still keen to travel to Japan. Instead of heading for the northern region of Honshu, they are instead heading to destinations further South and to the West.

In the west of Honshu, Japan’s former capital Kyoto remains a popular choice for tourists. While the city tourism department expects visitor numbers to have been impacted by the quake, down around 20 per cent on the previous year, it insists that international visitors are now returning in droves because of its rich and diverse arts scene and perfectly preserved historic district, Gion.

Maiko, a young girl in training to become a Geisha, performs in a velvet-lined theatre in Gion. A mixture of Japanese and western tourists continue to attend the girl’s flawless performances.

In contrast to Tohoku region, the cherry blossoms are already wilting along Kyoto’s Kamogawa river — a sign that life goes on. As are the tourists that are returning to the region, stuffed with noodles and wandering in search of a sake bar. 

Do our federal politicians need a code of conduct?

"Yes!" I hear many of you say. After all lots of professions have them, from journalists to doctors. Given that politicians occupy the highest office of our democracy, it shouldn’t be too much to ask them to comply with a code of ethics that would ask them to act honourably, honestly and with integrity — should it?

The talk about codes of conduct for federal parliamentarians is being driven by the current scandals engulfing politics, most notably of course the travails of the Member for Dobell, Craig Thomson.

We don’t need to rehash the sordid details of Thomson’s exploits: the report by Fair Work Australia has done that quite comprehensively. As well as spending union members’ money on things like escort services and his own re-election campaign, Thomson appears to have lied about it to Fair Work Australia’s Terry Nassios to boot.

Thomson’s response to the report has been a bizarre argument about being set up by union enemies. Given the forensic weight of evidence compiled by Fair Work Australia against him — including mobile phone records, credit card statements, signed receipts, logs from drivers and cab charges — it’s a claim bordering on the delusional.

We can happily set the Thomson affair aside for a minute, though, to ask whether parliamentarians need a code of conduct in order to better regulate their behaviour. It’s an interesting question and one that has many implications for the practice of our democracy.

The classical answer to this question would be yes. Legal principles stem from moral codes, after all. The Code of Hammurabi, for instance, includes an early regulation aimed at curbing corruption: a provision to penalise and remove judges from office for altering their judgements after handing them down. Centuries later, Pericles created the Athenian Oath, the first clause of which was "we will never bring disgrace on this our City by an act of dishonesty or cowardice". By the 19th century, John Stuart Mill was writing extensively on the issue of how to square the responsibilities of public office with the duties of morality.

But that doesn’t mean codes of conduct are necessarily the best way to regulate the actions of our elected representatives. Codes of conduct are, first and foremost, an attempt to define and describe ethical roles and responsibilities. As any ethicist would point out, codes of conduct are normative: they are about ethical values and the ways that people and organisations ought to behave. Because of this, they embody a value system — a value system which not everyone may subscribe to, including the voters who put that representative there.

Let’s take a simple example: should parliamentarians be duty-bound to honesty? It’s a seemingly simple question that has many complex implications. Misleading parliament is traditionally seen as one of the most serious things a member can do: in the Westminster system, tradition dictates that those who do so should immediately resign.

The problem here is not just that no-one actually resigns anymore for misleading the parliament or the public — even in reasonably clear-cut cases such as the "children overboard" affair. It’s also a deeper philosophical question over what constitutes ethical behaviour in the first place.

Codes of conduct are inherently about the means, not ends. But politics is all about ends, not means. This poses deep dilemmas even for ethical politicians (indeed, especially for ethical politicians), who must choose between greater and lesser evils in the everyday course of their job.

Is healthcare more important than education? Is balancing the budget more important than borrowing money to invest in infrastructure? More prosaically, is abandoning a promise or backflipping on a position justifiable? If you can’t achieve anything without being elected, what sort of conduct is justified in the campaign?

For some politicians, the answer is a very simple one: whatever they can get away with. The title of Graham Richardson’s 1994 book, Whatever It Takes, sums up the situation for some politicians nicely. Pericles himself, after formulating his famous oath, was involved in the sort of political contortions and backflips familiar to any contemporary observer of democracy. He ultimately led Athens into a disastrous series of wars.

Few of us would applaud the behaviour of Craig Thomson. Rapping a Craig Thomson or a Mal Colston over the knuckles for obvious misconduct is one thing, but what are we to make of politicians who use their networks to make lots of money after leaving office, like Lindsay Tanner (now a merchant banker) or Kate Carnell (a corporate lobbyist)? And what principles of natural justice should apply? What about things parliamentarians did before they got elected?

And what about actions that are legal, but unethical?

The behaviour of more contested political figures, like John Howard or Gough Whitlam, are full of such examples. Both Whitlam and Howard made many enemies for actions that voters perceived at the time as dishonest, cynical, or ruthless. Malcolm Fraser’s successful attempt to get the Governor-General to remove Gough Whitlam’s government may or not have been constitutional. But was it ethical? Similarly, John Howard’s decision to commit Australian troops to the 2003 invasion of Iraq was certainly legal under Australian law. But was it illegal under international law? And was it the right thing to do?

Ethical codes are often flimsy brakes on political action, especially when our leaders are faced with the relentless press of events.

How seriously does the electorate take codes of conduct anyway? Few voters understand the existing rules enshrined in the Constitution, such as the one about parliamentarians being disqualified if bankrupt, or convicted of a crime with a sentence of more than a year in prison. As for the parliament’s standing orders — well, do even the parliamentarians understand them? It’s a fair bet that many don’t.

In other words, a code of conduct for politicians is far from a panacea. Rather than achieve better standards, it is more likely to do what codes and regulations always do: ensnare the stupid and the unwary, while protecting the clever and the duplicitous.

In the period of pre-Budget speculation there was an expectation that mining companies would lose their exemption from diesel fuel excise. The Greens, in particular, were keen to see the exemption abolished and were understandably disappointed when the Government left it untouched.                            

But perhaps it would be better for the Greens and others to seek more fundamental reforms of fuel taxes, which carry more than just this one distortion.

Transport fuels, including diesel, gasoline and ethanol, attract an excise of 38.143 cents a litre, a rate which has remained unchanged since the Howard government abolished indexation in 2001, and which raises just under $15 billion a year in public revenue.

It would raise more but for an exemption for non-road use of these same fuels, an exemption estimated to cost $7 billion a year in forgone revenue. About 40 per cent of the exemption is claimed by the mining industry, 30 per cent by agriculture, and the balance by other industries such as fishing and rail transport. In view of the expected expansion of the mining industry, Treasury expects this cost to rise strongly over the next few years.

The Greens’ case for abolishing the exemption for mining is understandable. The miners got off lightly when the Henry Review proposals for a 40 per cent super profits tax was watered down to the much more limited Resource Rent Tax, and because of the contribution of these fuels to greenhouse gas emissions such an exemption does not align with the carbon pricing policy.

But to the extent that off-road fuel use does not contribute to road wear, traffic congestion or local pollution (almost all such use is remote from population centres), there is a case for at least some exemption from excise duty applying to any industries using these fuels for purposes other than road transport.

The Greens implicitly acknowledged this when they argued that farming should continue to be eligible for exemption — an argument with clear political logic but which is hard to defend in terms of policy consistency.

Excise itself is a messy legacy of Federation, when the Commonwealth’s taxing powers were mainly limited to customs duty. Excise was used to raise a few "internal" taxes, which were focused on some "luxury" or "immoral" items of domestic consumption, cigarettes and alcohol in particular, and on gasoline which was used by the small number of indolent rich who could afford automobiles. (In economic terms such taxes are called "sumptuary" taxes; in everyday language they are called "sintax".) Also, 100 years ago, broad taxes such as today’s GST would have been much harder to collect.

Tax reform is difficult in a climate of stridently aggressive politics. When Labor was in Opposition it almost brought down the Howard government with its scaremongering about the GST, and it is now suffering the same scaremongering from the Coalition in relation to the carbon tax and mining taxes.  

The Greens, however, have the benefit of being able to stand aside a little from these fights, and may be in a position to push for a fundamental review of taxes on transport fuels — something more comprehensive than simply picking out the miners’ exemption. Although transport contributes only 13 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, it is a source more amenable to change than others. Cars and trucks have a much shorter economic life than power stations, our vehicles are fuel inefficient on average, and our urban dwellers could be much better served by public transport.

The Henry Review recommended comprehensive road user charging, a system which could cover a number of costs. It would obviously cover road construction and maintenance, greenhouse gas emissions and local pollutants (noise and particulate emissions). If set high enough it would help eliminate congestion and would support investment in cycling and public transport. Such a cross-subsidy is easily justified, because every person who uses some mode other than road contributes to the convenience of road users.

The technology for such a system is not far off. Even now many vehicles are fitted with electronic tags for toll roads, but our road tolls are very inequitable and distortionary. They encourage "rat running" on to untolled roads, contributing to congestion and pollution. Tolls do not vary with congestion, and they do not vary with time of day — the shift worker who must get to town at 2am pays the same toll as the 9-5 commuter who could have used public transport. But GPS systems, applying to all road use, could distribute the costs much more fairly and efficiently than tolls.

State and federal governments have been unenthusiastic about restoring fuel indexation and even more reluctant to plan for comprehensive road user charging. But there are ways it may be possible to get a degree of support.

First, is to dispel the notion that Australia is a vast country where we must drive long distances. In reality, Australians live a very urbanised lifestyle. Most of us cling to a narrow coastal strip that stretches from Cairns to Port Lincoln, with a couple of "islands" thrown in — Tasmania and Southwest Western Australia. Our human geography is more like that of Japan, Sweden or Norway than the USA, which is more evenly distributed over a large land mass.

Second, a well designed system of road user charging could actually see a reduction in transport costs in rural, remote and outback Australia. Road use in these areas does not contribute to congestion or local pollution. While road construction costs in the bush are high, the principle that funding of state and national highways is a collective responsibility rather than a local one is well established. The greatest costs would fall on urban peak time CBD commuters.

Third, as pointed out in the Henry Review, we presently have an inequitable balance between charging for vehicle use and for vehicle ownership. In a country with high motor vehicle ownership, registration and compulsory insurance fees, which bear no relationship to distance driven, are close to a poll tax — one of the most regressive taxes. Road user fees should relate to use, not ownership. Similarly if the revenue from stamp duties could be absorbed into user fees, the burden of changing to more fuel-efficient new or used vehicles would be lessened.

Fourth, and most important politically, the environmental movement must shake off its "anti-road" image. For many years the urban transport choice has been presented as "roads versus public transport". The reality is that our cities have poor roads and poor public transport (and even worse provision for cycling). Roads don’t just carry commuters going to CBD office jobs. They carry freight, tradespeople travelling with their equipment, people with complex travel patterns, and workers working odd hours.

If, by constructing metro systems, we succeed in getting higher urban consolidation, we will need better roads to support freight and trade tasks in these regions, and to segregate motor vehicle traffic from pedestrians and cyclists (while ensuring that commuters, students and shoppers are served with public transport). European pedestrian and cycle friendly cities provide illustrative models: a quick examination on Google Maps of cities like Zurich and Utrecht reveals that these cities are served by well designed limited-access ring roads connected to long-distance highways.

Even though the Greens themselves have not been part of the strident "anti-road" movement, they suffer from the association people make with such movements. A few years ago, for example, a spokesperson for a lobby opposing a freeway near Brisbane cited "personal mobility" as being inimical to social control. That sort of association doesn’t go down very well with the tradesperson living in the outer suburbs or with the carer regularly driving an elderly relative to a clinic.

Fifth, and associated with the above point, respect must be shown for people’s lifestyle choices. Many Australians are opting for a medium or high density and largely car-free lifestyle, but many others seek a suburban lifestyle, and some may even get their thrills from doing up an old Falcon GTHO. When they do adopt such a lifestyle, they should have the means to keep their carbon footprint as low as possible.

A policy approach of forcing people onto public transport by making private vehicle travel more miserable will meet with political resistance. An approach of making public transport more attractive will work far better. Public transport, in common with so many government services like health and education, suffers when it is seen as welfare for the poor rather than a shared asset.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Nor should we sentence those who are not fortunate enough to have jobs suited to public transport to waste their lives and burn precious fossil fuel in traffic jams.

On Friday, the ABC’s The Drum published a letter from former Prime Minister Paul Keating. In the letter, Keating claims that the anchor of ABC’s 7.30, Chris Uhlmann is not a competent political journalist:

"His technique is to have the pap set question to hand. And as the interviewee responds, he speaks over the top of them to demonstrate an aggressive credential. This is broadly to conceal the fact that he is unable to follow an answer in a discursive way — to grow the conversation in a manner that is both informative and elucidatory."

Bruce Belsham, Head of ABC Current Affairs, responded to the article in an editor’s note, claiming that Keating’s letter was "a personal and unreasonable assault on one of this country’s best political journalists and interviewers". Defending Uhlmann as a widely respected journalist, Belsham wrote:

"I’ve just re-watched the interview. Chris’s tone throughout was respectful but probing, the appropriate tone for a political interviewer doing what political interviewers have always done — acting devil’s advocate for a public seeking to better understand its leaders."

Last year, GetUp! found itself in a media storm when their Suggest a Campaign tool (now defunct) was used to vent frustrations about rightwing bias on the ABC (although GetUp! never endorsed the campaign).

Users of the Suggest a Campaign tool targeted Uhlmann who, in interviews with Senator Bob Brown and Prime Minister Julia Gillard, was perceived to be "childish" and "aggressively interruptive".

Although Keating and the Suggest a Campaign critics accuse Uhlmann of different things (a lack of competence on the one hand and pervasive bias on the other), both appeal to their subjective impressions about Uhlmann’s behaviour and demeanour. When Keating asserts that Uhlmann’s technique is "limited to loaded set questions invariably posed in an accusatory tone", he leaves himself vulnerable to Belsham’s rebuttal: "I’ve just re-watched the interview. Chris’s tone throughout was respectful but probing".

Forget the people involved and what we think of Chris Uhlmann’s journalism. The criticisms highlight contemporary issues with how we discuss media issues, particularly the difficulty discussing issues of bias, balance, and fairness.

The ABC Code of Practice outlines its commitment to impartiality while acknowledging the problem of subjectivity:

"Judgements about whether impartiality was achieved in any given circumstances can vary among individuals according to their personal and subjective view of any given matter of contention. Acknowledging this fact of life does not change the ABC’s obligation to apply its impartiality standard as objectively as possible. In doing so, the ABC is guided by these hallmarks of impartiality:

• a balance that follows the weight of evidence;
• fair treatment;
• open-mindedness; and
• opportunities over time for principal relevant perspectives on matters of contention to be expressed."

Since the beginning of 2012 there have been three complaints about 7.30 by ABC’s Audience and Consumer Affairs: in January, the show claimed that NSW has 20 per cent of the world’s poker machines (it has 3.6 per cent); in March, it showed distressing images without giving sufficient warning; and, in April, the show inaccurately stated that sheets of fire-proof magnesium oxide were not available in Australia.

After all the chest-thumping and huffing and puffing about bias at the ABC, those are the three complaints that have been upheld, and the ABC’s complaints process is hardly substandard.

The Managing Director of the ABC, Mark Scott, was recently interviewed by Rod Tiffen, Emeritus Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, for The Conversation. Discussing attacks on the ABC, Scott noted:

"There are a few critics who are quite carping and consistent. I’m not sure we can do anything to appease them, and you’ve just got to be realistic on that. One of the things I think I’ve learnt about bias is that the audience member brings so much to this bias conversation.

We’d get these audience logs after Kerry O’Brien had done a vigorous or torrid interview and there’d be 200 phone calls, a hundred saying: ‘How dare Kerry O’Brien be so tough and rude to that political guest?’ and the other hundred saying: "Why has Kerry O’Brien gone soft? Why won’t he go hard?" and you realise that the audience is bringing this kind of perspective."

That’s not to say that there haven’t been attempts to find impartial evidence. In 2009, then Professor of Economics (now federal ALP parliamentarian) Andrew Leigh co-authored a paper which tried to demonstrate "media slant" (rather than bias) in Australian journalism. The study used intuitively unusual methods for detecting slant:

"First, we use parliamentary mentions to code over 100 public intellectuals on a left-right scale. We then estimate slant by using the number of mentions that each public intellectual receives in each media outlet. Second, we have independent raters separately code front-page election stories and headlines. Third, we tabulate the number of electoral endorsements that newspapers give to each side of politics in federal elections. Overall, we find that the Australian media are quite centrist, with very few outlets being statistically distinguishable from the middle of Australian politics."

The methods were modified from US studies into media slants which, as noted in the paper, had a larger sample. Despite the caveats, one metric revealed something interesting about the ABC:

"All but one media outlet is within two standard errors of the center position, 0.47. On this metric, the only media outlet that is significantly slanted is the ABC Channel 2 television station, which is significantly pro-Coalition during the period in question. However, even here the difference is relatively small, with ABC television’s estimate being 0.51."

The paper concluded on a temperate note:

"To the extent that cross-country comparisons are possible, our results suggest that the Australian media — at least in terms of news content — are less partisan than their United States counterparts."

The study conducted by Professor Leigh can only support weak conclusions about the ABC as a whole; it doesn’t support criticisms of particular pieces of journalism. And thus we are left with subjective and interpretative evidence for claims.

For what it’s worth, I agree with Keating’s letter. Watching the interview, I found it difficult to believe that Uhlmann was following and contributing to the conversation, but I doubt I could convince somebody who disagreed with my interpretation.

Unless we begin to develop a shared language about how to spot imbalanced journalism objectively, even insightful minds like Paul Keating’s are going to get stuck in this purgatory of subjectivity.

On Sunday morning in downtown Manhattan, couples and families crammed sidewalks ordering coffee and cakes and Bloody Marys as pink ribbons and garish "Happy Mothers’ Day" balloons shifted around in the light spring breeze. "All day half price cocktails for mums… even if you have two of them," read one Soho chalkboard. 

But it wasn’t just Mothers’ Day or the onset of Summer that made Sunday special. Three days after Barrack Obama historically declared his support for gay marriage and a year after the state recognised same-sex unions, New York City was preparing for the President’s arrival at, among other things, a LGBTI fundraiser hosted by recently out gay pop star Ricky Martin. 

"I feel like it’s an important time for civil liberties," MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow said.

In 1996, then president Bill Clinton faced a similar political decision over gay rights. Worried about losing key swing seats, Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) into law, restricting the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman. 

But things are different now. Obama refused to enforce DOMA, his administration has quietly introduced legislation increasing same-sex access to benefits, education and healthcare. And Clinton has just this week been campaigning in North Carolina openly supporting gay marriage. 

Although the US has a long way to go, it seems the popular attitude towards gay rights in the US is shifting. Polls indicate a growing support for — or at least acceptance of — gay marriage and, unlike Clinton, Obama has little to lose personally, politically or financially by supporting gay marriage.

Americans are unlikely to vote on gay marriage as a single issue. It’s a statistical fact. There is a risk Obama might lose some fringe support from conservative religious groups, but that loss probably won’t make much of a difference in his overall presidential campaign. There is a possibility that in states like Ohio, Florida and Colorado where a few thousand votes will really count, there could be cause for concern, but in an overall sense the polls look good.

Twenty five per cent of voters are more likely to vote for a supporter of gay marriage, while only 20 per cent are likely to vote against a candidate. Fifty four per cent of Americans said a candidate’s same-sex marriage views made no difference to their vote. 

But what about the religious-conservative black vote? Isn’t Obama risking the crucial 95 per cent of black support he got last election?

The most Obama could lose by supporting same sex marriage is about 5 per cent of the African-American population who identify themselves as religious-conservative. Doing the maths, Black Americans make up just 13 per cent of the electorate, which in real terms constitutes .65 of a percentage point from his share of the popular vote. In swing states like Virginia and North Carolina the margin could creep closer to 1 point, but not much more. 

Both sides of politics are vying for the Latino vote this election cycle, so you would presume Obama has taken their views into consideration in his decision. Traditionally conservative, this growing base now makes up about 9 per cent of the electorate.

According to polls though, the most conservative Latinos either aren’t registered to vote or do not have US citizenship. Of those Latinos who took to the polls last election just over two thirds support same sex marriage. And strangely enough, according to exit polls, it’s difficult to distinguish that from the 67 per cent of Latinos who voted Democrats in 2008. 

If the Obama-supporting, anti-gay-marriage Latinos switch their vote and outnumber the anti-Obama, pro-gay-marriage Latino voters who are drawn to him because of this announcement, then the Democrats might be in trouble, but that’s unlikely. 

When New York State introduced the Marriage Equality Act in July last year, the public asked "Why now?" and "What’s different this time around?" 

The answer is the money. A powerful consortium of five groups joined forces in late 2010 and poured $1.9 million into lobbying around just that one piece of legislation. Pressure was applied to the governor and other politicians from Wall Street and beyond.

Likewise Obama’s announcement instantly moved beyond the symbolic when his campaign fundraising dollar signs started flashing on Wednesday. It’s rumored, and FEC data isn’t out yet, but within an hour of the ABC interview, Obama’s campaign received an unsolicited $1 million surge in donations.

Already one out of six of Obama’s fundraisers are gay males, according to the Washington Post. And his endorsement will likely reignite the young, passionate support base he relied on in the last election, many who went online and simply donated $25. If New York is any indication of the financial clout behind the LGBTI marriage movement, Obama can look forward to some flush times ahead. 

So as he takes to the stage with Ricky Martin — gay and Latino — on Monday afternoon, in one of the nine states that support same-sex marriage, Obama will most likely receive a standing ovation from the audience who have all paid at between $5,000 and $200,000 a head for the privilege.

This phase of Obama’s evolution will be complete, he will personally relish the moment and his campaign will have received the financial and political boost it needed. Meanwhile, on the sunny streets of New York City his supporters, because of his bold move, can proudly wander around sporting his new line of LGBTI Obama fashion wear.

When Angela Merkel’s government examines contemporary Europe these days, they worry about an uncomfortable parallel from German history: "By this point, advisors in the chancellor’s office are reminded of the Weimar Republic when they see the pictures from Athens," reports German weekly Der Spiegel.

Greeks are today as angry at the austerity measures imposed by Brussels and the IMF as Germans were at the repayments that the Allies foisted upon them at the end of World War I, unnamed sources in the chancellor’s office said.

Like in Greece today, those Weimar repayments on debts incurred during World War I worsened the effects of a global financial crisis — and helped parties blaming unemployment and debt on anti-German machinations by foreign governments, especially the Nazis.

"And just like during the 1920s in Germany, fringe parties on the left and right are benefiting," Der Spiegel said.

It hasn’t yet reached crisis point in Greece. But late on Sunday night, Greek president Karolos Papoulias attempted frantically to put together a new government to avoid new elections next month, in which parties on the far left and right are likely to poll better than at last Sunday’s elections, say surveys.

There had been no winner last week. PASOK and New Democracy, the socialist and conservative parties that had dominated Greek politics since the end of the military junta in 1974, were left with just over a third of the vote last Sunday — down from just under 80 per cent in 2009.

Neither of those parties — nor the neo-Marxist, anti-bailout Syriza, which came second — could form a coalition last week. Leaving Papoulias meeting with everyone in parliament, in a likely quixotic attempt to form a new government. Even fascist party New Dawn were asked to meet with Papoulias during his attempts to form a coalition à la carte on Sunday.

Those talks are to continue on Monday. Nevertheless, it was rumoured in Athens over the weekend that yesterday’s attempts to form a coalition had failed before they began. Papoulias will today name 10 June as the date when the new poll will be held, according to information received by New Matilda.

If that indeed is the case, then Syriza will likely win June’s poll, reported French business daily Les Echos on Sunday. "Syriza registered 20.2 support, ahead of conservative New Democracy, which has 18.1 per cent support, and socialist PASOK on 12.2," the paper wrote, citing Greek weekly To Vima.

Thus Syriza, formed in 2004 after Trotskyites and Maoists joined an earlier eurocommunist formation, is suddenly and stunningly the favourite to form Greek’s next government.

"The party has captured the protest vote of many Greeks, who have seen their purchasing power and former standard of living fall by an unthinkable amount," writes Spanish online paper El Correo Digital.

As such, the party has picked up many of its voters from PASOK — which has been discredited by corruption scandals and its support for the "rescue plan" imposed on Greece by the Troika (the EU, European Central Bank and IMF).

The party pursued an anti-austerity, anti-Berlin strategy during the recent election campaign, says Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras campaigned on the need to drop the debt payments, wrote the paper last week. Tsipras also wants to put on more public servants and nationalise the country’s banks.

However, the question of "how Hellas will pay the rents and pensions of its public servants if the international lenders stop providing their multi-billion assistance" remains a question that Tsipras can’t — or won’t — answer, says Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Indeed, the charisma of 37-year-old former anti-globalisation activist Tsipras explains a large part of the party’s support, writes La Voz de Galicia. "Tsipras has various visages," writes an analyst in the Northern Spanish daily:

"At times, he talks like a communist, promoting the nationalisation of the means of production. At other times, he talks like a defender of human rights, like Martin Luther King, promising Greeks to deliver on his dream — that all Greek citizens enjoys equal rights."

Any victory by Tsipras in the elections anticipated for June would likely see the expulsion of Greece from the Eurozone — if Germany has its way.

In recent days, Berlin has selected an approach that is "all stick and little carrot", argues Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore. Berlin signalled last week that no matter which government is elected, Greece should live up to its international obligations, the Milan-based daily writes. Berlin’s position is that there is no alternative. "If the assistance tap were to be turned off, the country would very soon collapse", Il Sole says.

Still, Berlin has appeared to be willing to push Greece out of the Eurozone. Statements by the president of the German reserve bank and German media debate in recent days indicate the idea is very much on the agenda.

It will experience less pushback than normal from ally France if it does. Legislative elections will deliver a parliamentary government next month. And after the victory of François Hollande last Sunday, the Élysée Palace is busy with its political transition.

Besides, Hollande does not yet have a firm position on Greece — and won’t make up his mind until he has to, says French independent online daily Mediapart.

"We know very well that Greece is an important topic … but until now, Hollande hasn’t taken a position because it hasn’t been necessary for him to do so," one of the new president’s advisors tells the paper.

It may be the first position that Hollande has to come up with. The Greek tragedy is nearing its final act. With youth unemployment over 50 per cent, the country still practically bankrupt — despite a recent debt "haircut" — and the country’s state and political system moribund, Hellas has become more than a political issue for Europe.

Instead, Greece has become a historically significant drama — and the set is in place for a tumultuous denouement.

Since publication Syriza has indicated they will pull out of coalition talks, bringing the country closer to new elections.

ABOUT BEST OF THE REST:
It’s a big world out there and plenty of commentators and journalists are writing about it — but not always in English. And not surprisingly,ideas about big events of the day shift when you move away from the Anglosphere. Best of the Rest is a fortnightly NM
feature by Berlin-based journalist Charles McPhedran. Charles reads the news in French, German, Spanish and Portuguese and reports on what the rest of the world is saying about the big stories.

Over time, home video recording has become increasingly user friendly.

The VCR promised to be such a great device for catching up on your favourite TV but early VCRs were difficult to set to record ahead of time. In an attempt to make things easier manufacturers came up with a code — the G-Code — so you could set your VCR to the G-Code published in the TV Guide for that program and everything would go smoothly.

It was digital video transmission in Australia in 2001, and the taking up of devices like TiVo, that revolutionised digital video recording in Australia. The TiVo did everything in the one box with a comparatively simple handheld interface and, being a digital computer, it could automate everything — no more clunky G-Codes.

Computer savvy users who had TV cards were way ahead of the game even before digital TV arrived. Their computers had access to software that captured the analog signal and saved a digital file copy of the analog signal on their hard drive.

OptusNow — a new cloud computing service that operates as a personal video recorder — is the subject of ongoing trials and a recent appeal. At first instance it was adjudged to be part of the progress from the TV Card to the TiVo, according to the first instance judge, Justice Rares.

But following the full Federal Court appeal of NRL v Singtel Optus, Rares’ opinion has been overturned. Optus Singtel must now shut down OptusNow after the court took a very different view of how the complex technology is to be dealt with.

While Justice Rares saw the service as being analogous to a personal digital video recorder, the Full Court saw it as "so pervasive that, even though entirely automated, it cannot be disregarded when the ‘person’ who does the act of copying is to be identified". By which the Court is saying that the Optus system is involved in making many decisions about how the TV program is being recorded, where it can be stored, where and when and how it may be viewed and for how long — so much so that the subscriber is more a passive partner in the making of the copy than the sole instigator. The decision raises many implications for the currently emerging technologies in cloud computing.

Prior to 2007 s.111 of the Copyright Act exempted home taping of broadcasts from liability for copyright infringement in a limited way. But the section did not exempt liability for infringement of copyright in the music, the sound recordings, the movies etc contained in the broadcasts. It did not therefore effectively exempt private people in their homes from liability for the increasing prevalence of the VCR and later digital video recording devices.

As referred to by the Full Court, the Explanatory Memorandum to the 2006 Bill in discussing the background to the then proposed changes to s.111 says:

"Video cassette recorders have been used to time-shift analogue television broadcasts in Australian homes since the 1970’s. Today a range of new consumer devices (eg DVD recorders, Personal Video Recorders, and digital TV tuner cards for PCs) are being marketed to simplify and encourage the private copying of television broadcasts."

"Legal action has not been taken by copyright owners in Australia to stop such private copying. Nevertheless, such acts usually infringe copyright. Many ordinary Australians do not believe that … "time-shifting" a broadcast for personal use should be legally wrong with a risk of civil legal action, however unlikely. Failure to recognise such common practices diminishes respect for copyright and undermines the credibility of the Act."

"The failure to recognise the reality of private copying is also unsatisfactory for industries investing in the delivery of digital devices and services. Eg, the supply of personal recording devices by broadcasters of subscription television services is proving to be important for the development of digital television. The availability of personal recording devices is also likely to be important for digital radio."

However, the full Federal Court’s opinion in NRL v Singtel Optus differs from Rares in how it adopts the Explanatory Memorandum. While Rares seees it as a licence to adapt the law to new technologies the Full Court says:

"There is nothing in the language, or the provenance, of s 111 to suggest that it was intended to cover commercial copying on behalf of individuals. Moreover, the natural meaning of the section is that the person who makes the copy is the person whose purpose is to use it as prescribed by s 111(1). Optus may well be said to have copied programmes so that others can use the recorded programme for the purpose envisaged by s 111. Optus, though, makes no use itself of the copies as it frankly concedes. It merely stores them for 30 days. And its purpose in providing its service — and, hence in making copies of programmes for subscribers — is to derive such market advantage in the digital TV industry as its commercial exploitation can provide. Optus cannot invoke the s 111 exception."

The Full Court took issue with Rares’ approach to the word "make" when referring to creating copies. They said his view was entirely artificial, as there was no copy made on the subscriber’s mobile — only a stream.

On my reading of Rares’ decision I took him to be saying that a) the article or thing was the copy made on the Optus servers that was being streamed and/or b) that the stream as captured in the random access memory (RAM) of the mobile was the copy being made and that the pressing of "record" was simply the act of bringing those copies into existence to enable the stream to be sent.

The Full Court found that the design of the system made Optus the "main performer" in making the copy. Optus’ role was "so pervasive" that it could not be excluded as a maker of the copy.

"As the recording could only occur as and when the broadcast occurred of the programme sought but that programme itself had to be notified to Optus in advance, Optus established the wholly automated system, … which it so configured that the required recording did occur.

"If that part of the system embodied the steps taken by Optus to ensure that the required programme was recorded at the right time for the subscriber who required it, then the selection and notified confirmation by the subscriber of the programme required to be recorded could be said to be merely the necessary pre-condition to be satisfied to activate Optus’ obligation to perform its service.

"If this be correct, then Optus can properly be identified as the maker of the copies of the recording. As the AFL has put it, Optus’ data centre carries out the user’s instruction to record a programme; it records that programme. In other words, if analogies are helpful in this particular setting (which we doubt), Optus is to be analogised with a commercial photocopier which copies copyright material provided to it for copying by it."

But, taking up the Rares’ personal video recorder analogy, couldn’t the same be said of the electronic circuitry within a PVR? This reasoning seems to re-open the whole home taping argument that was supposedly settled some time ago in favour of the electronics companies — the VCR and the cassette recorder were not the infringer, the person pressing record was. From Rares’ argument the only difference between the PVR and Optus’ service is that Optus’ service uses software over a network instead of circuitry in a box under your TV.

The analogy to a commercial copier seems a stretch to me as the Optus system was designed so that only one copy is made for the given subscriber not multiple copies.

However, as the Full Court points out, Optus’ system does only allow streaming, and only for 30 days before the files are deleted. To me that is the critical failure of Rares’ PVR analogy. If you do not control the file in the same way that you control a recording made by a PVR then it is difficult to argue that Optus is not actively involving itself in the making of that recording.

But what if Optus modified its system whereby the file was downloaded to a subscribers’ Dropbox, iCloud, or similar cloud folder which automatically copied the file to the subscriber’s synchronised devices and the Optus server copy was deleted automatically once this was done?

Does that make Dropbox or the subscriber liable, or both? What if the same cloud computing home video recording system was provided by a company that was not a mobile carrier but simply a cloud computing system provider?

The Full Court decision will not be the last word on this matter given Optus’ announcement today that they will appeal. Cloud computing has put this technology in the hands of ordinary people and Australians have a reputation for being early and avid adopters of the latest technology.

It’s the ultimate in unwanted gifts. Approximately 13.2 cubic metres of radioactive waste wrapped in steel and cement. In the 1990s, we sent it to France. Now they’re sending it back.

After 30 years of failed attempts to find a place to dispose of nuclear waste, come 2015 the Federal Government — whether Labor or Liberal — is to be left with a neat political headache.

Last week the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) — a statutory body of the Australian government — announced its application for a licence to build a $30 million, 800 square metre warehouse to store the waste on the site of its research reactor at Lucas Heights just outside of Sydney.

Under contracts signed by the Australian Government in the 90s, Australia is obliged to take back its waste, which was produced by ANSTO’s research reactor, from France and the UK by the end of 2015.

ANSTO insists the facility will only provide "interim" storage for the waste, stipulating it can only be kept "for up to five years, until establishment of the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility".

For those working alongside Australia’s nuclear industry, it highlights what they’ve known for years. "The management of radioactive waste in this country has been ham-fisted at best and poorly done," Peter Karamoskos, a nuclear radiologist and public representative on the Radiation Health Committee at the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), told New Matilda.

"The only reason [this waste] is being housed at Lucas Heights is because we’re just not ready with the national repository. The radioactive waste was meant to go straight there."

Successive governments’ attempts to solve the problem of where to bury the waste have been characterised by failed negotiations and buck-passing.

In March this year the Federal Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, announced the Government’s National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010 had passed the Senate.

The legislation provides for a national facility to manage and dispose of both the long-lived "intermediate" grade waste returning from overseas as well as the low-grade waste currently held at over 100 "temporary" sites at Australian universities, hospitals, offices and laboratories.

However, the Bill only nominates one dump site — Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory. And that site is controversial.

Despite provisions that enable further nominations, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation the government has not received any other formal proposals and is not soliciting any.

The Muckaty site is currently the subject of a Federal Court challenge by local Aborigines who claim the Land Council — who nominated the site — did not properly consult traditional landowners who oppose the deal.

A mediation held last year failed to reach any agreement over the land and lawyers involved in the case say key evidence makes the site’s nomination "untenable".

"There’s certainly a Damoclean sword over whether [Muckaty] is going to go ahead," says Peter Karamoskos.

Nuclear spokesperson for the Australian Conservation Foundation, Dave Sweeney, agrees.

"It’s increasingly unlikely that it will be a national site for dumping radioactive waste," Sweeney told NM.

"What we are seeing is a growing political campaign and deadlock and strong legal pressure with a Federal Court case. It’s really bogging down the government."

During Parliamentary debate on the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill in February this year, Greens Senator and nuclear spokesperson Scott Ludlam slammed the Muckaty proposal.

"If the applicants to the Federal Court action are successful it will completely rip the rug out from under the government’s strategy of targeting the Muckaty site, and… if that happens, an enormous amount of… the parliament’s time will have been wasted," he said.

In this context it’s entirely possible that ANSTO will have nowhere to shift its parcel of radioactive waste come 2020.

"Council is concerned that in the absence of a national repository, not only will the 2015 shipment be returned to ANSTO, but subsequent shipments will also be sent to Lucas Heights for storage," said Carol Provan, the Mayor of Sutherland Shire where Lucas Heights is located, during a council meeting on Monday night.

Provan told New Matilda her local community is frustrated and angry at "becoming the country’s de facto waste storage for spent fuel rods".

Asked if it was possible the waste from France and the UK could remain at Lucas Heights beyond 2020, a spokeswoman for ANSTO simply said it was "operating on the premise that a national repository will be in place".

"Indeed all the signals that we are getting, including the passing of the [National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010], indicate that to be the case."

"It’s fortunate that the legislation enabling [a national repository] passed [in March]. Our act doesn’t allow us to be a national waste repository," she said.

ANSTO’s own report makes clear that "while the site is suitable for interim storage of limited quantities of radioactive waste, it does not meet the geographical and geological criteria for a disposal facility".

ANSTO also says it expects further waste to be returned from the UK in the second half of this decade will be transported directly to the as yet unidentified national repository.

According to Karamoskos, the Department of Energy and Resources has not yet submitted any licensing application with the regulator ARPANSA, whose responsibility it is to approve the proposed Muckaty site.

New Matilda contacted the office of the Minister for Energy and Resources, Martin Ferguson, for comment. At the time of publication we had not received a response.

According to The Australian and Tony Abbott, we are now engaged in class war.  The Australian’s headline was "Smash the rich" the morning after the Budget, followed by "Class War" the next day. And in case we missed the written message, Wednesday’s cartoon by Bill Leak, in Soviet Realist style, showed Gillard and Swan marching under the banner of the hammer and sickle.

Had we woken up to angry masses marching down Pitt Street, singing the Internationale and smashing their way into corporate offices? Were the sacked workers occupying the Toyota factory? Was the Melbourne Club ablaze? Or was this yet another Murdoch-Abbott beat up?

To the disappointment of Australia’s surviving "true believers" Tuesday’s Budget is notable not so much for its mild re-distribution, as for the way it keeps in place so many measures that entrench privilege. Family trusts — the vehicles used by the rich to minimise tax — remain untouched. Pension income from accumulated superannuation funds is still untaxed. The Government still shies away from the modest suggestions in the Henry Review that there be a bequest tax and a review of Costello’s generous capital gains tax provisions.

The less hysterical message to emerge in the post-budget commentary is that the Gillard Government, because its Budget is re-distributionist, is somehow anti-business, an argument dismissed by Ben Eltham yesterday. He pointed out that in fact the Budget had many measures that are strongly supportive of economic growth.

But is economic growth the main concern of the business associations who are complaining so loudly? Or are they pursuing some other agendas? Is their opposition a conditioned reflex like Pavlov’s dog — "what’s good for the Liberal Party is good for Australia". 

I suggest that their strident partisanship is not just an emotional attachment to the Liberal Party. Rather, it is representative of the interests of a group of businesspeople, particularly those who are already doing very well and are resistant to change. Those interests do not necessarily align with the broader community interest of ensuring that we have a strong economy.

When industry lobbyists and journalists talk about "the business community" and "business interests", it’s useful for the sceptical reader, listener or viewer to ask just what, if anything, those terms mean.

To start with "the business community", the only feature that could define such a "community" is private ownership. Otherwise it is a hugely heterogeneous patchwork of enterprises. There are sole-trader businesses such as contract gardeners and massive firms like BHP-Billiton. There are restaurants and airlines in fiercely competitive industries through to pharmacists and privatised utilities comfortably shielded against competition by policy or by geography. There are family farmers and giant agri-business corporations, boutique brewers and SABMiller (the multinational owners of Carlton United Breweries). There are sole traders, partnerships, private companies and publicly-listed companies, many of which have substantial foreign ownership. There are "low tech" and "high tech" businesses, alternative energy entrepreneurs and coal miners. And so on.

In short, there is no meaningful entity denoted by the term "business community".

If there is no business community there is no such thing as "business interests". It’s necessary, at times, to remind ourselves that a "corporation" is no more than a legal construct, rather than an animate being. People have interests, businesses don’t. These people include shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, and the communities where businesses are located. Industry associations, however, represent only a small sub-set of those stakeholders — often the highly paid executives and the bigger shareholders (in many cases the same people).

That selectivity helps explain the sycophantic partisanship shown by industry lobbies — an attitude elegantly covered by Bernard Keane recently in his open letter to Jennifer Westacott of the Business Council of Australia and by NM’s Ben Elthamin his Budget analysis. Their constituents’ interests may relate more to their personal circumstances rather than the long-term health of their firms. Their firms’ fortunes would be of interest to executives only to the extent that they can pay high salaries and stock market returns in the short term — an interest reinforced by the structure of remuneration packages and termination payments. Also, it is useful to recall that the senior executives of industry associations themselves are among the few with incomes to have been personally affected by the Government’s redistributions. 

The other problem with industry associations is that their membership is often heavily weighted to old and established firms, particularly those which see structural change as a threat and seek to maintain the status quo.

This is illustrated most starkly in relation to the Government’s carbon pricing policies. To hear the squeals from the industry associations, one would believe that the only energy firms in Australia are the coal companies. Their public protestations are insulting to all those people, many in small innovative firms, who see carbon pricing as an opportunity for business expansion.

This narrow membership also contributes to support for the Coalition, particularly as it is presently presenting itself, for Abbott has clearly stated his technological conservatism. He is well aware that the National Broadband Network, for example, is a disruptive technology, which could hasten the process of new and innovative firms gaining advantages over existing players, and in his Budget response he once again scoffed at its value.

That’s why, on Wednesday, when Joe Hockey delivered his insipid and vague response to the Budget, there was little criticism from the business lobbies. Hockey referred to "a strong agenda to drive economic growth, productivity and employment", but there was no further reference to the agenda, which may not exist at all.

What may have enthused the lobbies, however, was his promise to "lower taxation to enhance the rewards for effort". That’s code for increasing the take-home pay of executives; it has nothing to do with the health of the economy.

Abbott followed Hockey with a speech which was even more vague. He referred to "a plan for economic growth", but like Hockey’s "agenda", there was no revelation of what was in the "plan". Although he talked about the need for investment in transport infrastructure, he repeated his promises to reduce public spending and restore middle-class welfare.

These promises are mathematically incompatible, and given his priority concerns to cut taxes and to increase welfare, they can only mean even further cuts in infrastructure and skills — the very investments that are needed to ensure that businesses can contribute to economic growth.

If business lobbies were concerned about the nation’s economic growth they would be pointing out these contradictions. The silence is understandable if their only concern is for executive incomes.

In any event, there is no evidence that the distribution of the gains from business activity are out of kilter. Over the long term there has been a distinct shift in the distribution of income from wages to profit, as shown in the graph below. There are some qualifications to such a series: some growth in "profits" may be a result of sole traders and partnerships becoming incorporated, and ironically "wages" include executive salaries. But these effects are minor — there is no evidence of this trend reversing.

It is possible, in fact, that this high profit is not a sign of economic health. It may be a negative indicator. A classroom story illustrates the point.

Some years ago I taught a delegation of businesspeople and public servants from a newly established former Soviet satellite state — one of the "stans". I used the Australian concrete industry as a way to teach about profit and loss, balance sheets and financial ratios, drawing on the published reports of Boral, CSR, and Adelaide Brighton Cement.

The visitors were surprised by way such intense competition had kept a lid these firms’ profits. One of them, a fellow whose cunning had been a useful asset in the days of Soviet domination, said that the concrete industry was doing so much better in his country than in Australia. Each concrete firm had its geographic territory, he explained, and this was assured by a form of industry self-regulation. In the passenger seat of each ready-mix concrete truck was an employee, equipped with a camera and a shotgun, whose task was to keep a lookout for trucks from other firms which may have strayed out of their region. The concrete industry in that "stan" was much more profitable than ours.

That’s the hard lesson of the competitive market. There are only two paths to high profits. One, as so well illustrated by my student, is to suppress competition, and there are plenty of lobbyists in Canberra engaged in the task of trying to secure some corporate or industry-wide privilege. They don’t need to carry shotguns; they have chequebooks and friends in the media.

"Rent-seeking" is the common economists’ term for such behaviour, and it is generally inimical to economic progress. The other path to profitability is through innovation in processes, products or markets. Those gains are fleeting, for in a competitive market it isn’t long before others come into the market.

It is possible that Australia’s high corporate profits are influenced by successful rent-seeking, which is what the business lobbies are striving to defend. A test of sound economic management may be the extent of protest from industry lobby groups, and by that measure the Budget earns a reasonably high grade.

On Tuesday night I predicted we should get ready for more unhinging in the wake of Wayne Swan’s 2012-13 Budget and it was about six hours before The Australian produced one of the more ridiculous front pages in the dismal history of this once-proud newspaper.

"Smash the rich, save the base" screamed The Australian’s headline, accompanied by a bizarre cartoon by Bill Leak that strayed crazily into totalitarian propaganda.

I won’t rehash the general bemusement at the lurid response from News Limited to what was actually a fairly orthodox and conservative budget by Swan. Luke Ryan wrote a forensic take-down of the woeful effort, while Jonathan Green mourns the departure from public life of politicians courageous enough to demand an informed debate from constituents.

But it is worth discussing the only factual aspect of the anti-budget reaction, which is the disappointment of business groups concerning the government’s decision to abandon the 1 per cent cut to company tax, from 30 per cent to 29 per cent.

That decision saved billions for a government desperate to return to surplus, incidentally helping it to deliver cash payments to welfare recipients and families. But business groups were unsurprisingly critical of the abandoned tax cut.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Peter Anderson complained that "social policy has usurped the drive to a stronger economy".

"The decision to abandon the company tax cut is dripping with politics and a low blow to the business sector," he thundered.

The Business Council of Australia’s Jeniffer Westacott told the Herald-Sun "the only way to grow the economy is a strong business sector — where will the growth come from now?"

The Australian Industry Group’s Innes Wilcox put out a media release saying "the scrapping of the company tax cut that was to be financed from the Minerals Resource Rent Tax is a major blow to business".

So what was the point of the company tax cut, and are business groups right to be upset?

The promise to cut company tax goes all the way back to the Henry Tax Review and the ill-fated decision by the government to pursue a Resource Super Profits Tax. The idea behind the RSPT was to tax the above-trend profits of big resource projects, while simultaneously giving generous tax breaks for under-performing resource investments in bad times. Some of the money raised from the mining tax was going to be used to reduce the company tax rate, giving industries outside the mining boom something of a respite. The idea was to use the big profits generated by the extraction and sale of non-renewable resources to spread a bit of tax relief around the rest of the economy.

As we know, business groups, especially the mining industry, waged a vicious campaign against the RSPT that played a significant part in Kevin Rudd’s downfall. Even so, everyone wanted the tax cut that was attached to the mining tax. When Julia Gillard negotiated the second version of the mining tax in June and July of 2010 — the so-called Minerals Resource Rent Tax — the end result was still a 1 per cent tax cut to company tax financed by the proceeds of the MRRT.

But the Opposition has always refused to support any mining tax, and hence any reduction in company tax tat might come with it. As a result, the government decided to abandon the tax cut and use the money to get back to surplus instead. The result has been a war of words over who’s more "responsible".

There are some sound economic reasons to reduce business tax. According to many tax experts, the ultimate burden of company tax eventually falls on workers, because higher corporate taxes will be made up, in part, by lower wages. There are also concerns about companies taking their profits overseas through complex transfer arrangements, or simply by packing up and moving.

On the other hand, the case for lower business tax is a lot less compelling than the punchy sound-bites from the business lobby would have you believe. Many Australian business can’t or won’t pack up and leave, and lower company tax rates may well simply flow into higher free cashflows for shareholders, as economist Flavio Menezes pointed out last year.

I’d further argue that because corporation law gives companies the legal status of a "person", corporate tax should follow. The structure of limited liability means that companies can own property, enter into contracts and sequester all sorts of assets inside that legal status. If it all goes wrong, however, companies can declare bankruptcy and the directors and owners won’t be liable for any of that pain. Given that the law treats companies as people, perhaps its not inconsistent to ask those corporations to pay similar levels of tax to ordinary workers — 30 per cent being the tax rate most middle income earners pay.

Is Australian company tax high by world standards, by the way? No, it’s not. Australia’s company tax rates are only just above the OECD average.

In any case, will a tax cut of 1 per cent mean that much? We tend to forget that modern accounting being what is, very big companies making very large profits are not necessarily paying their full rate of tax anyway. Last year, Westpac Banking Corporation paid taxes of $1.455 billion on earnings of $8.514 billion. A simple calculator exercise will tell you that figure is only 17 per cent, far less than the headline figure of 30 per cent that Westpac is "supposed" to pay. NAB reported full year earnings before tax of $7.798 billion. It paid $2.124 billion in company tax — a rate of 27 per cent. Woolworths earned $4.14 billion before tax. It paid $842 million in tax — a rate of 20 per cent.

You get the picture. Compared to the myriad of tax breaks and deductions already open to big companies with sophisticated accounting procedures, the difference between 30 per cent and 29 per cent of a headline tax rate is marginal. And that’s the big guys. For smaller companies and corporations, the difference is proportionately smaller. At the micro-business end of the spectrum, most operating businesses are in fact sole traders who operate by invoicing through an ABN. These businesses are not incorporated and hence don’t pay company tax anyway. They won’t receive any tax break from a reduction in company tax.

Small businesses do in fact get some tax relief from this budget, as this handy PwC cheat sheet explains. One of the most useful is the new "instant asset write-off" which allows small businesses to immediately deduct the value of any asset costing less than $6,500, and $5,000 against the value of a motor vehicle. The idea is to make it easier for businesses to deduct the costs of buying small assets like tools, computers or utes and vans.

We didn’t hear a lot about this provision in the chorus of catcalls from the business lobby. Perhaps that’s because most of the business groups who get talking heads on the television don’t actually represent small business (the Business Council of Australia, for instance, represents only the biggest 100 companies). In general, the arguments advanced by the business lobby tend to be those that exercise the big end of town, rather than the small players.

That’s a shame. Business is an important part of Australia’s economy and society. Australian public life would be a much calmer and more sensible environment if business lobbyists could resist the urge to attack a Labor government at every turn, and instead engage with the realities of the budget situation.

The champagne corks have been popping at SBS in the wake of Tuesday’s Budget to celebrate what the multicultural broadcaster says is "the most significant funding boost SBS has ever received".

By any reckoning, SBS receiving $158 million in extra funding has to be great news.

Admittedly it is spread over five years and tied to some hefty non-discretionary commitments, but in light of the way the multicultural broadcaster has been treated in recent years the money itself is just one reason to celebrate. Almost as important is the Treasurer’s signal that SBS is back in the game. This is especially satisfying as, across town in Ultimo, big brother ABC received practically nothing extra in the Budget.

It has been so long since SBS has secured any substantial government largesse beyond its $210 million annual appropriation that a belief had formed within the corporation that they would never be able to drag themselves out of a spiralling descent into debt, budget cuts, falling audiences, disappearing advertising, more debt and so on.

Although public corporations can’t default on their debts or be declared bankrupt, for the last 10 years or so SBS seemed to be destined for death by a thousand cuts.

After the Howard years there was little doubt the Coalition believed SBS should sink or swim on the commercial high seas. Installing Howard supporter Carla Zampatti as Chairman with a Board of mainly conservative economic hard liners reinforced time and again that SBS was going to have to find any extra money it needed through advertising. The global financial crisis exposed the holes in this philosophy but given the Coalition’s general dislike of multiculturalism, the marginalisation of SBS — even if largely self-inflicted by the Board and Executive — was regarded as no great loss.

Dreams of Kevin Rudd riding to the corporation’s rescue proved to be a chimera, with little additional money forthcoming in an increasingly expensive global media market.

So no wonder the first thing the relatively new managing director Michael Ebeid did after Budget night was to call staff together at their Artarmon headquarters to celebrate the utterly unexpected windfall.

So how happy should SBS be and what will be the true effect of the extra funding?

To put the apparent munificence into perspective, the $158 million is spread over five years and large parts of it are already earmarked.

Just over $63 million will be set aside to run the network’s new Indigenous channel for the next four years. Considering National Indigenous Television (NITV) was already getting $15 million a year, taking into account inflation this is money already spoken for.

Significantly, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy and his colleagues responsible for "Closing the Gap" mentioned the Indigenous channel money separately in their joint announcement. They will all be watching to ensure it actually is spent on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programming, which is due to formally move into the SBS fold in July and begin officially broadcasting under the SBS banner some time later this year.

NITV staff might be reassured by the specificity of the joint ministerial statement, seeing it as effectively ring-fences Indigenous funding for the next four years should SBS ever be tempted to dip into the cache for non-Indigenous uses. Given the way SBS television raided the coffers of the corporation’s multilingual radio division over the years, this had been a real fear at NITV.

More good news may come from the way the rest of the new Indigenous channel money is to be divided. The fact that almost $3 million of the $15 million per year in 2012-13 will be for one-off capital establishment costs means that channel operations — essentially production and program purchasing — could get the full $15 million per annum for the following three years. Add to this the likelihood that advertising on the Indigenous channel — almost impossible to come by under NITV’s current limited pay TV distribution arrangements — could increase significantly with the new nation-wide digital transmission available on the SBS third channel and the news for Indigenous broadcasting seems generally good.

Of the remaining $95 million in new money for SBS from Tuesday’s budget, part will be gobbled up by necessary upgrades to its distribution and storage technology to cope with ever expanding and demanding digital technologies, but part will also be available for program content.

In the world of television, $10 million a year does not buy a lot of extra programming, but SBS has a reasonably good reputation of getting bang for their buck, so they might be able to make some noticeable improvements with whatever new funding is available for production and acquisitions.

So who does SBS have to thank for this unexpected early Christmas present?

Certainly after years of declining real-term funding under the Howard and Rudd Governments it was time for SBS to receive a boost. Large parts of the new money are required for necessary technical upgrades, so to leave it any longer would have meant SBS was doomed not only ideologically but practically too.

It may also be a reward for SBS efforts to return to its multicultural Charter obligations under Chairman Joseph Skrzynski, Ebeid and an increasingly ethnic Board. The ill-fated attempt at mainstreaming of the Zampatti/Brown years can now be consigned to what Leon Trotsky called the dustbin of history.

Certainly Senator Conroy will have played a significant part in getting the extra funding, an achievement even more commendable given the tightness of this year’s budget and the almost complete absence of significant increases outside health and welfare.

Of course, having decided to fold NITV into SBS the Minister had to provide the funds for Indigenous broadcasting, which is dear to the hearts of some within Senator Conroy’s office.

And perhaps too the Senator has pangs of conscience about SBS. After years of sitting in Senate Estimates Committee meetings month-after-month attacking the then Communications Minister Senator Helen Coonan for a lack of support for SBS, Senator Conroy could no longer delay righting the wrong he had denounced so often.

And let us not forget the role the Greens will have played. They more than anyone remained faithful to SBS when the Howard government disdained it and Labor saw it as little more than a political stick with which to belabour the Howard government. The Gillard government has needed Green support for some of its more contentious budget measures and a little extra for SBS makes a nice quid pro quo.

But before SBS and the Government, multicultural Australia and the Greens get too carried away with the celebratory champagne, let us remember one thing. If this Government ever had any intention of winding back the much-hated in-program advertising on SBS television and compensating the public broadcaster for the inevitable loss of advertising revenue this would cause, Tuesday’s announcement may have dashed those hopes.

Why would the Government give SBS approximately $20 million a year extra for the next five years — excluding the money for Indigenous TV — if it was also going to give them the $40 million or more per annum SBS would need to replace revenue from in-program advertising?

No, SBS has had its cash; those ads are here to stay.