This whole debate about politicians’ pay and superannuation is a classic example of self-interest being peddled as economic logic or public interest. There is enough hypocrisy flooding the airwaves on this to make even the most cynical politics watcher want to spew.
So let me say this: most politicians would do the job for free. The reason is that being elected to high political office is just about the biggest validation, or ego boost, that any normal person can enjoy in this life. And if you are lucky, you can even get to exercise real power. The money is a bonus.
Let’s consider some aspects of a Federal polly’s day. Picked up in the morning by a gleaming big Comcar driven by a deferential driver who takes you to the airport where you hang out in the VIP lounge until your first class flight is ready. Then there is more of this in Canberra. After that you head off into that monument to political self-regard, the new Parliament House. There you, as a polly, are a member of the only group not wearing an ID badge. Yep, the attendants have to learn what you look like. How’s that for personal recognition!
You go to your luxuriously appointed office to be met by your own attentive staff. Or you just hang out in this magnificently appointed and huge building until you decide to actually enter the inner sanctum, the chamber of the House of Representatives or Senate. Then you sit at your carefully designed seat, and act important. After all, you might be on TV.
There is sometimes a bit of work involved, but always the people you meet and the surroundings you are in send you the constant message – YOU MATTER!
And of course if you become part of the governing executive, then you can add all this extra stuff.
It is an incredible affirmation of you as an individual. I have yet to meet an elected politician who did not grow hugely in self-regard.
Pollies used to be the rich and powerful who did it to protect their own self-interest, particularly in terms of evolving property law (usually in opposition to spendthrift kings). This rationale still applies to much of the Liberal Party, of course. It was the emerging representatives of the less wealthy classes, and even labour, that eventually demanded pay so they could live. Now this has got totally out of hand.
Greedy people do not make good legislators because they are ultimately looking out for themselves, not the general good. Politicians should not be punished for public service, but nor should they be financially rewarded beyond what an ordinary citizen could claim.
So perhaps we should peg the basic rate for backbenchers at the average national wage, similar for super. We will get better quality politicians than ever because the simple careerists would go and only the seriously committed would participate.
Certainly Mark Latham would still do it, and most likely also John Howard. You see, it’s the power…

The other night I watched on SBS (where else?) as a mother buried her child. It was in Sudan. She and the child had been chased for weeks around the burning deserts of Sudan by the Sudanese army searching for its elusive enemy. The child, a six-year-old boy, had died of exhaustion and malnutrition. The mother buried the boy’s body in a shallow grave in the dry dirt and placed a scrappy branch of thornbush over it to keep scavengers away. She stood alone, staring at the grave.
There was a strange look on her face, controlled and almost inscrutable. The message seemed to be, “If I do not keep my expression still, I will just die of grief.” She was beyond the sort of emotions we would understand.
This black woman has known misery that would kill most of us. She is just as human as any of us, and as much as we do not wish to think about it, we have a relationship with her. We could have saved her boy. Furthermore, we can make sure such a thing never happens again. If we want to.
One half of the world’s population – men, women and children – live in poverty (less than $2 per day); one quarter live in absolute poverty (less than $1 per day). Of the next 2 billion people to be born on this planet, only 50 million will be born in developed countries.
This inequality must be dealt with. We must reallocate money from military spending to aid (we spend about a trillion dollars on arms, about 50 billion on aid). We must rethink our immigration policies on a global basis. We must develop a global population control strategy. To begin with.
This predicament of most of the world’s people should be the biggest issue in all elections, everywhere. John Howard and Mark Latham should be arguing over how Australia – one of the richest countries in the world, perhaps the richest – can best contribute to saving most of humanity from grinding poverty and misery.
That’s what should be happening.

The Liberals are pulling out some of the oldest tricks in the book to hammer newly resurgent Labor. One of them is to accuse anyone who questions a whole range of developments of being anti-American.
There are two basic problems with this critique. The first is that we are suffering the most right wing and activist US presidential administration in modern times. And secondly, the US, as sole global hyperpower, is now so important that almost everything is affected by it. As such, the US must accept some real responsibility for the problems of the world.
What does anti-Americanism mean anyway? It can hardly mean to question the importance of the US. The US is without doubt the most important nation in modern times. This is not just because it intervened twice to resolve the most intractable conflict of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – which eventually resulted in two world wars – and then shaped the character of the succeeding Cold War and post-1990 world orders. It is also because the US became the basic model for industro-capitalist development, a social system that has more and more shaped human society.
So does it mean to question the validity of the US as a nation? The US was the world’s first modern democracy, an achievement that can never be diminished. Furthermore, it has managed to maintain a balance between competing social pressures – democracy, populism, business, militarism, class interest, etc – that is still as viable as that of any country. The fact that the US has been a world superpower and is now global hyperpower and yet sustains a vital democratic tradition and practice shows the strength of this quality.
However, for various reasons, the main decision-making institution of the US is now in the hands of perhaps its least able president who is surrounded by unusually ideologically driven men and women. We should recall that this administration is only in power because of a decision handed down by a Republican–dominated US Supreme Court, and not through fair election. Despite the question of legitimacy hanging over its head, this administration has embarked on the most radical restructuring of international relations at all levels since the end of World War Two.
The US is now more dominant than any nation in history. It rules the world much like Rome ruled the Europo-Mediterranean world. Everything of any significance that happens on earth is seriously affected by this power. Therefore, any US government must accept the responsibility that goes along with legitimate power.
Recent actions by the current US government have not shown such responsibility. Amongst other things, Washington has opted out of a number of treaties designed to stabilise international relations, limit arms proliferation and deal with manifest environmental problems. Instead, it has gone to war illegally and greatly expanded its military ambitions.
These are not the actions of a government beyond reproach.
Furthermore, as the next presidential election will no doubt show, they are actions increasingly disapproved of by Americans themselves.
So, to criticise certain current trends in the behaviour of the US government is not necessarily to criticise America as such. But even so, as sole global hyper-power, the US must be prepared to answer to its critics in regard to a raft of pressing matters of global concern.
It should be said that there is one more aspect to this issue that needs mentioning, and that is the increasingly pervasive influence of American culture. Through the growing capability of electronic media – in particular, US TV, film, music and video games – Us culture mass is swamping other cultures. This McCulture is criticised because it is vapid and trite, and because it overwhelms alternative forms, including national traditions.
This is a different issue, and is much an argument about corporate influence as it is about American culture. In as much as there is raging debate in America, and hardly split down left-right lines, as various people worry about this same development, criticism can hardly be described as anti-Americanism.
So, all up, although we have to put up with, or willingly accept, Roman troops tromping around and a Roman trading system, we here in the provinces can still wish for a better emperor in the capital.

“The end of the beginning.” J M Barrie’s clever twisting of the more common phrase seems an appropriate place to start a post about John Howard’s pirouette on Parliamentary super. The political dual between Latham and Howard is getting a Peter Pan feel about it. I think Latham would make a lumpy flyer, more like a B52 than a Spitfire, no matter how much fairy dust he wore. Howard is too short to be a properly villainous Hooke, and has all his limbs.
But both our Neverlands have surreal thematic connections. There are boat people in both and off-shore detention centers; the Lost Boys live in the base of a huge tree, perhaps somewhere in Tasmania with Bob Brown, and they rely on an alliance with the indigenous inhabitants in their fight against the piratical forces. Then of course there is the crocodile, just waiting for Steve Irwin (perhaps another lost boy) to usher it out of the bush. Carmen Lawrence would have to be Wendy, and don’t tempt me on Tinkerbell.
Now there is this ferocious aerial combat where Latham relies on his complete unpredictability to slip under the long and sharp blade of Howard to tie his shoe laces together. Latham stands on top of the pile of Parliamentary Superannuation and crows, Howard pulls it out from under him. The question is, who gains the tactical and strategic advantages?
I had to think about this when a friend rang me with the news yesterday. The conventional answer would be that Howard has panicked. It was certainly a hasty decision and left Peter Costello (and Tony Abbott) who went out and defended the existing system looking very much like Smee. It also gives Latham the appearance of being in control of the agenda.
One can see a series of plays developing as Latham floats one populist idea after another and the Prime Minister adopts them. Latham’s eventual pitch to the electorate would then end up being – do you want the original or the counterfeiter; the boy who won’t grow up, or the one who doesn’t know he’s too old?
On the other hand, how many populist plays can Latham make? Howard takes this one away and it is forgotten in a month or so. Latham then has to find another which is as effective. As we get closer to the election it becomes harder and harder.
That is probably what the Prime Minister is hoping. Much of what Latham has come out with to date are stunts. For example a campaign to encourage parents to read books to kids at night is as likely to be effective as the “Life be in it Campaign”. Despite the exhortations from Norm we now live in one of the most obese countries in the world. Their sole value is that they give him momentum and they have the commentariat talking about issues which are on his agenda. It doesn’t really matter what is said about Education – as Labor is regarded by Australians as best to deal with it, any conversation about Education will tend to favour Labor.
Howard needs people talking about his agenda. At the moment that is the Free Trade Agreement with the USA. Parliamentary super was a distraction, so Howard has ruthlessly chopped it. In fact he is blatantly open about the fact that his change of mind is not about policy or what is right or wrong, but merely about tactics. That in itself is a concern. You would like to think that Government was about more than the game. There’s another echo of Neverland.
What would Peter Pan do? I think Peter would store this reaction up and go and play another game for a while. He now knows that he has the Prime Minister’s measure on populism and that the PM has no stomach when it comes to arguing the toss with Alan Jones and his audience. When the real showdown comes and the crocodile with the watch is circling the ship at general election time, he can bring a similar gambit out and know with reasonable certainty what Howard will be inclined to do. He will also know that at that stage of the game, Howard won’t be able to do it.
Captain Hook would also store up this knowledge for future use so as to avoid a similar situation or at least anticipate it. Hook would be devising his own strategy to fight the next battle on his own ground, laying his own ambush. That’s going to be tough for Howard as after eight years in power he has achieved, or tried to achieve, most of what he has imagined. There is not much more that he can get without running into reality in the Senate.
Hook also needs to reengineer the atmospherics. Much of the excitement around Latham is because he is perceived as being younger, more vigorous and different. What if Howard were to prove that he was really just another pirate? One of Latham’s greatest weaknesses is that people like me have agreed with a lot of his ideas in the past. It means that when it comes to economic and social policy he and Howard have very similar agendas.
To win the election Latham needs to keep the Left in his canoe, at the same time as he reaches out to new voters. Flattening the tax structure for example, would not do that. He’ll need to change his tune on tax and many other issues, but then what if people come to suspect that Latham’s new positions are just a cover for old ones? What if they come to suspect that policy positions are all about winning the game, and that their role as electors is to applaud and reward the performance, but that afterwards nothing will have changed? Our research into the last election suggested that Labor had a problem when it came to trust. People liked what they saw, but didn’t trust them to deliver. It is a problem common to oppositions everywhere in Australia at the moment.
At the moment there are a lot of possibilities open. When we look back at the 2004 Federal Election I think Howard’s conversion on superannuation will be seen as the first real engagement between him and Latham, and will embody a lot of what will become obvious and clear themes of their approaches. This is the first star, now it’s off to the right and on towards dawn. (And no I haven’t seen the latest movie, but I did read the book decades ago).

Yes, it’s the old ‘Pay peanuts, get monkeys’ argument as certain pollies (like Peter Costello) defend the incredible benefits ex-pollies get, such as very generous superannuation. Well, my response is that right now we pay our pollies big bananas, and we mostly get monkeys anyway.
There is no way that it can be argued that our politicians represent the best this country has to offer. The harsh reality is that politics, especially at the national level, is so brutal that only certain kinds of people can stomach it. In particular, it is overly aggressive and adversarial. This is one of the main reasons why the gender imbalance continues.
A few smart, even sensitive people manage to make it through, and sometimes gain power, but the majority of politicians cannot boast much other than inordinate self-belief and tough hides.
And I always like the comparisons with private industry. Just because the private sector has managed to ramp up executive salaries to absurd heights does not mean the public’s representatives should join in at the trough. If the pollies who make this argument value the cash so much, let them go back into business.
So who are the best people Oz has? I meet them all the time, doing thankless jobs for real peanuts. They are teaching children, or helping the disadvantaged, or fighting for industrial rights or nursing the sick, or doing any one of the unglamorous jobs that keep our society running. They are mostly too busy, or eventually too burnt out, to get involved in politics. And if they do so, they are usually too appalled by the cynicism and opportunism they encounter to stay involved.
The clearest example of the problem is in relation to the young. For over a decade I watched the students come though the university I taught in, and noted the very few who became involved in party politics. Mostly they were the wrong ones. To generalise, they were too often ordinary students in academic terms who wanted personal power. So they got into student politics, then, having learned all the wrong lessons about politics (like vote rigging and deal making), they went into party politics. Over time I watched them become harder, more cynical and ever more narrow in their intellectual interests.
My best students – not always those with the best grades, but usually – are completely sceptical about party politics. If they do get involved it is usually the Greens who attract them, currently the most idealistic if inept political party.
I think we should have our best people in politics. Despite all the talk about the end of the nation-state, and by implication, formal politics, it is still the most important social process open to all. We do need new people involved, and we do need a new kind of politics. But rest assured, the best will not be impressed by an offer of big money – they will be impressed by the chance to make a difference in a nation and a world facing unprecedented challenges.

I watched Parliament Question Time yesterday on TV to see how new boy Mark Latham did. He played it straight on a day dominated by the FTA, and governemnt gloating. It was definitely Mark mark II, careful and calculated.
John Howard is worried, you can tell from the hyper-aggressive body language. He jumps around like a rat on speed. I’m always amused when people talk about Howard as a great parliamentary leader – he just behaves with the confidence almost anyone would after three decades working in the same place. He has a bag of tricks he pulls out to avoid any real debate, and his contempt for Parliament as a real place of debate is obvious. Can he maintain any pretence of caring if he wins the coming election?
The real contest is now between Latham and Costello, who seems to hate Latham nearly as much as he does Howard. Is it just the old ‘born to rule’ stuff, or something more? Perhaps he sees the similarities between them.
Latham and Costello are both vehement men, with a take no prisoners attitude, but at least Latham is honest about being a ‘hater’. I suspect Costello is particularly annoyed than he will have to face a new, energetic adversary, probably from opposition. As I don’t see him hanging around if the Libs lose a couple of elections, he may be thinking that Howard has denied him his chance at ultimate power.
One thing is for sure, I thought as I watched the two young Turks stare at each other, this will be the ugliest pair of leaders in quite a while.
As for Parliament, and especially Question Time, it is a mess. Again, the interchange was so puerile and devoid of genuine content that it might have been talkback radio. As I said in a recent blog entry, changes have to be made to Parliament, and soon. Latham actually brought up the matter of public cynicism about politics, and he should do something about it. Neither Howard nor Costello will, because a dysfunctional parliament suits the modern Liberals most of the time.
More and more, Parliament resembles a boys’ school where the most aggressive rule. Maybe this is why Bronwyn Bishop seems to be the only woman remotely comfortable there.

So, after what the media tells us was a Herculean struggle, a free trade agreement between the US and Oz was signed. It is a lot less than was promised by the government and the impression lingers that George called John and put the pressure on. Not that I think George would really have any idea what the FTA was about.
I’ve said before that free trade is a worthwhile concept, but that things get complicated once you move past acceptance of the principle to actually doing it. It is certainly not true that economic growth statistics tell the whole story. On principle growth in trade between Oz and the US is a good thing, but not if the benefits go to, say, some already rich investors who stick the profits offshore while the costs land on some struggling farmer or insecure factory worker.
Anyway, time will tell how the costs and benefits pan out, but they will likely have political and well as social impact.
There are three things that do bother me about the FTA so far: how it will affect the pharmaceutical benefits scheme, local content in media and quarantine arrangements.
The rise of the medico-drug industry is a phenomenon of our times, and I certainly question just how effective it is in maintaining health standards. Many people do rely on various drugs, however, and something like the PBS is essential to alleviate the cost to them. These people have minimal options, and they must not become pawns in the efforts of the pharmaceutical industry to maintain high profits. This is a case where the government has to assert the interests of the vulnerable users of these drugs over any principles of free trade.
Local content in TV, film, etc is ultimately about culture. Will we keep a unique Oz national culture, having at last claimed that right after generations of looking to Britain, or will it get washed away in the flood of junk from the US? This is already happening and it is directly impacting on the young. Anyone who listens to the way they talk can see how the very language is changing because of the constant flow of American culture via magazines, TV, film, music and the Internet. It has to be said that much local content is not worth defending, especially as junk like Oz Idol and other reality and quiz shows are direct copies of US originals. But amid the dross there is enough gold to make it worthwhile.
Finally, there are the quarantine issues. Oz can boast an utterly unique ecology, thanks to our age and relative isolation. The long time necessary to travel here acted as a natural quarantine system, even when the continent was discovered and then settled by Europeans. Subsequently, when steam power and later long range aircraft made travel easier and cheaper, we established stringent quarantine controls. So we still have a comparatively clean, special environment populated by many unique species. In addition, our primary industries are still untainted by many of the diseases that have wreaked havoc elsewhere. Indeed, this has been a real asset in selling out produce overseas, as the current concern with Mad Cow disease shows.
The Americans do not appreciate these facts about the need for physical quarantine. They tend to see quarantine as a constraint on imports, and they want our quarantine systems weakened. If we do this, the future consequences may be very serious indeed in economic terms, and catastrophic in terms of conserving out unique indigenous species.
Making trade more efficient through FTAs is no bad thing, but completely subordinating basic social, environmental, cultural and ultimately political needs to that of assumed economic efficiency would be profound stupidity.

Having just won Michigan and Washington in the latest democratic caucuses, it looks like John Kerry is a shoe in for Democrat presidential candidate in the next election. The bad news about this is that Kerry’s credentials as a senator do not suggest he’ll do much worthwhile as president, other than not be Bush. The good news is that as Kerry’s Democrat rivals drop away they can all concentrate on beating the worst president in modern times.
Kerry is not particularly inspiring and will basically get the nod because of his ‘electability’, the key issue in the race to beat Bush. But since he will be elected in perhaps the most hard-fought and vehemently contested election in many decades, and he will come to office facing a raft of serious problems caused both by long term changes and the depredations of the Bush administration, he may feel like he has a definite mandate for change. In this sense he may relive the experience of two of America’s great leaders, Lincoln and FDR, who also came to power without much indication of greatness but were forced to act decisively by events. The US is not facing a civil war or world war, but it is facing a possible change of direction that has most thinkers inside and outside the US worried. In particular, they worry that the now unique position of the US as global hyperpower places inordinate responsibility on the US leadership. With problems like climate change, WMD proliferation, terrorism, infectious disease and an ever more integrated economy, all occurring on a global scale, the right decisions are more and more important.
In the end Kerry will be elected because George Bush Jr has been so bad. What is more, his failures are becoming more and more obvious. Fir instance, his hypocrisy in playing on his military record (remember his flying onto the aircraft carrier in a flight suit to announce the end of the war in Iraq?) is becoming apparent as his actual personal history of military service evasion emerges. His genuine incapacity in dealing with complexity is now being discussed as stories about his odd presidential practices proliferate and his ‘misspeaking’ on Iraq persists. And now evidence of a truly strange religiosity is about as he is reported to claim to have personally ‘spoken with God’. There is already an attempt to impeach Bush on the grounds of insanity – if he continues to act so erratically and the pressure grows as his defeat looms, it may not seem as bizarre as all that.
It’s not as if he would be the first president to crack – after all, from all accounts Nixon was nearly bonkers towards the end. Indeed, there is the famous tale of the chief of the armed forces being instructed by Whitehouse to staff to ignore any orders from Nixon to attack the Soviet Union. Whew!
Whatever Kerry is not, he is mentally stable. In fact he’s positively dull. So that would be a nice change for a start.

Labor leader Mark Latham is talking about reforming federal parliament. He wants an independent speaker in the House of Representatives and an end to Dorothy Dix’s. Well, that would make a start, anyway.
Federal parliament is a scandal, which would be much more of a problem if it had much to do with actual government. More and more, however, it is simply a rubber stamp for the governing executive (cut off in isolated splendour in the new parliament house – what a signal move that was) and a house of fun and rest for the increasingly dull types who make up our political caste.
Of course, this mess has been aided and abetted by a corrupt and lazy press gallery who are mostly in on the fun.
There are two basic things that need fixing: question time and getting the pollies to turn up in the chambers. Question time is supposedly the jewel in the crown of our hybrid parliament, sometimes called the ‘Washminster’ system. It‘s when the executive can be questioned directly by parliament. It is now a complete joke, when ministers simply abuse the opposition while not answering their questions or while supposedly answering some ridiculous question from their own side. These are questions like, “Is the minister aware that he is the best loved human being in history, aside of course from the Prime Minister, and that the leader of the opposition is the least loved?” And the minister starts off with, “I wish to thank the Member for XXX for her question, knowing as I do what a strong interest she has in history…”
Absolute, mind-bendingly dumb crap. And this rubbish is cross-party lines. It was, after all, Paul Keating who really killed off question time.
So, what to do? Latham’s idea of making independent members house speaker is one idea, but that would mean relying on reasonably intelligent independents being elected – not always a good bet. Maybe the Westminster model would do, where speakers leave their party and become sort of parliamentary officers. Independent speakers could then refuse Dorothy Dix’s and make ministers actually answer questions.
The second thing would be to make members turn up in the chambers. People who do not know how parliament works are often shocked by how few pollies are in the chamber at any one time. They are mostly off doing really important things, like, um… well, really important things.
Of course, parliament is mostly incredibly boring dealing with mundane things like sewage improvement bills. But pollies can work from their incredibly plush seats inside the chambers, and if they have to spend time in the chamber they might start taking an interest in how it works and the whole process of government.
It would be nice to imagine parliament full of articulate, focused, enthusiastic pollies deeply engaged with the various issues of governemnt, but to achieve that one would have to start by ejecting the great majority of current denizens for whom the existing system works just fine.

“Fifty million dead’, now there’s a headline. That’s how many chickens are estimated to have been killed in an effort to stop the Asian bird flu spreading. Interestingly, it is the same number of human beings who died in the great flu pandemic of 1918-19. No less than three per cent of the Australian population died in that event that eventually killed more people than the immediately preceding Great War.
The news is full of images of piles of dead chickens burning and bags of live ones being thrown into ditches. There is an enormous level of suffering in this for these creatures, but there has been minimal concern expressed. Perhaps we see these poor animals as being blood sacrifices made to avoid our own suffering.
As I have said before in this blog, we need to start taking this global health stuff seriously. Growing world population, ever increasing travel links and the unhealthy practices when humans and animals live in close proximity – sometimes exacerbated by the modern industrial mode of breeding, slaughtering and selling animals – is a formula for what will likely be, sooner or later, a global disaster.
Commentary on that great health catastrophe the Black Death – that ravaged Europe for about two centuries – now considers that the plague was able to become so powerful because society had become weakened by years of war, social upheaval and failed crops. Their nutritional intake generally was down, and so people were just not able to fight off infection.
This is one more reason to start seeing the well being of the entire population of the world as a concern for all. Even relatively small pockets of poverty can become reservoirs of potentially virulently infectious victims. This applies within the developed nations as well as outside them. New strains of tuberculosis, for instance, are being bred in poor parts of the US and Russia because poor people tend not to finish their drug treatments, allowing the various diseases to breed out against the weakened medicines.
Diseases like SARS and Asian bird flu are partially about the old world meeting the new. In the last two centuries the west was able to beat disease – and begin the ongoing global population boom – when the developing countries of Europe, the US, Japan and elsewhere spent big money on sewage systems, new health facilities and personnel, and ending various risky practices. They also did it by ensuring that national populations enjoyed reasonable living standards in terms of basic nutritional needs and adequate shelter. These same nations – who are the main beneficiaries of globalisation – now need to spend money on improving basic living conditions everywhere on earth for the same reason. After all, infectious disease is greatly affected by wealth, but once it really gets going, the rich die along with the poor.