By Ad astra  

Is China a bully? If you stopped the average person in the street and asked this question, the answer would probably be a resounding ‘YES’.

Why?

A bully is defined as: Someone who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable.

So how could China be a bully? ‘China’ is the name of a country, a landmass in Asia, even a collection of people, mainly Chinese in ethnicity. How could any of these entities be a bully?

Yet the perception that China is a bully is widespread. Why?

The average person would recall that very recently China threatened Australia with retaliation over its public push to have an inquiry into the origin, progress and management of the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, which China’s leaders interpreted as Australia pointing the finger of blame at China for this disaster and how it handled it. Now that there is world wide consensus about the need for such an inquiry, the threats have quietened, and China’s ruling class have endorsed it.

Some would quote the words of representatives of China: ambassadors and trade officials, who have made angry threats of trade retaliation against our government because it had sought an inquiry. China’s ambassador to Australia was particularly strident and nasty in his condemnation and his unconcealed threats of retaliation.

Others would quote the savage threats of trade sanctions against Australian barley growers, based on the spurious accusation that they were guilty of ‘dumping’ into China’s markets. This is seen for what it is: retaliation for our government’s uncompromising stand on an enquiry, indeed its leading role.

Now China is threatening to limit coal imports from Australian coal exporters. Government authorities in Beijing have directed state-owned power plants to purchase domestic product instead. Analysts fear this could also lead China to delay cargoes of Australia’s most lucrative export, iron ore.

Even as this piece was being written China’s National People’s Congress approved a controversial ‘security’ law that will override Hong Kong’s laws. Pro-democracy activists fear that pushing through the law will mean ‘the end of Hong Kong’ – that is, the effective end of its autonomy and its freedoms. If this is not bullying, what is it?

So there is bullying going on, no matter how you care to define it.

But as we’ve hinted that China as defined above could hardly be labelled a bully, who is it that has created this widely-held perception?

It comes down to the people who control the governing body: ‘The People’s Republic of China’, which operates in a framework of a socialist republic run by a single party.

The top man is the President, Xi Jinping. Elected by the National People’s Congress, he is simultaneously the general secretary of the Communist Party of China, and thereby the top leader in the one party system. He has held this position for seven years. So he is the one who controls the Party and the government of China. His subordinates follow his lead unquestionably.

If anyone is guilty of bullying, it is he, not the Chinese people.

If other evidence of his bullying propensity is needed, take his attitude to the Spratly Islands, located off the coast of the Philippines and Malaysia, claimed by both of these nations as well as Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan. Xi insists that China has sovereignty over these islands and has aggressively taken control of them to build military bases.

To highlight his military capability, Xi has ordered his navy to patrol the South China Sea, which encompass an area of around 3,500,000 square kilometres from the Karimata Strait, situated between Sumatra and Java to the west and Kalimantan to the east and the Strait of Malacca separating Indonesia and Malaysia, to the Strait of Taiwan, and in doing so China’s control over the strategic Zhongsha Islands. It claims all the islands, reefs, and shoals within the South China Sea.

The South China Sea is of great strategic importance; one-third of the world’s shipping passes through it, carrying over $3 trillion in trade each year. It contains lucrative fisheries in Scarborough Shoal, which are crucial for the food security of millions in Southeast Asia. Huge oil and gas reserves are believed to lie beneath its seabed.

The ‘demarcation line’ used by the People’s Republic of China to define its sovereignty over this area is named: ‘the nine-dash line, or the ten-dash line or even the eleven-dash line’. It refers an undefined, vaguely located, but not internationally recognised, inverted U-shaped line that China itself has drawn in the South China Sea, shown as green in this image..

So whichever way you care to spin China’s attitude and approach to sovereignty, it is hard to escape the conclusion that China is indeed a bully, headed by the bully-in-chief, Xi Jinping.

But there is matching bully across the Atlantic. You know who he is. Writing in in The Age, George Megalogenis says: The bully that is supposed to have our back, Washington, is often indistinguishable from the bully who now threatens our economy, Beijing. If the Chinese continue to pick off our second-tier exports to teach us a lesson for speaking out, perhaps Trump might want to open up his economy to Australia to compensate us for our losses? But this is not how Trump sees the world. He’d like Americans to buy local, and to sell their surpluses to the rest of the world. A world where China cuts out Australia, and leaves us to bargain with a protectionist US, is not one that serves our interests. This cartoon says it all.

Make up you own mind who the bullies are.

By 2353NM  

A week or so ago, we discussed the union bashing disguised as concern for ‘essential workers’ from LNP MPs Andrew Laming and Peter Dutton. Unfortunately, the pitiful behaviours exhibited by these two LNP politicians is not reserved to the outer suburbs of Brisbane.

It is on the record that the Premiers of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria convinced the ‘national cabinet’ to impose tougher social restrictions on the Australian community earlier than others wanted. This followed the experts’ advice that social distancing was the correct method to ensure that our health care system was not overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases. In comparison to a lot of other ‘first world’ countries, the strategy was successful, leading to us now experiencing a gradual relaxation of pandemic restrictions.

On 8 May 2020, Prime Minister Morrison released what he called ‘the roadmap’ to a reduction in social restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Morrison said in the announcement that

Australian governments are taking a measured approach. Our three-step plan provides a pathway for jurisdictions to move towards COVID safe communities in a way that best suits their individual circumstances. States and territories are able to move between the steps on the pathway at different times, in line with their current public health situation and local conditions. [Emphasis added]

When Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan let loose on the ABC’s Insiders on May 3, Queensland schools were open only as a last resort for children of ‘essential workers who couldn’t make other arrangements’ and New South Wales and Victorian schools were closed. However Tehan certainly didn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story

Tehan: So, he said that when those seven national priorities were put out, and they had two very important conditions to them. Now, the question to Dan Andrews, is, sure, take a sledgehammer to defeating the coronavirus. But, why are you taking a sledgehammer, also, to your school system? When Mark McGowan in Western Australia, when Michael Gunner in the Northern Territory, when Steven Marshall in South Australia, have taken a sledgehammer to the coronavirus, but haven’t to their education system.

Speers: But he is receiving this advice from his chief health officer, that I just quoted. Should he ignore that?

Tehan:` That same chief health officer is on the national medical expert panel, and that national medical expert panel says that it’s safe for children to be at school, and it’s safe for teachers to be at school, with the right protocols. So, why don’t we …

The differentiation wouldn’t have anything to do with the New South Wales Premier being a member of the Liberal Party and the Queensland Premier, while a member of the ALP, doesn’t have a large popularity buffer over the LNP contender would it? Before you answer, consider this News.com.au report on a statement by Victorian federal Liberal Party backbencher Tim Wilson

As other states and territories took their first tentative steps into life after the pandemic, Victoria held firm.

The cautious approach has won the Andrews Government more support, but predictably it has also attracted detractors.

Among them is Victorian federal Liberal MP Tim Wilson.

And Wilson is quoted in the same article as saying

“The burden and the responsibility then has to be on Dan Andrews, when other states are allowing people to go and visit their mums on Mother’s Day, why can’t we go and visit in Victoria our mums on Mother’s Day?

“Why can’t we send our kids to school? Why are businesses being unnecessarily punished longer than in other states? And he has to come out and articulate that case and take responsibility for it.

Victorian Premier Andrews is not doing much different to New South Wales Premier Berejiklian or Queensland Premier Palaszczuk — primarily because their states have the majority of COVID-19 cases. And for the record, Victoria was still managing clusters of infection in mid-May, unlike the other states so logically Andrews is being cautious. There is nothing wrong with caution; the Prime Minister — a member of the same political party as Tim Wilson — flagged that different states would take action at different times.

Of course it’s political point scoring. And they don’t just do it to ‘the other mob’, they ‘eat’ their own as well! Recently the ALP MP representing Eden-Monaro, Mike Kelly, retired for health reasons. Before Kelly actually resigned, the media was suggesting that NSW Deputy Premier (and State National Party Leader) John Barilaro would be the conservative candidate for the potential by-election. By 4 May, the story had changed

Mr Barilaro said he had not seen Liberal Party polling, but claimed Nationals research showed he could win the byelection, but he was not prepared to trigger a showdown for the seat against [NSW Transport Minister and Liberal Party member] Mr [Andrew] Constance.

“Andrew and I were never ever going to race or compete against each other. That is something we both honoured,” Mr Barilaro said.

“The polling clearly will show Andrew can win the seat and it clearly shows I can win the seat, but at the end of the day it’s not about winning the seat it’s about what’s right for the people of Eden-Monaro.”

And later on in the same report

“If anyone wants to try and put a wedge through Andrew and I good luck to them, but I know the friendship I have with Andrew.”

Constance did actually announce he would be a candidate for all of about half a day before announcing on a local radio station that he wasn’t going to do it (that’s another story altogether). While Barilaro might get on with Constance, there were clearly other factors in play for Barilaro’s withdrawal.

Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell has obtained an explosive text exchange between the two men in which Mr Barilaro says [Nationals Federal Leader and Deputy Prime Minister] McCormack was “threatened” by his plans to run. “Don’t hide behind the “members will choose the candidate’ rubbish, as you were the only one saying such lines,”

Mr Barilaro wrote in the leaked messages. “Don’t you think my branches would have backed me in? “To feel threatened by me clearly shows you have failed your team and failed as a leader. “You will never be acknowledged by me as our leader. You aren’t. You never will be. “The Nats had a chance to create history, to change momentum, and you had a candidate that was prepared to risk everything to make it happen. “What did you risk? Nothing. “Hope you are proud of yourself.”

You also have to feel sorry for whoever the Coalition does put up as a candidate in Eden-Monaro. Apart from the head start the ALP has on the campaign, why would you vote for a third or subsequent choice candidate representing a party that has a heated public slanging match (the obscene text messages within National Party ranks have deliberately not been linked in this article) over who should be the candidate?

Give us a break — we don’t need the points scoring or the second guessing. What we do need is a demonstration by politicians that they can work together to create benefit for all; without picking over the spoils of victory before the battle has even started and far less ideology for the sake of it.

What do you think?

By John Haly  

The CovidSafe app has triggered innumerable privacy and security concerns amidst the public, who are already deeply suspicious of a government that has eroded public trust. Amongst recent instances of the diminishment of our trust are:

• accusing arsonists of being responsible for the Summer fires,
• much pork barrelling in coalition seats (including but not restricted to the Sports-Rorts),
• the draining of Australian river waters by the continued attempt to privatise water supply,
• the recalcitrance over climate change and the attacks instigated by many levels of Government upon members of the public raising the issue,
• government recalcitrance in addressing issues of wage stagnation, welfare reform, and phony debt recovery.

Despite the trust deficit, the Australian Government has spent $1.5m on CovidSafe, including over $700,000 for Amazon to host the data.

But is the issue Trust or Competence?

The lack of trust in this Government’s promotion of this CovidSafe App may be justifiable on their record on privacy and security. Still, you have to keep in mind their frequent displays of incompetence in science and technology. Remember Abbott and Brandis trying to tell the public what metadata was? Remember Malcolm Turnbull trying to come up with a better NBN? Recall both the Australian Census online or the Centrelink portal failures were falsely blamed on convenient DOS attacks? Attacking them on untrustworthiness can be done. Still, it is easier to criticise the App’s lack of suitability both technically and statistically. So I am going to stay away from the privacy and security issue and ask the question, is the CovidSafe App fit for purpose?

The Physics of Radio Signals

My analysis begins with a comment in a recent ABC article concerning the software bugs and issues of the COVIDSafe contact-tracing app:

“ … “Because mobile phone device models are different in Bluetooth strength and how they operate, all contacts within Bluetooth range are noted on the user’s device,” a DTA spokesperson said. …”

Bugs and issues can be fixed (although not in time before lockdown lift begins), but there are limits to what our science can discern about the physics of radio signals, like Bluetooth.

Let me ask you, dear reader, a few questions.

Do you live in the country, city, an apartment or have anyone who lives within 10 metres of you? Do you stand in a social distancing line keeping the required 1.5m while waiting to get into a shop? The answer to the last question ought to be yes, but bear with me. If you are within 10 metres – or in right circumstances, perhaps twice that – then you and a stranger or a known neighbour can be tagged with “associating” because this App uses Bluetooth to detect other phones.

Before you protest that it is supposed to be when you are within 1.5 metres, keep in mind using BlueTooth for localisation is a very well researched field of study. Bluetooth and other narrowband radio systems can only reach an accuracy of several metres at best without accompanying geolocation or triangulation of wifi data (a strategy later IEEE papers raise as attempts to overcome localisation inaccuracies). Naturally adding geolocation data, raises all the apparent privacy and monitoring concerns (which I said I was not going to go into). This App, for now, doesn’t use geolocation except on the Android/Google version of the App in a limited capacity.

Bluetooth Ranges by class dependancies

Signal strength isn’t a good indicator of distance between two connected BlueTooth devices, because it is too subject to environmental conditions. Is there a person between the devices? How is the owner holding his/her device? What is its proximity to metal plates that impede the signal path? Are there any other radio frequency reflecting surfaces? Is there a wall? Concrete walls will attenuate the radio signal. Using BlueTooth is essentially wholly inaccurate, and it has absolutely no sense of direction. Much like our Government, but I digress. Whereas the virus can’t traverse walls and floors (unless it is brought into enclosed spaces by people), Bluetooth can. Generically for a distance of approximately 10 metres. Although my testing on a five-year-old iPhone 5 running iOS 9 can make a connection from nearly 20 metres through two building walls or doors. So Bluetooth can’t tell when you are 1.5 metres away.

Bluetooth Ranges are extending not contracting.

Meaning two neighbours sitting alone watching TV in their lounge room – according to their respective phones running the App – have been in close contact for hours if your binge-watching a good series. Let’s not even discuss how long you and your neighbours have spent “sleeping” together, while alone in your adjacent houses or apartments with your phones on the charger by your beds. For all you know, anybody’s phone might be standing in the adjacent store, approximately ten or more metres away but with whom you never interact. The Government App will be rife with false positives without you even knowing who these “contacts” are.

Google Phone providing geolocation permissions

But alternatively, a passing stranger’s viral cough load, can in seconds, infect you. So can contact from a surface contaminated with coronavirus. Someone coughing into your face is undetectable by your mutual phones, unless he spends 15 minutes in your proximity, apologising. At least if that happens, you have plenty of time to ask for name and contact information for the contact tracers, when one of you gets unfortunate news after being tested. Touching an infected surface and forgetting to wash your hands before shovelling food into your mouth, means the time between contact and infection, can be hours, but either the wrong or no phone, might be blamed.

The App can detect none of these scenarios that tell you when another person with the same App, has a phone. None of these things will trigger a 15 minute Bluetooth alert. It is not just false positives that it will generate, but it simply can not detect anything other than another phone. Let me reiterate. It is a Phone detection facility, not a virus detection facility!!

The Lottery Probability

Now let’s discuss some numbers! The ABC reported on the 6th of May, that 5 million phones that had uploaded the App. The Government reported on the same day we had conducted 688K tests Australia-wide for the virus. This lifted our testing stats to 2.6% of the population, presuming not too many people have gone in for repeat tests.

Our consequent testing regime has risen (as of 21st of May) to 1,137,684 tests or 4.4% of the Australian population of 25.695 million. Simultaneously, the upload of CovidSafe has slowed to only 5.87 million by the 19th of May. So 22% of the population (a long way from Morrison’s desire for 40%) with an App that can only potentially detect 4.4% of the population, and a lot of these tests will be negative – for now. Only 0.65% of all those tests have been positive.

The Covid infection Status in Australia as of 6th of May

So let’s rephrase that.

So 22% of the population – if paired with mutual phones running a working version of the CovidSafe App – can confirm the 0.65% of 4.4% of our population, has coronavirus. To be fair, it might have a remote possibility of identifying someone with an infection, but the probability of my winning the lottery has a better chance. Let’s not forget the only alert the App – in theory – sends, is AFTER someone has been infected and have informed authorities and a tracing team has triggered the alarm, which, if they have infected you, is a little too late. Note I used phrases like, “might have” and “in theory.” Sadly as of writing this, the capacity of the App to do any of this is non-existent.

The Covid infection Status in Australia as of 21st of May

Operability

As of the 19th of May, no State in Australia has reported any use of the CovidSafe App data, and the State with the most substantial documented infection rate (NSW) “has had issues integrating it into the existing contact-tracing method.” In addition to the incapacity of States to process the data, many smartphones can’t run the CovidSafe App.  The Guardian reports, “there are no plans to make it work on phones operating older software than iOS 10 and Android 6.0.” This is not a recent discovery, as we have known for some time that the tracing capacity is inoperative.

Risk Factors

The most significant risk is the public’s misunderstanding that it will keep them safe. That leads to complacency, which means people may ease their due diligence and not be so cautious about social distancing and washing their hands regularly. That is where it becomes dangerous.

To quote one woman I interacted with recently on social media said, “I have the app because l want to be notified if l have come into contact with a positive person and get tested ASAP.” The App was never even conceived to be a buzzer that alerts you to positive people nearby. Perceptions like that actually make it dangerous! Not only does it not keep you ”safe,” but it also has the potential to increase the risk of infection through complacency. The Government has been negligent in educating the public not only to what it is supposed to do, but what are the limits of the physics of radio waves and statistical probability.

People’s misunderstanding of how the App works leads to risk taking.

Alternately?

Instead of focusing on a dysfunctional App, perhaps we should be following the examples of Iceland, South Korea, Germany, or our neighbour New Zealand and upscaling randomised asymptomatic testing or regular testing for critical workers. All the success stories of countries handling the virus have the common thread that testing was crucial.

Conclusion

The App is not a panacea for tracing infection. It is a placebo to placate the masses who are too technically illiterate to understand the nuances and limitations of technology, by an incompetent Government that focuses on misunderstood technology at the expense of more robust asymptomatic testing of Australians.

Unfit for purpose? Gov’t or App?

By Denis Bright  

The W.H.O. Assembly reached a remarkable consensus on the need to investigate the spread of COVID-19. Australia co-sponsored the initiatives at the Assembly as part of a team effort by thirty-five other players, including the European Union with its twenty-seven additional states.

Regrettably, this achievement received far less attention than the evolving war of words between Australia and China. Australia was a loyal player in the Trump Administration’s efforts to marginalise Chinese influence across the Indo-Pacific Basin.

Australia’s Defence Connect (20 May 2020) called for even greater loyalty to the US Global Alliance from Australia in this time of crisis over the spread of COVID-19:

“It is Australia’s indispensable relationship, the core of our national security and the key enabler, that has allowed Australia to freely engage and prosper within the post-Second World War order. However, in an era of mounting great power competition and disruption, the US-Australia relationship will become ever more important, explains retired Army officer Jason Thomas.”

Now to earlier reports in Defence Connect (24 April 2020) on Australia’s involvement in joint patrols in the South China Sea with US naval vessels.

“The Royal Australian Navy frigate HMAS Parramatta (FFG 154) began sailing with Ticonderoga Class guided missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52) then rendezvoused with amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6) and Arleigh-Burke Class guided missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52) on 18 April.

Their combined operations started with force integration training and manoeuvring exercises between Parramatta and Bunker Hill.

Captain Kurt Sellerberg, Commanding Officer of the USS Bunker Hill, welcomed the opportunity to operate with the Royal Australian Navy again, saying, “It is great to be operating with the Australians again. Every time I have deployed to this region, and to the Middle East, I have had the good fortune to operate with the Royal Australian Navy.”

Operations with USS America started with a precision manoeuvres that included Barry in the South China Sea.

Rear Admiral Fred Kacher, Commander of the America Expeditionary Strike Group, said, “We look forward to every opportunity we get to work with our stalwart Australian allies at sea.

“To bring this much combat capability together here in the South China Sea truly signals to our allies and partners in the region that we are deeply committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Operations with Parramatta have included integrated live fire exercises, co-ordinated helicopter operations, small boat force protection drills, command and control integration, and manoeuvring interoperability.”

Only political insiders could explain the apparent contrasts between operations on the high seas and the productive diplomacy at the W.H.O. Assembly. Here are key clauses from the resolution which was carried unanimously and without amendment.

OP9.10  Initiate, at the earliest appropriate moment, and in consultation with Member States, 1 a stepwise process of impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation, including using existing mechanisms, 2 as appropriate, to review experience gained and lessons learned from the WHO-coordinated international health response to COVID-19, including:

(i) the effectiveness of the mechanisms at WHO’s disposal;

(ii) the functioning of the IHR and the status of implementation of the relevant recommendations of the previous IHR Review Committees;

(iii) WHO’s contribution to United Nations-wide efforts; and (iv) the actions of WHO and their timelines pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic, and make recommendations to improve global pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response capacity, including through strengthening, as appropriate, WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme;

OP9.11 Report to the Seventy-fourth World Health Assembly, through the 148th session of the Executive Board, on the implementation of this resolution.

OP9.9 Ensure that the Secretariat is adequately resourced to support the Member States granting of regulatory approvals needed to enable timely and adequate COVID-19 countermeasures.

How can Australians understand the gyrations in our defence and foreign policies? Here are two contradictory explanations.

Tentative Explanation 1:  Australia wanted to act as an honest independent country in coming to terms with the horrific spread of COVID-19 as the number of cases approaches 5 million with an extra 4,500 deaths each day recently and a total death toll of almost 350,000. It was clearly within Australia’s strategic and commercial interests to cool the war of words between the Trump Administration and China. So much of Australia’s recent prosperity since the election of John Howard in 1996 was indeed due to the rise of China with its positive benefits for Australia from profitable trade in commodities and services with China as well as substantial net investment from China in the Australian economy:

Tentative Explanation 2: Australia was acting as a staunch ally of the Trump Administration to fester the war of words between the USA and China in the longer-term. President Trump would indeed use this war of words to appeal to his support base across the USA to maintain his hold on the votes from the Electoral College on 3 November 2020 as in the previous presidential election in 2016:

The two Tentative Explanations are of course not mutually exclusive. Should President Trump gain his cherished second term, his administration will certainly be on the offensive against a rise in the global strategic influence of China.

Reporters Julian Borger and Alison Rourke in The Guardian (19 May 2019) support this foreboding about our future in such a staunch political, economic and strategic alliance with the USA under current Australia United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) protocols which make Australia a virtual 51^st state:

“Donald Trump has threatened to cut funding to the World Health Organization permanently and even pull the US out of the global body altogether unless it makes “major substantive improvements” which the president did not explain.

In a four-page letter to the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Trump claimed the organisation had shown an “alarming lack of independence” from China and accused Tedros of presiding over “repeated missteps … that have been extremely costly for the world”. The letter, he said, followed a US investigation into the WHO’s “failed response to the Covid-19 outbreak”.

Trump’s threat came on the day the WHO member states met for the first day of a two-day virtual assembly. Tedros had invited both Trump and Xi Jinping to speak, in the hope of resolving differences between the two leaders on handling the outbreak, but Trump did not take part.”

Commitment to a Space Warfare Agenda will be a crucial strategic initiative if President Trump is re-elected. This will require a network of ground stations in both global hemispheres including parts of the expanding NATO network across Europe where ties are being strengthened with countries like Georgia, the Ukraine and Poland.

Our own Pine Gap Base near Alice Springs will have a vital role to play in President Trump’s Space Warfare Agendas after 2021.

Sustainable peace across the Southern Hemisphere is still compromised by blind-spots in the UN Treaty arrangements to promote collective peace and security for our Indo-Pacific Basin. Can submarines bearing nuclear weapons transit across the oceans from Atlantic Ports in the USA to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and then move through the stormy waters of the Southern Ocean to cross the Pacific Ocean?

Although most countries have ratified the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967, there are still grey areas in the protective cover available. This permits accurate targeting of military vessels in transit across the various Southern Oceans from surveillance bases like Pine Gap in Australia.

Monitoring of expanded geospatial surveillance is surely consistent with the need to monitor pandemic threats with power to assess new initiatives in surveillance from satellites in an era of renewed great power rivalry.

The Cold Fleet Report from the Royal Navy has been around for four years. There has been little discussion of the cost of Australia’s involvement in military initiatives to support geospatial surveillance of the windswept and dangerous oceans to the south of Australia.

A future federal LNP national government is likely to be highly enthusiastic about Australia’s involvement in US Space Warfare Programmes.

The appeal of a return to our traditional role as the Deputy Sheriff to any Republican Administration in the White House will be almost irresistible to future LNP Governments seeking a higher profile for Australia in the global strategic profile of the USA.

However, the possibilities of a more independent role for Australia in the Indo Pacific Basin should be just as irresistible. The surprising level of consensus-building at the W.H.O. Assembly could be extended to strategic policies. Trillions could be saved in expenditure on future space warfare programmes if nuclear weapons free zones were extended and perhaps the role of the Pine Gap Base transferred to the protection of these new treaty obligations.

Ironically, it is the US which is ready to take advantage of Chinese embargoes on the export of Australian commodities, services and more open Chinese investment (AFR 15 May 2020):

“China is preparing to slap steep tariffs on Australian barley imports after an 18-month anti-dumping investigation. China also this week suspended beef exports from four Australian abattoirs.

“US barley products have similar quality levels to Australian barley which is replaceable. It is a shame that Australia is losing its competitive advantage in beef and barley,” said Lin Guofa, an analyst with consulting firm Bric Agriculture Group.

“The suspension of the four abattoirs is designed to send a strong signal to deter Chinese traders to import beef from Australia. Most buyers will be fearful now about continuing their business with Australia.”

Commodities traders and state media played up the barley announcement, saying it highlighted China was less dependent on Australian agricultural imports than it used to be.

China has indirectly threatened to punish Australia economically after the Morrison government called for an independent inquiry into the origins of coronavirus pandemic.

One trader quoted a Chinese idiom “Kill the chicken to scare the monkey” which means making an example out of someone to threaten others. “With barley and beef, China is now using Australia as an example (to threaten other countries),” he said.”

However, on a positive note in the interests of our commercial and strategic relationships with the USA, there is a possibility that the USA will want to raise the banner of modernism to overcome the excesses of the Trump era. I am too remote from the USA to call the outcomes of the presidential elections on 3 November 2020, still several months before the actual event.

With Bob Dylan’s 79^th Birthday approaching on 24 May 2020, Australians need to ask for  real paradigm changes that distance our country from the eccentricities of the Trump Administration relating to both global action on COVID-19 and his future strategic plans to involve Australia in future space wars programmes.

The old folk song for more peaceful agendas is even more relevant today than in 1963 when it was recorded before President Kennedy’s assassination and released the following year.

Australia is being hurt commercially by its growing antagonism towards China, our best and most profitable trading partner. What is going on behind the scenes in the corridors of power in Canberra in the halls of the Defence and Foreign Affairs Departments to justify this wanton folly to protect US interests across the Indo-Pacific Basin?

Surely, the Trump Administration with the support of the Department of State and the Pentagon can fight their own battles with China. So, what is the real payoff for Australia in these difficult times? And if the war games in the South China Sea go astray, are Australians instantly at war with China through the chain of command in these joint patrols?

By 2353NM  

You may have seen Federal MP Andrew Laming’s comment in the media recently suggesting that parents send their children back to school, regardless of the recommendations of the various Education Departments around Australia. The ABC’s version of the story is here.

“Essential workers are being second-guessed, cajoled and in some cases bullied by principals who are interrogating other parents, sometimes talking to children, to establish what hours families are working,” Mr Laming said.

“This is completely unacceptable.”

He said parents facing that sort of pushback should call the police to ensure their children received an education.

This certainly isn’t Laming’s first attack on teachers. Here’s one from May 2018:

Mr Laming said teachers would have a stronger negotiating position if they “regularised” their working week to 38 hours and their holidays to four weeks per year, like most other workers, reported Fairfax

“Teaching needs to operate like other jobs, with the same hours, days and weeks as the rest of the economy, rather than cluttered school hours where there it is little beyond the face-to-face time,” he said.

They shouldn’t work from home unless they are paid to do so, he said. But critics have said the MP has no idea about the realities of the working life of a schoolteacher.

Which just goes to show who really inhabits the ‘Canberra bubble’. It isn’t the school teachers who spend considerable time when not in the classroom doing professional development, marking exams, attending parent teacher interviews, extracurricular activities, school camps and the multitude of other things that teachers are expected to attend such as school fund raisers, school discos and formals without payment.

Laming is a member of the LNP and, like Home Affairs Minister Dutton, represents areas that are considered to be outer suburbs and adjacent rural/residential areas around Brisbane. Laming represents Bowman on the south east of Brisbane; Dutton represents Dickson on the northside. Dutton, who for some reason demanded to be given information the Queensland Government used to justify a partial school closure during April and May (he might have a reason if his portfolio was Education), leads us to the crux of the matter:

“I think it’s all about the Teachers’ Union playing the hand, trying to leverage some industrial relations outcome. They’ll try and squeeze some concession out of the State Government.”

For the record, the same report advises

[Queensland Teachers Union President Kevin] Bates said the union had concerns about the safety of staff and students but had no formal position, and had not put any case to the State Government on when all students should return to school.

If we’ve found out nothing else in the current pandemic, it is who our ‘essential workers’ are. Compare and contrast cancelling Parliament with the public servants who burnt the midnight oil to get the ‘JobKeeper’ and ‘JobSeeker’ packages together as well as contact tracers locating close contacts of those suffering COVID19, the people driving the delivery trucks and the people stacking the shelves in supermarkets, the people who are keeping the power grid and water supplies working and all those keeping the wheels of society operational as far as possible. And lets also include teachers who have been forced to completely redesign the way they work while delivering relevant and appropriate material to their students over the past couple of months. On the surface, each federal politician was told by their boss to go home and look busy until August, while keeping their $200,000 plus per annum salary, plus allowances – no JobKeeper for MP’s.

It’s very easy to make similar comments to Laming’s about the work habits of politicians because they are certainly not required to be in their respective Parliaments every day working a 38-hour week even when Parliament isn’t cancelled.

You can find the timetabled sitting dates for Federal Parliament here. Even if teachers only worked from 9 to 3 on school days, they are overworked in comparison to the number of days per annum Members of Parliament have to be in Canberra representing their communities. Recently there has been a few days of sitting under ‘social distancing’ rules to pass legislation for JobKeeper and so on, however not all Members of Parliament were required to attend. Don’t forget federal Parliamentarians collect a ‘living away from home allowance’, currently $291 per night (which is over 7 times the daily rate of the pre-COVID19 JobSeeker allowance) on top of their salary, just for doing something they knew they would have to do when signing up for the job.

Politicians do work far longer than the sitting days in Canberra suggest, as they (to a varying degree) get out into their community and ‘represent the Government’ in a number of ways at irregular hours. Constant travel is part of the job and is physically and mentally draining – just ask anyone who has done it for a period of time. In the past couple of months. politicians have probably been in their offices directing those needing assistance to the current additional support available, probably burning the midnight oil to keep up with the latest stimulus measures and the demand for information. So like teachers, politicians do a lot of work that is not seen by the majority of the community they live in.

Really, Laming and Dutton’s attacks on schoolteachers are purely and simply bashing the unions – a favourite conservative pastime. There is also a state election due in Queensland later this year, fodder for conservative ideological warriors trying to link the actions of a union to that of a political party in what is really a cheap but inaccurate shot.

Cheap shots against ideological enemies is never a good look, especially when it certainly isn’t business as usual. Hopefully in the ‘new normal’, those who frequently engage in the cheap shot to ‘score points’ will be told very quickly by those they ‘report to’ to desist. In this particular case, you can easily make the same argument about the time politicians spend at work as they attempt to make about teachers; a demonstration of the adage that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

What do you think?

By Denis Bright  

My Preface

As a financial member of the MEAA, I am always on my best behaviour when interacting with representatives of the LNP at all levels.

Occasionally, I have phoned Josh Frydenberg’s electorate office in the Melbourne electorate of Kooyong or to his staff members in Canberra. Despite the high profile of Josh Frydenberg’s portfolio, his staff team is always polite and helpful. Some point of clarification maybe required relating to budget papers or related documents for articles later published on The AIM Network. Getting the facts straight is a Win-Win Exercise.

A busy staff member at the office of Senator Anne Ruston, Minister for Families and Social Security, gave some polite clarification about aspects of the Corona Virus Supplement payable to university students in the preparation of this article. This clarification saved errors of interpretation.

Our representatives serve the entire electorate and not just their own support base. Courtesy should be the norm in Australian politics.

Foreign shores, past and present, offer alternative models of leadership styles.

Long before the modern era, audiences were enthralled by the fictional antics of Sir Joseph Porter in Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore from its initial performance in Queen Victoria’s Britain in 1878.

Sir Joseph’s promotional trail commenced by shining up the button on the big front brass door at an obscure legal partnership. Is there some Freudian imagery in the choice of the imagery in the musical repertoire long before psychoanalysis was born?

YouTube offers some entertaining variations on Sir Joseph’s career which always assist with my understanding of contemporary politics.

I commend Josh Frydenberg’s commitment to a preface to his economic statement on 12 May 2020. It contained a kind remark to the family members of Ged Kearney who is currently Labor member for an adjacent federal electorate of Cooper in Melbourne and a former ACT President. The Treasurer’s economic statement can be read in full here. Here is an extract from the preface to the document.

Australia finds itself at war against a faceless and flagless enemy.

The coronavirus has created a one in a hundred- year event.

A health and economic shock the likes of which the world has never seen.

So many of our fellow Australians, through no fault of their own, are struggling and doing it tough.

Be they battling the virus, separated from friends and family or worried about their job security and economic future.

Tragically, 97 Australians have lost their lives with many more people, including in this Parliament, directly affected.

Our thoughts are with the Member for Cooper and all the other families across the country who have lost loved ones.

A short preface is often appropriate. Audiences welcome such a statement of intent before moving onto the details which must still be evaluated objectively. Today’s political players sometimes make the mistake of going straight to the boring details. However, dwelling on the Preface at the expense of the details is also hazardous to audiences. It can also mean that confusion exists within the federal LNP caucus about the longer-term agendas.

Let’s move on through the document.

Shorter-Term Economic Stimulus Measures in the Treasurer’s Statement

The Treasurer’s Economic Statement proceeds to the grim economic statistics which were taken up by eyewitness news bulletins on 12 May 2020.

The ABC news coverage offers a summary of the details with an embedded video extract. Why compete with that splendid coverage, I ask?

My previous article for The AIM Network covered some aspects of the grim times faced by my parents during the slow recovery from the Great Depression at the behest of LNP governments at Queensland state (1929-31) and federal levels of government (1931-41) prior to the ascendancy of John Curtin as our wartime leader.

Tuesday 12 May was also my deceased mother’s birthday. I am sure that Kathleen Bright would be taking note of events in Canberra from a heavenly perspective. My mother joined the Ipswich Central ALP Branch during her latter years. Does she have a metaphysical extension to her membership after death and all those years of commitment to family, work and involvement in the Labor Movement.

In these times of new wave theology, I have no doubt that the energies and momentum of earlier generations can be mutated and perfected. Democratic politics can perfect baton changes in the interests of the nation and a wider humanity.

So how far has Josh Frydenberg moved away from the federal LNP’s cherished commitment to neoliberalism in its more virulent phase since 1996 when the days of the corporate state were still riding high?

The Treasurer’s statement proceeds from the current economic gloom to focus on practical solutions to the most significant challenges which will be front and centre in the post-crisis world.

Even the local Suburban Social Bar in Chapel Hill within the Ryan electorate got a mention in the economic statement:

Our economic measures fall into three categories: support for households; support for business and employment; and support for the financial system.

For households, our actions are designed to “cushion the blow” from the income shock and support consumption across the economy.

Given the level of uncertainty, our economic measures provide more than financial relief.

They provide a psychological boost as well.

There are so many stories from across the nation about how our measures provided an economic lifeline to people in their hour of need.

Like Luke, the owner of a local restaurant and bar in Chapel Hill, Brisbane, who said JobKeeper “saved our bacon” and Adrian, owner of an auto business in Moonah, Hobart, who said JobKeeper has “turned out to be a saviour.”

We effectively doubled unemployment benefits with the introduction of a temporary $550 coronavirus supplement for jobseekers.

We waived the waiting period, adjusted mutual obligation requirements and expanded the partner income test to ensure it reached those in need.

With over 1.4 million Australians now receiving the payment, it is providing critical support.

The Treasurer’s Long-Term Vision?

The Treasurer’s economic statement was a little scant on long-term vision. Perhaps there is always the fond hope that the old globalised neoliberal economy that has prevailed since the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 might be resuscitated:

On the economic front, we have put in place a comprehensive range of measures designed to keep people in jobs and to build a bridge to recovery.

Our measures are working, protecting lives and livelihoods. 

We can be confident about our future. 

This virus will not defeat us.

We must stay strong.

We must stay together.

We must maintain our resolve.

The fighting Australian spirit will see us come through stronger than ever. 

The Churchillian rhetoric in the Treasurer’s Statement sounds great. However, the emergency response measures carry some short-term flaws through anomalies in the fine print of the Coronavirus Supplement, the Stimulus Payments, emergency taxation assistance to the business sector and of course support for self-funded retirees in a virtually zero interest rate environment.

Let’s take feedback from a staff member at one of my favourite Woolworth’s supermarkets in Brisbane where most casual and permanent staff members are SDA Members (SDA Queensland).

After the initial rush to buy toilet paper and foodstuffs in late March 2020, business has now plateaued. Hours for casual staff members have been reduced at this store. Many of these casuals are also students who are in receipt of student youth allowances to cover their long years at university. The student and casual worker who I spoke to at Woolworths is an architecture student who had already completed a degree in town planning. It is indeed a long road on low income before career goals are attained. Every shift counts.

A spokesperson for the Minister for Families and Social Services, Senator the Hon Anne Ruston, assured me that recipients of student youth allowances would be in receipt of the additional coronavirus supplements of $550 per fortnight to complement the basic allowance available to all students but subjected to means testing for students who are living with parents/guardians. However, there were no guarantees on just how long this support could be extended from a government that believes in the power of the corporate market over the social market.

Basically, the Churchillian rhetoric seems to be a support of a return to the normalcy which has prevailed under neoliberalism since John Howard was elected in 1996.

Under this normalcy, official unemployment levels have been massaged to exclude anyone working for an hour per month or on job-seeker training programmes. Access to Job Seeker Allowances is also means tested for young people living at home with parents/guardians.

In over thirty years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a more aggressive form of capitalism has emerged which will ultimately have to be challenged by the election of a majority Labor governments with a strong social market agenda. Constituents expect to know more about the longer-term goals of the government in these difficult times. Our gravest errors since 1996 is an assumption that the macroeconomics of US Administrations should be applied here when our own economic and financial ties are increasingly with the South West Pacific and Asia.

The old school financial leaders got things badly wrong as they smoked away to forget the excesses of the First Abbott Budget in 2014. Both Mathias Cormack and Joe Hockey were astute enough to expect some real flack from the cutbacks dished out to Australians.

It’s surely time for Australian youth to mobilise again in the spirit of Bob Dylan’s rhetorical challenge to the status quo expressed in a recent release in March 2020 to honour of the late President John F. Kennedy.

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway

Don’t block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’

It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin’

The future lies with the change strategies embedded in a commitment to people’s capitalism in a future social market as opposed to the corporate agenda which is coming out of US firms like Amazon (CNBC) and perhaps the federal LNP itself. This article is worth reading in its entirety.

By Ad astra  

Code: Dx = diagnosis. ‘The clincher’ = a fact, argument, or event that settles a matter conclusively.

How many times have we questioned the mental status of POTUS Trump?

It was as far back as November 2016 that we began to do so with Let’s welcome President Trump. Even then, Michael Moore expressed his doubts about Trump’s surprise election and predicted, albeit incorrectly:

This is why we’re not going to have to suffer through four years of Donald J. Trump, because he has no ideology except the ideology of Donald J. Trump. And when you have a narcissist like that, who’s so narcissistic where it’s all about him, he will – maybe unintentionally – break laws. He will break laws because he’s only thinking about what’s best for him.

In May 2017 we began to ask questions about Trump’s competence and performance in 100 days of President Trump.

In June 2017 we were already asserting Trump becomes irrelevant.

In July 2017, just a few months after his election, we first asked: Is Donald Trump Mad?

In October 2017, even more alarmed, we posted: Who thought Trump couldn’t get worse? 

In March 2018 there was an anguished: What can be done about President Trump?

In April 2018, already convinced of his unsuitability as POTUS, we wrote: Morally unfit.

Seeing the end possibly approaching in November 2018, we posted: Is Donald Trump Crumbling?

Last October we asked the question again with: Is Donald Trump Mad – Revisited?

It concluded with:

What a dilemma Trump is for international statesmen and ordinary folk the world over, all of whom fear what this erratic, unpredictable, unbalanced, loud-mouthed, egocentric man will do next. Just listening to his daily harangues from the White House forecourt, and reading his endless Tweets, is enough to alarm any sensible observer. Time and again his pronouncements on trade and economic issues have confused the stock market and sent it into disarray.

Which is why we ask once more: Is Donald Trump mad? Let us have your opinion.

Finally, that piece extended an invitation: If you still have lingering doubts about Donald Trump’s mental state, take a look at this YouTube videotape from MSNBC: The Dangerous case of Donald Trump; 27 Psychiatrists Assess. You may care to review it.

All of the above may evoke readers to ask: “Why then do you seek to provide still more evidence about Trump’s mental state? Haven’t we seen enough already? In medicine, when we believe we’ve nailed the final diagnosis, we declare we’ve got ‘the clincher’, a fact, argument, or event that settles the matter conclusively.

I use ‘clincher’ here since Trump’s performance in recent weeks sounds like one to me. He has sought to give advice about the treatment of people suffering from COVID-19, which has been not only uninformed and stupid; it’s been downright dangerous. You’ve heard his suggestions, reported by SBS News

Medical authorities should look into whether injecting disinfectant into people’s lungs and exposing them to a “very powerful light” could cure coronavirus. These comments that came after Department of Homeland Security spokesman William Bryan, told the daily coronavirus briefing at the White House that early research was indicating the coronavirus dies faster in warm and humid weather than in cold and drier conditions. “Increasing the temperature and humidity … is generally less favourable to the virus,” he said. He also said common disinfectants and bleaches were also extremely effective in killing the virus. This evoked Trump to ask: “Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light … and supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re gonna test that,” Mr Trump said, gesturing towards Mr Bryan.

“And then I see disinfectant, where it knocks coronavirus out in a minute; is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.

“So, it’d be interesting to check that. So, that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds interesting to me.”

Since mid-March Mr Trump has advocated the use of chloroquine to treat COVID-19 infections, with scant evidence of its safety or effectiveness. Now medical experts are warning the dangers of this drug, which they fear might make matters worse. Earlier this week the head of the US agency in charge of developing a vaccine against coronavirus said he was removed from his job for questioning chloroquine.

Yet all this rhetoric has been offered by Trump in the face of 13.8 million more Americans losing their jobs, and an unprecedented 30 million seeking unemployment benefits during the last six weeks.

That’s not all: he has to contend with the fact that the US economy is shrinking at the fastest rate since 2008, as reported by the BBC.

The Commerce Department reported that consumer spending – which accounts for about two thirds of the US economy – dropped 7.6% in the first three months of the year. Spending on food services and accommodation plummeted more than 70%, while clothing and footwear purchases were down more than 40%. Health spending also plunged – despite the virus – as concerns about infection prompted doctors to postpone routine treatments and other medical care.

The economic pain in the US is expected to be even more severe in the April-June period, but economists say even the estimate for the first quarter is likely to be revised lower, as the government receives more data. “It’s very difficult to gauge the depth of the decline,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics: “The economy has just been flattened. We won’t really know the extent of the economic damage for years.”

To add to this lamentable picture, Trump is witnessing the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the US, with over 1.2 million confirmed cases and already almost 70,000 deaths, the highest rate in the world.

Against all of this background, are you now convinced about the dangerous mental state of the POTUS? What is the Trump Dx? Have recent events been a ‘clincher’ for you too?

If you still harbour doubts, read this article in Salon. Are you alarmed? Is the whole world in peril with this man at the helm?

What can be done?

By Scott Hamilton  

In episode seven, season three of ‘Yes Minister’, the Right Honourable Jim Hacker MP visits his local sporting club to watch his beloved Aston Wanderers play a game of football. At a drink afterwards in the board room, he learns the club is about to go bankrupt and needs half a million quid to stay alive. Hacker initially takes the high moral ground and gives his fellow barrackers a polite brush-off. But then politics get the better of him.

A fiendishly clever plan is developed where an old arts gallery building would be sold and the proceeds used to save the club. This is to the displeasure of Sir Humphrey, who decides it must be stopped.

The episode revolves around how an independent planning inquiry could be persuaded to come up with the desired outcome. The solution: the guidelines.

Sir Humphrey and Sir lan will give him some informal guidelines.

How do you mean, ‘informal guidelines’?

Guidelines are perfectly proper.

Everyone has guidelines for their work.

I thought planning inspectors were impartial?

Oh, really, Minister! So they are.

Railway trains are impartial too.

But if you lay down the lines for them, that’s the way they go!

The sports rorts on steroids saga has shone a light on the murky role of guidelines in contemporary public sector responsibility accountability and governance. In a 27 February hearing of the Senate Select Committee on the Administration of Sports Grants, the word ‘guidelines’ was spoken 110 times in one sitting.

The Minister’s own submission to the Senate inquiry (29 April) is littered with references to the guidelines that applied to the infamous program. The guidelines, said the Minister, were developed in consultation with ‘my office.’ Key actions were supposedly ‘in keeping with the Guidelines’, such as when the Minister’s then Chief of Staff ‘emailed Sport Australia… for these project inclusions.’

The former Minister made the remarkable claim that ‘practices deemed usual across other government agencies and departments were not required because [Sport Australia] was not governed by the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (PPGA) Act 2013 nor the Commonwealth Grant Rules and Guidelines 2017 (CGRG).’ The Minister is correct about the CGRG, but incorrectly points to the ANAO report to substantiate her assertion that the PGPA Act doesn’t apply to Sport Australia. It does.

The sports grants guidelines were the vehicle for giving the Minister for Sport the role of ‘final approver’ in what became a $100 million campaign slush fund. ‘It was, under these program guidelines, ultimately the minister’s prerogative to make decisions as the minister saw fit,’ said John Wylie, Chair of Sport Australia’s board, at the hearing on 27 February.

While Sport Australia says it ‘did its job in this process’, concerns with the role of the Minister’s Office were raised and ‘discussed in depth’ at a sub-committee of Sport Australia. Independent Member of the Finance, Audit and Risk Committee and now acting CEO Sport Australia, Robert Dalton, told the committee ‘we were comfortable that those risks were being managed, because we’d communicated.’ They’d sent two emails to the Minister’s Office.

‘It was not considered to be a matter that needed to be elevated further,’ Wylie told the Senate Committee. On the contrary, it was a matter that was a serious threat to the organisation and should have been raised and discussed in depth at the board level. Further, Sport Australia should have taken more action than sending two emails. It had a duty to escalate and to speak out.

At different points in the sports saga, key people have had to channel Sir Humphrey. For example, John Wylie:

‘We would love to see more funding going into community sport. It is the backbone of this country… So we would have loved there to have been more funding to go around… As an organisation, we have an obligation to comply with the published basis [e.g. guidelines] for decisions and programs. And the published basis for this program was that we were to go through this process: applications were invited, they’d be assessed on a particular criteria and we would come up with an assessment based on those criteria. But, ultimately, the role of the approver was the minister. So the minister had wide discretion under the program guidelines… We would love to see more worthy applicants successful. We would love that. But there are rules and guidelines… and those were the rules and guidelines for this particular program.’

Thank heavens for those program guidelines laying down the outcome wanted. But, who approved the guidelines in the first place and why didn’t the board approve them? ‘Broadly speaking they were developed by our grants management team as program guidelines normally are,’ Wylie told the Senate Committee. It turns out the last senior person to have actually seen the infamous program guidelines was the executive director of sports partnerships, Robin O’Neill – who incidentally has resigned from the embattled organisation.

It is contested whether the role of the Minister and these sports grants was constitutional. But let’s assume that it was reasonable for the accountable entity to involve the minister in the approval process. The program guidelines specify that the Minister for Sport will provide final approval – but they do not absolve the responsibilities of the board to perform its lawful duties, including compliance with the PPGA Act.

Further, while the guidelines indicate the Minister for Sport may consider ‘other factors’ when deciding which projects to fund, the assessment criteria outlined in the guidelines ‘will remain applicable’ and the discretion to consider other factors is limited to ‘otherwise further the objectives of the program.’

So where does this all lead? The Minister for Sport, or whoever was deciding on which projects to fund, still had to do so on merit and in accordance with the objectives of the program. Furthermore, it was the duty and responsibility of the accountable entity, the Sport Australia board, to ensure this occurred. Sport Australia ‘cut the cheques’ (as the Prime Minister said) but it failed to fulfil its obligations.

Sir Humphrey also says, ‘never set up an inquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be.’ Well that was clearly the case with the Gaetjens inquiry into the sport grants. (He was formerly Chief of Staff of the PM’s private office and now heads the Australian Public Service.) But when it comes to the Senate inquiry (which has cross-party support) it might be a case of being hoisted on one’s own petard, or one’s own guidelines.

Scott Hamilton is a Melbourne-based author and consultant.

By Denis Bright  

The onset of COVID-19 involves a change in political direction from my old town of Ipswich and every other locality across the nation. The initial public health challenge has extended to new financial, social and environmental problems of unknown proportions. Not since the 1930s has there been such a sudden dislocation in the employment market.

Below is the reference given to my father in 1930 when staff were dismissed forever to save W. Haigh and Sons, an important wholesaler in Ipswich at the time. The file for the reference was developed from an old letter.

The irregularities in the digital copy might offer some authenticity to a paper reference that is almost eighty years old.

Like business entrepreneurs today, descendants of the William Haigh adapted to the economic downturn after the entrepreneur’s own death in 1922. This is two years before my father commenced his employment at W. Haigh and Sons.

Staff members were shed. Assets acquired by the Haigh family were used to support a display of private wealth which are summarised on the Ipswich City Council’s data base of historic sites:

In 1892 Elizabeth Haigh (the fourth daughter of Benjamin Cribb and his first wife Elizabeth Bridson) and her husband William purchased the property. The house is said to be named after a village near Leeds in England, from which Haigh’s husband originally came. Mr Haigh was an agent for the steamship owners, Collins & Son, and he also ran a wholesale fruit market in Bell Street. Dorrington’s grounds extended to Brisbane Road and included an orchard, tennis court and gardens. The Haigh daughters continued to live in the house after their parents’ death. The present owners are only the fourth occupants of the house.

While the Haigh family consolidated household assets in East Ipswich, my father left his parents’ home down the hill in Torch Street to try out casual jobs. His Uncle Walter Ward of Bentley neat Casino in NSW welcomed his enthusiastic efforts. Later, he worked in the in the Currumbin Valley on the Gold Coast and joined the Currumbin SLSC. Being quite a fit swimmer, he was fine with surf rescues.

My father never mentioned this very unpleasant experience from 1932. I found it on the Trove Newspaper site at the National Library Online. It is an extract from The Queensland Times in Ipswich dated 16 January 1932, still five months before the defeat of the Moore Government on 11 June.

The offer of a job at Ipswich Station in the late 1930s provided some relief from the Depression Blues.

When conscription to the Australian Army followed, my father was assignment to non-combatant duties because of his eyesight problem. Colin’s eye had been injured in a childhood accident.

Labor was revitalised during the 1930s at state level during the Forgan Smith era by offering pragmatic recovery strategies. Several rural and regional seats were held by state Labor during the 1930s in the Darling Downs Region and South West Queensland. At the 1935 state election, these seats included Carnarvon (Stanthorpe and Goondiwindi based), Warwick, two Toowoomba seats, Maranoa and Warrego.

At a national level, Federal Labor looked inwardly to heal its internal rifts with Lang Labor in NSW. At the national elections on 21 September 1940, the electorate had become uneasy with Robert Menzies’ wartime leadership. The UAP-Country Coalition had lost its absolute majority. Menzies made a strategic decision to resign as Prime Minister and commenced a series of radio talks on the Macquarie broadcasting network to revitalise the Australian conservative movement at the height of the wartime emergency in 1942.

Arthur Fadden had moved from Minister Assisting the Treasurer and an assortment of other portfolios to become Australia’s second conservative wartime Prime Minister on 7 October 1941.

The wartime election on 21 August 1943 resulted in the formation of the Second Curtin Ministry with an extraordinary majority in both houses of parliament as shown by the tally of seats. In the Senate, Labor won all nineteen places available at a mid-term senate election. The Senate still included sixteen senators from the UAP-Country Coalition who were elected in 1940.

Image from Marplesmustgo

The decisive action by John Curtin to form minority government in 1941 with the support of the two Victorian Independents was political risk-taking of an extraordinary degree. A grateful nation soon endorsed the changes in the direction of wartime policies during the new national crisis over Japan’s thrust into South East Asia and New Guinea.

The numbers needed to form a minority government by John Curtin in 1941 were build up from the economic and social hardships of the depression era generation of Australians. Each of the marginal Labor electorates from the 1940 federal elections is a case study of their endurance in mobilising local campaigns against well-resourced elites who had dominated inter-war politics in cities, regions and rural areas. Some of Australia’s most conservative heartlands were already in Labor hands by 1940 including seats like Gwydir and Riverina in NSW, Wannon in Victoria and Maranoa in Queensland.

With the right leadership, Labor can handle the paradigm changes needed for the current Coronavirus era. Today’s crises extend to employment in essential service industries and to the financial sectors. Similar problems were encountered by the Depression generation when my mother waited for some time to gain employment in state education.

The Queensland Times covered the extent of unemployment amongst teaching graduates in the same edition as its news item about Colin Bright and his request to the Industrial Magistrate’s Court for reduced Award Wages to assist in his re-employment.

By then, my Mother was finally working in state education, initially at Silkstone State School (SS) in Ipswich and then on country service to North Branch School outside Pittsworth with a series of country transfers to follow.

But the ghosts of the old state LNP struck again after the internal tensions within the Gair Labor Government brought election defeat for Labor in 1957. Labor would be in the wilderness for a full 32 years until the ascendancy of Premier Wayne Goss.

By the end of 1958, some married women were selectively dismissed from 31 December to save three weeks holiday pay. The dismissals were selective. School principals had to decide which teachers should go. At Blair SS in Ipswich, the choice was between two married teachers who were both trade union members and Labor supporters.

The LNP could boast that the dismissals helped to balance the state budget at a time when no expense was spared on hosting Princess Alexandra’s tour of Queensland in 1959.

My father worked on refurbishing a royal train for Princess Alexandra. The visiting Princess was treated to a trip through Premier Nicklin’s electorate with its exotic volcanic peaks, pineapple farms, rainforest remnants and quaint towns to enjoy afternoon tea with elites selected by the LNP state government.

Back in the real world, there was no work for my mother in 1959. She sought employment in NSW at Tweed Heads Public School. I went with her to a job interview at the Education Department in Bridge Street, Sydney. We were whisked to Sydney and back on a promotional fare on one of TAA’s new pressurised super viscounts where we spent a few days on holidays.

Working in Tweed Heads might have enabled my father to retire on a partial disability pension with his eyesight problem.

Under the current LNP Government policies, he would have been pushed onto Newstart programmes and excluded from current unemployment rolls because of his partial disability.

Working in railway traffic as a shunter was an occupational hazard as it involved lots of night work coupling coal wagons. There were occasional near misses from this type of work. At his request, Colin Bright was reassigned to the North Ipswich Workshops and eventually worked as an electroplater. He would come home with grazes from the buffing machines as he tried to balance awkward objects on the machines.

Union shop stewards took up his case and its was referred to the administrative tribunal at North Ipswich Workshops. My father was assigned to painting work at both North Ipswich and later Redbank Workshops as he had done a stint at painting for a contractor during the 1930s. Regrettably, the federal LNP could portray this union activity as Communist inspired and subversive.

Before any recruitment to NSW eventuated, my mother was re-employed at Serviceton South State School at Inala in 1960. A transfer to Ipswich District schools followed in 1961 and she eventually gained a transfer to Ipswich North SS until her retirement.

The quest for stability of employment was one of the key priorities in Australian politics prior to the four post-war recessions from the post-Korean War downturn, to the more serious recessions of the early eighties and nineties as well as the GFC during the Rudd-Gillard years. I shared the concerns of earlier generations in our family against any compromises with full-employment policies or breaches of industrial awards and working conditions by employers in their own self-interests.

The 1961 credit squeeze brought a more complacent nation out of their political slumbers. The official unemployment rate of 3-4 per cent or 125,000 registered unemployed in a workforce of around 5 million.

As a student at Bremer SHS in Ipswich, I was appalled by the return to even moderate levels of unemployment. I remember writing to The Queensland Times to express my concerns this issue. I used a non de plume so a search on Trove will not find the article.

Anyway, the little hiccup of the 1961-62 credit squeeze brought a new generation of Labor leaders to national parliament including Bill Hayden as member for Oxley. Oxley had become a more Ipswich based federal seat after the electoral redistribution in 1949.

Although Labor won the two local state seats in Ipswich during the recovery phase from the Great Depression in 1932, federal Labor had little success locally until 1961. By 1949, the LNP used well cultivated frames of economic incompetence and fear of communism to unseat the Chifley Labor Government. After five consecutive LNP victories in Oxley after 1949, Bill Hayden won the seat on his first election foray.

I did not realize the significance of the 1961 election until the results came through on television that evening. Apart from my Uncle Les Cooper who was a shop steward for the AEU (now AMWU) at the North Ipswich Workshops, members of our extended family had no hands-on political involvement aside from trade union membership. I am the sole survivor of that family network who watched the results at our place in East Ipswich.

Ipswich had a federal Labor representative in federal parliament for the first time since the defeat of James Wilkinson who represented the seat of Moreton for two terms between 1901 and 1906.

The seats appeared to be falling to Labor like skittles as the election results came through on the evening of 9 December 1961. In the end, Labor’s net gain was a more modest fifteen seats. Parliament divided 62 to 60 in favour of the LNP although Labor’s overall vote was 50.5 per cent after preferences.

Commentators dwelt on the significance of the results in the seat of Moreton which was adjacent to Oxley. Here Liberal Minister James Killen survived a 10.2 per cent swing after preferences by 130 votes. Some preferences from Communist candidate Max Julius leaked to the LNP but the crucial blow to Labor came from QLP Preferences which amounted to 7.4 per cent of the primary vote in Moreton.

Labor’s national defeat in 1961 must be attributed to the weight of numbers from Arthur Calwell’s own state of Victoria. Labor had no net gains in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania in 1961. Its net gain in WA was confined to the seat of Stirling.

Victoria carried the weight of numbers because of its population levels. Highly winnable Labor seats like Ballarat, Bruce, Corio and La Trobe stayed with the LNP. The worst-case scenario was Maribyrnong which recorded no swing to Labor after an extraordinary local vote for the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). The results for every division are well summarised on Wikipedia where a search can be made of the results for specific electoral divisions as far back as the 1901 elections.

The current public health, financial, social and environmental crises in Australia provide opportunities for new directions for our country as in 1961.

Image from Nundah, Brisbane from the Daily Examiner: From Pop Concerts to Centrelink Queues

Sally McManus is the inspirational national figure of these times.

Our ACTU leader will surely take up commitment to progressive structural changes to bring a middle-sized economy through the current crises.

This absence of commitment to inclusive structural change has created a dislike of formal politics across Australia. Lesser leaders talk up rhetorical alternatives which are unconvincing to ordinary Australians who fear that Labor will embroil them in higher taxes and meddlesome bureaucracy.

There is no return to normalcy as defined by the politics of the Howard era. Then and now, journalists can choose to unlock structures of power and influence in society from a critical structuralist perspective as an alternative to eyewitness news reporting. Both forms of news reporting of course have their place and should co-exist harmoniously.

Interested AIM Network readers will have no difficulty with the text from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana to explain the positive application of structuralism in literature. Hopefully, the Rust Belt States of the Mid-West in the USA will soon overcome their endorsement of Trump era populism in the best traditions of American modernism.

Sally McManus has shown us the way forward by negotiating with rusted on neoliberals and still gains accolades for her efforts. This is a good sign as John Curtin inspired by consensus-building and responsible risk-taking during the wartime emergency of the Post-Depression era.