As part of the FTA being negotiated with China Australia is required to recognise that China is a market economy. I actually didn’t think there was much doubt that this was the case these days, but a recent news report has given me pause.
According to Reuters as quoted in an ABC-Newsmail this evening, an online gamer in China was killed for stealing a cyber sword. Zhu Caoyuan, Qiu Chengwei and another man were devotees of Legend of Mir 3, which involves “heroes and villains, sorcerers and warriors” and apparently very large, but not corporeal, swords. Zhu was lent the sword by Qui and his friend who jointly owned it, and then sold it for 7,200 yuan. When Qui complained to the police he was told that it wasn’t “real property” and therefore not protected by the law. The result was that he took the law into his own hands.
Unbelievably the status of the sword has led to a legal controversy.
“The armour and swords in games should be deemed as private property as players have to spend money and time for them,” according to “Wang Zongyu, an associate law professor at Beijing’s Renmin University of China”.
Sounds reasonable to me, but not to the lawyer for a “Shanghai-based Internet game company” who claims “The assets of one player could mean nothing to others as they are by nature just data created by game providers”.
Obviously the Chinese have yet to get their minds around exactly how a market economy works these days. The combination of plastic cards and investment markets means that all we ever see in the west these days is data created by game providers channelled through an eftpos machine. These guys really need to get with the programme. No way are they a market economy!
March 30, 2005 | Graham
China not plastic fantastic
March 22, 2005 | Graham
What are the Queensland Libs offering the Nats?
One of the most common complaints you hear from politicians is that they have been misrepresented by the media. Generally it’s whinging, but occasionally you come across the real thing. It’s insidious when the media misrepresents what public figures are saying. Not only does it give the public a false basis on which to make their decisions, sometimes with calamitous results, but it encourages politicians to be less than honest with journalists. The result is that our politics becomes more like a bare knuckle, no-holds fight in Jimmy Sharman’s boxing tent late on a boozy Friday night, than the forensic contest of ideas and interests that it should be.
The Courier Mail served up an example of what I am talking about this morning. This article and this editorial contain a number of inaccuracies. They’re not too many to enumerate, but I only have time to deal with one – that is the allegation that the Liberal Party went into yesterday’s meeting demanding to be the senior party in any coalition. From all the information available to me, that is simply not true, but the repetition of it in today’s paper (presumably because they got it wrong in yesterday’s paper but don’t feel they can back down) rather than a factual account of what was on the table leads to the impression that the Queensland Liberal Party is being unreasonable.
It’s not difficult to find out what the Liberals’ position is – Michael Caltabiano the State President put out an email at 3:33 pm yesterday detailing it, and it has since found its way to me in various forms.
There appear to be lots of problems with the Liberals’ position, but none of them entails demanding to be the senior Coalition partner. Entitled a “Unity Plan” the document proposes an alliance in opposition and a coalition, but only in government.
The plan has an “‘Election Ready Committee’ that would have equal representation from both parties and would coordinate election requirements.”
It allows for an allocation of seats between the parties, but “if the other party has a member who seeks preselection [in a seat allocated to the other party] then membership passage would be facilitated and that member could be considered by the other party’s pre-selection college.”
The plan is not just about who runs in what seats: “Policy is to be coordinated across the five regions (Gold Coast, Brisbane, North Coast, North Qld and Western Qld), by a committee consisting of the Leader, Deputy Leader and President of both parties.”
When it comes to campaigns it says “It is expected that the Party with the majority of candidates in each region will direct the campaign for that region.”
Not only should this document have been reported on, but it should have been analysed. A myriad of questions spring to my mind about it. Doesn’t the proposal to allow members of either party to seek preselection from the other amount to some sort of amalgamation by stealth? What’s the point of separate parties if all the candidates in one region are going to be running a campaign directed by just one of the parties? What exactly is meant by “policy coordination”? Are there to be joint policies or is this just fluff?
Non-labor politics in Queensland are in a very interesting phase – a once in 50 year position. What happens now is as significant as what happened in 1957 after the Labor Party split. It deserves to be reported on accurately.
March 21, 2005 | Graham
Labor in favour of flat tax and non-means-tested welfare
I never thought I would see the day when Labor members were arguing for flat rate taxation and non-means-tested welfare. But then the Voluntary Student Union debate is unusual.
The arguments for keeping compulsory student unionism appear to be that it helps poorer students by making canteen food cheaper,and providing sporting and club facilities, counselling services and childcare. Interestingly enough, hardly anyone appears to be arguing that it is needed to represent the interests of students with university administrations – surely the main reason for unions in the first place.
They’re kidding aren’t they? Without a means test just exactly how do they determine that these benefits go to poorer students? It’s much more likely that they are used by the better off, or those in the know.
Take canteen food for example. When I was a poor student I packed a lunch, I didn’t buy it in the refectory. I imagine that nothing has changed since, which means that whatever part of poor students’ fees that are taken to make refectory food cheaper doesn’t benefit poor students at all.
But then, even if all students bought their lunches every day, this argument rests on the absurd proposition that if we all pool our money and allocate it towards a particular cost the act of pooling makes the cost less for all of us. This one was obviously thought up by someone from the humanities faculty!
And if the system is really meant for poor students, why should they pay the same levy as everyone else?
Same goes for sports and societies. It’s only the better off that will be likely to use these facilities. As for childcare the government already provides income contingent fee relief; and when it comes to counselling there are any number of subsidised sources for that as well.
When you think about it, as it is presented, compulsory student unionism is a privatised taxation and welfare system where everyone pays tax at the same level irrespective of ability, and the benefits to go to those who are better off, better informed or better connected, irrespective of need.
So why have so many ALP politicians jumped into this issue, particularly as they are the party which introduced means-testing into welfare and supports progressive taxation?
Teen angst. The reason such a trivial issue has dominated the media for the last week or so is because so many politicians and commentators were student politicians, and they still have unfinished business from those days. This isn’t really about student welfare at all, but about getting square with a Tony Abbott or a Jenny Macklin or a whoever because 30 years ago they turfed you from office by bribing the country kids in the residential colleges to vote for them with a six pack and a mars bar.
March 21, 2005 | Graham
Queensland Liberals – history repeating
Here we go again. It’s like a familiar school ground dust-up. You know that whenever the Queensland Nationals throw a punch, the Queensland Libs are going to walk straight into it. This morning’s Courier Mail provides yet another example with a story that the Liberals are demanding to be the senior party in any future coalition, thus threatening the peace at a “summit” brokered by Prime Minister John Howard.
The Courier Mail story carries all the haulmarks of an ambush – it bears a relationship to the truth, but it’s not close and it does favour one side of the argument. It’s the sort of thing that happens when one side of a debate is actively briefing the media, and the other side isn’t.
Let’s start with the meeting. Yes, there is a meeting, but no, it’s not a summit – this is a meeting that Howard was badgered into, and as he made quite clear on Steve Austin’s 612 ABC programme, he has no intention of getting involved in brokering any sort of a deal.
Apparently Springborg, through John Anderson, has been pestering the Prime Minister for a meeting for the last six or so months to talk about his proposal for one conservative party.
Once Springborg had publicly abandoned his plans for the party as a result of being over-ruled by the National Party’s conference, Howard apparently felt it was safe to agree to a meeting, on a couple of conditions, one of which was that Bob Quinn was there. The meeting appears to have been envisaged as not much more than a chat.
Have the Queensland Liberals demanded to head the Coalition, even though they only have 5 seats to the Nationals 15? Again, the answer appears to be no. What they have said is that based on research, the people of Queensland are not going to accept a Coalition headed by the National Party as the government, and this presents a problem to them and the National Party.
The solution they propose is to have some sort of an alliance. Each party would have designated regions of the state in which they would run, and policy leadership in particular areas would be allocated to each party. They think a coalition is unviable.
I am told that the research was conducted by Sexton Marketing Group which is well regarded by the National Party, and chosen by the Libs for this reason. The results appear to be very discouraging for anyone who wants to see the end of the Beattie Government. Apparently Springborg was found to have only a 3% net positive approval rating (25 to 22) and Quinn 2% (19 to 17). It shows that the National Party has all but disappeared as a viable political entity in the south-east urban area.
But despite the facts the National Party started the week with a favourable Courier Mail story which then put them on the front foot for the morning press and the meeting with the Prime Minister.
By comparison the Liberals have agreed to a meeting which can achieve nothing, for which they have, at best a confused agenda, and without preparing public and elite opinion to the realities of the opposition parties’ plight – at the very least the Sexton research should have been out in the public domain in enough detail to set the scene.
So once more Queenslanders are treated to the Lib/Nat Punch and Judy show where the National Party manages to change from agressor to victim faster than you can say Sideshow Alley, and the Liberal Party is left looking under the wrong thimble for the wrong pea, whilst simultaneously being relieved of its valuables!
March 18, 2005 | Graham
Is the Internet balkanising political debate?
Good question, and one I’ve always answered in the affirmative after reading work by Cass Sunstein on group polarisation. That’s why On Line Opinion has a determinedly multi-partisan point of view – the last thing we need is more intellectual ghettos, and someone needs to look after the architecture to stop them developing.
But while I’ve made up my mind, there is still an academic debate raging. Some people say Sunstein’s right, and others side with writers like Jack Balkin (is this a case of being “anti-eponymous”?) who suggest that in the blogosphere at least it shouldn’t happen because bloggers are always referring to each other.
The latest evidence suggests that Balkin is wrong. A study by blog pulse tracks links between liberal and conservative (using these terms in the US sense) blogs during the last US elections and finds precious little overlap. Apparently ghettos and gulags are forming, at least when you allow people to spontaneously form into groups.
It all looks very Hobbesian and suggests that in some ways the Internet is providing a good demonstration of social contract theory at work. One of the underlying understandings of the social contract is that its origin is a necessary myth to explain its existence – there has never been any original state of nature out of which people voluntarily contract. But what if the ‘net is actually showing us, in an action research sort of way, that when you do get a state of nature people do have to contract into some order so as to survive (in a metaphorical sense in this context, you can’t really die in cyber space)? And what if the lack of that social contract actually spills into the f2f world and corrupts it?
That’s presumably why Eric Abetz is looking at whether online publications and commentators are covered by the election laws. It would appear to me to be a “no-brainer” that Internet sites are subject to the same electoral laws as govern all other publishers, so good on Eric for coming to the same conclusion.
I was the first to blow the whistle on the www.johnhowardlies.com site, which ultimately turned out to be run by my good friend Tim Grau. My point was that I didn’t care who ran the site, or what was on it, but they should put their names to it. This also appears to be Abetz’s point, but predictably the move has angered some on the Internet. You might be able to work out who some of them are by looking at the abuse I copped over my original post.
March 17, 2005 | Graham
Mogadon versus heroin
Rob Davis of the Queensland Law Society is opposed to using private laboratories to augment the John Tonge centre’s DNA testing. Apparently private companies couldn’t be trusted not to tamper with the evidence!
Read Bernie Matthews’ series of articles about the centre and DNA testing in general on On Line Opinion, and you’d be left wondering how anyone, private or public, could do a worse job.
On Tuesday two accused drug dealers walked free because after 15 months the laboratory hadn’t been able to do the analysis, and what’s more couldn’t tell the magistrate when they would be able to. That latter point appears to have been cleared up yesterday when in another case, apparently also regarding drugs, they told another magistrate they couldn’t assign a scientist to his case for at least 2 years!
When Chris Puplick gave his maiden speech in the Senate in 1979 he based it around a joke. According to him the three great lies of the 20th century were “My cheque is in the mail”, “Of course I’ll still respect you in the morning”, and “I’m from the government, I’m here to help you”. Apparently after 26 years people like Davis don’t get the joke.
The John Tonge centre has proven it’s incompetent to produce results to any reasonable timetable, and its analysis in any case has been shown to be frequently flawed. Not only that, but when it comes to evidence tampering, it’s hard to go past the police force, from verballing up to serious and widespread corruption.
How is it that, despite the evidence, some insist on believing that the same person paid from the public purse will behave like an angel, but when paid from a private purse will debauch the public good? There’s a few books on public choice theory that Davis should read. Come to think of it, the John Tonge centre could make an interesting case study.
March 16, 2005 | Graham
Tower of Babel shows democracy alive in Iraq
The Iraqi Parliament is due to sit today and the parties still haven’t managed to form a government – that’s a good sign.
Much of the Australian commentary on the Iraqi elections, including a number of articles published in On Line Opinion, is prefaced on a belief that the US has imposed democracy on Iraq and that the resulting elections are a sham that will result in a client US state.
That there is confusion in Iraq and hard negotiations that appear almost like squabbling confutes both these criticisms, as demonstrated by this article on the Financial Times site, or this on News Limited’s site.
The thesis that democracy was somehow imposed rests on the assumption that Saddam Hussein’s regime had legitimacy and that Iraqis would prefer not to determine their own future. As these tough negotiations demonstrate, the Iraqis are just as adept at democracy as the rest of us. It’s human nature, not US edict, that makes us want to rule our own destinies.
Of course, we should have known this all along – the Kurdish state in the north of the country has been practising democracy ever since the allied bombing campaign freed them from Saddam Hussein. There were no Western troops on the ground forcing them to run a democracy, they did it spontaneously.
The client state argument also fails. Nowhere in these reports, or anywhere else that I have seen, is there any mention of the US strong-arming the political participants to accept a particular outcome. Its very confusion demonstrates that the democracy is real.
Much of the hard negotiating is dictated by the fact that the new government needs to be ratified by a 75% majority of the parliament, but after that only needs 50% plus one to pass its legislation. This is the best time for the Kurds, who have a blocking vote of 77 seats out of 275, to extract guarantees and concessions. Once the government is ratified the Kurds’ power diminishes.
The news stories may also over-state the case as to how tough the negotiations are. All the major spokesmen appear to be conscious of the need to be inclusive of all Iraqis. For the country to become functional, the insurgency has to be stopped. That means that the vast majority of Sunnis will need to be convinced that they can achieve more for themselves via political means rather than violence. Leaving them anyone out of government in Iraq is not an option.
March 15, 2005 | Graham
More evidence of evolution?
Our environmental narratives tend to exclude man as being a sort of non-natural being. A termite nest is a thing of wonder, but a sky-scraper is a blight, that sort of thing.
Until recently man has been such an insignificant animal that most of creation could get by quite well without accomodating itself to him. Of course there have always been co-dependencies – dogs and cats and the seagulls that follow fishing trawlers being good examples. But as man’s population grows ever greater more animals not only seem to be becoming dependent, but even a little bit human.
This story from FarmOnline (requires registration) says that elephants in Thailand are bailing up (in the Australian bushranger sense of the word) trains carrying sugarcane, tapioca and fruit. One elephant stands in front of the train and the others then rush out of the jungle to help themselves.
So, a dependency, but one where they innovate strongly from human traditions and behaviours. Smacks of the robber baron, the bushranger and the marxist revolutionary. If dependency continues to grow, how long before welfare systems adjust to include animals, and liberation theologians and development economists expand their notions of wealth being oppression of the poor to include fauna, if not flora?
March 11, 2005 | Graham
Memo to Howard: They’re armless
The Courier Mail reports this morning that John Howard is going to broker a peace between the Queensland Libs and Nats. Here we go again. Not that the CM journalists appear to be aware of this.
The CM reports “Mr Howard has never before personally and formally intervened in the Queensland Liberal Party division” which is dead wrong. If you can call convening a meeting between the two state parliamentary leaders a “formal intervention” Howard has intervened both personally and formally at least thrice before to my certain knowledge.
One was the federal intervention into the state branch after the 2001 election (noted by the CM, but apparently not personal and formal). Another was in 2000 when he put pressure on the state Liberals over three-cornered contests. Yet another time was in 1996 when he put pressure on for a joint senate ticket.
None of his interventions have been successful (unless you count the failure to convince of the need for a joint senate ticket which ultimately delivered him control of the senate at the last election). There is a good reason for that – you can’t micro-manage the rest of the country from Canberra, something the centralists currently in charge have missed on a number of fronts.
This one is likely to be just as unsuccessful, particularly judging on this excerpt from ABC radio this morning:
Announcer: The PM is to step in to broker a peace deal between the Liberals and Nationals in Qld. John Howard’s invited the Party’s State Leaders and the Nationals Federal Head, John Anderson, to a peace summit in March. Nationals Leader Lawrence Springborg says he’s been asking to meet with Mr Howard since last December. Mr Springborg believes the Prime Minister has realised Qld needs a unified conservative force to take on the Beattie Government.
Springborg. It’s taken some 3 months for that happen. Nevertheless, we’re grateful that there is a meeting but we do need this level of Federal intervention and just keep in mind that Federal intervention has failed in the past to convince the Qld Liberals that they need to adopt a more conciliatory position.
Springborg castigating the Libs for not taking a “conciliatory position”! Isn’t he the leader of the party that is threatening to throw the next election away by running against the Liberal Party in every state seat that they hold? And hasn’t he been running around the state accusing the Liberals of knocking back his amalgamation proposal because of selfish factional interest?
In 1996 when Howard suggested temporising with the National Party I remember saying something like, “It doesn’t matter how many bones you throw this dog, it will not be happy until it takes your whole arm off.” My advice is still the same.
[Note: I’ve just been reminded by a colleague – how could I forget – that the Nationals unilaterally ended the last coalition and immediately evicted the Liberal Party from the Coaltion offices. Yes, very conciliatory indeed.]
March 08, 2005 | Graham
Urban environment shapes urban violence
One thread binds the riots in Redfern’s “The Block”, Palm Island and Macquarie Meadows. It’s not race, it’s public housing. In all the talk of tougher laws and social intervention, hardly anyone is dealing with the root cause.
If you bang a whole lot of financially deprived people together in an environment where no-one owns anything and where there is no cultural diversity sooner or later you will have riots.
It’s not as though urban gang violence is new. Sydney and Melbourne’s slums had their various pushes – read The Sentimental Bloke. Dad remembers gangs fighting around Woollongabba in Brisbane in the ’20s.
When it comes to welfare we have most of it right, apart from public housing which comes with a model straight from the era of soup kitchens and work gangs.
Still, there is some light. According to this article Frank Sartor intends to replace The Block with a mixed development with limited aboriginal housing. He should take his skills to Macquarie Fields as well.
That is not to say that demolition of all public housing estates is an option, or even specifically desireable, but they need to be remodelled and transformed.
In one way or another land tenure needs to be significantly changed (harder in Palm Island, which is a deed in grant, than the rest). In the other two it can be changed by selling some proportion of the houses to their existing occupants – you might be surprised how many takers there would be if the terms and conditions were right.
Other houses would need to be demolished and areas redeveloped or sold to outsiders. Of course the long-term solution is to ensure that there are no more housing estates. Housing should be provided to welfare recipients the same way food, electricity, transport and clothing is – via fornightly amounts deposited in their bank accounts so that they can make the decision how much to spend, and on what, rather than some sleek bureaucrat.
Rental subsidies actually provide more housing for more of the needy more efficiently and flexibly than housing estates, or even small public housing clusters. Most importantly they integrate people into communities where there is hope and where riots are much less frequent. Will the Queensland and New South Wales governments do the obvious?