Train Reading - introducing Sabatini's Scaramouche

At the start of my last post I wrote:

"I almost didn't have a Monday Forum this week, my attention was distracted by Commedia dell'Arte, but I am trying to firm up my weekly program on this blog. Maybe something on the other tomorrow. Still, free to comment in any way you like on anything you like. After all, Commedia dell'Arte was all about improvisation. And masks! "

The reproduction is entitled Karel Dujardin, Commedia dell'Arte show (1657) (Louvre).

But what was Commedia dell'Arte and how did I come to discover it?

Wikipedia describes Commedia dell'Arte in this way.

Commedia dell'Arte is a form of theater characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios.

Okay, that seems clear enough. But how did I find out about it?  Well, I got a remarkable lot of my early knowledge from novels just picked up from family shelves. In this context, I have been rereading Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche. My grandfather loved Sabatini, and I acquired that love from him, reading and rereading the books from my grandfather's shelves. The now very old and battered paper back copy I have of Scaramouche was his, as is my copy of Captain Blood.   

Rafael Sabatini was born in Italy in 1875 to an English mother and Italian father. Until I came to prepare this short piece, I had no idea just how long ago Sabatini was born! His books don't read that way.

Sabatini's parents were opera singers who became teachers. At a young age, he was exposed to many languages. By the time he was seventeen, he spoke five language, later adding English. He was to write in English as a matter of choice. His first novel was published in 1902, but it wasn't until the publication of Scaramouche in 1921 that he attained real success.

Scaramouche tells the story of the young lawyer Andre-Louis Moreau through the turmoil of the French Revolution. The story is somewhat melodramatic, with traditional melodrama memes such as the orphan who discovers his parents! But Sabatini also uses techniques that would appear very modern today including writing as though the story was in fact a biography, referring among other things to theatre bills and the later confessions published by Moreau. He also has a very clear grasp of the detail.

I will return to this theme on Thursday, focused on the theatre elements in the plot.  

Monday Forum - has social media become, like, just so last week?

I almost didn't have a Monday Forum this week, my attention was distracted by Commedia dell'Arte, but I am trying to firm up my weekly program on this blog. Maybe something on the other tomorrow. Still, free to comment in any way you like on anything you like. After all,Commedia dell'Arte was all about improvisation. And masks!

Computerworld's  Rebecca Merrett reports (Facebook fights user fatigue, while Twitter is fastest growing: report) on a decline in the number of active Facebook users. The story begins: 

Facebook has seen some growth in its active users, but Twitter has become the fastest growing social platform in the world, according to Global Web Index.

The research firm’s Stream Social Q1 2013 report found Facebook experienced a 35 per cent increase in total active users between Q2 2012 and Q1 2013, while Twitter experienced a 40 per cent increase over the same period. Twitter’s growth in active users also surpassed Google Plus' 33 per cent.

Rebecca goes on to quote figures from Social Bakers suggesting that about 33 per cent of countries on Facebook saw a decline in monthly active users over the last six months, compared to about 11 per cent over the last year. In the Australian case, active users fell by 202,880 over the last six months.

As you might guess, I am fairly active on social media. I am also interested in it in a professional sense. However, I must that admit that I, too, suffer from social media fatigue! I use it as a tool, but I find the constant chops and changes frustrating. I am also increasingly reluctant to invest scare time in new things. I have decided that I actually have no interest in the new, just the useful or the fun.

On Facebook, I am actually a fairly regular user because I find it useful in a personal sense. I have also been experimenting, not very successfully, with a public Facebook page. But I also find that the usefulness of Facebook has actually declined because some people that I am most interested in now post on an irregular basis. They still look from time to time so that they can (if they wish) see what I'm doing. But its now one way.

So what do you think is the future of social media? How do you use it or not? Now I know some of the answers here from my regular readers, but I'm still interested.        

Sunday Essay - on salt, mushrooms and memories of times past

It seems strange now, but when I first started to cook, I never used salt. Salt was something that you added to food later to taste. Salt was placed on the table in a little bowl, silver for formal occasions. It was never sprinkled over food, but added to the side of the plate in a little pile.

Later, my habit of doing this seemed strange to others. By then, salt was incorporated into cooking. "Why don't you wait and see if it's salty enough", I was told when I asked for the salt or added it to the side of the plate. I was reminded of this by a fascinating post  by Asya Pereltsvaig, Russian cuisine: a Melting Pot of Native Sensibilities and Foreign Influences. There, to my astonishment, was a description of my salt tradition! Salt was scarce, so you didn't add it to food, but kept it separate for later use.

As a child staying with my grandparents, I sometimes used to eat my porridge sitting with my grandfather on the front verandah at Mann Street. I say front, but the main verandah was actually at the back of the house. That's another oddity. He ate his porridge in the Scottish way. There was no sugar, but he did sprinkle the porridge with salt. I did likewise! This tradition did not last, at least so far as I was concerned. Brown sugar was just so much more attractive. And with cream, delicious!

Since all this is making me a little nostalgic, this is a photo of my grandparents with that verandah. You can see that it's a quite impressive view!

Many of the traditional cuisines are in fact farm or peasant cuisines. You ate what was around, what was in season.

If you look at the Russian case, the aristocracy brought in newly fashionable food  tastes, but the peasant had to use what was available. You can see this clearly in China. Today, of course, we are all aristocrats and can access whatever we like. The sometimes mess called modern Australian cuisine (I find that word poncy: do you? How about just food?) reflects that. We no longer focus on getting best taste from what we have, but instead focus on buying the things that we believe will give us best taste.

Friday night at dinner overlooking Sydney Harbour, a friend and I chatted about mushrooms. If you look at Asya's piece, you will see the reference to mushrooms. Mushrooms were food of the ordinary people, collected from the fields or forests. There were no mushrooms in the shops when I was a child. All the mushrooms we ate were field mushrooms. We used to pick them ourselves, or sometimes they would come in from a local property. We also learned how to identify those that could be safely eaten. That was kind of important!

The American writer Harry Turtledove specialises in alternative history or, alternatively, new worlds based on historical examples. I learned a lot about the Byzantine Empire, for example, from the novels set in or around  Videssos, a world based on Byzantium and its environs. Harry' has a PhD in Byzantine history! 

Mushrooms feature in one series; from memory, I think that it is the Darkness series. Within the series, the Kaunians are a strange melange based on the Roman Empire (the previously defeated Kaunian Empire) plus the Jews (now oppressed minority). The Kaunians  love collecting mushrooms, They also know how to avoid one especially poisonous variety that tastes delightful but leads to very painful death. This mushroom features in a revenge attack towards the end of the series.      

Today, mushrooms come in boxes with brown paper bags for packaging purposes. Then, we picked them.

When Aunt Kay died, we went down to Glenroy, the Vickers' old property, long sold. The house had gone, demolished, as had many of the old features. We drove through the paddocks identifying the features we had all known. There were mushrooms everywhere, huge mushrooms, the biggest I had ever seen. They looked all right, just like the ones that I had known.

Thirty years ago, I would have picked and picked. Like the Kaunians, I adore mushrooms. But they were so big and I had forgotten through my urbanised environment; we all wondered if they were okay. Some were picked, but most were left alone. 

In fact, they were the old field mushroom. So through the decay of old memories and the resulting uncertainty, I missed my chance of collecting mushrooms with the huge, old, full-bodied taste when things were real. I have never seen mushrooms like them. I really haven't. And mushrooms properly cooked are the food of the gods.             

Saturday Morning Musings - Wanderers, Eels and the story of a university

The sound of the drums drew me. I swung off Argyle Street under the railway towards the town square where I could see the flags waving. It was a bright, warm day and the crowd was celebrating the near victory of The Western Sydney Wanderers in the Australian A-League soccer competition. I know that I am meant to call it football, but there are other football codes!

There was something tribal about the scene. Standing there under a tree, I watched the fans go through their ritual dance, waving flags and rhythmically shaking their arm in the air or clapping their hands above their heads. Nobody had expected the club to make the grand final in its first season, so there was reason to celebrate. 

The formal street parade had yet to begin, so I wandered down Church Street past the University of New England's recently opened Future Campus in the old Parramatta post office. This had been officially opened a few days before with a street party supported by another football code, in this case the Parramatta Eels Rugby League team.

In welcoming the opening, Lord Mayor John Chedid had said in a statement that the city was fortunate to now have two leading universities, referring to the Parramatta campus of the University of Western Sydney.. The Mayor went on; “The establishment of the UNE Future Campus is an opportunity for everyone to experience a new generation of distance learning through the use of cutting-edge technology”.

  The University is one of the Eels' main sponsors. Parramatta Eels Help Launch UNE Future Campus proclaimed the team web site. Players were at the opening to provide support and to be photographed with their young fans.

I had reservations about the University's move to sponsor a major Rugby League team far from the home campus, but it's turned out to be a quite effective regional marketing strategy, The University now has over 2,000 students in Western Sydney, including a number of Eels' players. The Future Campus itself, don't you love the modern jargon?, has received a fair bit of national press coverage because its actually a demonstration site for the application of new technology.

Looking around me that lunchtime, I realised that I had solved a problem. I have been struggling to write a 3,600 personal memoir of my memories of UNE to go into book that may be published later in the year. My earliest memories of the University, it was then a university college, are as a very young child. I sort of grew up in the place and still have connection today. I had been struggling to work out just how to compress all this, to explain, to tell a story. I now realised I had my answer. 

I would start the piece in Parramatta with the opening of the Future Campus, then jump back in time to where I already had some words in draft.

"Early in February 1938, a young looking thirty year old lecturer in history and economics arrived to take up his appointment at the newly created New England University College. It would be some weeks before thenext academic staff member arrived. There were just two students enrolled; Jean Dyce, the Warden’s secretary, promptly tried to enrol him as the third and was disappointed to find that he was only a staff member.

The story had begun some six months before. On the journey back to New Zealand from England after completing his PhD at Manchester, the ship had called at Sydney. The young man left the ship to inquire about job prospects at the University and the banks. It was in the Economics Department at the Bank of New South Wales that he heard vague rumours about a proposed university college to be established in a remote part of the state. Those he talked to were not impressed.

Around December, the first five academic positions at the New England University College were advertised. Without much enthusiasm and with decided reservations, he decided to apply, beating thirty five other applicants for the position.

His reservations did not disappear with his arrival in Armidale, nor was his enthusiasm aroused. The town seemed small; it was dry, brown and dusty, a huge contrast to New Zealand’s green. It seemed to be asleep a great part of the time, or at least very drowsy."

So that gives me by bookends if you like, a personal touch to today and that distant past. Mind you, I wasn't personally present in 1938! Come on, I'm not that old, but certainly I wouldn't exist without that arrival in Armidale.

With my problem solved, I wandered slowly back through the Wanderers' fans. I really had to get back to the office and get some work done.  

The unique features of ANZAC Day

This photo by Steve Sanders shows this morning's dawn service at South West Rocks, a little seaside town at the mouth of the Macleay River.

My 2011 post, ANZAC Day, national identity & the power of images, was strongly influenced by my experiences in Greece the pervious year. It includes a photo of Turkish and Australian flags that I still think captures the power of image.

Last year's post, ANZAC Day, Toynbee & impermanence, dealt in part with impermanence, including my own family's experiences,

Next week, early on the morning of Friday 3 May, marks the anniversary of the death of Great Uncle Morris Drummond, killed in battle in France. By all accounts, Morris was a remarkable man, the practical but charismatic man who formed the centre of the family, who looked after the others. He did not enlist because he wanted to, but because he believed that it was his duty. 

When I think about Morris, about the potential lost, about the fact that my daughters have had no central contact with this man, I feel sad. Given that I was a late starter in the children stakes, they might never have met him anyway, although they did meet his half sister Ellie (Helen) when they were very young,

The next photo by Paul Barratt shows Polish ex-servicemen marching in the ANZAC Day Parade, Sydney, 1967. The Polish experience in World War Two was bitter. When I saw the photo, I sent it to a Polish Australian friend to show her the Polish Australian links.

ANZAC Day is about remembrance, about continuing contribution and continuing links.

Morris died in 1917. A few weeks ago, cousin Sophie who has been writing for the Financial Review (she has just gone on maternity leave) contacted me about background information for a story she had been writing about. We chatted about Morris, as I did later with her Dad, On Sophie's side of the family, Morris remains a very large figure.  

This is a World War One photo of Ellie, Sophie's grandmother, at my grandfather's property Mawelton near Inverell.

Modern Australia is a migrant country drawing people from many parts of the world who have been in historical conflict with each other and indeed with Australia. In this context, ANZAC Day really is quite distinctive.  It remains not a celebration of military victory achieved by one group, our group, but a celebration of duty, loss and contribution. That is its distinctive feature as compared to other military celebrations. ANZAC was a military loss. Australia celebrates and the victors, the Turks, can join in as can others. They can share the Australian views of the diggers, but without detracting from their own images and history.

I think that's important.

Australian Life - death of the stamp man

It's hard to believe now how popular stamp collecting was. I suppose that it provided a window into an exotic world now lost in the constant stream of information about foreign climes. I was reminded of this by John Armati's obituary of Bill Hornadge, Editor with a literary love for life. If I am right in just who John is, there is a certain symmetry in the fact that he should write the obituary. 

I don't want to detract from John's obituary, but a need to sketch a little of Bill's life.

Born in 1918, Bill wanted to be a journalist. He started in a temporary job with Smith's Weekly at sixteen, In 1942 he joined the Northern Star at Lismore as a junior journalist where he met his wife to Jean. Restless despite his success at the Star and wanting his own newspaper, he established the North Coast Review at Murwillumbah with his father, Thomas.

Still restless, he joined The Sydney Morning Herald as a subeditor and then took what was meant to be a temporary job at the Dubbo Liberal that turned into a permanent position as editor.

The Dubbo Liberal had been purchased in 1949 by Leo Armati and wife Patricia. Leo had been a leading Sydney journalism figure. When John and Patricia were hurt when their car crashed into a train, Bill kept the paper going. This 2006 obituary of Patricia Marks (Amarti) by Malcolm Brown will tell you a little of the Amarti story. After Leo's death, Patricia and son John continued building a journalism and publishing empire, Macquarie Publications, which owned 65 rural newspapers and was one of the country's largest printers of nationally circulated magazines at the time of its sale to Rural Press.

Leo was a fiery man. After one confrontation graphically described by John Amarti, Bill resigned. As an seventeen year old, Bill had established a stamp business selling stamps from the family home. Shortly after his 18th birthday, launched a bi-monthly The Australian Stamp Collector, with his mother, Lily, as its subeditor. Journalism took him away from this path, but now he and wife Jean returned to that original love,

Bill and Jean established Seven Seas Stamps, sorting and packaging stamps from the spare bedroom. The business grew rapidly. In April 1954, Stamp News was launched, again with great success. It was after this point that Bill came into my view.

Brother David and I were great stamp collectors. Seven Seas used to advertise in comics, something that we could hardly miss! Our parents took out a subscription to Stamp News. We even tried our own hand at selling stamps on approval via an ad in Stamp News!  

While we knew Seven Seas through comics and the magazine, I remembered the name Bill Hornadge through his books. They weren't especially profound books, but they were quite funny with a quirky perspective on the idiosyncrasies of Australian life. I have some still! 

 

To airport or not - Sydney's confusion

Back last October, a deal was announced that would allow Geelong's Avalon Airport to become an international airport. Depending on traffic Avalon Airport is about 45 to 60 minutes by road from the Melbourne CBD.   At the time, Victorian Premier Baillieu said the Government had committed $50 million to the design, planning, land acquisition and preliminary construction works of a rail link, and $3 million to develop a fuel line to pipe aviation fuel directly from Shell Geelong to the airport.

The desire to turn Avalon into a second Melbourne international airport has been around for a while. I haven't had the time to go back and refresh my mind on the history, but it's certainly more than twenty years. 

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell was distinctly sniffy about the whole thing.

After signing a $30 million tourism marketing partnership with Qantas on Monday, Mr O'Farrell was quick to point out Victoria's planned second international airport was not in Melbourne proper.

''It is an airport at Geelong,'' he said. ''Geelong's about as far from Melbourne as Wyong is from Sydney as Springwood is from Sydney as Bulli is from Sydney.

Barry, try getting from either place to the Sydney CBD in the same time. You couldn't do it.

Mr O'Farrell's sniffiness came from an announcement that an agreement had been signed that would allow direct flights from the Philippines to Avalon. 

The question of a second airport for Sydney has been a vexed question for a very long time. In 1986, the Australian Federal Government announced that a new airport was to be built at Badgerys Creek to the west of Sydney. Land was acquired and planning begun, but the whole project then foundered on local opposition. It became all too hard.

Now the question of a second major airport for the Sydney Basin is firmly back on the agenda. For some obscure reason, the operators of Sydney Airport don't feel that one is necessary, or at least not yet. Mr O'Farrell has his doubts about the whole idea.

I don't think that the operators at Avalon or the Victorian Government should worry too much. Building a major new project like an airport takes a lot of time, the approval processes are even longer and require an equivalent weight in paper to the airport itself.

My best guess would be that Avalon has about twenty years before it needs to worry. It's hard to believe that thirty years ago Tullamarine, Melbourne's main airport, was a very minor international airport compared to Sydney, Brisbane smaller still. How the world changes.

Monday Forum - how do we improve productivity?

Back in February, The first three Federal election issues - the economy, industrial relations and NSW Labor, nominated the first three key issues that I thought were going to be important in electoral terms.

In recent weeks, the question of budget deficits has come to the fore. While the mantra of immediate returns to surplus has dropped away, that's clearly not on, the need to address the structural deficit has become central to discussion. Phrases like "the need to share the pain" have become ritual. I think that a fair bit of the discussion misses the point.

I am not a supporter of productivity improvement for the sake of productivity improvement. Too often, it becomes another squeeze for short term gain. I am a supporter of productivity improvement as a means to longer term growth.

Our problem at the moment is that budget and associated policy discussions have become a zero sum game. If one benefits, another must lose. That leads to fights, fights that will get worse if Government budgets are all, as argued, in structural deficit. Of course, there will always be trade-offs, trade-offs made worse by current obsessions with "the big picture", the "big reform". There have been too many promises, too little focus on simplification and steady improvement. too many expectations. But we need to change focus. If the rules of the game are fixed, change the game!

So what do you think might improve long term productivity, increase growth, help us meet challenges like an aging population? I have my own ideas. I would be interested in yours. 

Postscript

I suspect that I left this too general to attract responses. So focusing all this a little.

Here is a speech by the Chair of the Australian Productivity Commission setting out what the Commission perceives to be the to to do list required to increase productivity. I agree with some, but find there to be a fairly mechanical flavour. Now these views have been widely reflected in media and business commentary, so that they are not without influence.

To further focus discussion, I pose three questions:

1. If Gonski is introduced exactly as proposed, will it increase productivity? That's a claim that's often made. How?
2. Why has Australia been so slow to invest in new infrastructure when there appears to have been general agreement for at least a decade that this is necessary?
3. COAG, the Council of Australian Governments appears somewhat broken, adding to rigidities and reporting load without achieving reform. Is this true? Does it matter? Obviously I think that it does.

Those are just three initial questions. I am sure that you have your own. 

Sunday Essay - the importance of people in technology

Browsing in a second hand book shop some years ago, I found a battered management book. Published at the start of the eighties, it argued that IBM would become the world’s dominant corporation because of its dominance over information technology. Ten years later, very similar arguments were being applied to Microsoft.

Both IBM and Microsoft benefited from a technology shift. Both rode a wave of success. Both remain successful corporations. Neither achieved that long term commercial dominance forecast by the popular management pundits.

The creative destruction unleashed by the application of new computing and communications technologies is huge, dramatically altering the business landscape. However, it is not the first such shift, nor will it be the last.

To illustrate, the invention of the internal combustion engine had equivalent effects and in much the same time horizon as the IT revolution. Over the first two decades of the twentieth century, entire industries vanished as new ones were born. The human landscape was reshaped. How we lived, where we lived, what we ate, all changed.

The rolling effects of the internal combustion engine revolution continued for decades. New industries and activities continued to be born. New fortunes were made. The motor vehicle, aircraft, the shopping complex all became natural and apparently fixed features of the human landscape.

If you look at the hype surrounding the internet as the latest manifestation of the computing and communications revolution, there is a huge focus on winners and losers and on the fads, fashion and social implications of the new technology. I am as fascinated with this as anyone else, yet it helps to keep a sense of perspective.

From a practical personal and business viewpoint, the key thing is the way we use the technology to achieve our objectives. We know that a lot of the froth and especially the kit will vanish. That’s just a fact. What is important is how best to take advantage of it all.

My local tennis club is a good example. I play tennis badly, but enjoy the game and the social interaction. Like many of us, I spend far more time in front of a computer than I really should. I need to get out to do something physical and to talk to people.

My tennis club has an on-line presence. I use that to find out what is going on and to make court bookings. They have a simple system that I can use easily. That’s important. However, that’s not why I go back, that’s not why I am such a supporter.

In simple human terms, there are people behind the technology. I am called Jim. If I have a problem, I can call a human. They recognise me when I come to play. We chat.

The technology helps the club because they get more cash up front, have fewer cancellations, make the courts accessible to more people, Yet it works because it helps me as a customer do the things that I want to do without taking away the things that I value.

I think that we all need to remember this when we consider how we might use the new technology to our own advantage. In the end, it all comes back to people.

Saturday Morning Musings - blog tidying

It's wet here in Sydney. I woke very early, restless, unable to sleep. I struggled out to the kitchen and turned my computer on. Looking at one of my blogs, I realised that housekeeping was well overdue.

A week back, a friend said that she could follow the pattern of my writing through the blogs. That's true enough, but looking at them left a dusty taste in my mouth because I realised just how far behind I was. Looking at the twitter link on one blog, it was two years out of date!

Sitting there in the early morning looking at my blogs and some of those of my friends, I felt a little like a forest after a bushfire. It was time for regeneration. This photo by Gordon Smith shows the trees coming back after a fire, You can see the new growth.

In writing, I draw from the things that I have experienced. That's perfectly normal. But when I look back at the writing, I remember the background. The story is no longer a free standing story, but a memory jogger of the past.

I had a long running Greek trip series using the trip as a device to explore all the surrounding history and life. It was fun. I stopped on Rhodes, leaving the series up in the air. Why? Things had happened that took the joy from the memories. They and the series were no longer fun.

The Australian bush regenerates. Looking at my failed housekeeping on the blogs, looking at the way my focus has become, what, well less focused, I am spending today tidying and fixing.

Don't expect huge changes. I am a bit off big things. I have never been afflicted by the dreaded template instability that used to afflict Neil, but change is good. It's just questions of tidying and focus.

The mystery of Armenia

One of my friends, Noric Dilanchian, is Armenian. Over the years we have known each other, he has often Educated (lectured?) me on Armenia. Now this quote from Wikipeda, "the important role played in the history of Byzantium by that talented minority, the Armenians, has been generally unrecognised" may seem like special pleading, but there is a grain of truth to it.

This is a map of Armenia in Byzantine times. A brief comment follows the map. 

Despite all Noric's lecturing and my own writing on the Byzantine period, I do not have a firm historical picture of Armenia or the Armenians. Maybe it's time that I properly educated myself!

Postscript

In a comment, Ramana pointed me to this Wikipedia entry on Armenians in India. From time to time I have written about the way location affects our view of the world. Growing up in a Western European/Australian/Greek-Roman centric view of the world, I was impressed by the way that Alexander the Great struck of east into the apparently unknown. We can see the same mind-set in classical or ancient history and the way it centres on Rome, Greece, and Egypt.

We tend to forget that between the Mediterranean sea and the Indian sub continent lay a series of big empires. If you look at the Persian invasions of what is now Greece, we (those with a Euro-centric view) see them as Persian invasions of Greece, a threat from the east. If you look at it from a Persian perspective, they were trying to tidy up on the eastern edge of their empire.

When Alexander headed off to India, he wasn't heading into the unknown, just the opposite. There were well travelled routes. To the Persians, I am using that phrase as a generic term to cover all state entities, what is now India was on the western edge of empire. Remote perhaps, but in world view.

To be worth a "history", you have to have an entity in which to centre the history. At a tiny parochial level, I write about my New England, a place that never existed in a formal sense. and is therefore not recognised. The Armenians are New England writ large. They had entities, but they are a people who generally always "belonged" to others, to the various larger bodies that controlled them.

Just interesting, that's all.  

Who will fill Australia's current policy vacuum?

In tax terms, hypothecation is the dedication of a particular tax for a particular purpose. This can make perfect sense. For example, a tax on fuel may be used to fund roads. In this case, it's a variant of the user pays principle and can offer real advantages over tolls. However, if the tax on fuel is part of a general tax applying to all or most inputs such as the GST, then it doesn't make sense; revenue is simply part of the general tax system.

Generally with a hypothecated tax, the amount you spend depends on the tax. No money, no spend unless you want to make it up from the general budget.

In the case of both the Minerals Resource Rent Tax and the Carbon Tax, the Australian Government effectively hypothecated a significant projection of the potential revenue to compensation and other activities. However, the scale of that spend was not flexible. The Government allocated revenue to fixed spend based on what now appear to be, at best, Commonwealth Treasury guesstimates. It's a bit like buying complex derivatives. You need to be aware of the assumptions or you will end up losing a lot of money. Now we all pay a price.

There was another problem as well. The Government committed a fundamental error. Instead of arguing the merits of the particular tax and articulating the issues involved including costs and possible compensation principles, the Government combined tax and spend in those pretty but boring paste graphic packages so beloved by all Australian Governments at all levels and then tried to sell the spend. How very NSW!

The commenters on this blog appear to share the general view that the policy positions of the current Gillard Government no longer count, but the opposition doesn't count either because, with the exception of the NBN, it doesn't have any articulated policies. With such a long period to the Federal election, a policy vacuum has been created. Into that vacuum others are now rushing to enter, including most recently the Business Council of Australia.

Maybe that's not a bad thing. The PM's decision to provide such a long lead time to an election has created a very rare position, one I think unique in Australian history. It's end April now. The current Government will probably go into caretaker mode in August. We have a number of months where neither Government nor opposition can control the policy agenda. Essentially, we can now chat among ourselves on what we consider to be important.

Of course, there will be special pleading. Both the Financial Review and the BCA are demonstrating elements of that at present. But seriously, there is a fluidity now in national debate that is most unusual, one in which the focus group driven atmospherics that usually drive high level political and policy debate actually don't count!

As the final election campaign kicks in, things will change.  In the meantime, let's make the most of it!