Australian election - the Coalition will win; the interest lies in the detail

The latest opinion polls show the continuing opposition lead in the Australian Federal election. However, the latest poll also apparently shows the strength of the Palmer United Party in Queensland, around 8%, the same as the Greens. The Queensland results also show the Katter Australian Party on 4%. The PUP campaign has been expensive, very visible and somewhat irreverent.  You will get a feel here.

While I''m sure that the overall polls are right, there has been a remarkable diversion of individual voting intentions among people that I know, especially among the Labor voters. Ever heard of the Future Party? I hadn't until a younger family member suggested that I might vote for them since they had a candidate in my electorate!

Many of the Labor voting group still intend to vote Labor number 2, but cannot bring themselves to vote Labor number one. They are disengaged; many among the women were Gillard supporters. I haven't seen this level of disengagement before.

I have no idea how all this will break in the end. The national opinion polls have a very good record at tracking aggregate results in the House of Representatives: they are not so good at individual seat level, worse in the senate. Mr Abbott will win, but its the detail that counts in the longer term.

In WA, I am keeping my fingers crossed for the WA National Party. There the party is not in coalition with the Liberals. In the Northern Territory, will the First Nations Senate candidate get up? If so, it would be the first specifically Aboriginal political party to get a candidate into the national parliament. Now that Tony Windsor has backed independent Rob Taber in New England, will that translate into a stronger independent vote. \

There are all sorts of interesting competitions, if all at the margin. In terms of Government, the only question is the size of the Coalition victory. I am not going anywhere next Saturday night. Yes, I am an election tragic, I accept that!    

A morning at the rugby - TAS v Scots

it's been a gorgeous weekend here in Sydney. Yesterday I went to see TAS play Scots in the NSW GPS (Greater Public Schools) thirds competition. TAS,The Armidale School, has been a GPS member since 1897. The school's smaller size and non-metro location (TAS is the only NSW GPS school outside Sydney) makes participation in Sydney based GPS events difficult.  However, this year TAS firsts have been playing in the newly created GPS Thirds, while other TAS teams have been making the trek as well.

It's a big effort. With the exception of Sydney Boys High and Sydney Grammar who come to Armidale on an annual basis, the other Sydney schools play  in Armidale every second year. By contrast, the TAS teams play in Sydney on average every second week. There are fifteen players in a Rugby team plus reserves. Twelve TAS teams played against Scots Saturday. That's 180 boys plus reserves, coaches etc. Every Friday when there is a Sydney game, the boys join the buses that pull up at the front of the school for the seven hour trip to Sydney. Every Saturday after the games. they join the buses for the seven hour trip back. It's a huge effort.

Why bother? Well, it's partly tradition. But it's also the only way that the boys can get top level competition. TAS is the Australian Institute of Sport Rugby focus for Northern NSW. It draws a thousand plus boys to its local Rugby carnivals. But while still weak by Sydney standards, it is just too strong for the local competition.    

Yesterday TAS won against Scots 31-22, the competition leaders. With results in other other games. TAS moved to second place, Scots to third. This is one shot I took of the game. It shows TAS defending.

I suspect that at my age one could argue against my interest in schoolboy football. But I do enjoy it. 

I get depressed, mind you, at just how much better the boys are as compared to my period. I do wonder how I might have gone with today's training skills? I also get depressed at the way that professionalism and sports scholarships have entered the game. It doesn't seem right. In the end, this should be kids enjoying themselves.

Still, it was a nice afternoon. Next week is the last game in this year's comp with TAS playing Newington. Eldest daughter has promise to come with me. That will be fun its own right.

Elections, representative democracy and popular opinion

As the Australian Federal election campaign enters its last week, both sides are attempting to appeal to what they perceive as popular topics with particular slices of the Australian population. Meantime, there appears to be a common view that this has been an uninspiring election.  Most people shrug and say that they are voting against or for the least disliked. Of course there are enthusiasts, true believers. Still, they appear to be a smaller group than usual.

Looking back over my writing on previous campaigns, I have railed against what I see as the supermarket approach to politics, the idea that parties put forward a series of specific offerings that voters then chose between; I have criticised the idea of mandate, that Governments must do just what they have promised to do at an election; and I have suggested that the idea that a popular vote at some point in time can somehow bind Parliament or Parliamentarians to either fixed agendas or specific leaders was a fundamental breach of representative parliamentary democracy.

Back in June 2012, Possum Comitatus had a rather interesting piece, What Australians Believe, that looks at certain sets of Australian views as measured by the polls. It may be over twelve years old, but it is still worth a read for the patterns and contradictions revealed actually frame aspects of the current election campaign rather well. For example, the conflict between the popular view that Government should do more and the equally popular view that Government is too large.

Now consider the following table. Even after all these years, the privatisation of icon Government enterprises is seen in negative terms. By contrast, the five following items including the GST are seen in positive terms. They each met with sometimes very strong opposition at the time, but are now seen in positive terms. Further comments follow the table.

The things I criticised  in my second paragraph have the effect of locking Government into a straight jacket set by popular view at a particular time. The role of Government is to govern, taking changing circumstances into account. This includes taking unpopular decisions, not implementing blind promises made at a point in time regardless, With time, some of those decisions will prove to be right if still unpopular, others will gain net approval but in fact be questionable. 

That's all part of our system. In the end, we give Governments power and expect them to exercise that power if with restraint. We do so, knowing that we can kick them out.      

Biographical wanderings - introducing Archibald Clunes Innes

This is Archibald Clunes Innes, then a Captain in the English 3rd Regiment or Buffs. Study him, for you will be hearing more about him.

I have been sadly remiss in my writing on my main history project. I don't want to give up writing on politics or MOOCs or any of the many things that interest me. Indeed, I have an economics column due that must be written before the Australian election but won't be published until some time after, but must be current. That's kind of a challenge in itself! But I must move forward on my main projects.

I have decided to try an experiment. While still writing on other things, over the next week or so and across my blogs, I am going to focus on one man. 

Archibald Innes was, to my mind, a rather nice man, kind and courteous. These are qualities I value. He went bankrupt in 1852. But before he did, he built a business empire. The world of Archibald Innes is a world that few Australians know. It is a world that I find appealing in, at one level, for the same reason that I find Jane Austin appealing. It is about manners and style.

I am not going to say more tonight. I wish to write my Armidale Express column on one element of the life that surrounded that man. You will see that column much later. Now I am just staking the ground. I will use this post as an entry post for all my posts.Think of them as an experiment in biography, the way that a man or women can illumine their world.      

In praise of Optus customer service

I have been of line because I have had no internet connection. First my phone went dead, and then my internet.

I like rewarding customer service and have the power to do so via this blog.

I know a lot about technology, but am hopeless on mechanical details. I rang Optus customer service and got Vanessa. She talked me through the problem and then said that she could get the technicians to check the line, but if the problem lay in my equipment there would be a $150 service charge. We talked about the issue and agreed the following:

• I would buy or borrow a new handset to check the connection.
• She would divert my home fixed line to my mobile and arrange for me to get a credit on the mobile to cover costs. That came through the next day.
• I would buy a Telstra prepaid USB Wi-Fi, and Optus would credit the costs to my account. Why Telstra? Vanessa checked, and i live in an Optus wireless blackspot. Telstra customer service, by the way, were very good in helping me connect the device. Optus would reimburse me for the costs.
• She would ring me back to review the situation when I had done these things.

Tonight I rang the Optus call number to report progress. Vanessa wasn't there, but as it turned out a friend answered the call. I reported that the new phone hadn't worked and that my internet had finally collapsed. I had also changed some of the connecting cables to check that. She checked technical support and found out that there was, in fact, now a broader outage problem in my immediate area that might be fixed tomorrow but might in fact take to Friday.

She took the receipt number for my purchase of the new Telstra USB Wi Fi and the price and said that she would arrange the credit to my bill. She said that she would let Vanessa know what had happened and pass on my thanks. They would SMS me when the broader problem was fixed, and I would ring back Friday if I still had problems.

I know that it is annoying when things go wrong. Certainly I was annoyed. But isn't it nice when you get someone who who can offer practical help?  Neither Vanessa  nor her friend had and idea that i could or would take their help to the world.

Saturday Morning Musings - elections, budgets & the patterns of political and demographic change in Australia

I have been off air, so to speak, since Monday because of the need to complete other things. Meantime, the election has ground on. This has been a very strange campaign, really two campaigns, The first is the official campaign, the second the surrounding analysis and commentary.  Of the two, the second is the more informed, interesting and indeed important for it is delineating the issues that either side will have to deal with following the election.

The official campaign is all about specific initiatives that may or may not be offset by spending cuts. Nobody is quite sure what might be cut, indeed, nobody is quite sure about anything. We may or may not buy some decrepit Indonesian fishing boats. We may or may not get the budget back into surplus. We may build this road or then again we may not. We may or may not develop the north. We definitely won't increase GST, but then again we may. I get confused, I must say, for I am not sure what any of it means. Neither side has really articulated a clear picture or clear principles that I can easily understand.  

At least with the second campaign, the surrounding analysis and commentary is drawing out key issues quite clearly.

It is clear, for example, that the Australian Government faces significant expenditure constraints that must be dealt with by tax increases or expenditure cuts or a combination of the two. The quantum may vary depending on your view about the size of government and the acceptable level of budget deficit, but the central principle remains true. I am not saying anything new, just stating an accepted fact.

We also face an uncertain economic outlook. Again, I am not saying anything new. Globally, there are signs of economic revival in the developing world, while the developing world is slowing. In a world awash with money, short term currency flows can have significant impacts as we have just seen, with flows from emerging markets to the US. Australian domestic activity on which tax revenues depend is sluggish. If we take the official estimates on which the Commonwealth budget is predicated, higher or lower results are equally likely. This increases budget uncertainty.

Of all the various issues raised during the election campaign, the one that has emerged as most important in a macro sense is productivity improvement. Without productivity improvement, the country's ability to fund things will be further constrained. Both sides agree on this, but neither has really articulated a coherent approach towards the issue. Grouping a series of sometimes ad hoc initiatives usually developed for other reasons under a productivity improvement mantra, Gonski or Mr Abbott's paid parental leave scheme come to mind, does not make for a coherent approach. 

I have come to think of this election as the pain election. With both sides trying to balance promises with cuts in the name of budget neutrality, each promise involves pain for someone else. In the case of Mr Abbott's paid parental leave scheme, as a simple example, shareholders will lose a degree of franking credit. Both sides are involved in a game of redistribution, redistributing a notionally fixed cake at the margin. That is why it is so important to have the detail of the Coalition promises and associated cuts elsewhere.

Since the final size of the cake is actually uncertain, we also need to make judgements about what might have to be done if the economy performs less well than expected. Given the promises and pledged expenditure cuts, just what flexibility will either side have in responding? What promises might have to be broken, what new cuts imposed, what taxes increased? I would feel a lot more comfortable if I could provide an indicative answer to those questions.

The latest public opinion polls (as always, the Poll Bludger provides a good entry point here) show Labor weakening. It is hard to see the Coalition losing; the only question in my mind is the size of the victory. However, the thing that now interests me is what the polls, as well as the qualitative analysis, might say about the future, the changing structure of Australia and Australian politics.

If we look at the detail of the latest poll, we find a very skewed voting structure based on age. To draw this out, I have selected some of the data and put it in the following table grouped by age.

Age Group	18-24 %	25-39 %	40-54 %
Labor	38	40	35
Coalition	32	40	49
Greens	21	12	9
Independent	3	3	3
Other	6	4	4
Prime Minister's Performance
Approve	59	50	41
Disapprove	35	42	54
Uncommitted	6	8	5
Opposition Leader's Performance
Approve	34	39	44
Disapprove	62	56	53
Uncommitted	4	5	3
Preferred Prime Minister
Gillard/Rudd	62	56	44
Abbott	34	37	47
Uncommitted	4	6	9

The age skew in the figures is very interesting from a longer term perspective. The Coalition vote is strongly skewed towards the 40+, the Green vote is heavily skewed towards the young (21% in the 18-24 age group is very high indeed), while Labor is strongest in those up to 39. This is a generational election in which older Australians have swung towards Coalition. younger Australians away from the Coalition. If this election were held tomorrow with voting limited to those under forty, Labor would romp in with strong Green support.

This pattern fits with my perceptions of the views of younger Australians. They are less likely to support stop the boats, more likely to believe that climate change is a real problem, more likely to be left of centre on social issues including gay marriage. The distribution shows why, from a Labor perspective, it is so important to try to minimise losses in this election. The age distribution vote skew is so pronounced that, if the voting intentions were to stay the same, each year that passes improves Labor's vote as the presently younger age cohorts age, the older cohorts diminish.

The Greens will obviously be pleased too. While their overall vote has apparently weakened (10% in this poll vs 11.8% at the last election), the high youth support does provide a base for subsequent Senate elections.

   There are a number of other interesting features in the numbers. However, I am out of time this morning. I am going to be watching the detailed pattern of voting on 7 September with interest not because of the overall result, but for what it may tell us about the longer term changing pattern across Australia.

The Mediterranean's 300 year drought

This piece by Kosta Pandos and Sunanda Creagh in The Conversation, Climate change hastened ancient civilisations' collapse: study, interested me. It reports on a new study that concluded that climate change sparked the political and economic turmoil that hastened the collapse of formerly prosperous civilisations in regions such as Greece and Syria towards the end of the 13th century BC. You can find the full study here.

The Conversation writers put it in the context of current discussions on global warming, although the study does no more than illustrate the importance of climatic shifts in a particular place and time in which I have an interest.

I commented once before that one of the things that I did not properly understand when I first did history and prehistory at University was the extent of climatic variation. If you look at just how dry the Greek Islands are today, you can see how a long drought might affect life. In similar vein, we now know that the troubles afflicting new settlement at Sydney were in part climate induced, while during the long Aboriginal occupation of this country there were multiple climatic variations.

The expansion in our knowledge of past variations in climate and their affects is really quite remarkable. 

Sunday snippets - the importance of PEFO in an economic policy free zone

This has been a most disrupted weekend.

Some of has been good. Eating eldest's pork belly plus salad (it's a nice combination) while watching first a film and the Rugby test between Australia and New Zealand with both daughters. Then today somewhat unexpectedly watching youngest play hockey; her season had ended, but she had a last game as a sub.

Some of it has been not so good. Really, oh Wallabies, with 55% of the possession, how did you let the All Blacks beat you so badly?! Eighteen points no less. Did you let the Haka put you off? The photo is from the Canberra Times. Then youngest let some goals in, although she played well and did stop a penalty shot. That's one on one and quite hard to do.   

Some of the weekend has been just plain bad. Waking in the early morning today to do some writing, I turned the air conditioner on to get some warmth. Half an hour later, it blew the fuses. Hours later, the electrician got things working again. Grrrr!

So what to write now? Well, just one thing.

For those who like acronyms, PEFO stands for the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Prepared by the Commonwealth Departments of Treasury and Finance, its purpose is summarised in this way: 

The Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 (the Charter) provides for the Secretary to the Treasury and the Secretary of the Department of Finance and Deregulation (the Secretaries) to release publicly a Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook report (PEFO) within 10 days of the issue of the writ for a general election. Such a writ was issued on 5 August 2013.

The purpose of the PEFO is to provide updated information on the economic and fiscal outlook. The information in the report takes into account, to the fullest extent possible, all Government decisions made before the issue of the writ and all other circumstances that may have a material effect on the economic and fiscal outlook.

The objective is, to use a phrase popularised by former Australian politician Don Chipp, to keep the bastards honest. As an aside, where are the Australian Democrats when we really need them? They provided a middle of the road alternative to those who find themselves unable to vote for either of the major parties or, today, the Greens. 

I digress.

This year's PEFO has attracted varying views. Economic columnist Ross Gittins is supportive (The devil's in the detail of Treasury data), fellow economic columnist Alan Kohler is not (PEFO a work of pure fantasy). For those who want to read the original, you will find it here. Ross Gittin's piece provides the best summary.

In many ways, this election campaign has been an economic policy free zone. What PEFO does is to lay down some parameters that both Labor and Coalition will have to deal with. How those parameters are interpreted depends upon particular bias, yet ignore them at your peril. The capacity of either of the leading contenders to deliver on their other promises depends on those parameters.

I make this point because, to my mind, neither of the main sides has yet provided a clear explanation, a clear picture, of the way that they are going to manage economic uncertainty. The policy elements may be there, but I need a simple explanation that I can test.  

MOOCs 1 - overview

I didn't get a lot of feedback on my post on massive open online courses (MOOCs) (Have you tried MOOCS? What did you think?), but I wanted to continue my discussion as a way of clarifying my own thoughts. It also makes a welcome break from the current Australian election campaign!

I suppose I should start by explaining further why I am interested in MOOCs.

To begin with, what is a MOOC? In simple terms, MOOC stands for:

• Massive. The platforms used allow for almost any number of enrolments. In Autumn 2011, Stanford launched three courses each of which had over 100,000 enrolments. That's massive.
• Open. The courses are open to anyone. There are no limitations on entry. Further, participation has been free, although that is changing.
• Online. The entire course is delivered online. There is no campus.
• Course. Students are enrolled in specific courses of varying lengths.

A free course from major institutions taken in your own home? What's the catch? Well, there are two. The first is that it requires a certain level of determination to get through. Completion rates are as low as 10%. The second is that, in the past, you got no recognition for your efforts. That's fine if you were doing something just for the sake of learning, not so good if you wanted something to put on your CV.

The costs involved in setting everything up are obviously tremendous, and then you give it away. Is that sustainable? No, its not. An institution might do certain things as an ad-on, but you can't do it in a core way for ever. There has to be money in it.

Now here we come to the basic product of a university or recognised training institution. It's not the course, but the qualification or tick at the end that counts. In measuring the economic value of education, for example, economists don't measure the value of the course, but of the qualification at the end.What extra income do people with degrees get?

Now once you have a mass audience, some at least may want to get the qualification. So what do you now do? You charge them for a test or exam and, if they pass, you give them the formal tick. As a former CEO of a specialist medical college, I know this system well. We charged our trainees a membership fee, that covered certain costs, but we also charged them an examination fee for the exams that they had to sit to test scientific knowledge.

Can you see why universities are worried?  I enrol in the course at no charge, then if I am doing well I pay for my test and get my qualification. Bingo, I am a graduate. It's actually not quite as simple as that. In my next post, I will look in more detail at the economics of MOOCs. 

Refugees - Mr Morrison, Mr Abbott and a staggeringly stupid inhumanity

I do not know if the reports coming through on the Coalition's latest stance on refugee policy are true or not. I quote from Bianca Hall's story in the Age.

The Coalition will ramp up its hardline stance on refugees on Friday, announcing that almost 32,000 asylum seekers who have already arrived in Australia by boat will never get permanent settlement as well as stripping them of the right to appeal to the courts.

The Coalition would also introduce indefinite work-for-the-dole obligations for those found to be refugees.

A Coalition government would scrap the right of asylum seekers to appeal to the courts, which in the March quarter brought the number of asylum seekers who were granted refugee status from 65.3 per cent to more than 90 per cent.

To my mind, this is a bridge too far. It displays an inhumanity of staggering proportions. All objectivity has been lost in the continuing race to the bottom.

Let me start with a simple question. If the Coalition is prepared to do this to one group, what makes you think that they won't do it to you if politically expedient? Once the principle is established that Governments can simply overturn due process and the rule of law, where do you draw the line? Why are you different?

My second point. In playing on this issue in the way they have, Governments of both persuasions have created a festering sore that has begun to poison the country. Think I'm wrong? Just read some of the comment threads.

My third point. This is just bad policy in practical terms. Yes, it may stop the boats. But can it be enforced? Leave aside the legal challenges, leave aside the moral or value issues, this is punishment policy. I would have thought that the practical problems associated with, for example, indefinite work for the dole obligations for those found to be refugees would actually make the policy unenforceable.

I know that assimilation has acquired a bad odour.  It's not a politically correct word. However, the idea of assimilation provided a path acceptable to the broader community that allowed new groups to be fitted into Australian society. There is no path in these latest pronouncements. There is no room for assimilation.  There is just exclusion, regardless of case.

If these latest pronouncements prove to be correct, then I am forced to the conclusion that we cannot trust the Coalition to run this country. We cannot trust them to be objective or fair. We cannot expect them to observe the rule of law. We cannot trust them to look after us.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? To slightly mangle the Latin tag, who will  guard us from the guardians? 

I write with sadness, knowing that many will disagree with me. Looking at the polling data, I would think that I am in a minority.

But who would have thought that issues such as productivity improvement, the economy, decentralisation, the future we want to build together, would be so overshadowed by a single, arguably peripheral, issue? 

Shakespeare wrote: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves." I think that's pretty right. Neither Labor nor the Coalition would be running on the refugee issue in the way they have if they didn't think it appealed to the electorate, ie us.  

Have you tried MOOCS? What did you think?

As I mentioned in passing a little while ago, I have been watching the emergence of Massive open online courses (MOOCs) with interest. They continue to be all the rage in the university sector. Now they are spreading into other parts of education and training. I can see why MOOCs may disrupt, change, existing teaching systems. However, I have been wondering about the economics of the whole thing, as well at the educational aspects.

MOOCs are, in fact the latest in a series of changes dating bask to at least the early eighties (I first wrote about the process around 1983) that mark the progressive commercialisation and industrialisation of the services sector. I may be wrong, but I suspect that my regular readers are unlikely to be interested in MOOCs as device for personal learning. Still, I wondered if I could find anyone who has had personal experience with MOOCs.

If so would you like to tell me about it? Did you start and then stop? What were the things that you most/least liked about the process? This information would help me cross-check my own views.

Postscript

I am going to leave this post up until Saturday to see if I can get more. In the meantime, a colleague wrote in another forum:

Yes I have tried one. I did an online course with Steve Blank on How to Build a Lean Startup . He lectures at Stanford and I did the course through Udacity. It was excellent! 

In response to a question, Ian added:

It was well presented. it was nicely broken up into modules. There were some review questions in each section. And I felt I was getting as good as I would've got in a face to face lecture. The material was stimulating. There was extra reading to do from a set text book. So it was a very positive learning experience.

Messrs Abbott and Rudd fail their middle management interviews

Note to readers. I am treating this post as my Monday Forum post. I am told that the debate got better during the Q&As. Maybe I'm wrong in my initial reaction, but I found myself disappointed and quite angry. What was your reaction to the debate? What did you learn from it that was new in terms of policies, style of government? 

This will be tomorrow's post. I'm sorry, but I switched the debate off. This is what I wrote on Twitter:

What a boring lot of twaddle. I switched off the Rudd v Abbott debate. It's like listening to a narrow middle management job interview.

Seriously, and maybe it improved later with questions, but it was the most boring job interview I ever heard. I wanted to know what both thought were the key issues for our future, a bit of high level stuff backed up later in questions with additional details. What should we aim for over the next three years, how might we get there?

Surely that's not too much to ask? It doesn't have to be perfect, but it gives me a basis for choice. To the degree that each leads a team, I wouldn't vote for either.

How about something like this. "I will leave the detail to the questions. In the short time I have, I want to  tell you about the most pressing challenges Australia faces and what we will do to address them."