I quoted Monbiot back on Christmas Day as saying: “We will know that our approach is working only when it is violently opposed.”

Now I’m not saying that any one person is responsible for the plight of Australia’s Indigenous people, it is largely a systemic issue. But the current Riots in Sydney say to me that the situation is on a knife edge and has for too long been a life and death issue for too many people.

Is anyone surprised at these reactions? It is the cry of a proud but desperate people.

Edit: with hindsight I’m quite embarrassed about this quote – I posted it with out really reading anything. This is poor an inexcusable. However my point about violent retaliation stands – it is just that there is not the focus on indigenous issues that I thought their was. However it does raise questions about ‘ghettos’ and th likes breeding a lack of opportunity. Something will give sooner or later as it clearly has here.

Further my earlier comments on Teaching methods, the Victorian State Government is now sacking teachers and principles for underperformance.

The details are unclear at the moment. If these people are being sacked because they are incompetent then that is fine.

However I think it puts an over emphasis on measurement. This can have two negative effects. Firstly, it can dominate the teaching process by taking up too much time. Secondly can also mean that students are taught to do well on the tests or in the various areas that are tested and the broader picture is lost.

As I’ve said before, and no doubt will have occasion to say again, Industrial Relations is a particularly significant issue and the battle that is ensue will be a particularly hard fought one. One of my reasons for continually harping on about it that I don’t think enough people are angry enough about it.

So I’ve reprinted Peter Lewis’s Editorial from this week’s Workers Online – an excellent free newsletter that I strongly recommend you subscribe to if you have any concern about workers rights:

And The Battle Begins
After months of skirmishing and waiting for the first shots to be
fired, we finally have a picture of the Howard Government’s agenda to
tear down 100 years of industrial relations.

Much of what is coming was expected – it is a direct steal from the
obnoxious policy paper released by the Business Council of Australia
last week.

At its heart is the ‘economic imperative’ to drive labour costs down so
big business can further increase their share of national prosperity at
the expense of working families – after all, it’s a lot easier than
running a business efficiently.

All the ‘reform proposals’ are to this short-sighted end:

- legalising the rights of employers to sack workers unfairly;

- ‘reviewing’ the minimum wage to make it harder for low paid workers
to get a pay rise;

- promoting union-busting campaigns by neutering the industrial umpire
to create a system where employer lock-outs of unionised workers is
rife;

- and aggressively spreading individual contracts to make the lives of
Australian workers putty in the hands of their managers.

The one proposal that wasn’t flagged was the federal government’s
hostile takeover of state industrial relations systems – an audacious
move that may ultimately be more difficult than Howard et al imagines.

The push for a unitary industrial relations system is one of those
insidious plays that looks oh so reasonable on paper. After all, surely
it would be efficient to have everyone under the one system?

There are two big problems; first the federal industrial relations
system is now an industrial relations system in name only, in reality
it is a license for big business to liberate their workplaces from the
influence of unions.

But more significantly, particularly for workers under the NSW state
system, it would do away with a framework of work relations that has
evolved over 100 years to deliver one of the great successes of not
just the Australian, but also the global economy.

The beauty (and yes, I believe an IR system can be beautiful) of the
NSW industrial relations system is that it has been designed to create
the sort of society that most Australians (the BCA and Kev Andrews
excepted) say they want – based on fairness and equity.

That’s why the NSW Industrial Relations Commission has powers:

- to maintain industrial harmony;

- to set wages – not just based on the wishes of employers, but also
the value of the work performed;

- to ensure that awards flow across industries, even to those without
the resources or wherewithal to make a wage claim.

But it goes further, the NSW IRC is charged with taking a broader view
of the way the economy works – in recent years it has reviewed gender
pay equity and is currently looking at the plight of casual workers.

In short, the NSW system is an institution that has delivered
prosperity and fairness – principles that big business say are mutually
exclusive, but have been part of our way of life for 100 years.

The achievements are so ingrained that few even recognise them, they
accept them as their way of life.

Most working families would be horrified to think that, over the next
few years, they may lose control over their working hours, their leave
entitlements, even their job security.

As I have written in recent weeks, our response must start with an
exercise in educating working families about what they are going to
lose – and showing how boring sounding legal terms and institutions
actually make a difference.

Peter Lewis

Discussions about teaching and teaching methods has always seemed a little ‘something’ to me. There are many contradictory reports, all with a different way of measuring the success of our teachers.

I can’t really qualify my thoughts, but I get the feeling it is a sort of ‘hippy bashing’ exercise (and yes I know how that sounds). For a start our teachers clearly aren’t valued enough. They, by and large, do an amazing job and should be commended for it. Secondly they generally use both the teaching methods in question. Thirdly, the more holistic approach that is in question (where students are though to read entire sentences rather than single words) seems to be a little bit more ‘hippy’.

I guess by ‘hippy’ I mean two things. Firstly ideologically left-leaning and secondly I think it associates with ideas of a lack of discipline and that this is reflected in the preferred teaching methods.

Now I don’t know that the disciplinary issue has any real backing, obviously it comes down to the individual teacher. However my suspicions about the ‘ideological battle’ were given some more weight when I came across this little number.

As the article states: “Liberal education spokesman Victor Perton smells an ideological rat. “The three films going together really do indicate a left bias,” he said. “We’ve got a significant ideological battle. You still get teachers wearing Che Guevara T-shirts at the weekend,” he says.”

So stand proud teachers of Australia. Lets face it, the Libs are a little threatened by critical thought but it is probably the single most empowering thing someone can have.

…on Monbiot’s Age of Consent

I’ve been wanting to make a few points about Monbiot’s Age of Consent for a little while now as I think it is a really significant book. I’ve just been too lazy to pick it up and reference it. So having given up on that I’ll just make a few wild accusations.

Firstly, while it is only given a passing mention it would seem to me that Monbiot believes that the structural change he is advocating can really only occur in a top-down manner. I disagree with this because I believe that it is only through bottom-up pressure that governments and international institutions will concede their power – usually by being over thrown and being replaced by a more benevolent ruler (as we are seeing in South America). I should clarify that Monbiot argues for the top-down imposition of a bottom-up democratic system. So my argument is not with the end but the means.

I also felt he over simplified ‘localisation’ arguments. Moreover he overlooked Glocalisation which I feel more accurately depicts the argument of parts of the Global Justice Movement. He also seemed to rely on one or two people’s opinion on the matter, and while it is undeniable that these two people’s opinion were myopic, it was wrong to characterise this entire idea along the lines of these two authors who I felt were unrepresentative of the idea of ‘localisation’. Moreover, I felt that in a lot of ways Monbiot was trying to encourage a ‘localisation’ of sorts.

Monbiot also placed a strong emphasis on ‘full-cost accounting’ – where social and environmental factors were taken into account in the pricing of things which he hoped would reduce the amount of transport – or unnecessary transport. Transport is a massive problem in terms of the environment so any reduction in it is a positive (and this is partly why I think Monbiot leans himself to localisation arguments). However I can’t help but think that the environmental often disproportionately outweighs the social in full-cost accounting. In a sense this is because of the importance I place on the environment. But moreover, humans have an environmental impact – generally this is considered a negative impact (which is generally true). But the fact of the matter is that humans will always have a negative environmental impact, the question is: ‘Is that sustainable?’ By that I mean, can the environment deal with this impact? So, in my mind full cost accounting would make the pharmaceuticals that are sent to Africa to help people with AIDS would then become prohibitively expensive. Perhaps I’m over simplifying Monbiot’s argument a touch here and I’m not sure if Pharmaceuticals are a good example but I think my point stands that necessary things often become prohibitively expensive (either for the individual or the government) with full cost accounting. In my mind, you can’t just have a blanket approach to this it needs to be highly circumstantial however certain things should be costed higher than they are in order to reduce demand and hopefully use that extra money for social and environmental development.

As an aside to this, I also think it is impossible to cost environmental impacts because it is impossible to fully understand environmental interrelations.

I was particularly pleased to see him rebut the argument that majority world countries aren’t in a position to afford high environmental standards. For starters, they just have to – there is no argument here. But more importantly, it is largely the multinational corporations that are polluting majority world countries. Take Shell’s exploits across Africa and South America for example – particularly in Nigeria where their unnecessary gas flairs are resulting in acid rain for example. These companies can afford particularly high levels of environmental standards. There is the argument that this then reduces the competitive advantage of these majority world countries who are desperate for the jobs these companies create. I disagree. These countries still offer cheap labour and materials. But more importantly, the companies (as Stiglitz points out) actually tend to have a negative economic impact on the countries they are exploiting. In other words they take more money out of the country than they put in – this includes both actual cash and infrastructure/technology. So if they are no longer have a completive advantage then this could well be a positive.

Finally, I’d think that Monboit’s argument is really not as radical as he thinks it is. It seems to me that what he is proposing is the creation of international institutions that do the job that the current international institutions are supposed to be doing. And while I think that Monbiot’s proposal is excellent, it really isn’t any different from (at least the rhetoric) of the current international institutions.
For all of it, Monbiot’s book is excellent and a must read for ANYONE interested in the ideas of the Global Justice Movement (or Movements).

A Small Victory

I have argued for a long time that the world is now in a revolutionary period and that we stand on the threshold of a new epoch. There is a growing body of literature that is saying the same or similar things. That liberalism is dead and the powers that be are struggling to maintain their strangle hold on the geopolitical order. However there are cracks in the wall – and exciting suggestions that the Transnational Capitalist Class is loosing its grip.

I’ve reprinted this article because it makes this point:

Buenos Aires takes on the banks

24 February, 2005

http://www.earlywarning.com/articles/2005_02_24_argentina_goes_its_way

What goes down does not always come up again – but it has in Argentina’s case. President Nestor Kirchner and his economics chief, Roberto Lavagna, have, in effect, set out to defy global financial gravity – and are showing that it can be done.

The outcome of the current attempt to restructure the country’s $103 billion debt represents the most daring act yet of defiance to conventional wisdom.

By proposing to default on nearly three quarters of the debt and ignoring IMF conditionality, Argentina would be driving a coach and horses through the international financial system.

Brazil and Mexico

The outcome will be keenly watched by other major debtor nations, particularly

Brazil, whose left-of-centre government under President Lula da Silva sympathises with Argentina’s position

Mexico, which does not – but whose, President Vicente Fox, may be succeeded by a much less pro-American figure.

The Argentines have bucked conventional wisdom not deliberately, but out of sheer desperation.

In 2002, following bloody riots that toppled President de la Rua and two successors, the country defaulted on its commercial debt and floated the peso.

Bankrupt

There was nothing the banking community could do, because Argentina was bankrupt.

Under the accepted scenario of international finance, the country should then have been starved of credit, shunned by traders, risked having its assets overseas impounded and thus gradually grind to a halt – unless it accepted the stringent conditions laid down by International Monetary Fund and its creditors.

But Kirchner and Lavagna, relying on economic recovery – coupled with Argentina’s self-sufficiency in many essential goods – stared the international bankers down, and refused to divert funds from social programmes to pay the banks back.

New loans for old debts

Instead, they have offered a deal on their own terms – some $42 billion in new loans, with lower interest rates and longer repayment dates, in place of the $103 billion in old debt – a package worth about 25-30 cents on the dollar.

This represents a write-off of about $70 billion of debt, the largest default in history.

The banks have been given until late February to accept the offer – or face the prospect of a lower offer later on.

There is, in addition, the matter of some $23 billion in unpaid interest during the three years of suspension of debt payments. Argentina says it might pay a fraction of this – as a goodwill gesture.

Settle

After three years of getting nothing, many of the country’s creditors at last seem ready to settle.

Argentina needs some two thirds of them to do so to regain its international solvency.

The maverick policy has been formulated against the backdrop of economic recovery, which bankers said was unachievable in these circumstances.

In 2003, the country defaulted and devalued following a plunge in gdp of around a quarter as it tried to stick to debt repayment schedules, implement IMF medicines, cut social spending and maintain the dollar parity.

Growth

After this:

**The economy grew by 9 per cent in 2003. In 2004, it was still around 8 per cent and is expected to continue at 6-8 per cent for the next two years.

**Exports soared

**Industrial output increased by 18 per cent

**Consumption rose by 38 per cent ? Car production doubled

**Unemployment fell, while investment jumped some 38 per cent

Budget and reserves

On top of this:

**The government achieved a 2.3 per cent budget surplus while not cutting back social programmes.

**Foreign exchange reserves grew from nil to some $18 billion.

**A trade surplus of $16 billion was achieved, with exports rising from 14 per cent of gdp to 23 per cent

Argentina’s success is attributable to the devaluation of the peso – adopted against IMF advice – as well as to improving prices for its commodities.

Populist policies of raising the minimum wage, pensions and pay levels also helped to maintain social peace.

Corruption

The recovery owed much to the sound foundations laid by structural reforms under President Carlos Menem in the 1990s, which privatised many sectors and stripped away bureaucracy.

Problems remain – in particular, a culture of corruption left over from previous administrations, and low levels of investment thanks to the debt uncertainty.

But the predicted pariah status did not materialise.

Wider repercussions

Indeed, the government is now able to pledge no new default on entirely fresh lending and investment.

This contrasts with the past when investors were afraid of adding to the colossal debt overhang and becoming swept away by a default avalanche – new snow will take a long time to build up again.

If the current debt renegotiation is successful, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and others are likely to be considerably more robust in their attitude to the banks.

At the same time, the IMF’s authority to impose conditions as in the past is likely to be diminished in the future, certainly as far as Latin America is concerned.

The rhetoric of there being no such thing as Class can be quite convenient if you are a conservative, market fundamentalist, politician

The thing about the proposed changes to disability pensions is that generally people with a disability want to be in the work force and the community as a whole.

By insisting on forcing people with a disability into the workforce you are saying: “These people are lazy dole bludgers who have it sweet.”

For a start, this is obviously not true because the pension is an inadequate amount and living expenses are often a lot higher if you have a disability. Certainly many people with a disability live in poverty because they have effectively been marginalised by an inadequate system.

Secondly, the way to get people – any person – into the workforce is to take steps to remove the barriers that they face to employment. In this case poverty, carer needs, and physical barriers. Hopefully in the case of people with a disability we can also take steps towards removing the barriers that are faced with regards to participation in the community.

This is really just another example of market fundamentalism overtaking compassion. And another form, deliberate or otherwise, of bigotry on behalf of the federal government.

More on Doyle. I think he is just quite comical to watch.