Politicians

Voting Values

May 8, 2019 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

Voting is the expression of the rights of an individual to participate in their government, but like any expression, it can be misdirected, coerced, bought and sold. Political Parties understand the role and importance of marketing, propaganda and salesmanship in seeking your vote, irrespective of whether it is in your or your community’s best interest, or aligns with your values.

Value development.

Voting the voice of the people or the perceptually manipulated by the MSM?

For the rest of us, our political attitudes are not always based on careful consideration of policy. Instead, a range of factors including gender, family, religion, race and ethnicity, and early childhood environments are strong predictors of political beliefs.

However, we arrive at our political beliefs; the next question we need to ask is, who in the political spectrum best represents those beliefs. This may be discovered by:

an analysis of the policies and their consequences
an evaluation of the perceived integrity of the political party

There is a range of political analysis strategies to make a systematic evaluation. Though this does presume that:

Any of us spend any time to analyse the policies of political parties.
Politicians can be trusted to follow through on their promises and ideological pronouncements.
Politicians represent their constituents and not the interests of well-financed lobbyists and donors.

Instead of a rationally researched choice, research demonstrates that we engage in:

Bandwagon voting [1] in which people’s voting preferences are reflecting a desire to follow trends and “hop on the bandwagon” regardless of the underlying evidence. [2]
Reluctance to change voting patterns as other research from Europe demonstrates that voters do not adjust their perceptions according to what parties advocate in their campaigns. [3]
A lack of comprehension of essential differences between the major parties motivated by the desire to decrease the potential costs of post-decision regrets. [4]

Why discouraging small party votes disempowers voter's message. — Why discouraging small party votes disempowers voter’s message.

Major political parties actively encourage bandwagon voting. A prime example is an argument that you should vote for a major party on the pretext that that is more likely to win, instead of voting for the minor party which holds policies with which you agree. This argument ensures you throw away your real choices, for a compromise with values you don’t own, for people you would rather not have in power and relinquish your one element of control to power brokers. I can only assume this must be very empowering for someone, just not the voter.

The reluctance to change your voting patterns despite disagreeing with what parties advocate is a common problem in every democracy. Pensioners expressing anger at being shafted by the government, then declaring their continuance to vote for the same party, may seem odd to an outsider, but we know it happens.

Turnout % failure increasing in real numbers in recent decades.Turnout % failure increasing in real numbers in recent decades. — Turnout % failure increasing in real numbers in recent decades.

Failure to comprehend essential policy differences underpins the high incidence of informal voting in Australia of around 6%. The percentages of voter turnout failures and eligible voters not registering has also increased over time, although offset recently by the Marriage Equality plebiscite voter enrolments. Informal vote margins could have changed outcomes in electorates and possibly even the election of 2016. Many are content to throw away their only leverage in politics; protesting that we don’t like our options when we don’t know what our options are. These folk are highly disengaged with the ability to change politics but are very deliberate in expressing their political disappointment.

Left or Right

Other issues are the misperception of where your values lie on the spectrum between left and right wing, or “progressive” versus “tyrannical”. Some other people are sufficiently misled in concepts of political theory to associate socialism with the Nazis or can’t distinguish between communism, socialism, capitalism and democratic socialism.

ABC's insular perception of political positioning — ABC’s insular perception of political positioning

To aid objective rationality researchers examine party policies, attempting to map a parties position on the political spectrum. The ABC’s vote compass tries to help voters understand their position relative to each of the main political parties. The ABC describes its online survey as a civic engagement application, where one can:

“Based on a user’s responses to a series of propositions that reflect salient aspects of the campaign discourse, Vote Compass calculates the alignment between the user’s personal views and the positions of the political parties.”

Its critics suggest it’s an insular Australia-centric representation of political ideology, treating the Labor Party as Left-wing party and the Liberals as Right-wing party. The Greens and One Nations are treated as political extremists. The basis of the perception is that it reflects community attitudes. There is an apparent political reluctance for the ABC – and the “political scientists” who designed the “compass”, – to challenge the status quo or adopt an international perspective.

Democratic Socialism or Nationalist conservatism.

The Liberal Party in Australia sees themselves as conservative which former prime minister John Howard described as a “broad church”. The Labor party still see themselves as a left-wing “democratic socialist party”. Oddly both Labor and Liberal suffer from the delusion that they are progressive parties who are at odds with each other when they are really merely in heated agreement. Some pundits legitimately note there are left and right factions within both Parties, but the party as a whole, cannot be both. Both Labor and Liberal party candidates vote as a whole and discourage “crossing the floor“.

The party as defined by what its policies support, must by logical necessity, establish itself as either one or the other, independent of its internal divisions. As such, I am not interested in the individuals but the gestalt organisation. Also, I want to introduce a more global view of politics rather than the insular ABC Vote compass. A broader international perspective lifts us away from the tedious bias criticisms levelled at the ABC from both “sides” of the political spectrum.

The shifting polarisations of localised political perspective over time.

How the world sees the political spectrum has changed since it was simplistically regarded as American capitalism versus the communist Soviet Union. This died with the Soviet Union’s restructure via Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika. In the latter part of the 1980s, as the walls came down in Berlin, perspectives changed. The attitudes of Menzies’ worship in the 1980s that framed perspectives for political engagement, for men like Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, and Christopher Pine at college, have shifted significantly.

The Global Compass.

Political Compass positioning of Parties in 2016

The internet phenomenon of the political compass did not originate from the ABC but from further afield from an older body of political analysts, who review politics from an international perspective as opposed to our myopic national perception. “The Political Compass” has been analysing OECD democracies since 2001. Their perspective on the political positioning of Australian politics is very different and revealing. The political compass provides a much more accurate assessment of the exact nature of the political positioning of parties in the Australian democracy (and for that matter several other democracies such as the UK, Canada, America, Germany, New Zealand, Irish, and European Governments).

Previous Labor Party progression and direction change since 2016.

What is of particular interest to myself was to review their separately graphed analysis of each year to gain a perspective on how we have changed over time. To this end, I have overlaid the graphs from the last four elections as depicted by the analysis from https://www.politicalcompass.org/aus2007 to https://www.politicalcompass.org/aus2016. This show’s Labor as a right-wing authoritarian party that had been steadily marching further rightwards and more authoritarian until 2016 when it seems they took a back step.

Liberal policy blip leftwards corrected under Morrison and back on course.

It has primarily followed behind the Liberal party, which, although always further right in political ideology at any instance in time, shifted towards the centre in 2016. While this shift helped the Liberals under Turnbull win the 2016 election, the Right-wing factions of the Liberal Party subsequently reasserted themselves. After a challenge by former immigration ministers Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison, the conservative Morrison claimed the Leadership of the party. The direction of the party reassumed the previous course to the Right.

National Party being utterly consistent and never swerving from the path.

Interestingly, the only party that has made no backstep at all was the National Party. They have stopped for nobody including their partners in the Liberal Party. If you are a right-wing voter who expresses some concern that the Liberal party has softened, then the Nationals have compromised for nobody. Neither, for that matter, has Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party.

Menzies & Whitlam

White Australia Policy - Racist & misogynist — White Australia Policy – Racist & misogynist

From 1949 to 1966 Sir Robert Menzies dominated conservative politics as the Prime Minister. While described by contemporaries as the Father of the modern conservative movement he was far more pro-refugee, pro-family, pro-freedom, pro-middle-class as the “The Forgotten People” broadcasts showed, then the current manifestation of the Liberal Party. Despite his support for the racist White Australia policy (which is an attitude that has run consistently through his party for generations) his later dismantling the policy and ratification of the UN Refugee Convention was far more progressive than what is exhibited by his party today with their indefinite detention programs. The conservatives held power until 1972 when Australia reacted to a long run of conservative political leadership and voted Whitlam and his agenda into power. By 1973 Whitlam’s Government changed immigration laws to repudiate race as an issue. Gough Whitlam from 1972 to 1975 shifted the political face of the country sharply to the left-wing. From the perspective of where Australia had been, his policies seemed radical. Some suggest that in comparison with the world stage, Gough was predominately only playing catch-up with many more progressive countries that had already gone down the path Gough was following. He admitted this in his 1969 election policy speech in Sydney Town Hall about education. Though to many Australians, especially the Right-wing, it was radical politics. While “The Political Compass” has taken no stock or measure of what the Labor Party looked like then, I suspect given the history of the movement of the Labor party in the socioeconomic, political spectrum, and it would be fair to suggest it was legitimately a Left-wing party at that time. It has marched steadily rightwards in the decades that followed.

Strange bedfellows

The only significant left-wing parties in existence anymore according to “The Political Compass”, were the Democrats, Bob Katter’s party and the Greens. Sadly, Don Chip’s political ambitions to “keep the bastards honest”, has been mostly lost to history. Bob Katter – while initially a member of the National Party – formed his party in 2011 and remained as a member of Parliament – neither gaining or losing ground. The Greens party, on the other hand, shifted towards the centre where the Democrats once trod, even taking on board as members, former state party politicians from the Democrats.

So regarding the left/right divides of the political spectrum, it is incorrect to think of it as between the ALP and the LNP. The real gap between left and right policies, ideologies, and social causes are primarily between the Greens on the left and the Labor/National/Liberal “coalition” on the right. Not of course, that the Liberals or Labor party would consider themselves in such an alliance, given their antipathy. In 2013 the political compass placed the Labor Party’s positioning under Kevin Rudd, to the right of the National party’s position in 2007 under Mark Vaile. Perhaps discovering the Labor party held a political policy position further to the right and closer toward authoritarian than the Liberal party’s partners (The Nationals) during the Howard years is undoubtedly challenging to some. While the conception of a Liberal/Labor coalition is unpalatable to both parties, keep in mind the Nationals under the Leadership of Barnaby Joyce had marched onwards unrelentingly rightwards and authoritarian and are no longer trailing behind the Liberal party the way Labor has done.

How far Right?

We should evaluate parties regarding their real and current political persuasions in the 21^st-century rather than what they were in the 20^th century under Menzies or Whitlam. The Labor “left” is no longer close to left-wing! If the rise of far-right nationalist movements from National Action in the 1980s, to Australia First, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Rise Up Australia (RUA), and the Australian Protectionist Party (APP), are any indicators, the two major parties are far more closely aligned. The political compass only charted One Nation in 2007 and 2013, but it is evident where on the spectrum it sits. In the absence of a re-evaluation for 2019, we must look to policy changes in parties to determine how far to the right-wing sit Liberal, Nationals, One Nation and Labor. Given the bipartisan agreement around legislation and policies over initial Adani Coal mining support (although there are signs of change recently), refugee detention, Foreign interference, Encryption laws, journalists and whistle-blower repression, Social media laws restraints, Low targets for NEG energy , website blocking, the PM’s war powers, cutting migrant welfare, Aged care funding cuts, costly education, private healthcare, Metadata retention, globalisation of trade, mandatory sentencing agendas, static Newstart allowances, criminalisation of abuse reporting and privatisation of public assets, it is not hard to deduce the policy direction. While they have differences on minimum wage (only recently), marriage equality, climate change, Medicare, tax cuts, Federal ICAC, negative gearing and infrastructure & economy, remember that the Labor party has voted with the Liberals for at least 40% of all Liberal legislative agendas since 2013.

How Far Left?

Greens and Liberals - just who are the "Neo-liberals on bikes"? — Greens and Liberals – just who are the “Neo-liberals on bikes”?

The only representative left-wing parties noted by the “The Political Compass”, were the Democrats, Bob Katter’s party and the Greens. The Democrats being the only real centrists to speak of had largely exited the realm of political influence but have returned to contest 2019’s election. The Green’s have floated around on the left side of the political spectrum becoming more Libertarian/Progressive over time but lately shifting rightwards. The Greens have been disparagingly referred to as “neoliberals on bikes”, but while it is true, they have as a party moved rightwards they are by the Political Compass’s assessment a long way from the Labor/Liberal/National neoliberal agendas. The Democrats and Greens are the closest to centrist parties Australia has.

Beyond these parties, the “Political Compass” has not assessed other left-wing or progressive smaller parties. These would include the Pirate Party, the Arts Party, Science Party, Socialist Alliance, and Reason Party, amongst others. The rise of small parties has been marked, and while the Political Compass does not evaluate them, recent emergents have been summarised in the embedded link here.

Choices.

As 2019 election draws close, whatever values you seek in a party, left or right, socially conservative or progressive, it behoves you to consider which party aligns to your values. So perhaps it is time to reassess both your perception of where your party of choice stands in relation to what you believe. As such “The Political Compass” test, may be revelatory.

The right-wing power Block and what we can expect for 2019.

In doing so, perhaps you might adapt the fixed impression you’ve held over the past, for where the party you’ve always voted for, has moved to in the dynamic and ever-shifting landscape of Australian politics.

If you are a member of any number of right-wing nationalist parties such as “Rise Up”, “Australia First”, “Love Australia or Leave”, then your mainstream preferences would likely be extended to One Nation, the Nationals and the Liberal party in that order. If that is too far right-wing for your liking, but you are still conservative, then the Liberal Party followed by Labor makes a good choice. If you are what many refer to as a conservative “small l” liberal or a mild to a moderate right-wing constituent, then the Labor Party is the only option left to the right. Should in that process, you discover your leanings are significant enough to the left of the Labor/National/Liberal/One Nation right-wing power block, then you have three main options in Bob Katter, the Democrats and the Greens and numerous small progressive party options to choose from, depending on if they have representatives in your electorate.

To many realising that “Labor” is a right-wing party and “The Greens” are the only progressive centrist mainstream party is disturbing enough to one’s decision process, without having to evaluate the real position of smaller parties. The public’s expectations of democracy in Australia are damaged enough already.

What’s in it for ……?

While there is inevitably, the hedonistic approach to politics, on which so many politicians count. All to garner your vote, with “What’s in it for me?”, as opposed to “What’s in it for my country?”! Might I remind you of the words of Gough Whitlam when writing in the London Daily Telegraph in October of 1989?

“The punters know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race.”

—–//—–

Postscript.

It is early Jun 2019, and the dust has settled on the election results, and the political compass has scored the positions of the parties, and I have an opportunity to assess the predictions made in the article above. The only significant miscalculation was with the Greens that appear to have moved leftwards but less progressive where – because of the rise of bipartisan agreements between the Greens and the Liberals changing from 8% under Abbott to 28% under Turnbull – that they appeared to be shifting rightwards. I conjecture that the constant references to the Greens being “neo-liberals on bikes” was responsible for a predisposition on my part to make inaccurate forecasts.

One Nation’s assessment was based on only two statistical variations (2007 & 2013), and it appears they haven’t shifted from their position from 2013.

In regards to all other parties, Labor, Liberal and Nationals, they have moved in accordance with expectations although the shift was more vertical along the Authoritarian/Libertarian axis. The Liberals moved approximately into the position the National held in 2016.

Except for the Greens, the political landscape was reasonably predictable, and it is still true to say the closest main party to centrist in the Australian political Landscape from a global political perspective are the Greens.

Footnotes:

[1] Rebecca B. Morton, Daniel Muller, Lionel Page, Benno Torgler (2015) “Exit polls, turnout, and bandwagon voting: Evidence from a natural experiment”, European Economic Review, Volume 77, July 2015, Pages 65-81, Elsevier [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292115000483]

[2] David J. Lanoue and Shaun Bowler (1988), “Picking the Winners: Perceptions of Party Viability and Their Impact on Voting Behavior”, Social Science Quarterly Vol. 79, No. 2 (June 1998), pp. 361-377, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/42863794]

[3] Fernandez-Vazquez, P., & Somer-Topcu, Z. (2017). The Informational Role of Party Leader Changes on Voter Perceptions of Party Positions. British Journal of Political Science, 1-20. [https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000047]

[4] Craig Goodman, Gregg R. Murray (2007), “Do You See What I See? Perceptions of Party Differences and Voting Behavior”, American Politics Research, Volume: 35 issue: 6, page(s): 905-931 [https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X07303755]

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The Banality of Evil

December 19, 2018 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

When we contemplate great evil, who comes to mind? Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Idi Amin, Kim Il Sung, Josef Mengele, Saddam Hussein, Emperor Nero and so on? Too easy. The reasons are apparent, the history unrefuted and the weight of affirming opinions near universal.

We all like to think of evil as insidious, intentional, cruel, focused and malodorous even. Isn’t “evil” patently recognisable by its social maladjustment? That is the comfortable illusion of how “good folk” describe evil to distinguish ourselves from it. So it may be surprising to hear that according to psychologists nobody thinks of themselves as evil. We self-justify actions and beliefs. Folks may hold their irrationality within their mindset, as they persist with the delusion of being the good guys.

Hitler, for example, grew up in a time where he experienced the open expression of anti-Semitism. He didn’t create anti-semitism, it was his honest belief, that the Jews were responsible for the economic hard times of other Germans in the post-war years. Seems almost banal, doesn’t it?

Chase Replogle writes “Arendt coined the phrase, the ‘banality of evil.’ You can define banal as, ‘so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring.’ What Arendt observed was that evil feeds not just on extremism, but just as frequently on our banality. Sin works its way deepest into the most boring and apathetic lives.”

We often don’t recognise evil amidst banality as it is human nature to separate “evil” from our apathy, ignorance, “benign neglect”, “thoughtless bureaucracy”, or our an innate desire to please our perceived “superiors”. Aren’t we all just inclined to follow orders? Resistance is hard, besides “who has the time to protest”? Perhaps you vote for the good guys (however or whomever you decide are the “good guys“), and in that single choice, you make once every three years, some may consider their duty complete. “That’s a democracy“, you cry. As though to comfort ourselves we say, “I’ve done the right thing; I’m not evil or fascist!”

Last century’s Version of Fascism

But then who is fascist? Is it what it was or what it will be? How often do we accuse the comparative justification of calling the alt-right “fascist” as being too radical? “Nobody is exterminating minorities in gas chambers” one may say defensively. But recall that Hitler took seven years to bring Germany to war. When was it a step too far?

When he was promoted to Chancellor on a minority vote in a democracy?
When he consolidated the Nazi Party’s control of Germany and secretly rebuilt its army from 1933 to 1935?
When he only talked for years about the possibility of expelling Jews and removing their civil rights?
When he was objectifying women as subservient for reproductive purposes with no place in key influence roles?
When he disengaged from the Treaty of Versailles in 1936 and war-tested his military in the Spanish Civil War?
When he shifted non-german foreigners and Jews into gulags or race specific ghettos?

A thousand banal little steps were undertaken in the decade after the Nazi Party grew from 12 seats in the Reichstag to 107 seats in 1930. By the 1940s his troops were frog-marching across Europe and throwing people into gas chambers. When would you have stopped him or protested or objected in that decade? Neither current parties of the Australian nor American government have been in power as long as Hitler before the war (Jan 1933 to Sep 1939).

When I raised a draft version of the above paragraphs in social media, I was warned, “I think comparison with the holocaust needs to used carefully. The Germans did not just “go along” with the Nazi’s they fought against them until a police state was imposed upon them – while most of the political class stood by till it was too late.” This statement, although, was not entirely valid, as the elite of German society did embrace Hitler enthusiastically. While it is true that some “good” people resisted fascism, as they do today, many others, including Jews didn’t realise the consequences. Irrespective of resistance or because of obliviousness the Nazis still marched across Europe, so perhaps it is a moot point. Contemporaneously the problem is, as always, identifying how fascism has evolved. This awareness is painful for many, as they only want to recognise it in the form it took 80 years ago.

This Century’s version?

Despite refutations of such positions, Perhaps because that was before your lifetime and people are so more “woke” now, it is all very different. So let’s explore into what it may have evolved. Have your responses evolved?

Did you react when Donald Trump seized power via the electoral college on the votes of a minority?
Did you respond when Trump began to refocus on the military?
How about when he spoke of expelling Mexicans and Muslims?
Did his objectifying of women whom he grabbed by the pussy upset you?
Did launching air strikes in Syria or breaking established treaties caused you concern? Paris climate accord, Iran Deal, TPP, or NAFTA?
Did locking children in Gulags and separating many permanently from their parents, upset you?

Australian wannabe

OK, so perhaps America has dysfunctional parallels, but we in Australia are markedly different some may claim.

Our politicians are more subtle and more sophisticatedly communicators than Trump. Still, what were your responses in these circumstances?

When 41.8% of all voters voted for the coalition in 2016, did you defend and justify the preferences system for its selection of what the majority wanted?
When Abbott started spending billions on faulty American aircraft, late running Submarines and involved us in America’s pointless Syrian war, did our propensity for violence concern you?
When the social dialogue about banning Muslims entered the political fear mongering, did you speak in defence of the vast majority of adherents to a peaceful religious code?
When misogyny became a familiar and recognisable feature of legislation and leadership, did you say this went too far and defended women?
When Indigenous treaties were scrapped, and political impetus arose that sought to have us withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement were we at all surprised? Did Morrison’s undermining of Refugee Convention obligations, all while adding to our refugee push-factor in bombing raids in Syria, cause alarm?
When we against any decent moral code not only locked innocent adults and children in gulags for the “crime” of being foreign and desperate but then began actively resisting efforts to provide medical assistance to children, did any sparrows die?

Policies for the people?

Equality in Australia: How we treat anyone without wealth.

On such subjects, the coalition argues that we need secure border protection for an Island like Australia with minimal 150 km of sea between us at the tip of Queensland and Papua New Guinea to fight off refugees. Even though the majority of refugees fly in and by-pass our secretive “on water matters” border protection. There are many absurdly opposing arguments, such as desperately trying to entwine refugee policy with the war on terror. Money, alternatively, is unavailable for the likes of education, health, social and legal justice, wage equality, mediocre wage growth and affordable housing, utilities food or justice. This absurdity of fearmongering about refugee crime suggests we need be strong and prepared for an invasion of terrorism in our population but simultaneously drives policy to make our community uneducated, poor, unhealthy, un-housed, oppressed and socially divided.

So just because we can see the correlation between what we thought was the progress towards evil and contemporary examples of the same, does it mean we should rethink real “evil”? I mean, we all accept that these things happen in society. Unfortunate, perhaps, but “evil”. Let’s try to compromise surely. “We are doing this for your security and to save you from the threat of terrorism,” says our politicians. “You will hardly notice it”, they say. Moreover, that last part is right. Like the gradually heated frog in the pot you don’t mainly notice it, and by the time the pot boils, it is way too late.

What we don’t discuss over dinner

“Isn’t that politics”? “I’m not political”. “I disengage from that stuff”. What was it Martin Luthor King said? “All that needs to happen for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.” Do we by our silence, allow all of that to happen? Perhaps we are too busy to notice the correlations, too compromised by our selfish preoccupations, perhaps we don’t care. However, surely that isn’t bad. Surely that isn’t “evil”.

Amidst the same social media post commentary I previously referenced one gentleman wrote “most people aren’t evil just caught up in their own lives… “ and in this contemporary society this is, unfortunately, both accurate and a misconception.

Distractive Accuracy

“Accurate” because of our history of

deregulation of industrial relations has meant more extended unofficial work hours and strangled wage growth,
financial deregulation, negative gearing, foreign investment and Capital Gains Concessions has blown out mortgage costs
Privatisation and deregulation of Education has made higher education expenses and debt-ridden
the privatisation of energy provision, scheduled generation markets and resistance to renewables have resulted in larger utility bills increasing household debt.

It's not like there isn't plenty of issues to raise, provided we can raise ourselves — It’s not like there isn’t plenty of issues to raise, provided we can raise ourselves

Being “caught up in our own lives” is true because of more extended hours with reduced skill sets for less pay and bigger bills. These are the results of deliberate bi-partisan political policy choices. We should never forget that policies designed to redistribute wealth upwards, increase inequality, engage in a civil war on society using the tools of racism and attacks on a range of marginalised groups, have a deliberate purpose.

Misperceived evils

A “misperception” because as an act of self-protection of ego, we protest that we are not evil, just a little compromised, more compliant, obedient or scared of being socially ostracised, perhaps?” As I said before, evil is integral to life’s banality; it is everyday ordinary barely conscious choices we make. It exists in the tiny, tired, “I don’t have the time“, “it’s not that bad“, “there are worse situations” excuses we tell ourselves to support the choices we make. Evil is not in the individual decision but the cumulative. It takes thousands of bad collective small choices made over years, that lead to the exclamation of “how the Fu€ did we get here?” as we watch border patrol march down our streets, while our “authorities” detain and abuse our children and bash our disabled neighbours.

Worry not, you’re safe!

But fret not, if you never raised a voice in protest, then they are unlikely to arrest or hamper you because you played it safe with your daily banality. You remained silenced by indecision and compromise; you respected authority and the status quo; you defended the need for thoughtless bureaucracy and realised it was too much work to improve your knowledge of history and politics. Besides, our administration is acutely aware from their study of your metadata, your phone messages, your facebook posts, and even your TV set-top box that you’re still compliant, malleable, cooperative, collaborators but never, really, truly, magnanimously, unambiguously … “evil”?

Comparative corruption and transparency

November 30, 2018 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

The media and public’s desire for a Federal anti-corruption body and the search for revealing transparency has met with a lagging response by the government. From the mantra of “on water matters” when resisting transparency around refugee issues to the failure to submit Peter Dutton to the High C ourt over his extraordinary profiting from the public purse, the lack of transparency is wearing thin with the public. As the media scrutiny digs deep into the hidden recesses of the largess to ministers provided by government coffers, the public is finding their protests about the “double dipping” of mothers or the “lifters and leaners” or justification of “Robo debt” claims, a tad hypocritical.

The years of shielding the banks from the scrutiny of what the royal commission has revealed, while these same banks donated millions over time to their political coffers, has upset the public. Especialy as they have often been the victims of these banking scams. That successive prime ministers wanted to offer millions in tax welfare as a gratuitous icing on the cake above and beyond protecting them from their crimes, was seen as very “rich”.

That Morrison could claim that he was unaware of the long history of banking fraud and money laundering or saw it as nothing more than a “populist whinge“, flies in the face of what banks have been seen to do here and across the globe. Repeated inquiries into the banks from the Wallis inquiry in 1997 to the Murray inquiry in 2015 and the equally numerous scandals from merely this century, from NAB concealing losses in 2004 to CommInsure payments scandal in 2016, have demonstrated clearly that unregulated banks will always misbehave. There was never any legitimate grounds for not having a Royal Commission, but the government resistance was palpable. As with most cases of corruption and graft to be found in Banks, isn’t it always recommended that one “follow the money”?

Meanwhile in Denmark

Opening of IACC conference in Bella Centre's Congress — The opening of IACC conference in Bella Centre’s Congress Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark

On the international scale, one has only to look at the Danish Banks in a country routinely near the top of the Transparency International index. As the Danish government hosted the International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Copenhagen on the 22nd of October 2018, the scandal of the Danske Bank was prevalent in the media. The national Danish Chair of Transparency International, Natascha Felix, welcomed the collective audience to three days of workshops and discussion groups. She spoke specifically of the failure of control systems that “allows individuals to steal from the most vulnerable populations in Denmark” and how a Danish bank laundered millions of dollars. The rather ironic timing of Denmark holding this conference and their banking scandal was a subject that came up many times in the course of discussions that followed. The illusion that Denmark was immune to the sin of corruption because of its view that it was an isolated island of progressive values, had been dealt a significant blow. Natascha Felix noted that while Denmark had often been at the top of the Transparency International index, “it doesn’t mean that power and access doesn’t corrupt the Danes.”

Natascha Linn Felix presenting at the opening of the 18th IACC

One of Natascha’s important opening points was that “when it comes to corruption there is so much more at play than rules and regulations and procedures”. For example, locking people in German gulags in the mid-1940s was legal whereas smuggling Jewish people out of Germany was illegal. In a contemporary example, locking up asylum seekers – who have no criminal charges laid against them – in gulags has been legal for years in Australia. Current illegalities have echoes of the German past. When even so much as reporting crimes committed against “legally innocent people” while working in these gulags, is illegal, the roles of values and ethics that transcend laws of convenience are significant. Corruption and oppression championed by poorly drafted laws and regulations, does not make the actions of governments less corrupt.

Australia’s Fall.

Abdullah Al Dardari answering questions in the Conflict and Development workshop,

Australia held the enviable position of being 7th in the world in the Transparency index in 2013, but since the coalition government has been in power, we have dropped to 13th. This is still an enviable position, especially after I was confronted by a response about that fall, by the former Syrian Minister, Abdullah Al Dardari. While on a panel in a workshop at the IACC conference, he gave an amused response to my query about how Australia should proceed. “I will take Australia at any time now … this is a different planet, what you are talking about … 13th, [we’ve] never been 150th”. While many in the audience laughed, context on the international scale can be quite sobering. (Just in case you were curious, Syria comes at 178th, so you can see why the ex-minister suggested my concerns were “from another planet”.) Still, we are not without our battles to seek better from our governments regarding transparency and the absence of corruption.

As Denmark and our own experience demonstrate, being amidst the top end of the transparency index doesn’t mean our governments and banks and institutions will not make every effort to “rob you blind” and quite literally, “rob the dead”.

What we may never of heard.

Corruption still holds sway in robust democracies with independent judicial and media oversight. Were we in Syria, it is unlikely we would even hear of banking scandals, much less have any official inquiries. Nor might we have heard that Peter Dutton made $5.63 million from direct subsidisation of his childcare facilities for which he voted. Perhaps it didn’t occur to him there was a conflict of interest? Nor might we have heard of his submission to build a third childcare unit, which is a remarkable interest in children despite his ongoing and robust resistance to other children in his care receiving medical care. Perhaps his interest is not the children, one might speculate?

Helicopter scandals, perks & privileges should face ICAC

Nor might we hear about:

Bronwyn Bishop’s questionable use of helicopters;
The $443 million been given to six people in a laughably named group called the “Barrier Reef Foundation” to get rid of money that might jeopardise an “on paper” budget surplus proposal;
Tony Abbott’s enormous expenses claims, or just about any politician’s expenses nowadays;
Susan Ley’s coincidental and very rapid decisions on the purchase of Goldcoast property while funded by parliamentary travel entitlements;
Assistant treasurer, Stuart Robert’s family company, in receipts of 356 government contracts worth more than $37 million;
Or again, Stuart Robert’s elephantine internet bills;
David Gillespie’s postal office profits which were the subject of an unsuccessful reference by Labor to the High Court.

I am stopping here although I am sure dear reader you can find many more.

Whereas attempts to pork barrel electorates whether it be Barnaby Joyce or a Wentworth by-election will always receive high publicity under any regime as long as it was positive and complimentary. Negative stories like Joyce’s condemnation of women to cervical cancer deaths would, of course, be wholly suppressed where less robust protections for journalists exist.

We are not Sryia, but…

Corruption is multifaceted and has high-level impacts of any country, and even if we are not the worst, we are infected by its influence.

So we are not Syria. We do hear of, or have a public reaction to, and legal stoushes over, the apparent corrupt conduct of our political leaders, banks and institutions. And with respect to Abdullah Al Dardari’s entirely appropriate observation that we in Australia are “on a different planet”, compared to what he has had to battle in his roles in Syria and later the United Nations, it is a fight none of us should relinquish because there are darker shades of grey. To have fallen to 7th to 13th on the international transparency index – although to over a hundred other nations that is still enviable – it is indicative of a systematic weakening of our democracy. We are on a downward track which our government is responsible for, as are we who do not hold them accountable. We are a lucky country compared to so many, and ours is an elevated state we have taken for granted. For a long time, we’ve remained politically disengaged, proud of apolitical inclinations, unwilling to take stand over the dinner table on behalf of the struggle of others, lest we offend our privileged white neighbours. We have paid scant attention to the slippage that once it gains momentum, will career downwards unless we put our backs against our pedestal and push hard.

The wages of pollution is tax

September 14, 2018 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

How is it that recent parliamentary bloodletting over tax breaks and electricity pricing continues to detract from steady planetary exsanguination? Are we now to accept that farm tours, milk levies and infrastructure spends are to be the ready tourniquets for our Australian economy? The political focus on Tax breaks to increase wage rates while the world’s climate renders economics a mute subject, for a planet less habitable, is a distraction we probably can’t afford long-term. The political rhetoric around these subjects is diversionary, and there is little truth expressed in the alleged relationships between these subjects.

Taxes for wages while climate destroys economies

Right or Left – the invasion of the neo-liberal agenda.

July 13, 2017 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

Identifying bipartisan values within in our polarised political class is hard. Common ground is elusive not only because the values represented by politics have changed, but discerning the truth in an alternative fact world, filled with propaganda, is problematic. What values do our politicians really hold, as opposed to what they say, they do? What do our representatives really value and what leverage can we apply upon finding commonality between Liberal and Labor or Republican and Democratic representatives?

Our economic commonality

Once upon a time the Republicans stood against slavery, fighting a bitter civil war over it (even if the recently installed president Donald Trump himself, is not sure what that conflict was all about). But now, the red shoe is very much on the other conservative foot.

The American economy was built on slavery, but the emancipation of the black population forced America to reconstitute slavery, redefining it by way of contemporary political spin. The now changed and more authoritarian Republicans have achieved this by instigating the largest per capita incarceration rate in the world, where prisoners slave for the private industrialised markets. And attempts by previous President Barack Obama to curtail this “market” are now being undone by his successor’s moves to boost it.

There are striking similarities in the Australian experience. Although rarely recognised as such, our own initial economic growth was also predicated on slavery of the convict and pacific islander variety. So we can claim no high moral ground. Similarly with America’s passion for “rule of law” and the devising of ever more draconian reasons for increasing incarceration. By way of example, where drug addiction and mental health are succesfully treated as a medical issue in more enlightened countries like Norway, in America and Australia they are still legal issues used to feed prison populations.

Australia is also no stranger to political ideology (once foreign and abhorrent to party politics, but which is now being swallowed whole). Australia as one of the instigators of, signatories to and loud supporters of the UN refugee human rights platform, now holds refugees in foreign gulags across our oceans. Such treatment would have been unthinkable to foundational conservative stalwarts such as Robert Menzies, who in 1954 was amongst the first to ratify the Refugee Convention. Once we in Australia reached out to refugees and embraced them as new neighbours into our community, bringing food parcels and contact to strangers. Today we have the increasing fiasco of scandals and mistreatment of refugees, first by Morrison, and now by Dutton.

Once upon a time

Political relics change with time but society's memory is short lived — Political relics change with time but society’s memory is short lived

Looking back, we were less afraid, our news of the wider world more limited. Admittedly our situation was hardly perfect. We were more openly racist as evidenced by the White Australia Policy. But we were also less willing to lie and obfuscate to justify our injustices. We were also more courageous, a little less insular in some manner, and far more attracted to science, wonder, community, tribalism and extended “families”. Our societies here and abroad had a larger and more prosperous middle class. Greed was a vice, not a virtue. Class distinctions may have seemed more obvious, but now – when they are more prevalent – they are less discussed. We used to be about societies but now we are all about economies. Interesting reading on that subject can be found in “An Economy is not a Society” by Dennis Glover.

Left and Right wing politics, Democrats and Republicans, Socialists and Conservatives stood for different approaches to the politics of life. Distinctions that existed have disappeared over time. The middle classes are vanishing and now the real polarisations are the rich and the poor, certainly not left and right. Christ was right when he said “the poor you will have always“. One wonders if he actually realised just how vast the gulf would eventually become between the poor and the rich (whom he frequently addressed to do something about it)? Money and it’s influence have become the ultimate distinction in western society.

“Greed is good!”

It no longer matters if you are Democrat, Liberal, Labor or Republican, as the common thread that holds our politics in undivided loyalty is Greed. The sort that Gordon Gekko from “Wall Street” once famously declared was Good (although a lot of his speech was also about the complacency of the powerful).

Today our political class embraces greed and complacency without reserve or hesitation. Politics is a lucrative business, as the recent scandals from One Nation demonstrate. Lobbyists, corporations, developers, the rich and empowered all bandy both “sides” of the political spectrum with donations, lucrative “political retirement” jobs and financial funding access. The political arena is awash with nepotism to jobs for the boys. That is on top of the significant salaries, lifelong pensions, travel and security concessions, and business opportunities, which are the dividends of a career in politics. Though even in these shameless times, perhaps Mike Baird, could have spared a little more effort towards maintaining the illusion of some propriety, by spending a little more than six weeks with his “ailing family” (his avowed reason for suddenly quitting the hallowed position of NSW Premier), before taking up the far more lucrative banking industry role with the million dollar salary.

The “sides” that successful political parties hold to today, are small deviations from an overall shared conservative class of values, with greed always being at the center. The “left wing” parties follow the “right wing” parties who have a differential approach to following the money. The pursuit of that money is closely followed by corruption, as the NSW ICAC has repeatedly found on BOTH sides of politics. I attended a lecture by Dr Knox-Haly at the University of Sydney’s 5th floor Abercrombie Room on the history of ICAC on the 19th of May 2017. Also in attendance was Elizabeth Kirby, the longest serving State Democrat MLC (now retired). While asking questions afterwards, Elizabeth pondered why both parties avoid a Federal ICAC. Dr Knox-Haly speculated that the differentiation for corruption between our primary two parties, was while the Liberal’s entitled mentality has little insight into their own corruption, “The difference is, that Labor actually has some insight that what they are doing, might be corrupt“.

Electing democracy

The “left wing” stay just marginally behind their similar “right wing” counterparts, for the purpose of declaring their “distinctions” to attract a community of voters who will largely vote for the “lesser of two evils“. Unfortunately, clever gerrymandering, electoral colleges, systems of disenfranchising classes of voters, legal court challenges and strategic alliances more often than not, ensure the public majority will is ignored.

In the recent American presidential elections, the Democratic candidate (Hillary Clinton) received three million more votes than the Republican candidate (Donald Trump), but due to the electoral college system, the Republicans won the presidency. Dismissing 3 million people as an example of fraudulent voting is not just unproven, intellectually lazy, ludicrous, and credibility stretching. It is also an acceptable lie, which relieves the “true believer” from any intelligent engagement in politics.

Similary in Australia, according to the AEC 34.73% of the electorate voted Labor and 28.67% Liberal in the last federal election. But political alliances with the Nationals and preference systems ensure the Liberals currently hold power in Australia, although only by the majority of one seat. Adding all Liberal, National and LNP primary votes, only accounts for 41.80% of the 13.5 million voters in Australia. In France, the majority voted against National Front candidate Marine Le Pen, and yet with 21.3% of the vote, she was still one of just two finalists in the last round of French elections (which she lost).

Trump won the American presidency but not the popular vote, because of an historical, artificially weighted voting system. It is arguable that there may have been good reasons for such weighted voting systems historically. But as times and circumstances have changed, such electoral systems have moved from serving the common good, to more likely serving small select interest groups driven by avarice and greed. Gerrymandering has largely been discounted in Australia by non-partisan boundary selections, but it is rife in America, even though it loudly and proudly proclaims itself to be the longest lasting “democratic republic” in the world.

Neo-liberal agenda origins

None of these weighted electoral voting systems started out as corrupt. The rebalancing undertaken was merely meant to provide a more equitable representation of the will of all of the people in a polity. For example, to avoid giving greater or overwhelming national influence to more populous urban and coastal areas, over the needs and will of smaller regional inland populations. A reasonable proposition on the surface of it.

But societies and technology have changed slowly over time, and unfortunately that electoral system has simply not adjusted (enough) to the changing nuances and circumstances of contemporary life. As a result, the erosion of democracy did not occur suddenly. The rights of the majority were rather whittled away through successive governments from both “sides” of politics. Privatisation of Public assets in Australia did not start with Conservatives, it began with Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. The “socialist” Labor party divorced itself gradually from its roots in the Union movement and its support of the working class. Similarly, Trump is not a new phenomenon. The pathway there was laid by Democrats and Republicans equally.

Obama was not a “socialist” black man. He was a privileged, wealthy man complicit with the greedy, über wealthy class he mingled with and still does. Unlike Iceland, he did not jail the people responsible for crippling his country’s economy, he paid them off. That mistake has cost America dearly. A repetition of a formula that has never worked but is repeatedly applied. The gold coloured glasses of privilege and wealth screened out the faces of the poorer masses, who had otherwise hoped that because he shared a skin colour, his filtered eyes might see their plight. His foreign policy was deplorable when it came to the Middle East, when you consider that Obama bombed seven countries adding to an enormous refugee crisis in Europe.

While I am being harsh with Obama, there are many things that are commendable about his administration, not the least of which is the extraordinary efforts he made to create (the now endangered) Obamacare. To be fair to the balance of this article, you should read the Rolling Stone’s article in regards his successes and failures. The good that a man may do, whether it is Obama or Keating, is oft undermined by what they either failed to address, or any concessions that were made to not ruffle the feathers of the wealthy cocks in the hen house.

Inequality

European lighthouse warning Australian economic/policy shipping

Neoliberal politics from both the “left” and the “right” have had a debilitating effect on egalitarian democracies. Neither “side” of politics (Labor/Liberal or Republican/Democrat) have a policy platform designed to rectify inequality, or our increasingly controlling police state, or our endless pointless involvement in wars on the other side of the planet. The best we can hope for is to be a little less unequal, by choosing a candidate that leans towards helping the proletarians. Instead each “side” have internalised neo-liberal conservative values to a lesser or greater extent. Unless either side tailors a persuasive vision of real world solutions based on evidence – as opposed to ideology – from more successful democracies (i.e. Europe), the downward spiral of inequality and social class division will continue. Unless the “lefter” side of “right” begin to propose policy platforms that could achieve a shift away from what cripples our economies, then they will continue to lose elections and the public’s faith.

It’s just a step to the left.

Interestingly in Australia, both Labor and Liberal have begun leaning a little to the left (Labor in policy and voting history, and the Liberals with regards to the 2017 budget). A departure from previous history. Such wins are small and their longer term future uncertain. The positive aspects of the 2017 Liberal government budget and health reforms, still exist in context alongside other classic neoliberal policies, such as tax breaks for the wealthy at the expense of the impoverished. Both Trump and Turnbull share the delusion that trickle down economics is a way forward, despite all the real world evidence that it has never worked. Wages and jobs remain depressed in both countries and unemployment is the only growth area.

Death by 1000 cuts.

Very few of the changes that harm our society are rushed, although the Rebublicans are certainly trying it with healthcare. Once suggesting the nascent beginnings of a possible policy paradigm shift – the very likely soon to be extinct Obamacare – has proven to be merely an ephemeral reform, yielding to an upsurge in the everlasting tidal vices of greed and self interest. Likewise, the increasing incremental attacks on Medicare in Australia are following a similar path by way of stealth such as freezes and coverage removals leading eventually to an American privatised style medical system.

Of course, even Trump recognises that Australia’s universal healthcare system is currently still a long way from being anything like what they have in America. However, the eventual dissolution of Medicare was never going to be a matter of outright overnight dissolution, in the manner that Trump and the Republicans are seeking to achieve with the dissolution of Obamacare. Rather, it will be the gradual death by one thousand cuts, with Australia gradually devolving to a system where big phama, hospitals, insurance, bio-medical and prosthetic companies garner huge profits at the expense of failing health and ageing demographics of our society.

Paths once trod we follow.

Are the Roman and American empires fates entwined?

With so little political differences in policies, how will any of this change? Being self-contented and tranquil is the domain of spiritual gurus, saints and philosophers, but many of us find our political plight disturbing and seek change. America, although, is as unlikely to change anymore than the Roman Empire once did. Only collapse or revolution ever bought about real change in the Roman Empire. Is America’s only hope therefore, its eventual collapse? And even if that occurs how will it ever satisfy its insatiable vice of greed? How much longer will it take for Australia to follow that path? Do we have hope of another, less-traveled path? Is there hope that we are not as America-lite as some dread? For example, if you have to go to the pains that Matt Wade did to assert our differences, is that because he is aware of how many similarities we have? How long will such differences remain? And if either nation changes course, for how long shall we stay that course, guided by the sort of people that are currently attracted to a polity where self aggrandisement and avarice takes precedence over leadership, governance and vision? Some vices transcend time, revolution and society.

Save

Bribery or Donations

April 22, 2017 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

There is a growing awareness that our conservative government’s policy needs a little work or is that a massive understatement? The Sydney Morning Herald listed just a few policies that it had no problem in describing as “Bad Policies“.

The article (in the link aforementioned) doesn’t touch on the one cause and two reasons for bad policy decisions. That being – Money driving Bribery and Financial Corruption! Neither reason alone but a combination of both – as well as to whom they are directed – is necessary. Major industrial complexes that can afford significant donations to the Liberal party keep their industry alive and prosperous. The call for a Federal ICAC has been growing. Not one like the NSW ICAC which has been recently neutered by the very party that is currently being caught with their collective hands in the cookie jar. Especially as Australia’s ranking in global corruption index has been falling.

For example: consider the case for Mining versus Tourism.

Mining interests are primarily big consolidated industries heavily subsidised by the government who return portions of that welfare subsidisation, by way of donations to political parties. Despite Minings falling demand on world markets, falling contribution to our GDP and the diminishing employment of Australians, they continue to be supported as “welfare” recipients to the tune of around $18B. However, Mining was only paying taxes of around $12.7 billion (in 2013 according to Deloittes). Inclusive to this they are exporting our finite resource to foreign markets and actively channelling profits overseas to tax havens rather than back into our economy. It makes one think supporting these grifters is a losing proposition, long term. Taxes paid by –

Financial redirections

Adani’s Abbot Point Terminal: Nothing;
Exxon Mobil Australia: Zilch;
Chevron Australia, Peabody Australia, and Whitehaven: Nada.

Somebody paid that $12.7 Billion of the $18B we paid them.

Consider the case of one company where in 2014-15: BHP Billiton contributed $1.7B in taxes on $33B income although they declared only $6.3B as taxable but still paid under the 30% company tax threshold. BHP Billiton utilises its Singapore marketing office to be channelling iron ore sales and profits overseas to avoid Tax. A practice protected by our political legislation and given our Prime Minister hordes $200M in the Cayman Islands; such protective policies are not going to change. In fact, Turnbull’s latest legislated decision to cut $24B in taxes for corporates means these companies will contribute even less! Is a picture forming for any of you yet?

It is not just local mining magnates such as Gina Rinehart who bribed the political class. Foreign Chinese mining interests also participated. One of these was Sally Zou, who alone donated $400,000 to the liberals. When Origin, Santos and Beach Energy can contribute about $226,000 to the LNP to keep fracking alive, you can be guarantee legislation will provide aid to keep them in place on farms around Australia.

Tourism is where the real money is.

Tourism - diversified & small businesses — Tourism – diversified & small businesses

Tourism, on the other hand, is dominantly comprised of diverse micro & small businesses that are not heavily subsidised and yet contribute $87.3 Billion to our economy according to government records. In June 2012 there were over 283,000 tourism businesses in Australia. The individual business interests do not contribute as significantly to the political donation process/bribery and soliciting donations. Bribes from them are difficult, because of the sheer logistics of chasing numerous entities to give – from what little margins they make – to maintain the government protection racket.

As the mining sector is largely dominated by a few large firms, it is far easier to approach the much smaller numbers of mining CEOs and therefore extract significant financial support in return for subsidies and legislative protection. Only .5% of tourism businesses are large companies – there are still over 1000 of them. One can, therefore, begin to see why tourism doesn’t get enormous political support.

LNP's preferred mining project. — LNP’s preferred mining project.

Thus, when an Indian mining company “Adani” wants to drink up the Great Artesian Water Basin and pollute an already two-thirds bleached Barrier Reef, guess whose side our political elite preference? This bias exists despite Reef tourism being a direct contributor (according to Deloittes) to our economy of over $7.04 Billion. Indirectly, Reef Tourism contributes another $3.1B to our economy and employs well over twice the number of people employed by mining. The Liberal’s do not come down on the side of who makes the most money or who supports the largest employment of Australians – as many might believe they do.

Conservative governments are not interested in Australians making money or employing people. They come down on the side of those who can contribute or donate more efficiently to their wealth, employment and power base.

Debt Collection

January 19, 2017 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

Centrelink has been fraudulently issuing debt notices to people who owe no money. Persons so identified are then harassed and threatened to the point that they pay this un-owed debt rather than being penalised by a system, which they already know actively disparages them.

Labor’s Anthony Albanese, while being concerned about this government’s debt collection said, “No one would argue [against] that if someone has a debt from Centrelink, had payments to which they were not entitled, then it should be repaid“. I would argue to the contrary.

The Poverty of Welfare.

Centrelink’s services exist to ensure the disbursement of social security payments whether that be for unemployment, or aid for families, carers, the disabled or indigenous. That financial aid in many cases has rarely increased, and in some has decreased in terms of CPI value. In the case of the baseline unemployment benefits, though indexed to the CPI, “there have been no legislated changes to real Newstart rates in over 20 years”, in fact since 1996.

Government benefits verses the poverty line

This has raised legitimate concerns that the Newstart allowance is well below the poverty line, which is an issue championed by:

the Unemployed Workers Union,
the Australian Council of Social Services,
Anglicare,
and the ABC (although that was prior to it’s current management).

Rorters! from Welfare or Multinationals?

The erroneous perception of the wealth of welfare

These inadequate payments entrench poverty, inhibiting rather then aiding workforce participation. Mobility, presentation, education, literacy, and skill acquisition all cost money. Financial stress adds to social marginalisation. Bullying by the job networks and policy victimisation generates social ostracisation in the community, and also limits possibilities for the unemployed and disabled. So sorry Anthony, but I am very much inclined to believe that if anyone got a little more money out of this dysfunctional system than the government was prepaired to provide, then they deserve to keep it. Any extra money would only increase their chances of improving their lot, including their ability to contribute to the economy and to finding work. Instead of attempting to recoup $3.5 billion in alleged “welfare debts”, why is the government not energetically recouping $6 billion from the tax dodging multinationals?

What about getting a Job?

The divergence between the Government's unemployment numbers & Roy Morgans. — The divergence between the Government’s unemployment numbers & Roy Morgans.

Numbers don’t lie but as the ABS knows, how they get presented matters. Apart from the financial constraints, there is the statistical improbability of finding work in any way. Roy Morgan demonstrates unemployment figures in December 2016 were 9.2%, which involves 1.186 million people. In fact, when you take into account underemployment, which has risen another 10.8%, the pool of potential job seekers rises to 2,584 million. All of these job seekers are competing for approximately just 163,100 jobs Australia wide. (Nov 2016 Dept. of Employment IVI stats.) In the worst-case scenario, there are at close to an average of 16 people for every single job in the market and that doesn’t take into account the following:

the new year’s rush of young school leavers,
foreign workers with reciprocal work rights,
current workers seeking to change jobs or
the new entrants to the unemployment lines as car manufacturing in this country vanishes.

And now, just to add to the psychological and financial pressures inherent in looking for work, the government has come up with a new strategy to inhibit your search, by occupying your time with digging up old payroll records. The news of this new tactic is ever-present. 20,000 people a week receive notices of debts – allegedly to recoup incorrect welfare payments. All of which are triggered by an automated debt recovery system, which is under intense criticism because of what is essentially, the (intentionally?) flawed logic of a computer algorithm.

Erroneous mathematics.

Centerlink’s computers (IBM machines in case you were wondering) are attempting to match tax office data with Centrelink records to determine if there are discrepancies between Centerlink financial information and Tax office records.

But an inherent incompatibility exists between these two data sources, and it is a matter of timing. Centerlink has information about its payments made fortnightly, and possibly data relevant to jobs which clients were offered and accepted. Centerlink is unlikely to be aware of the continuing circumstances of that job or subsequent ones found independently in the course of any given financial year. The tax office has only an annual summary of income. There is no breakdown into weeks, fortnights or months. There is no breakdown of pay rates, when it was specifically known they earned it, or what changes to income streams occurred in the course of the year. The tax office data is therefore incompatible with Centerlink’s data. The government is comparing apples with oranges.

Despite this, Centrelink’s algorithm takes your yearly income as reported to the ATO, and averages it over each fortnight of the year. As any primary school age statistician would recognise, an annual “average” apportionment cannot measure individual fluctuations and is a flawed measure in any given fortnight. To assumes absolute consistency for all fortnights is absurd on a number of levels. The only group that may get close to this pattern are the fully employed and even then, there are allowances, overtime, uneven hours, holidays, sick leave, RDOs, wage rises, wage falls, changes of roles, and any manner of occurrences that will alter the payroll for any individual over any given week/fortnight. Certainly, the most unstable employment group and the most likely to have variants are the unemployed. It is common sense that if you are dealing with people who move in and out of employment in any given year where they may move from poverty one fortnight to sufficiency (or if lucky, excess) the next. It is common sense that averaging their yearly income will produce inaccurate results by which to measure any given actual fortnight.

Guilty before proven Innocent!

So what does Centerlink do? They take the ACTUAL fortnightly records held by Centerlink along with any limited volunteered data and try to cross-reference it against a fortnightly averaging of annual taxation income data. The normal presumption of statistical probability would tell you the likelihood of such figures matching for this demographic, is extremely unlikely. You would have to presume the mismatches will be the most common occurrence. Any programmer (and I worked as one for most of my career) would tell you such a matching is deeply flawed. Therefore clients should be approached with the assumption of innocence. In the absence of specific information in Centerlink’s internal records for discrepancies, inquires should be made tentatively as to why there might be a prima facie case for a mismatch in numbers. The onus of proof should also be on Centerlink (and not the client), as the process is so obviously flawed. Something fully recognised internally within Centerlink, if not by the political policy makers. In the face of the inherently flawed logic of this approach, innocence till proven guilty would be the legally prudent course of action.

Debt assessment is followed in 3 weeks with debt claims

So what does the government decide is the best course of action? To implement a process that presumes people to be guilty (of debt) till proven innocent. 20,000 Welfare recipients a week have been receiving notices that they have 21 days to prove their “innocence”, or be hit with penalties. These include a 10 per cent debt recovery fee, jail time, a restriction on travel. The event for which they are being investigated may be anywhere up to six years in the past. Some recipients are paying up, not because they accept that they actually owe the debt, but simply because they can’t locate evidence from past years, or because they fear the repercussions of a punishing government bureaucracy. If you have ever had to deal with Centerlink or any of its private job network partners you will be well aware of how punitive they are. Surprisingly to the government – apparently – this is producing a backlash.

Flaws and error rates.

Tudge's apparent ignorance — Tudge’s apparent ignorance

Human Services Minister, Alan Tudge, insists the automated process is not flawed and despite protests to discontinue the letters he is forging ahead with gusto. For Trudge to declare, “he wasn’t aware of anyone who was completely convinced they don’t owe money but have been given a debt notice” is either grotesque wilful ignorance or a lie in the face of a growing body of evidence otherwise. When even “Liberal Senator Eric Abetz acknowledged there seemed to be problems with the system“, then you know it has to be disastrous.

The one aspect of this (that nobody appears to be talking about) is the sheer workload this must be creating for Centerlink. Let’s assume Alan Tudge is correct that the error rate is only 20%, which is contrary to what centerlink whistle-blowers reveal is the case. Giving him the full benefit of the doubt, 20K letters a week represents 4K fraudulent claims a week. Which is 16K a month and 192K a year. After 1.04 million data matching discrepancy letters in a year, they will not even cover all the numbers of unemployed in this country (1.186 million – see above), let alone all the other welfare recipients for other reasons. Alan Trudge expects the system to “generate 1.7 million compliance notices”, which by his own estimates means at least 340,000 letters in error. Of course, the Centrelink compliance officer whistle-blower that spoke to the Guardian suggests the percentages of errors are vastly larger. Given that all of this was not only easily identifiable but unavoidably self-evident prior to the system being switched on, how is any of this not fraudulent?

Voters & workers affected.

At the current letter-writing rate (if they can maintain it) this will take over a year and a half to complete, although Mr Trudge thinks it will take 3 years. By then Australian Lawyers will be in a feeding frenzy of class action suits with minimally 340,000 clients with legitimate grievances with the government. This will presumably still be an ongoing issue by the next election. According to 2014 Centerlink data there were 14.459 million Social Services payments made in the March 2014 Quarter to 50% of the population – interestingly, a reduction from previous numbers. There are only 13.5 million voters – according to AEC – who voted in the last election. This is not a vote winner. But presuming you are not expecting to win the next election, leaving this mess on another party’s door to cleanup provides a damaging handicap. The amazingly short-term memory of the public, gives the coalition an advantageous opportunity to disparage what the next government will have to do to rectify the situation.

Access issues for Centrelink online facilitates debt being levied

Putting aside the legal costs, consider then the other real cost in man-hours for Centerlink to resolve each erroneous issue when there are minimally 4000 cases a week. To keep on top of the “erroneous” case load – if Mr Trudge is correct – requires the equivalent of 105 Centerlink officers processing each claim within an hour in a 38 hour week. This presumes the ability for each officer to address, research, confirm and redress an error on each letter in one hour and do no other administrative work. There appears to be mounting evidence it takes much more time. Plus that does not factor in the equivalent of the 421 Centerlink officers devoting a single hour in a 38 hour week, that you’d need to process the claims – and not fall behind – which Mr Trudge believes are valid. But these figures are conservative. As I previously explained, the error rate is far larger according to the Guardian’s Centerlink whistle-blower. The backlog of work is just going to be extraordinary, if it isn’t already. No wonder it is so difficult to get through to Centerlink on the phone. It was nearly impossible to get Centerlink on the phone when there was only 20,000 debt recovery letters sent in a year but now that they are doing it every week …. ? As for other means of communication, even compliance officers are complaining they cannot access the Centerlink online system efficiently, let alone customers.

Opportunities or Overload?

In truth, even if Alan Trudge did put an end to it; Centrelink will probably still be spending thousands of man-hours dealing with the consequences of this flawed and fraudulent system. The same would be true if the Commonwealth Ombudsman began investigating Centrelink’s debt recovery system and put a stop to it – disregarding the costs in legal redress, which are sure to follow. Nothing about this course of action makes any logical sense, except to see this as class warfare against our vulnerable and easily disparaged citizens.

Well at least, it will probably increase employment opportunities in the community at Centerlink that will giving a few folk some extra, well sought after work. But wait, isn’t there a public service full time employment freeze?

——//——

P.S. 03/03/2017

Senate inquiry into Centrelink launched from 8th Feb 2017.

I add this postscript because I wish to cover one of the points of mystery I’d not been able to discern. How the government (Alan Tudge in particular) could repeatedly claim Centrelink’s average wait time on a call was 12 minutes. Despite:

when repeated anecdotal evidence said it was much longer. Statistical evidence being more credible (if collected accurately) than anecdotal.
the government’s claims were not in accordance with the aforementioned backlog , as logically it should have been longer.

As you may be aware the Senate on the 8th of February confirmed an inquiry into the automated debt system would be launched. A Senate question raised by Labor senator Louise Pratt finally got to the bottom of this mystery on Thursday 2nd of March.

“A transfer to a new line becomes a new inquiry, and the clock would start again,” Human Services staffer Barry Jackson said during a Senate estimates hearing.

Basically by Centrelink staff transferring your call to another phone on a regular basis and only measuring time between two specific phones, then the “wait-time” is kept low. Centrelink does not measure the total time any client spends on the phone but how long you are connected to a specific phone within Centrelink.

It is a contrived and deliberate deception so Alan Tudge can make a claim that call waiting times are short.

There’s been a Fall

December 13, 2016 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

Winter is coming!

This winter was cold apparently, and Australia slipped on the ice. No limbs were broken in the fall, but the economic dilatometer for Australia’s GDP has demonstrated contraction. Not a surprise when you consider a full range of economic indicators for the Abbott/Turnbull Government. The September quarter revealed a .5% shrinkage in our GDP, not seen since the Queensland flood affected the March 2011 quarter. The time before that was during the Global Financial Crisis. It has not been an unexpected fall given the low growth figures each of the last year’s quarters. In June 2015 quarter it was our accounting standards that defer payment recordings that recognised a 41.5% jump in government defence spending that secured a tiny growth rate. There was no defence spending finalised to save us in September 2016.

Will the Wall hold?

The Coalition team were quick to allay fears of recession, as was the media. The Treasurer blamed the deterioration on the lack of opportunity to provide tax cuts for corporations. The same corporations that by in large provide little to no tax revenue to our bounty and often relocate locally generated profits overseas. On the radio, Christopher Pyne blamed poor performance on the distraction of Australian and American elections but commented that now these were over, things would be better. What?

Build your walls higher!

The largest contributor to the fall in GDP growth according to the Australian National Accounts was the reduced output of the construction industry. Construction work had continued to tumble for the 3rd consecutive quarter taking its biggest fall of 4.9% in September’s quarter. Some are blaming poor weather (i.e. rainfall ) for a fall in building activity. Aside from the fact that we are now in the wet monsoon season meaning things will get worse, is the industry suggesting “construction” doesn’t make allowances for rain? To be fair, the Bureau of Meteorology had been reporting higher rainfalls than normal for July thru September, but it has also reported a long term decline in rainfall of around 11 per cent since the mid-1990s in April–October in the continental southeast and 19% in the southwest of Australia. Forgive me the pun, but does rainfall as an excuse, hold water? Might there be other factors in the construction downfall?

Letting “investments” through the gates.

The rise of Foreign investment in Australia

An August News article showed foreign investment approvals had shown a sharp increase in Chinese natio nals particularly in the last few years. Now the previous linked News article suggested the tightening of bank lending was unlikely to affect Chinese enthusiasm for Australian real estate adversely. But is this true? Concerns about Chinese investors laundering money in the Australian housing market was exposed by the Four Corners program “The Great Wall of Money” in late 2015. Three significant events occurred in the period after this program went to air.

Despite much procrastination because of the economic risks to the banking system, the prudential regulator of banks, APRA began to enforce some of their own rules on high-risk lending.
Australian Banks uncovered evidence of numerous and sophisticated fraudulent income statements made by Chinese borrowers. To mitigate risks they have begun to restrict lending to offshore investors.
The Chinese Government began cracking down on Money laundering corruption.

Three consequences have been reported in the media.

Robert Gottliebsen reported in August that “The mass of Chinese property buyers who snapped up Australian apartments “off the plan” on the basis of a 10 per cent deposit have started to walk away from their agreements in Sydney”. Melbourne has larger volumes of Chinese buyers.
To secure sufficient financial collateral and because banks consider development projects high-risk ventures, developers depend on being able to provide evidence to banks of “off-the-plan” purchases of apartments.
Risk avoidance by the banks is resulting in restricting or pulling finance on the Chinese markets. This risk means construction became nonviable and added to buyer pull out; it may likely be the greater cause of any given developer may ceasing or stalling development.

Chinese interest in Real Estate & Renewables

While not wanting to “rain” on anyone’s parade, a more likely reason for a drop in construction might be the exit – of what was last year a massive influx of Chinese Buyers. In fact, given the huge influx of Chinese buyers in the market in 2015, it could be hypothesised that Chinese consumers were keeping our economy afloat.

Closing the gates on the wall.

The strong and weak performers from last year

So what hope is there left in the final month of this quarter for us not to discover some time in February that we are in a recession? Because two depressed GDP terms is an official recession and we have less than one month to go of the 2nd term.

Manufacturing? – Ford is gone, Holden  fired-up the final V6 motor at its Port Melbourne plant on the 29th of November and Toyota is in palliative care expecting to pass away next year.
Renewable energy market? – The government is slashing support for that industry
Mining? – Mining investment fell for the twelfth consecutive quarter & the seasonally adjusted estimate fell 0.8%
Exports? – Exports of goods fell 0.3% which is a bit surprising given how cheap our dollar is.
Retail? – This is the first decline in over three years as the seasonally adjusted estimate fell 0.8%, so perhaps that is just a glitch.
Real estate industry services? – which fell by 2.4% which is no surprise – given the continued unaffordability of the housing market.

Industries such as Education, health, power, hospitality, transport, professional & scientific services, etc. contributed virtually nothing. So where are our economic booms?

Information Media & Telecommunications? – rose 1.6% driven by rises in telecommunications and internet services, so be thankful for Youtube, iView, Netflix and Facebook but it’s a pity we don’t have an innovative & internationally competitive NBN.
Farming & fishing? – driven by rises in grains, cotton and livestock production it had a 7.5% increase, so the social well-dressed participants at a BBQ with beef burgers may yet save the day.
Finance & Insurance services? – Up by .1%, so insurance salesmen are still the best sellers around and we are still buying their spiel.

It’s either Jon Snow to the rescue or …

Unless the government can quickly pay off a huge defence “lay-by” as they did last year, it’s in your hands people. Our consistently strong industries have been Retail and Services Industries driven by household expenditures which have been traditionally strong areas of our economy. It’s Christmas, the retail and services industry awaits your patronage if you still have a job that pays a decent wage. You have one month left to buy us out of a recession. Buy up big for your kids, travel and stay in a nice motel. God help Australia, but is our last hope to avoid recession, “Santa Claus“?

Trump – fascist or fascistic?

December 5, 2016 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

Philosophically changing landscape.

Just before the election, President elect Donald Trump, published his intentions for his first 100 days in office. It is insular and sequestered towards his take on focused American interests. From building walls to encouraging non-renewable pollution builders like shale, oil, natural gas and coal, which will result in undermining climate rectification. Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a boon many would welcome, as alternative RCEP will be far more beneficial to the Australian economy.

Post-Truth world.

Tony Abbott the masterful beguiler of the Aussie Punter!

Whatever your values on these intentions, what is emerging, is that since the election, he’s made statements that are at variance with the dialogue from his rallies and his initial plans. That “lies”, featured in Trump and Clinton’s campaign dialogue, has become par for the course for political bargaining with voters. This “post-truth” phenomena drew criticism that the Trump campaign countered with assertions that the media should not be ‘fact-checkers’. Since the election, building walls, the death of Obamacare, the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and the demise of the Iran peace treaty are all being quickly watered down in Washington. At least Tony Abbott waited a few months before he instigated proposals to make cuts to education, cuts to health, change to pensions, increasing GST and cuts to the ABC and SBS. While the Senate foiled many of the LNP’s valiant efforts to break their promises, much of the public showed their willingness to ignore Abbott’s apparent about-face. But lies are a negotiation the public has struck with politics for decades. Unless one engages in extensive fact-checking and pragmatic reasoning, such lies remain unchallenged; and many can’t be bothered to do so.

Observations of Fascism.

Some folk listened to their Grandfather's stories — Some folk listened to their Grandfather’s stories

Trump’s plans or renegotiations (or “lies”) are admittedly not standard Republican ideology. His thinking is hard to pin down, echoing sentiments from across the political spectrum. Trump is something else altogether. An interesting observation was made by an American teacher, which has landed her in hot water. She was teaching students about the parallels between the rise of Trump and German dictator Adolf Hitler. It’s an observation that has also been made by veteran Jewish Americans who fear the rise of a “new Hitler”.

Gianni Riotta in the Atlantic disagrees with the assertion Trump is a fascist. She talks about a “brand of fascism” defined by Mussolini’s original Partito Nazionale Fascista rule. Being of Italian heritage, she is very wed to that being the only legitimate fascism. For folk like Riotta, unless they are goose-stepping down Broadway, it isn’t fascism. As though the final goal defines the process, but not, until you get there. Fascism deniers hold to the rather odd presumption that unless we have set up gulags in the manner that former Italian fascists did, then we are not there yet. Perhaps we should poll the unwilling residents of Guantanamo Bay, Manus and Nauru.

As Robert O. Paxton in his book “The Anatomy of Fascism” says, “Fascism does not rest explicitly upon an elaborated philosophical system, but rather upon popular feelings about master races, their unjust lot, and their rightful predominance over inferior peoples. […] In a way utterly unlike the classical “isms,” the rightness of fascism does not depend on the truth of any of the propositions advanced in its name.” So Riotta attempt to define it as an elaborated philosophical system or fixed creed rather than a syndrome or a “beehive of contradictions“, lies on somewhat erroneous premises. Or as Nicholas Clairmont (also from “The Atlantic”) explained, “But the debate over the definition of fascism is much richer than Riotta covered.“

Jobs and Growth.

It is not an insignificant difference that America is a mature democracy, where Germany was not, at the time of Hitler’s rise. Hitler was elected Chancellor in January 1933 in what was a relatively new democratic system established in 1919. And in this latter American variation, there are both systematic differences and protections in place to stall degeneration into the Nazi’s historical outcomes. Nevertheless, striking similarities remain. Like America, the German economy had hit rock-bottom and was at the time recovering. Hitler also vowed to pull out of the Versailles treaty and repayments, much like Trump is pledging to renegotiate NAFTA and cancel the Pacific Trade Agreements. Both were promising to protect internal jobs and build infrastructure. In short, the familiar politico battle cry of “Jobs and Growth” was on both their agendas.

As Llewellyn Rockwell writes, “He suspended the gold standard, embarked on huge public-works programs like autobahns, protected industry from foreign competition, expanded credit, instituted jobs programs, bullied the private sector on prices and production decisions, vastly expanded the military, enforced capital controls, instituted family planning, penalized smoking, brought about national healthcare and unemployment insurance, imposed education standards, and eventually ran huge deficits.“

Can Trump can be similarly successful? Trump’s immediate promotion of jobs growth was very similar in manner to Malcolm Turnbull’s approach in providing jobs for unemployed friends. Trump has engaged the former mayor Rudy Giuliani (if you go to the link, note Rudy’s unusual nickname), former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, and former federal prosecutor Jeff Sessions. Not unlike Malcolm Turnbull’s recycling of former MPs or George Brandis’s job stacking, Trump is “bringing jobs back” … to lobbyists and republican insiders. One of his more controversial “jobs for the boys” decisions has been the selection of Steve Bannon as Trump’s chief strategist. Bannon is the chairman of “Breitbart” the alt-right anti-semitic, anti-Muslim, misogynistic, racist, bigoted, conspiracy filled news site. No doubt some readers will find that description a little harsh, and I’d have to concede that “news site” is probably inappropriate. Trump’s choice of a strategist, is emboldening the rise of identity politics in America. Reminiscent of a familiar Nazi German salutations, “Hail Trump” echoed from attendees at Richard Spencer’s recent annual conference of the National Policy Institute in Washington.

Historical similarities & differences.

Like Trump, Hitler was not the popular candidate. Political machinations got Hitler into power, as he controlled the largest block of seats. For Trump, his path to power was winning the electoral college, not the popular vote. Both leaders lead a racist mass movement, along with being misogynistic and ultra-nationalistic, eliciting violent reactions from their attendees at national rallies. The difference in Hitler’s case was protesters who tried to shout him down, were ejected by Hitler’s army friends armed with rubber truncheons. Trump was not so organised, but his followers still ejected peaceful protesters, violently. Trump displays contempt for liberal democratic norms and has identified a class of people he is quite happy to direct blame for America’s failings. Muslims replace Jews as the preferred targets despite the unconstitutional nature of his desires. Hitler, equally, had contempt for the Weimar Republic Constitution which changed Germany from a monarchy to a parliamentary democracy. The original Nazi party was filled with disenfranchised youth as a movement, whereas the Tea party Republican adherents found their primary support from older white men. Trump represents an avatar for their anger, marginalisation and resentment. In both points of history, the people had lost faith in the ability of their government to look after them. Coupled with a loss of confidence in the civil system, they sought a political option that came from outside the “system”.

Precluding Minorities.

Neither Hitler, not Trump spoke about exterminating the ethnic minority they were using as scapegoats, in their pre-election period. Hitler only talked about expelling Jews and removing their civil rights. Trump’s platform was to deport 2 million illegal immigrants, to eliminate birth right citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants and keeping Muslims out of America. There are differences worth considering here too. In the 1930’s data retention machines were primitive, but still, IBM rose to the challenge with a punch card sorting/cross indexing system to evaluate the census data to locate, identify and catalogue Jews. Without IBM’s help, the mass extermination of the Jews would have been logistically impossible. Today’s technology is streets ahead of anything IBM had then. IBM’s census collecting apparatus is so more sophisticated and accurate now, despite the issues Australia suffered via IBM on their last census. The American government with access to the NSA’s extensive data records on Americans – as Edward Snowden has revealed – can so quickly identify ethnic minorities.

Hitler promised to make Germany great and restore national pride. In echoes of Charles Lindbergh‘s “America First” isolationists rhetoric, Trump claimed, “I promise to make America great” and then spoke of isolating America. Hitler threatened and did persecute his political opponents, and Trump threatened to jail Hillary Clinton during public debates. He has since reneged on that, but his earlier rhetoric was worrying. Honesty among politicians in a “post-truth” era is unexpected, but even in Hitler’s time, a former finance minister described Hitler as thoroughly untruthful. Washington Post gave Trump 3.4 “Pinocchios” (as compared to Hillary Clinton getting 2.2), and noted of the 92 Trump statements that were fact checked, only 11 were found to fall into the category of mostly true or neutral. Attitudes towards women by both Hitler and Trump were quite simply appalling and deeply misogynistic. Hitler and Mussolini declared themselves as opposed to feminism, while Hitler’s predominant offence was in objectifying women for reproductive purposes. As for Trump’s Billy Bush conversation, I am opposed to giving that any more oxygen than it already, by linking to it here. If perchance you don’t know to what I refer, then all I can say is, “Welcome back, I trust that your absence from civilisation over the last few months has not been unduly traumatic”.

The results of Fascism take time.

Under Hitler, unemployment figures began to drop. Public work schemes were introduced, and the German Labour Front was set up to “protect” workers. Measures to ensure the leisure time of the work force was entrenched. It was a good month after he was “elected” in 1933 before Hitler began suspending several constitutional protections on civil rights. Jews didn’t lose their citizenship until 1935; about the same time conscription was brought in. Government income increased to ℛℳ15 billion Reichsmarks by 1939 (from ℛℳ10B in 1928) but then spending increased too. The invasion of Poland didn’t occur till 1939. Hitler had been in “legitimate” power for seven years by then. If Trump stays in power for two terms, he will have eight years to bring to fruition what he desires and the fact that four of the last five presidents served a full eight years is not encouraging. If you hold to the belief that Trump isn’t intimately aware of Hitler’s strategies, then you don’t want to read this.

What have you done?

Of course there are subtle differences. It is 80 years later, after all. But in essence, how is any of this not similar in spirit (if not exact fact) to the rise of Hitler’s Fascist German Nazi Party? And on that point, I should acknowledge the impeccable research work of my wife, who provided me with far more comparative information than I could fit into this one article. Perhaps as Jeet Heer says, ”even if Trump is only fascistic rather than a fascist, that’s more than scary enough“. However you phrase it to make yourself feel more comfortable and sleep well at night, in the end the question remains, where will the rise of Trumpism take America and the rest of the world? Good luck America!

WTF Trump!?

November 10, 2016 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

When even Murdock’s “Daily Telegraph” leads off the day after the American election, with the letters “W.T.F” in 72mm high characters in reaction to “a political triumph that seemed impossible 24 hours ago“, you know something major has happened. Mind you, given how supportive Murdoch’s media influencers in Fox News was initially for Donald Trump, it is disingenuous for the Telegraph to be milking the global shock reaction. But of course, the Telegraph knows such a response will sell papers, and as usual the profit motive “trumps” ideological approval of the result. Turnbull very quickly – as he does so often – capitulated to the ultra-right and affirmed his alignment with the new administration.

Two rather interesting and telling reactions to the growing realisation that Trump would win were the markets plummeting and the Canadian immigration website collapsing. While the markets have made something of a recovery there is an element of nervousness in the future because of his unpredictability. In regards Canadian immigration website, one can only infer Americans began immediately exploring their options at leaving America. Like our Australian Census website, the canadian site was not built to withstand so much “natural” traffic and failed.

When my Father was alive, he made a number of efforts to have myself and my family relocate back across the border from NSW to Queensland. As he pointed out on one occasion that over a thousand people a week were moving up to Queensland from New South Wales. Like the appeal now to moving to Canada, my Father promoted it as the choice sane, rational and smart people were making. I agreed with him, at which point he joyously reveled in his apparent “win”. It was at that point I raised the point that my wife as a psychologist, made a living out of treating dysfunctionality. I countered that, the migration of smart and sane people to Queensland meant greater opportunities for my wife to ply her trade here and less in Queensland. He replied with “Touché!“. And so we stayed put. Perhaps now we should hurry to America. I suspect now the Canadian immigration will be inundated with people contacting them once they restore their website. Certainly, the Chaser, is satirically suggesting that to the south, the Mexican border may now be swamped with fleeing Americans.

Trump as the 45th President embraced so wholeheartedly by middle America is fueling anger amongst democrats and socialists in America. But it is not leveled so much at Trump – although some has, as riots have shown – but at an introspection at the failures of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Many articles reflected that the choice of Hillary Clinton was a choice of the lessor of two evils. Certainly Dr Lissa Johnson’s pre-election analysis did this. In terms of the lesser of two evils, Clinton was not the popular choice, although she was the corporate choice, as evidenced by her significant corporate donors list. It is becoming apparent that many Bernie supporters simply abstained from voting or voted for minority candidates or even switched to vote for Trump. This although was offset by another rather ironic development. Many Trump voters couldn’t vote – as evidenced by the many complaints on the right-wing “4chan” online hangout – because they didn’t register to vote. The sheer irony of the alt-right trolls complaints on the day of voting, that many forgot to register (or didn’t realise they had to) was amusing to some. Clinton – on the other hand – had made ensuring supporters registered was a major part of her strategy, which Trump had largely neglected.

The question remains as to what was the offset difference between Bernie voters abstaining or voting for Trump verses non-registered Trump supporters. Certainly the overall effect – whatever it may have been – did not hamper Trump’s success. The Democrats although, created a rod for their own back. The DNC corruptly undermined Bernie Sanders when he clearly had the more popular following but failed to take corporate money and therefore be beholden to them. Hillary gladly accepted her donors and the faustian bargain was completed. She got the nomination. The DNC have only their own corrupt internal arrogance to blame for this failure to beat Trump. Sanders was never behind Trump in the polls, although to be honest the polls did not predict a Trump win. So polling should be approached with large pillars of salt. If the final choice weren’t so disastrous, I would say it served the DNC right. Their arrogant complacency and willingness to bend over to bow to the will of their corporate donors has handed America over to a racist, misogynist, incompetent, liar and failed business man who has run a trail of corporate wreckage behind him. Political party’s need to wake up and start listening to their supporters, not their donors and internal lobbyists and factional politics. It’s the same in Australia. Political donations by corporates are well overdue for review.

The media was also complicit in handing America to Trump. I would just like to quote former Democrat Senator and now Greens member, Arthur Chesterfield-Evans’s reflections on the media. “But if the level of disgust in the process of government is enough to turn a US Presidential election, one must also wonder about the effect of the media. For years, news has been replaced by infotainment. What is important is replaced by what is titillating or exciting. News is trivial, what is important is often not covered, particularly things like falling middle class jobs and stagnating wages. […] So the non-expert, pontificating and criticising overcomes the expert discussing sensibly- how many of those are on TV? The shock jock has become more important than the politician. So why are we surprised when it now happens in real life? The shock jock beat the politician. And the pollsters got it wrong again- just like in Brexit.”

The American political élite were not inclusive of what they regarded as the Hoi polloi of the population. The people who once engaged with Obama have turned on the Democrats as they have continued to cater to corporate interests. The grass roots support for Bernie Sanders demonstrated this. But DNC undermined Bernie Sanders when he was clearly more popular and with far less baggage. Given the turnaround in voting patterns there had to be many former democrats who changed their allegiances and not merely because of a racist or misogynist agenda – even if Trump represented that. There were other influences that guided Americans. The Hoi Polloi saw an establishment that bailed out banks rather than implement banking regulation on Wall Street. The brutal destruction of the Occupy Movement by a coordinated national effort led by the FBI won no favourable impressions. Despite long-term unemployed Americans having dropped by 614,000, it was still 761,000 higher than at the start of the Great Recession at the beginning of 2016. Home ownership dropped and while worthy projects such as the Heidelberg Project converted abandoned houses into Art works in Detroit, that such a project even exists, is telling of the America’s economy. The myth of the “great American dream” for opportunities for success have been dashed as the administration has failed to provide genuine opportunity for social mobility amongst Americans. This administration continued to fail to facilitate a lack of educational opportunities for the masses. Interestingly, the largest significant characteristics of Trump voter demographics was an apparent absence of a college degree. And of course their foreign policy which resulted in America bombing seven countries during the last administration and adding to the huge worldwide mass of refugees on the move through out the world, is winning few friends. (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Syria, in case you weren’t keeping track.)

Exit polls have shown that Trump maintained a strong lead amongst white Anglo Saxon men supported by the conservative religious right. Which leads us into examining the category of folks who had other reasons other than simply rationalising their disillusioned with the performance of the current administration. There is that group of white Anglo Saxon men and women who aligned with Trump’s core values. They who sought to assert their claim to racial dominance and hierarchical social control. As with Australia, many Americans rejected egalitarian pluralism for bigotry, misogyny and racism.

The “right to be Bigots” (as Brandis lobbied for) has been implanted in the moral ethos of three major western democracies. Brexit for Britian, Trump for America and Turnbull’s capitulation to the neo-conservatives of his party for Australia. All the progress in values, morality, fairness and equality which so many folks at the grass roots in this generation witnessed slowly emerging, have been dashed on the shores of hatred, pettiness and division. The blow to egalitarianism that Trump represents has been a crushing blow many are still reeling from. But having been hit so hard we can not stay down. We can not surrender to the hatred. Like the followers of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu or Martin Luthor and the like, we have to pick ourselves back up off the ground. We have to face they that defile our hopes and stand for true freedom from oppression, racism, bigotry and misogyny. The battle for a more progressive, egalitarian and inclusive society continues and we cannot let these defeats define us.