India, how free markets can transform beggars into spenders.
Totalitarian lefty demands everyone go to jail to save the planet.
How the left's 'outrageous bias supports Conservatives' is untrue.
How will the NSW Govt end?
16 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Can no one rid NSW of this government? Andrew Bolt NSW’s economy is at a crawl and Sydney’s infrastructure is falling apart. Now this:
THE NSW Labor Party has gone into damage control over sensational allegations of bribery and corruption within Wollongong City Council, suspending five party members implicated in the scandal.
Three ministers have been dragged into the widening furore, with the Government of Premier Morris Iemma reeling from claims of jobs for mates and a trail of political donations from allegedly corrupt developers.
And this:
HIGH-PROFILE NSW minister Phil Koperberg will resign from cabinet due to ill health. Premier Morris Iemma said his Enviroment Minister would go on sick leave ahead of surgical treatment and a period of recovery…
Mr Koperberg, the former Rural Fire Service head, resumed his cabinet position in mid-January after police said they would not charge him over 20-year-old domestic violence allegations.
And this:
New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma has told the Department of Community Services (DOCS) to lift its game following revelations confidential client files were sent to the wrong addresses. Two women were mistakenly sent each other’s files, which included their case histories, medical and psychiatric reports, as well as names, addresses and phone numbers…
The bungle has come to light as former Supreme Court judge James Wood QC holds a commission of inquiry into DOCS, after two children known to the department died within weeks of each other last year.
In the first case, the body of a two-year-old boy was found stuffed in a suitcase in a Sydney duck pond. Less than a month later, a seven-year-old girl was found starved to death at her family’s home on the NSW mid-north coast.
And there’s a trial I won’t mention (and neither must you).
All in all, if voters don’t throw out this astonishingly cartoonish Government they deserve every lousy thing that’s falling on their heads.
Iemma vows 'heads will roll' Imre Salusinszky and John Stapleton MORRIS Iemma says "heads will roll" if any NSW ministers are found to have acted inappropriately in their dealings with Joe Scimone.
The NSW Labor Party is in damage control over sensational allegations of bribery and corruption within Wollongong City Council, suspending five party members implicated in the scandal.
Three ministers have been dragged into the widening furore, with the Government of Premier Morris Iemma reeling from claims of jobs for mates and a trail of political donations from allegedly corrupt developers.
The NSW premier called a press conference today amid growing controversy over the appointment of Mr Scimone to a $200,000 a year government position. Mr Scimone is under investigation over alleged corruption at Wollongong council.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has been asked to decide whether there are grounds to investigate the appointment of Mr Scimone, a friend of NSW Ports Minister Joe Tripodi, to a senior job with NSW Maritime.
“Anyone who is found to have done the wrong thing are out, their heads will roll,” Mr Iemma told reporters. “The only thing that will be destroyed in this is the careers of those who have done the wrong thing.”
Mr Iemma said if the investigation was warranted then Mr Tripodi would stand down, and if any allegation of impropriety was found “he will be sacked”.
He said further claims surrounding ministers Matt Brown, David Campbell and Reba Meagher seemed to be based solely on the fact that they “knew Scimone”.
The allegations have emerged from explosive evidence at the ICAC hearing, where it was alleged a town planner, Beth Morgan, was involved in sexual relationships with three developers - and received cash and gifts from two of them - while she was approving their property developments worth a combined $135million.
Ms Morgan, a 32-year-old divorcee and mother of one, regularly attended morning meetings with the three developers, Glen Tabak, Michael Kollaras and Frank Vellar, at a Wollongong kebab shop in a group called "the table of knowledge", an informal meeting of business and council heavyweights.
Labor-controlled Wollongong Council was yesterday left to swing in the breeze by the state Government, with Local Government Minister Paul Lynch refusing to take calls from council general manager David Farmer.
Mr Tabak and Mr Kollaras maintained their usual practice of a 6.30am coffee at the shop yesterday, just hours before they gave evidence at the ICAC inquiry.
Members of their group told The Australian yesterday "the table of knowledge doesn't really exist" but Mr Kollaras later told the inquiry he started the "table of knowledge" about 10 years ago.
In the witness box, Mr Kollaras denied having an affair with Ms Morgan but was presented with a series of highly personal emails between them.
In one, she called Mr Kollaras "my favourite, sexy, delectable, gorgeous Greek".
He explained the emails by saying she was an "extremely close friend".
In his evidence, Mr Tabak told the inquiry Ms Morgan was possibly "on a mission for sex" and believed she "wanted to be surrounded by successful people" by liaising with developers.
The political dimension of the scandal widened when it emerged that two conmen, posing as corruption investigators, allegedly extorted a $30,000 payment from Labor powerbroker and council staff member Joe Scimone in exchange for offering to destroy evidence against him.
Mr Scimone left the council in February last year after sexual harassment claims and went on to receive a $200,000 a year position with NSW Maritime, a department controlled by his friend Joe Tripodi, the Ports Minister.
Mr Scimone, who denies he quit because of the claims, was among those suspended from the ALP yesterday.
Three more ALP members bounced from the party are Wollongong Labor councillors accused of soliciting bribes from developers in exchange for planning approvals: Frank Gigliotti, Zeki Esen and deputy lord mayor Kiril Jonovski. The fifth suspension is Labor councillor Val Zanotto, who is accused of paying the same conmen $120,000 to pervert the course of justice.
NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell yesterday renewed his call for Mr Iemma to allow ICAC to investigate Mr Tripodi, labelling him the "tar baby" of the NSW Labor Government.
"We have a Premier who reacts to the appointment of a Labor mate to a $200,000-a-year job in government by setting up an in-house inquiry and ignoring the state's anti-corruption watchdog," Mr O'Farrell said.
Mr Tripodi denied helping Mr Scimone get the NSW Maritime job and said he did not know he was a person of interest to ICAC until this week.
Mr Iemma said he had asked ICAC if the recruitment process at NSW Maritime warranted an external inquiry.
There were further signs of trouble for Mr Iemma last night when John Sutton, national secretary of the construction division of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, said it was time for Mr Iemma to stand aside for Deputy Premier John Watkins.
Adding to his problems, there is speculation that high-profile Environment Minister Phil Koperberg, who recently returned to work after being cleared of domestic violence allegations, will today announce his retirment from cabinet, citing ill health.
The pressure being felt in government circles was also evident when NSW Housing Minister Matt Brown cut short a press conference after reporters quizzed him on political donations he received from a company associated with developer Glen Tabak.
Mr Tabak allegedly began a sexual relationship with Ms Morgan and showered her with gifts to receive favourable treatment of applications.
Police Minister David Campbell was also friendly with Mr Scimone, who helped with his election campaign. And Sydney's The Daily Telegraph reports today that Health Minister Reba Meagher and her predecessor John Hatzistergos are also being questioned about their knowledge of Mr Scimone's appointment to a health department committee in 2005.
At the ICAC hearing yesterday, Mr Tabak said he was a friend of Mr Scimone and had sold him a unit in one of his developments. He said Mr Scimone told him he paid $30,000 to two men who said theycould help him with the ICAC investigation.
Independent Wollongong councillor David Martin yesterday successfully moved for an emergency council meeting on Monday to ask the four Labor councillors to stand aside.
Ill Koperberg quits NSW cabinet HIGH-PROFILE NSW minister Phil Koperberg will resign from cabinet due to ill health.
Premier Morris Iemma said his Enviroment Minister would go on sick leave ahead of surgical treatment and a period of recovery.
Mr Koperberg is expected to resume work as the local Blue Mountains MP after his treatment and recovery, Mr Iemma said.
“His health is understandably his top priority at this time,` said Mr Iemma.
“He's advised me he needs time to undergo proper treatment, and to recover fully.”
Mr Iemma said: “The door will remain open to him for future cabinet consideration.”
Mr Koperberg's resignation comes at a turbulent time for the state Labor Government as it faces further scrutiny after five ministers were linked to the ICAC inquiry into Wollongong Council.
Mr Koperberg, the former Rural Fire Service head, resumed his cabinet position in mid-January after police said they would not charge him over 20-year-old domestic violence allegations.
Water Utilities Minister Nathan Rees will take on the wider water portfolio and Assistant Environment Minister Verity Firth would assume responsibility for climate change and the environment.
Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said it appeared the stress was too much for Mr Koperberg.
“I'm sorry to hear the news,” Mr O'Farrell told Macquarie Radio.
“I hope Mr Koperberg is able to regain his health.
“Phil Koperberg made a significant contribution to the state through the Rural Fire Service, but it's no secret he's not looked comfortable in his role as an active member of the Iemma Government.”
Iemma tells DOCS: 'Lift your game' ABC news New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma has told the Department of Community Services (DOCS) to lift its game following revelations confidential client files were sent to the wrong addresses.
Two women were mistakenly sent each other's files, which included their case histories, medical and psychiatric reports, as well as names, addresses and phone numbers.
DOCS deputy of operations Annette Gallard says the department has apologised to both women and is investigating the incident.
Mr Iemma says he is angry and he wants DOCS to get to the bottom of the mix-up.
"It's obviously a very sensitive area and [it highlights the] importance of getting it right when information is exchanged," he said.
"It's not good enough. The apology's gone but more than that, [we need] to get to the bottom of that and make sure that when this very sensitive information is being exchanged, that it's being done properly."
The Premier has told DOCS to take steps to ensure similar incidents do not happen again.
"[They are] doing a very tough job but in this instance, lift your game," he said.
'Fobbed off' The State Opposition says the incident is more than just a bureaucratic mix-up and shows DOCS is dysfunctional.
"It's a tragic mistake," Opposition community services spokeswoman Katrina Hodgkinson said.
"It's an unforgivable mistake and it's one the Minister, Kevin Greene, should be thoroughly apologising for rather than just fobbing it off to his director-general once again."
But DOCS deputy director of operations Annette Gallard says the file mix-up was an isolated incident.
Ms Gallard says the women were not put at risk because DOCS took steps to retrieve the files as soon as the mistakes were discovered.
"This means that the information is not being circulated past one individual," she said.
"It's a terrible mistake but we're looking into our procedures because we don't want this to happen to anyone else."
The bungle has come to light as former Supreme Court judge James Wood QC holds a commission of inquiry into DOCS, after two children known to the department died within weeks of each other last year.
In the first case, the body of a two-year-old boy was found stuffed in a suitcase in a Sydney duck pond. Less than a month later, a seven-year-old girl was found starved to death at her family's home on the NSW mid-north coast.
The Left’s outrageous bias helps conservatives Andrew Bolt Queensland University’s Professor James Allan:
A 2005 study in the US in The American Lawyer concluded that “recent studies reveal what the insiders have known all along: professors at top US law schools are predominantly liberal (left wing)"…
So if we were to take all the legal academics from the 30-plus law schools in Australia and poll them, what percentage do we honestly think would tell us they vote Coalition as opposed to Labor (or something further left)? One could quite confidently put the figure for Coalition-voting legal academics across Australia at less than 20per cent. Indeed, I’d bet there are whole law schools where hardly anyone admits to voting for the Coalition.
If we were really keen on mandating a wide-ranging diversity, then top university officials across the country ought to be taking steps to favour the hiring of only those on the Right of the political spectrum “to foster an institutional culture that favours diversity on campus” or however the jargon of the day happens to put it.
Of course, that’s plain laughable. It will never happen.
Which brings Allan to the subject of Jon Faine.
But Allan also notes a benefit to this overwhelming bias that I’ve found particularly helpful myself, especially for my appearances on the lone chair in Insiders:
That advantage is this: you get to hear the other side of things all the time and from lots of different angles.
You get to debate with other smart, reasonable and nice people with whom you disagree. You get to sharpen your position, fix the flaws and weaknesses in your views, and generally just enjoy a good difference of opinion. That’s far harder to do when you’re spending most of your time talking to other broadly like-minded people.
I’ve been surprised by the number of very smart Leftists I’ve debated who seem to have never considered the alternative arguments, never practised arguing against them and never been made to consider the obvious chinks their own positions. I include in that even Julian Burnside, which is odd given he is a barrister.
Agreed is good in halls of academe James Allan THERE is a lot of talk in universities about diversity. What is this wonderful thing called diversity? It doesn't take too long working in an Australian university to realise that whatever this thing is, it involves getting more people into top jobs, restricted courses, PhD programs, what have you, based on some group characteristic. Maybe it's the person's sex, or race, or whether they are an indigenous person.
Of course, universities are in the business of ideas. So if those of us in the university sector really think diversity is so important that it needs mandating, or some other sort of positive encouragement, then it is a diversity of ideas that needs mandating or encouraging. Presumably that would include seeking to provide students with a diversity of political perspectives.
Do you think they get such a broad spectrum now? Let me restrict myself to the 30-plus law schools in Australia, though I am confident what I am about to say applies even more so to arts faculties. A 2005 study in the US in The American Lawyer concluded that "recent studies reveal what the insiders have known all along: professors at top US law schools are predominantly liberal (left wing)". Indeed, that's putting it as softly as possible. Another commentator came right out and said "legal academia is heavily tilted to the political Left".
So if we were to take all the legal academics from the 30-plus law schools in Australia and poll them, what percentage do we honestly think would tell us they vote Coalition as opposed to Labor (or something further left)? One could quite confidently put the figure for Coalition-voting legal academics across Australia at less than 20per cent. Indeed, I'd bet there are whole law schools where hardly anyone admits to voting for the Coalition.
If we were really keen on mandating a wide-ranging diversity, then top university officials across the country ought to be taking steps to favour the hiring of only those on the Right of the political spectrum "to foster an institutional culture that favours diversity on campus" or however the jargon of the day happens to put it.
Of course, that's plain laughable. It will never happen. Nor do I think it a good thing to be pursued. I don't much like group-based hiring decisions on any basis. But leaving that aside, there is a real, competitive advantage to being part of a minority when it comes to the ideas and political positions one holds. That advantage is this: you get to hear the other side of things all the time and from lots of different angles.
You get to debate with other smart, reasonable and nice people with whom you disagree. You get to sharpen your position, fix the flaws and weaknesses in your views, and generally just enjoy a good difference of opinion. That's far harder to do when you're spending most of your time talking to other broadly like-minded people. As it happens, no one much even talks about this political bias. It's just a dirty little non-secret.
All of which takes us, by a rather circuitous route, to the comments by Melbourne ABC radio's Jon Faine. A fortnight ago he advocated a "cleansing process" for newspapers in the Rudd era, suggesting that The Australian, in particular, cut most of its conservative opinion columnists. The apparent reason for this was that the voters had opted for a left-wing Kevin Rudd and so it would be best all around if newspapers followed the voters.
Think about this. If Faine were of the view that all newspapers and media ought overwhelmingly to favour the viewpoint of the elected government - that when 53 per cent of voters pick a party, 80 per cent or 90 per cent of commentators ought to be in that same basic camp - then that would be a respectable point of view. I don't think it's an attractive view. I think we want lots of dissenting views, for the sorts of reasons I gave above. I don't think aiming for a situation in which the vast preponderance of commentators agree with the government is all that healthy in a democracy. But at least such a view is respectable.
What is less respectable, and Faine does not seem to get this, is to argue that we need like-minded commentators staffing newspapers and the ABC when his preferred political party is in power, but that we need lots of dissenting voices when it's the other guys in office.
John Howard won an election with just about exactly the same 53 per cent of the vote as Rudd just did. Was Faine back then calling for a cleaning out of the ABC and The Age? You see, if he wasn't, then Faine wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants the ABC and the newspapers largely to be cheerleaders for the political party he happens to favour. In terms of living in an open, democratic system of government, that is not a respectable view. You call for a cleaning out when either side wins, or never. If Faine can't see that, perhaps he should be asked to leave the ABC. He then might find a job in a university, where at least he'd feel right at home.
James Allan is professor of law at the University of Queensland.
Faine denies saying what he did Andrew Bolt What ABC host Jon Faine today claims he said last week: We were talking about the need for renewal after an election and the need for renewal that all sorts of individuals and particular organisations search for at this time of the year. Here on this radio station and on this radio program - in so far as I have some control - we ae looking for new voices and we say, well, “Who’s had a good run and who can we find that’s new and fresh and different” and we had a conversation about newspapers doing the same thing.
Well, put like that, who could object?
But here’s what ABC host Jon Faine in fact said last week: I want to expand our discussion to another aspect of media which I think is quite intriguing as the Rudd Government is about to start it’s first session in the parliament, and that is whether or not the media needs to go through a bit of a rethink, as it would seem, according to last year’s election, the nation has. Have things moved on and have some of the staples of the media in the Howard era worn out their usefulness as we enter a Rudd era? ... I’m going to talk in particular about columnists… and Bruce you have some notorious ones of your own? Although I’m going to here, stick my neck right out, and say I think The Australian newspaper has perhaps the most loyal band of Howard supporters amongst its current crop of columnists. And you have to wonder how they’re quite going to adjust, and cope, and fit in when the people they are so well connected to, are no longer in office.
BRUCE GUTHRIE (Editor-in-chief of the Herald Sun): Yes, I’d probably take issue with the word notorious Jon, by the way. I’d say notable rather than notorious…
JON FAINE: But it’s more the columnists (on the The Australian), the sort of Christopher Pearson’s and Janet Albrechtsens and Mark Steyn was the American columnist who was used in the paper yesterday and so on. And you think, well, it kind of represents the thinking that’s out of step with the result of the election in a way, some of the material that those people are very much making their own and their own beat.
BRUCE GUTHRIE: I guess it comes down to whether you think newspapers need to be in step with the Government?
JON FAINE: Oh no, not with the Government with the electorates… But within your newspaper, rather than asking you to speculate about other things, within your own newspaper, does the result of the election mean you rethink any of the component parts that make up your weekly diet?…
BRUCE GUTHRIE: I think it’s very, very hard to contribute a column on a weekly basis over a long, long period of time and so we’re forever monitoring that.
JON FAINE: Very interesting, so you’re not going through a cleansing process?
BRUCE GUTHRIE: Definitely not.
Hmm. That sounds like rather more than a mere search for the fresh, I’d have thought. What Faine seems clearly to be advocating is a political “cleansing” of the kind he’s never called for after a Liberal election victory.
He’d had done better to simply say his misspoke and did not mean what he’s been naturally taken to mean. But to so misrepresent what he actually said doesn’t seem to me like straight dealing.
As for his claim to be searching for “new and fresh and different” voices for his own show, would Faine really like me to recount what I know of that search, and the limitations he has put on it in the past? Perhaps one day, when I’m feeling indiscreet… But no! Resist that temptation!
Faine sensitive to criticism Gerard Henderson LIKE many members of his profession, Melbourne radio presenter Jon Faine can dish out criticism but becomes very sensitive when he himself is criticised.
Contrary to Faine’s claim (Cut & Paste, 21/2), I did not quote from second-hand sources when describing his proposal that columnists who are out of step with the result of the November 2007 election should be subjected to a cleansing process. Not at all. I quoted direct from Faine himself.
It is not surprising that Mr Faine is sensitive about his proposal. After all, there is an intolerant double-standard involved here. Faine never argued that such ABC presenters as former Gough Whitlam staffer Kerry O’Brien and leftist columnist Phillip Adams should be cleansed from the taxpayer funded airwaves following John Howard’s election victories in 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2004. It seems that, according to Faine-think, leftist comrades should be able to survive a Coalition election win but conservative columnists should be cleansed following a Labor victory.
By the way, I have never suggested that Faine is either a fascist or a Stalinist. But his calls for the cleansing of those with whom he disagrees is profoundly anti-pluralist. Gerard Henderson Sydney, NSW
OVER the past two weeks I’ve watched with amazement as Jon Faine’s words have travelled the globe. They started on Andrew Bolt’s blog and then appeared on Cut & Paste. They then jumped to The Wall Street Journal, hurried back to Cut & Paste in The Australian and The Australian’s editorial, to Gerard Henderson, to Janet Albrechtsen and finally to rest at Cut & Paste again—with a guest spot on the letters page as well. On each of these occasions the words were worked to argue that Faine suggested a cleansing of conservative columnists.
To the listener it was abundantly clear that Faine had merely asked a question, whether newspapers considered election results when deciding on their opinion columnists. He had suggested nothing at all. Todd Jorgensen Healesville, Vic
Save the planet, jail the people Andrew Bolt Lavishly Leftist Johann Hari is getting so excited about global warming that he’s developed a totalitarian twitch:
It is not enough for you to change your bulbs. Everyone has to change their bulbs. It is not enough for you to eat less meat. Everyone has to eat less meat. It is not enough for you to fly less. Everyone has to fly less.... Every minute you would have spent shopping around for a greener choice, you should spend volunteering for Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth, or Plane Stupid, or the Campaign Against Climate Change…
(E)ven the most hardcore libertarians agree that your personal liberty ends where you actively harm the liberty of another person. Greenhouse gas emissions are undeniably harming tens of millions of people – and endangering the ground on which all human liberty rests: a stable and safe climate.
Johann Hari: We'll save the planet only if we're forced to Do you check every item you buy to make sure it is green and planet-friendly? Do you buy carbon offsets every time you fly? Stop. It is time to be honest: green consumerism is at best a draining distraction, and at worst a con. While the planet's fever gets worse by the week, we are guzzling down green-coloured placebos and calling it action. There is another way. Our reaction to global warming has gone in waves. First we were in blank denial: how can releasing an odourless, colourless gas change the climate so dramatically? Now we are in a phase of displacement: we assume we can shop our way out of global warming, by shovelling a few new lightbulbs and some carbon offsets into our shopping basket.
This is a self-harming delusion. It's hard to give a sense of the contrast today between the magnitude of our problem, and the weediness of our response so far. But the best way is offered by the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen.
He explains that until 10,000 years ago, the planet's climate would fluctuate violently: sometimes it would veer by 12 degrees centigrade in just a decade. This meant it was impossible to develop agriculture. Crops couldn't be cultivated in this climatic chaos, so human beings were stuck as a tiny smattering of hunter-gatherers.
But then the climate settled down into safe parameters – and humans could settle down too. This period is called the Holocene, and it meant that for the first time, we could develop farming and cities. Everything we know as human civilisation is thanks to this unprecedented period of climatic stability.
Today, we are bringing this era to an end. By pumping vast amounts of warming gases into the atmosphere, we are creating a new era: the Anthropocene, in which man makes the weather. There is an imminent danger of it bursting beyond these safe parameters, and bringing about a return to the violent, volatile variations that prevented our ancestors from progressing beyond spears and sticks.
Those are the stakes. Every week, there is greater evidence that we are nudging further from our safety zone. The hottest year of the 20th century – 1947 – is now merely the average for the 21st century.
And what are we doing? Many good, well-intentioned people are beginning to grasp this problem – and then assuming green consumerism is the only answer to hand. They shop around for items that have not been freighted thousands of miles to make it to their supermarket shelves. They change their lightbulbs. They turn down the thermostat a few degrees. They make sure they buy products that don't sit on electricty-burning standby all day. They buy the more energy-efficient cars, and scorn SUV drivers.
I don't want to attack these people. They are an absolutely essential part of any solution. But we have to be honest. This is not even the beginning of a solution – and by pouring so much energy into it, we may actually be forestalling the real solution. I know a huge number of people who are sincerely worried about global warming, but they assume they have Done Their Bit through these shifted consumption patterns. The truth is: you haven't.
In reality, dispersed consumer choices are not going to keep the climate this side of a disastrous temperature rise. The only way that can ever happen is by governments legislating to force us all – green and anti-green – to shift towards cleaner behaviour. Just as the government in the Second World War did not ask people to eat less voluntarily, governments today cannot ask us to burn fewer greenhouse gases voluntarily .
It is not enough for you to change your bulbs. Everyone has to change their bulbs. It is not enough for you to eat less meat. Everyone has to eat less meat. It is not enough for you to fly less. Everyone has to fly less. (And yes, I hate these facts as much as you do. But I will hate the reality of runaway global warming even more.)
The only way we will get to the situation where we are all required by law to burn fewer greenhouse gases is if enough people pressure the government, demanding it. Green consumer choices often drain away people's political energies to do this. You have a limited amount of time to spend on any political cause. If you have an hour a week to dedicate to acting on global warming, and you spend it scouring the supermarket shelves for the product shipped the shortest distance, that time and energy is gone; you feel you've done what you can. Part of you might also assume: I've made these choices; other people will too; in time, we'll all be persuaded. But we don't have time.
There is a much better way for you to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Every minute you would have spent shopping around for a greener choice, you should spend volunteering for Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth, or Plane Stupid, or the Campaign Against Climate Change. Every hundred-pound premium you would spend to buy a greener product, donate it to them instead. Why? Because by becoming part of this collective action – rather than by clinging to dispersed personal choices – you will help to change the law, so everyone will have to be greener, not just nice people like you.
It works. Green campaigners from Australia to Canada to Japan have successfully banned the old lightbulbs, so only the energy-saving lightbulbs are on offer there now. Green campaigners have prompted the Mayor of London to force SUV drivers to pay a punitive £6,000-a-year premium to drive through our city, forcing many of them to shift to greener cars. These are the first tiny steps towards banning – or massively restricting – the other technologies that are unleashing Weather of Mass Destruction.
Of course, some sincere and well-intentioned people have libertarian concerns about this approach at first glance. Why should we force people to choose the green option? Isn't it better to rely on persuasion and voluntary choice? But even the most hardcore libertarians agree that your personal liberty ends where you actively harm the liberty of another person. Greenhouse gas emissions are undeniably harming tens of millions of people – and endangering the ground on which all human liberty rests: a stable and safe climate.
Just as no libertarian would argue you should have the right to buy and fire a nuclear weapon, no libertarian should argue you have the right to burn unlimited greenhouse gases. Once confronted with this argument, the only people who cling to a libertarian defence of fossil fuels are people who take money from the fossil fuel industry itself, like Spiked Online. They have to scrape together any old excuse.
So enough with the placebos. Enough with the fake-libertarian excuses. As the climate that sustains human life unravels around us, we are long past the moment when we need real medicine – and the only one we have is hard government legislation.
India scores Andrew Bolt The big story of the Indian Cricket League auction is really the astonishing emergence of India from a famine-riddled basket case to a honey-pot - all within just a couple of generations:
Dhoni ... grossed more than double what Adam Gilchrist did ($700,000 from Hyderabad)… In the third round, featuring the star players from outside India, [Andrew] Symonds was bought by the Hyderabad franchise for $1.35m… Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden - two other Australians auctioned in the same round - were not fought for nearly as hard and went for $400,000 and $375,000 respectively… Irfan Pathan, whose bidding started at $200,000, was finally bought by Mohali for $9,25,000. His brother, Yusuf, and Cameron White, another largely untested player at the international level, were bought for $475,000 and $500,000 respectively.... David [Hussey] actually found more takers than brother Mike, and was bought by Kolkata for $625,000...
When I was a boy I remember seeing aid appeals for victims of India’s famines - probably the last the country ever suffered. Now I see the money coming the other way, phenomenal salaries for Australians to just play cricket.
Nor is that the only sign of one of the most uplifting and least commented stories of our times. Check the good news behind the higher food prices:
Crop prices have soared as much as fourfold this decade because of increased demand for food in India and China, where hundreds of millions of people are moving up to the middle class and can afford to eat more meat from animals raised on grain- based feeds...
And as Michael Moore (the sane one who was Director-General of the World Trade Organisation) points out:
More wealth has been created in the past six decades than in all previous history, and it’s reduced poverty. The number of people living on less than $1 a day dropped from 40 per cent in 1981 to 18 per cent in 2004…
The evidence is clear, open economies, open trade, open societies - those that cherish the rule of law, property rights, labour rights and democracy - do better.
Capitalism - eventually let loose in India - and technology have achieved a miracle that none of us students in the 1970s were told was possible. We were taught instead that the only TV footage we’d see from India was of people dying in famines - famines that would grow only more devastating with time:
Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, The Population Bomb, taken as gospel then, stated ”India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980,” and “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971.”
But here we are watching Indian cricket carnivals instead, played with Australian players paid a fortune to please India’s new middle classes.
Terrific. The real story of the Indian Cricket League is that free markets can transform beggars into spenders.
The day cricketers sold like stocks Sidharth Monga in Mumbai On-field action aside, we could have just witnessed the most eventful day in cricket's history, one when players were bought like stocks at a share market. In the frenetic Indian Premier League auctions, which lasted 10 hours in the Hilton Towers in Mumbai, six players raked up more than a million dollars each, and over 70 others earned immediate financial security. In one day of tradings, the face of world cricket has been changed: for better or worse, is for time to tell.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Andrew Symonds were the big winners on a day when Indian and Australian players were the most wanted. A whopping US$14.6 million was spent on 25 Indians, including big sums for those on the fringe, while the 13 Australians were worth US$6.7 million, with relative unknowns like Cameron White and David Hussey thriving among the big daddies.
The auction wasn't without its surprises. Glenn McGrath was not picked up in the first set of bids and needed to wait till the end before he was bought at the base price. In contrast Ishant Sharma, a bowler just two seasons old, benefitted immensely from the recent performances, ending as the costliest bowler in the pool.
The trends were hard to miss. Teams have not looked to buy just match-winners; they have invested in a mix of cricketers and brands. The fact that Dhoni is getting more than double of what Gilchrist will is a case in point. As for the young players, especially the batsmen, the franchises have all preferred the popular over the proven: Robin Uthappa was worth more than Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting put together. Stunningly Yusuf Pathan, who's played just one Twenty20 international, was deemed about three times more valuable than the experienced Scott Styris.
The day kicked off with the blockbuster news of Dhoni being bought for US$1.5 million by Chennai. That set the ball rolling, and no other player was able to catch up with it by the end of the day. Dhoni was part of the first group of players (the marquee players) to be auctioned and grossed more than double what Adam Gilchrist did ($700,000 from Hyderabad). It took the franchises only about 20 to 25 minutes to decide the teams for the six biggest names in the fray.
The second round of bidding featured some more senior players for sale, and surprisingly McGrath and Mohammad Yousuf didn't find any takers. It was later learnt that Yousuf was a disputed property as he had been asked by the court not to participate in any league that is rival to the Indian Cricket League (ICL). Harbhajan Singh and Sanath Jayasuriya were the big draws in this round and Mumbai dug deep into their pockets to procure the two. While a $975,000 salary might not be too high for Jayasuriya, Harbhajan's taking away $850,000 did come as a surprise.
After a brief lunch break, the kind we see in a rain-curtailed ODI, Andrew Symonds came pretty close to beating Dhoni. In the third round, featuring the star players from outside India, Symonds was bought by the Hyderabad franchise for $1.35m. The franchises would have known of Symonds's decision to not tour Pakistan later this year, because Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden - two other Australians auctioned in the same round - were not fought for nearly as hard and went for $400,000 and $375,000 respectively. The New Zealanders, Brendan McCullum and Jacob Oram, were interesting picks as they drew $700,000 and $675,000 from Kolkata and Chennai respectively.
Bangalore, who were relatively quiet till then, surprised all by digging deep into their coffers to procure Jacques Kallis for $900,000, while Kolkata bought Chris Gayle for $800,000 in the fourth round of biddings, which featured stars who were perhaps one rung lower than the top draw.
By the end of the fourth round, one could vaguely look into how the teams were going about their selection. Hyderabad, for example, were going all out for big hitters: Symonds, Gilchrist, Herschelle Gibbs, and Shahid Afridi had cost them $3.3m by then. Mohali were looking for solid batsmen (Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara) and a fiery pace attack (Brett Lee and Sreesanth).
Kolkata were going for a more equitable distribution of salary, not bidding outrageously for superstars but looking to get as many good players as possible, while Jaipur kept their cards close to their chest, having spent only $1.15 by the end of four rounds.
In the fifth round, Delhi surprised everybody in the auction for wicketkeepers - spending $825,000 for two wickekeepers, Dinesh Kartik getting $125,000 more than AB de Villiers. Bangalore followed their trend of banking in safe players and picked Mark Boucher for $450,000.
The allrounders, the hot properties in Twenty20 cricket auctioned in round 6, had more surprises in the offing. Irfan Pathan, whose bidding started at $200,000, was finally bought by Mohali for $9,25,000. His brother, Yusuf, and Cameron White, another largely untested player at the international level, were bought for $475,000 and $500,000 respectively. No-one, though, was ready to pay a dollar more than his base price of $175,000 for Scott Styris.
When it come to the young batsmen, it was down to the real box office. India's dashing Twenty20 stars were showered with money while Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina and Manoj Tiwary - those not part of the World Twenty20 squad, got their share too. David Hussey was the only non-Indian lesser-known batsman, to draw a favourable response from the bidders. David actually found more takers than brother Mike, and was bought by Kolkata for $625,000; bidding for him started at $100,000.
By the time we moved to the last round of auction, for the lesser-known bowlers, the franchises were spent, both physically and financially. Umar Gul, one of the best bowlers in the Twenty20 world championships, was bought for a mere $150,000 by Kolkata, while Chaminda Vaas, Makhaya Ntini, and Dilhara Fernando all went for their base prices. But Kolkata offset the Gul steal and stung the last surprise of the day by buying Ishant for a whopping $950,000.
Things have happened too fast to make a sense of it or predict where we are headed, but in one day one thing was proven: in a free-market environment, the players' worth and selections would not be judged by how they played, but as a commercial commodity.
Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year, Potash Says By Christopher Donville Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Grain farmers will need to harvest record crops every year to meet increasing global food demand and avoid famine, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. Chief Executive Officer William Doyle said.
People and livestock are consuming more grain than ever, draining world inventories and increasing the likelihood of shortages, Doyle said yesterday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Global grain stockpiles fell to about 53 days of supply last year, the lowest level since record-keeping began in 1960, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
``If you had any major upset where you didn't have a crop in a major growing agricultural region this year, I believe you'd see famine,'' Doyle, 57, said in New York.
Potash, the world's largest maker of crop nutrients, has more than doubled in market value in the past year as record crop prices allowed farmers to spend more on fertilizer to boost yields. The company has more than doubled net income in the past two years to $1.1 billion and expects gross profit from potash to expand to $8 billion within five years from $912 million in 2007. Potash is a form of potassium that helps plants grow.
Potash, based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, rose C$7.90, or 5.3 percent, to a record C$157.25 yesterday in Toronto Stock Exchange trading.
Mosaic Co., the world's largest producer of phosphate fertilizer, rose $6.18, or 6 percent, to $109.55 in New York. Agrium Inc., the largest retailer of crop nutrients in the U.S., rose C$3.22, or 4.9 percent, to C$69 in Toronto.
China and India
Crop prices have soared as much as fourfold this decade because of increased demand for food in India and China, where hundreds of millions of people are moving up to the middle class and can afford to eat more meat from animals raised on grain- based feeds, Doyle said.
Soybean futures rose to a record $14.2875 a bushel yesterday on the Chicago Board of Trade, capping an 85 percent gain in the past 12 months. Wheat prices, which have more than doubled in the past year in Chicago, reached a record on Feb. 11, and corn climbed to a record on Feb. 6.
``There is a dietary shift occurring in China today, particularly amongst the young,'' Hugh Grant, chief executive officer of Monsanto Co., the world's biggest seed producer, said in a Feb. 6 interview. ``As protein consumption increases, as they move from fish to chicken, chicken to pork, and pork to beef, the demand for commodities increases almost by an order of magnitude.''
`Enormous Pressure'
``We keep going to the cupboard without replacing and so there is enormous pressure on agriculture to have a record crop every year,'' Doyle said. ``We need to have a record crop in 2008 just to stay even with this very low inventory situation.''
Planting more crop land in Brazil and boosting yields from existing fields in China and Russia, where agricultural productivity has lagged behind the U.S. and Canada, may be needed to avoid food shortages, Doyle said.
``The agriculture fertilizer sector offers tremendous fundamentals that will prove unique in an otherwise challenging and eroding macroeconomic environment,'' Robert Koort, a New York-based analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said in a Feb. 13 report. He recommends buying Potash shares.
Potash Corp. is expanding output of potash by about 7 million metric tons a year in the next eight years as farmers seek to boost crop yields. The company currently can produce about 10 million tons.
``You won't have a global shortage of food because you don't have enough potash,'' said Doyle, whose company also makes phosphates and nitrogen-based nutrients.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Donville in New York at cjdonville@bloomberg.net
Global poverty can be overcome By Mike Moore, Special to Gulf News Here's some figures that you won't believe if you read only the headlines about global poverty. More wealth has been created in the past six decades than in all previous history, and it's reduced poverty. The number of people living on less than $1 a day dropped from 40 per cent in 1981 to 18 per cent in 2004.
In the same period, the number of people living on less than $2 a day has dropped from 67 per cent to 48 per cent. Too many people still live in poverty, half a billion on $1 a day, and 2.6 billion on less than $2 a day. The evidence is clear, open economies, open trade, open societies - those that cherish the rule of law, property rights, labour rights and democracy - do better. Closed economies are always run by the most unpleasant and oppressive leaders. If they don't let people decide their economic rights, they are most likely to suppress their human and political rights. No two democracies have ever gone to war and there's never been a famine in a democracy with a free press.
'Sustainable development'
Every now and again a serious report emerges that nails the issues and its ideas are put centre stage, and success is when they become cliches. A report generated by German leader Willy Brandt, invented the words, "North/South", and put the idea of 1 per cent aid as an obligation of rich countries to poor countries on every nation's agenda. Norwegian Bro Bundland's report on the environment put the phrase, "sustainable development", into popular usage. Now every political manifesto feels obliged to put the word "sustainable" before every policy statement.
I'm the least distinguished member of a UN Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, chaired by former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, and Peruvian Economist Hernando DeSoto, and includes outstanding individuals; a former US Treasury Secretary, and a US Supreme Court Justice, a former president of Tanzania and Ireland, a Nobel Prize winner from Iran, and former finance ministers from Egypt and Afghanistan. We had our final meeting recently, the Commission's report will be profound and may change the thinking on how we alleviate poverty.
Poverty is a man-made thing so we can fix it. What's the common denominator in success and failure? Open economies always do better. Trade and competition drive up better results and are powerful weapons to drive out corruption, as well as allocate resources more efficiently. Private ownership, spread through society, works. The tragedy of large scale privatisation in countries such as Russia was the brutal insider wealth grabs. A free market without solid, trusted institutions, property rights, independent courts, a professional public service and democracy is not a free market but a black market.
Firm, predictable civil institutions create a vital factor to promote success. Trust. Trust in the courts, in contracts, is a serious issue. People are driven underground when they don't trust their institutions, which is why 40 per cent of the economies of developing countries is in the informal economy. Why register a company if it costs so much? This relegates local businesses to the back streets.
Secure property rights boosts investment. Evidence abounds that when trust emerges, investment increases. When China established de facto securitisation of property and liberalised agriculture, productivity jumped some 42 per cent between 1978 and 1984. Its more open economy has lifted hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty.
This Commission is focusing on the legal rights of the poor. Over 7 in 10 children in the poorest countries have no birth certificate or legal identity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that everyone has the right to recognition everywhere before the law. Without secure, property rights, poverty will endure, corruption remain endemic, and investment wither.
Informal capital in Peru is estimated to be worth $74 billion, Egypt $248 billion, Tanzania $29 billion, Albania $16 billion, and Mexico $310 billion.
Eighty per cent of all real estate in Latin America is held outside the law. The poor and indigenous people are not without assets; in Egypt the assets of the poor are 50 times greater than all foreign investment ever recorded. But in Egypt it can take 500 days, 29 visits and 29 agencies, compliance with 315 laws, and costs 27 times the monthly minimum wage just to establish a bakery. In New Delhi, there's an estimated 500,000 bicycle rickshaws driven but only 99,000 licences allowed for legal drivers. Same story for street hawkers who are kept in limbo and pay up to a third of their incomes to stay in business. Licensing and restrictions create opportunities for the bureaucrats to take bribes and steal. In the Philippines, 65 per cent of homes are unregistered, in Tanzania 90 per cent. This explains why millions build their homes and business illegally.
Bringing people out of the shadows formalises what they already own and safeguards them from predatory politicians, bureaucrats and local mafia. It widens the tax base which in turn makes people want to hold their politicians accountable for expenditures not favours.
Access to justice, getting your case heard is important, even when appropriate law is enacted. India has only 11 judges for every million people, and some civil cases can take 20 years to reach court. Around a million cases are pending in Kenya, the average judge in the Philippines has a backlog of nearly 1,500 cases.
We can establish property and collective rights which will encourage people into the formal economy where they are protected by the courts, can borrow formally against their assets and live better.
This is not rocket science, the pattern is clear. Those countries that are doing better are those that are adopting these principles of good governance.
Mike Moore is a former prime minister of New Zealand and former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation.
U.N. Climate Scientists Write Off Africa by Patrick J. Michaels he United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly believes that Africa is incapable of developing a 19th-century market economy in the 21st century. Where's the outrage?
In particular, I am referring to the just-released "Policymakers Summary" of an upcoming UN report on "Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability." It predicts that "agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries and regions is projected to be severely compromised by climate variability and change....This would further affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition on the continent."
With a diversified economy Africa and the world can easily deal with declines in local food production brought upon by bad weather. Nations of the world do it all the time, every year. The mechanism is the global market.
Many nations on earth do not produce, in requisite amounts, all the raw material required for the diets people desire. Even vegetarian diets are complicated, requiring a proper balance of amino acids that can come from mixing legumes (soybeans, lentils, etc.) with rice and maybe some corn. How many small countries have sufficient agrodiversity and productivity?
More people like meat. Meat that isn't grass-fed (i.e. about 99% of what's in the store) requires a more complicated production catena: corn and soybeans, ground into food, are transported to intensive feeding facilities (quaintly and erroneously called "family farms"), fed to cattle, pigs, and chickens that are trucked to slaughter, packaged, chilled, shipped, bought and cooked.
No one person can do all this economically, nor is it likely that it's best done even in one county or state. Some large countries might do it all, but not many others. Instead , the world relies on markets. People good at producing soybeans and corn (like the U.S.) may export feed to other countries that don't have such a fortunate climate or favorable land (say, Mexico), and eventually the beef appears on a taco in Toluca, bought by a worker at Daimler-Chrysler's billion-dollar plant that produces PT Cruisers for U.S. consumption.
Sometimes the weather is bad in the U.S., or we might divert a lot of our corn into politically-correct ethanol, reducing the supply (and resulting in some grumbling south of the border). The price will rise, but someone else will produce more, where the weather or political climate are more favorable, and there will still be a supply.
In Africa, there's a tremendous amount of labor available for manufacturing, and it is in a terrific location to supply Eurasian markets. Why condemn the continent to low-yielding agriculture and poverty? If Mexico produces cars now, why can't Africa industrialize? A relatively constant stream of capital will purchase food more reliably than what local weather can produce.
The UN is also assuming that agricultural technology in Africa will not change, in this century, in a fashion similar to what happened in much of the rest of the world in the last century. Rather, Africa's food supply, and that of nearly nowhere else on earth, will be threatened by climate change.
The resilience of modern agricultural technology is obvious. Consider a climatically diverse state like Virginia. Temperatures average 6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the agriculturally intensive southeast than they do in the in the Shenandoah Valley to the northwest. The southeast gets over 25% more rain than the northwest. But, corn yields are the same.
Operationally, there's little difference between a farmer moving to another climate or the climate moving around the farmer. In resilient economies, both adapt.
Yet the specter of famine is a constant theme. How many American adults were taught in school that India -- now populated with over a billion people -- was on the verge of starvation? Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book, The Population Bomb, taken as gospel then, stated "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980," and "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971."
Obviously Ehrlich was wrong. India adopted high-yielding "Green Revolution" wheat in the early 1970s, followed by similar advances in rice production, at it became a substantial net exporter of food, as it is today. And, even if there were widespread crop failures, the now-diversified Indian economy would have little problem purchasing food on the international market.
Apparently the UN does not believe Africa is capable of emulating India. The IPCC believes Africa will remain so undeveloped that it will be unable to diversify its economy enough to avoid famines in a world that is awash in food.
In other words, the UN is saying that Africans are incapable of existing in the modern world for the coming century. One might ask, on what cynical model of international development is such a pejorative outlook based? And what gives the UN's climate scientists such special knowledge that they predict that Africa will not enter the world's market economy?
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Can no one rid NSW of this government?
Andrew Bolt
NSW’s economy is at a crawl and Sydney’s infrastructure is falling apart. Now this:
THE NSW Labor Party has gone into damage control over sensational allegations of bribery and corruption within Wollongong City Council, suspending five party members implicated in the scandal.
Three ministers have been dragged into the widening furore, with the Government of Premier Morris Iemma reeling from claims of jobs for mates and a trail of political donations from allegedly corrupt developers.
And this:
HIGH-PROFILE NSW minister Phil Koperberg will resign from cabinet due to ill health. Premier Morris Iemma said his Enviroment Minister would go on sick leave ahead of surgical treatment and a period of recovery…
Mr Koperberg, the former Rural Fire Service head, resumed his cabinet position in mid-January after police said they would not charge him over 20-year-old domestic violence allegations.
And this:
New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma has told the Department of Community Services (DOCS) to lift its game following revelations confidential client files were sent to the wrong addresses. Two women were mistakenly sent each other’s files, which included their case histories, medical and psychiatric reports, as well as names, addresses and phone numbers…
The bungle has come to light as former Supreme Court judge James Wood QC holds a commission of inquiry into DOCS, after two children known to the department died within weeks of each other last year.
In the first case, the body of a two-year-old boy was found stuffed in a suitcase in a Sydney duck pond. Less than a month later, a seven-year-old girl was found starved to death at her family’s home on the NSW mid-north coast.
And there’s a trial I won’t mention (and neither must you).
All in all, if voters don’t throw out this astonishingly cartoonish Government they deserve every lousy thing that’s falling on their heads.
Iemma vows 'heads will roll'
Imre Salusinszky and John Stapleton
MORRIS Iemma says "heads will roll" if any NSW ministers are found to have acted inappropriately in their dealings with Joe Scimone.
The NSW Labor Party is in damage control over sensational allegations of bribery and corruption within Wollongong City Council, suspending five party members implicated in the scandal.
Three ministers have been dragged into the widening furore, with the Government of Premier Morris Iemma reeling from claims of jobs for mates and a trail of political donations from allegedly corrupt developers.
The NSW premier called a press conference today amid growing controversy over the appointment of Mr Scimone to a $200,000 a year government position. Mr Scimone is under investigation over alleged corruption at Wollongong council.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has been asked to decide whether there are grounds to investigate the appointment of Mr Scimone, a friend of NSW Ports Minister Joe Tripodi, to a senior job with NSW Maritime.
“Anyone who is found to have done the wrong thing are out, their heads will roll,” Mr Iemma told reporters. “The only thing that will be destroyed in this is the careers of those who have done the wrong thing.”
Mr Iemma said if the investigation was warranted then Mr Tripodi would stand down, and if any allegation of impropriety was found “he will be sacked”.
He said further claims surrounding ministers Matt Brown, David Campbell and Reba Meagher seemed to be based solely on the fact that they “knew Scimone”.
The allegations have emerged from explosive evidence at the ICAC hearing, where it was alleged a town planner, Beth Morgan, was involved in sexual relationships with three developers - and received cash and gifts from two of them - while she was approving their property developments worth a combined $135million.
Ms Morgan, a 32-year-old divorcee and mother of one, regularly attended morning meetings with the three developers, Glen Tabak, Michael Kollaras and Frank Vellar, at a Wollongong kebab shop in a group called "the table of knowledge", an informal meeting of business and council heavyweights.
Labor-controlled Wollongong Council was yesterday left to swing in the breeze by the state Government, with Local Government Minister Paul Lynch refusing to take calls from council general manager David Farmer.
Mr Tabak and Mr Kollaras maintained their usual practice of a 6.30am coffee at the shop yesterday, just hours before they gave evidence at the ICAC inquiry.
Members of their group told The Australian yesterday "the table of knowledge doesn't really exist" but Mr Kollaras later told the inquiry he started the "table of knowledge" about 10 years ago.
In the witness box, Mr Kollaras denied having an affair with Ms Morgan but was presented with a series of highly personal emails between them.
In one, she called Mr Kollaras "my favourite, sexy, delectable, gorgeous Greek".
He explained the emails by saying she was an "extremely close friend".
In his evidence, Mr Tabak told the inquiry Ms Morgan was possibly "on a mission for sex" and believed she "wanted to be surrounded by successful people" by liaising with developers.
The political dimension of the scandal widened when it emerged that two conmen, posing as corruption investigators, allegedly extorted a $30,000 payment from Labor powerbroker and council staff member Joe Scimone in exchange for offering to destroy evidence against him.
Mr Scimone left the council in February last year after sexual harassment claims and went on to receive a $200,000 a year position with NSW Maritime, a department controlled by his friend Joe Tripodi, the Ports Minister.
Mr Scimone, who denies he quit because of the claims, was among those suspended from the ALP yesterday.
Three more ALP members bounced from the party are Wollongong Labor councillors accused of soliciting bribes from developers in exchange for planning approvals: Frank Gigliotti, Zeki Esen and deputy lord mayor Kiril Jonovski. The fifth suspension is Labor councillor Val Zanotto, who is accused of paying the same conmen $120,000 to pervert the course of justice.
NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell yesterday renewed his call for Mr Iemma to allow ICAC to investigate Mr Tripodi, labelling him the "tar baby" of the NSW Labor Government.
"We have a Premier who reacts to the appointment of a Labor mate to a $200,000-a-year job in government by setting up an in-house inquiry and ignoring the state's anti-corruption watchdog," Mr O'Farrell said.
Mr Tripodi denied helping Mr Scimone get the NSW Maritime job and said he did not know he was a person of interest to ICAC until this week.
Mr Iemma said he had asked ICAC if the recruitment process at NSW Maritime warranted an external inquiry.
There were further signs of trouble for Mr Iemma last night when John Sutton, national secretary of the construction division of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, said it was time for Mr Iemma to stand aside for Deputy Premier John Watkins.
Adding to his problems, there is speculation that high-profile Environment Minister Phil Koperberg, who recently returned to work after being cleared of domestic violence allegations, will today announce his retirment from cabinet, citing ill health.
The pressure being felt in government circles was also evident when NSW Housing Minister Matt Brown cut short a press conference after reporters quizzed him on political donations he received from a company associated with developer Glen Tabak.
Mr Tabak allegedly began a sexual relationship with Ms Morgan and showered her with gifts to receive favourable treatment of applications.
Police Minister David Campbell was also friendly with Mr Scimone, who helped with his election campaign. And Sydney's The Daily Telegraph reports today that Health Minister Reba Meagher and her predecessor John Hatzistergos are also being questioned about their knowledge of Mr Scimone's appointment to a health department committee in 2005.
At the ICAC hearing yesterday, Mr Tabak said he was a friend of Mr Scimone and had sold him a unit in one of his developments. He said Mr Scimone told him he paid $30,000 to two men who said theycould help him with the ICAC investigation.
Independent Wollongong councillor David Martin yesterday successfully moved for an emergency council meeting on Monday to ask the four Labor councillors to stand aside.
- Additional reporting: Lauren Wilson
Ill Koperberg quits NSW cabinet
HIGH-PROFILE NSW minister Phil Koperberg will resign from cabinet due to ill health.
Premier Morris Iemma said his Enviroment Minister would go on sick leave ahead of surgical treatment and a period of recovery.
Mr Koperberg is expected to resume work as the local Blue Mountains MP after his treatment and recovery, Mr Iemma said.
“His health is understandably his top priority at this time,` said Mr Iemma.
“He's advised me he needs time to undergo proper treatment, and to recover fully.”
Mr Iemma said: “The door will remain open to him for future cabinet consideration.”
Mr Koperberg's resignation comes at a turbulent time for the state Labor Government as it faces further scrutiny after five ministers were linked to the ICAC inquiry into Wollongong Council.
Mr Koperberg, the former Rural Fire Service head, resumed his cabinet position in mid-January after police said they would not charge him over 20-year-old domestic violence allegations.
Water Utilities Minister Nathan Rees will take on the wider water portfolio and Assistant Environment Minister Verity Firth would assume responsibility for climate change and the environment.
Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said it appeared the stress was too much for Mr Koperberg.
“I'm sorry to hear the news,” Mr O'Farrell told Macquarie Radio.
“I hope Mr Koperberg is able to regain his health.
“Phil Koperberg made a significant contribution to the state through the Rural Fire Service, but it's no secret he's not looked comfortable in his role as an active member of the Iemma Government.”
AAP
Iemma tells DOCS: 'Lift your game'
ABC news
New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma has told the Department of Community Services (DOCS) to lift its game following revelations confidential client files were sent to the wrong addresses.
Two women were mistakenly sent each other's files, which included their case histories, medical and psychiatric reports, as well as names, addresses and phone numbers.
DOCS deputy of operations Annette Gallard says the department has apologised to both women and is investigating the incident.
Mr Iemma says he is angry and he wants DOCS to get to the bottom of the mix-up.
"It's obviously a very sensitive area and [it highlights the] importance of getting it right when information is exchanged," he said.
"It's not good enough. The apology's gone but more than that, [we need] to get to the bottom of that and make sure that when this very sensitive information is being exchanged, that it's being done properly."
The Premier has told DOCS to take steps to ensure similar incidents do not happen again.
"[They are] doing a very tough job but in this instance, lift your game," he said.
'Fobbed off'
The State Opposition says the incident is more than just a bureaucratic mix-up and shows DOCS is dysfunctional.
"It's a tragic mistake," Opposition community services spokeswoman Katrina Hodgkinson said.
"It's an unforgivable mistake and it's one the Minister, Kevin Greene, should be thoroughly apologising for rather than just fobbing it off to his director-general once again."
But DOCS deputy director of operations Annette Gallard says the file mix-up was an isolated incident.
Ms Gallard says the women were not put at risk because DOCS took steps to retrieve the files as soon as the mistakes were discovered.
"This means that the information is not being circulated past one individual," she said.
"It's a terrible mistake but we're looking into our procedures because we don't want this to happen to anyone else."
The bungle has come to light as former Supreme Court judge James Wood QC holds a commission of inquiry into DOCS, after two children known to the department died within weeks of each other last year.
In the first case, the body of a two-year-old boy was found stuffed in a suitcase in a Sydney duck pond. Less than a month later, a seven-year-old girl was found starved to death at her family's home on the NSW mid-north coast.
The Left’s outrageous bias helps conservatives
Andrew Bolt
Queensland University’s Professor James Allan:
A 2005 study in the US in The American Lawyer concluded that “recent studies reveal what the insiders have known all along: professors at top US law schools are predominantly liberal (left wing)"…
So if we were to take all the legal academics from the 30-plus law schools in Australia and poll them, what percentage do we honestly think would tell us they vote Coalition as opposed to Labor (or something further left)? One could quite confidently put the figure for Coalition-voting legal academics across Australia at less than 20per cent. Indeed, I’d bet there are whole law schools where hardly anyone admits to voting for the Coalition.
If we were really keen on mandating a wide-ranging diversity, then top university officials across the country ought to be taking steps to favour the hiring of only those on the Right of the political spectrum “to foster an institutional culture that favours diversity on campus” or however the jargon of the day happens to put it.
Of course, that’s plain laughable. It will never happen.
Which brings Allan to the subject of Jon Faine.
But Allan also notes a benefit to this overwhelming bias that I’ve found particularly helpful myself, especially for my appearances on the lone chair in Insiders:
That advantage is this: you get to hear the other side of things all the time and from lots of different angles.
You get to debate with other smart, reasonable and nice people with whom you disagree. You get to sharpen your position, fix the flaws and weaknesses in your views, and generally just enjoy a good difference of opinion. That’s far harder to do when you’re spending most of your time talking to other broadly like-minded people.
I’ve been surprised by the number of very smart Leftists I’ve debated who seem to have never considered the alternative arguments, never practised arguing against them and never been made to consider the obvious chinks their own positions. I include in that even Julian Burnside, which is odd given he is a barrister.
Gerard Henderson today says the same about Faine.
Agreed is good in halls of academe
James Allan
THERE is a lot of talk in universities about diversity. What is this wonderful thing called diversity? It doesn't take too long working in an Australian university to realise that whatever this thing is, it involves getting more people into top jobs, restricted courses, PhD programs, what have you, based on some group characteristic. Maybe it's the person's sex, or race, or whether they are an indigenous person.
Of course, universities are in the business of ideas. So if those of us in the university sector really think diversity is so important that it needs mandating, or some other sort of positive encouragement, then it is a diversity of ideas that needs mandating or encouraging. Presumably that would include seeking to provide students with a diversity of political perspectives.
Do you think they get such a broad spectrum now? Let me restrict myself to the 30-plus law schools in Australia, though I am confident what I am about to say applies even more so to arts faculties. A 2005 study in the US in The American Lawyer concluded that "recent studies reveal what the insiders have known all along: professors at top US law schools are predominantly liberal (left wing)". Indeed, that's putting it as softly as possible. Another commentator came right out and said "legal academia is heavily tilted to the political Left".
So if we were to take all the legal academics from the 30-plus law schools in Australia and poll them, what percentage do we honestly think would tell us they vote Coalition as opposed to Labor (or something further left)? One could quite confidently put the figure for Coalition-voting legal academics across Australia at less than 20per cent. Indeed, I'd bet there are whole law schools where hardly anyone admits to voting for the Coalition.
If we were really keen on mandating a wide-ranging diversity, then top university officials across the country ought to be taking steps to favour the hiring of only those on the Right of the political spectrum "to foster an institutional culture that favours diversity on campus" or however the jargon of the day happens to put it.
Of course, that's plain laughable. It will never happen. Nor do I think it a good thing to be pursued. I don't much like group-based hiring decisions on any basis. But leaving that aside, there is a real, competitive advantage to being part of a minority when it comes to the ideas and political positions one holds. That advantage is this: you get to hear the other side of things all the time and from lots of different angles.
You get to debate with other smart, reasonable and nice people with whom you disagree. You get to sharpen your position, fix the flaws and weaknesses in your views, and generally just enjoy a good difference of opinion. That's far harder to do when you're spending most of your time talking to other broadly like-minded people. As it happens, no one much even talks about this political bias. It's just a dirty little non-secret.
All of which takes us, by a rather circuitous route, to the comments by Melbourne ABC radio's Jon Faine. A fortnight ago he advocated a "cleansing process" for newspapers in the Rudd era, suggesting that The Australian, in particular, cut most of its conservative opinion columnists. The apparent reason for this was that the voters had opted for a left-wing Kevin Rudd and so it would be best all around if newspapers followed the voters.
Think about this. If Faine were of the view that all newspapers and media ought overwhelmingly to favour the viewpoint of the elected government - that when 53 per cent of voters pick a party, 80 per cent or 90 per cent of commentators ought to be in that same basic camp - then that would be a respectable point of view. I don't think it's an attractive view. I think we want lots of dissenting views, for the sorts of reasons I gave above. I don't think aiming for a situation in which the vast preponderance of commentators agree with the government is all that healthy in a democracy. But at least such a view is respectable.
What is less respectable, and Faine does not seem to get this, is to argue that we need like-minded commentators staffing newspapers and the ABC when his preferred political party is in power, but that we need lots of dissenting voices when it's the other guys in office.
John Howard won an election with just about exactly the same 53 per cent of the vote as Rudd just did. Was Faine back then calling for a cleaning out of the ABC and The Age? You see, if he wasn't, then Faine wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants the ABC and the newspapers largely to be cheerleaders for the political party he happens to favour. In terms of living in an open, democratic system of government, that is not a respectable view. You call for a cleaning out when either side wins, or never. If Faine can't see that, perhaps he should be asked to leave the ABC. He then might find a job in a university, where at least he'd feel right at home.
James Allan is professor of law at the University of Queensland.
Faine denies saying what he did
Andrew Bolt
What ABC host Jon Faine today claims he said last week:
We were talking about the need for renewal after an election and the need for renewal that all sorts of individuals and particular organisations search for at this time of the year. Here on this radio station and on this radio program - in so far as I have some control - we ae looking for new voices and we say, well, “Who’s had a good run and who can we find that’s new and fresh and different” and we had a conversation about newspapers doing the same thing.
Well, put like that, who could object?
But here’s what ABC host Jon Faine in fact said last week:
I want to expand our discussion to another aspect of media which I think is quite intriguing as the Rudd Government is about to start it’s first session in the parliament, and that is whether or not the media needs to go through a bit of a rethink, as it would seem, according to last year’s election, the nation has. Have things moved on and have some of the staples of the media in the Howard era worn out their usefulness as we enter a Rudd era? ... I’m going to talk in particular about columnists… and Bruce you have some notorious ones of your own? Although I’m going to here, stick my neck right out, and say I think The Australian newspaper has perhaps the most loyal band of Howard supporters amongst its current crop of columnists. And you have to wonder how they’re quite going to adjust, and cope, and fit in when the people they are so well connected to, are no longer in office.
BRUCE GUTHRIE (Editor-in-chief of the Herald Sun): Yes, I’d probably take issue with the word notorious Jon, by the way. I’d say notable rather than notorious…
JON FAINE: But it’s more the columnists (on the The Australian), the sort of Christopher Pearson’s and Janet Albrechtsens and Mark Steyn was the American columnist who was used in the paper yesterday and so on. And you think, well, it kind of represents the thinking that’s out of step with the result of the election in a way, some of the material that those people are very much making their own and their own beat.
BRUCE GUTHRIE: I guess it comes down to whether you think newspapers need to be in step with the Government?
JON FAINE: Oh no, not with the Government with the electorates… But within your newspaper, rather than asking you to speculate about other things, within your own newspaper, does the result of the election mean you rethink any of the component parts that make up your weekly diet?…
BRUCE GUTHRIE: I think it’s very, very hard to contribute a column on a weekly basis over a long, long period of time and so we’re forever monitoring that.
JON FAINE: Very interesting, so you’re not going through a cleansing process?
BRUCE GUTHRIE: Definitely not.
Hmm. That sounds like rather more than a mere search for the fresh, I’d have thought. What Faine seems clearly to be advocating is a political “cleansing” of the kind he’s never called for after a Liberal election victory.
He’d had done better to simply say his misspoke and did not mean what he’s been naturally taken to mean. But to so misrepresent what he actually said doesn’t seem to me like straight dealing.
As for his claim to be searching for “new and fresh and different” voices for his own show, would Faine really like me to recount what I know of that search, and the limitations he has put on it in the past? Perhaps one day, when I’m feeling indiscreet… But no! Resist that temptation!
Faine sensitive to criticism
Gerard Henderson
LIKE many members of his profession, Melbourne radio presenter Jon Faine can dish out criticism but becomes very sensitive when he himself is criticised.
Contrary to Faine’s claim (Cut & Paste, 21/2), I did not quote from second-hand sources when describing his proposal that columnists who are out of step with the result of the November 2007 election should be subjected to a cleansing process. Not at all. I quoted direct from Faine himself.
It is not surprising that Mr Faine is sensitive about his proposal. After all, there is an intolerant double-standard involved here. Faine never argued that such ABC presenters as former Gough Whitlam staffer Kerry O’Brien and leftist columnist Phillip Adams should be cleansed from the taxpayer funded airwaves following John Howard’s election victories in 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2004. It seems that, according to Faine-think, leftist comrades should be able to survive a Coalition election win but conservative columnists should be cleansed following a Labor victory.
By the way, I have never suggested that Faine is either a fascist or a Stalinist. But his calls for the cleansing of those with whom he disagrees is profoundly anti-pluralist.
Gerard Henderson
Sydney, NSW
OVER the past two weeks I’ve watched with amazement as Jon Faine’s words have travelled the globe. They started on Andrew Bolt’s blog and then appeared on Cut & Paste. They then jumped to The Wall Street Journal, hurried back to Cut & Paste in The Australian and The Australian’s editorial, to Gerard Henderson, to Janet Albrechtsen and finally to rest at Cut & Paste again—with a guest spot on the letters page as well. On each of these occasions the words were worked to argue that Faine suggested a cleansing of conservative columnists.
To the listener it was abundantly clear that Faine had merely asked a question, whether newspapers considered election results when deciding on their opinion columnists. He had suggested nothing at all.
Todd Jorgensen
Healesville, Vic
Save the planet, jail the people
Andrew Bolt
Lavishly Leftist Johann Hari is getting so excited about global warming that he’s developed a totalitarian twitch:
It is not enough for you to change your bulbs. Everyone has to change their bulbs. It is not enough for you to eat less meat. Everyone has to eat less meat. It is not enough for you to fly less. Everyone has to fly less.... Every minute you would have spent shopping around for a greener choice, you should spend volunteering for Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth, or Plane Stupid, or the Campaign Against Climate Change…
(E)ven the most hardcore libertarians agree that your personal liberty ends where you actively harm the liberty of another person. Greenhouse gas emissions are undeniably harming tens of millions of people – and endangering the ground on which all human liberty rests: a stable and safe climate.
Johann Hari: We'll save the planet only if we're forced to
Do you check every item you buy to make sure it is green and planet-friendly? Do you buy carbon offsets every time you fly? Stop. It is time to be honest: green consumerism is at best a draining distraction, and at worst a con. While the planet's fever gets worse by the week, we are guzzling down green-coloured placebos and calling it action. There is another way. Our reaction to global warming has gone in waves. First we were in blank denial: how can releasing an odourless, colourless gas change the climate so dramatically? Now we are in a phase of displacement: we assume we can shop our way out of global warming, by shovelling a few new lightbulbs and some carbon offsets into our shopping basket.
This is a self-harming delusion. It's hard to give a sense of the contrast today between the magnitude of our problem, and the weediness of our response so far. But the best way is offered by the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen.
He explains that until 10,000 years ago, the planet's climate would fluctuate violently: sometimes it would veer by 12 degrees centigrade in just a decade. This meant it was impossible to develop agriculture. Crops couldn't be cultivated in this climatic chaos, so human beings were stuck as a tiny smattering of hunter-gatherers.
But then the climate settled down into safe parameters – and humans could settle down too. This period is called the Holocene, and it meant that for the first time, we could develop farming and cities. Everything we know as human civilisation is thanks to this unprecedented period of climatic stability.
Today, we are bringing this era to an end. By pumping vast amounts of warming gases into the atmosphere, we are creating a new era: the Anthropocene, in which man makes the weather. There is an imminent danger of it bursting beyond these safe parameters, and bringing about a return to the violent, volatile variations that prevented our ancestors from progressing beyond spears and sticks.
Those are the stakes. Every week, there is greater evidence that we are nudging further from our safety zone. The hottest year of the 20th century – 1947 – is now merely the average for the 21st century.
And what are we doing? Many good, well-intentioned people are beginning to grasp this problem – and then assuming green consumerism is the only answer to hand. They shop around for items that have not been freighted thousands of miles to make it to their supermarket shelves. They change their lightbulbs. They turn down the thermostat a few degrees. They make sure they buy products that don't sit on electricty-burning standby all day. They buy the more energy-efficient cars, and scorn SUV drivers.
I don't want to attack these people. They are an absolutely essential part of any solution. But we have to be honest. This is not even the beginning of a solution – and by pouring so much energy into it, we may actually be forestalling the real solution. I know a huge number of people who are sincerely worried about global warming, but they assume they have Done Their Bit through these shifted consumption patterns. The truth is: you haven't.
In reality, dispersed consumer choices are not going to keep the climate this side of a disastrous temperature rise. The only way that can ever happen is by governments legislating to force us all – green and anti-green – to shift towards cleaner behaviour. Just as the government in the Second World War did not ask people to eat less voluntarily, governments today cannot ask us to burn fewer greenhouse gases voluntarily .
It is not enough for you to change your bulbs. Everyone has to change their bulbs. It is not enough for you to eat less meat. Everyone has to eat less meat. It is not enough for you to fly less. Everyone has to fly less. (And yes, I hate these facts as much as you do. But I will hate the reality of runaway global warming even more.)
The only way we will get to the situation where we are all required by law to burn fewer greenhouse gases is if enough people pressure the government, demanding it. Green consumer choices often drain away people's political energies to do this. You have a limited amount of time to spend on any political cause. If you have an hour a week to dedicate to acting on global warming, and you spend it scouring the supermarket shelves for the product shipped the shortest distance, that time and energy is gone; you feel you've done what you can. Part of you might also assume: I've made these choices; other people will too; in time, we'll all be persuaded. But we don't have time.
There is a much better way for you to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Every minute you would have spent shopping around for a greener choice, you should spend volunteering for Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth, or Plane Stupid, or the Campaign Against Climate Change. Every hundred-pound premium you would spend to buy a greener product, donate it to them instead. Why? Because by becoming part of this collective action – rather than by clinging to dispersed personal choices – you will help to change the law, so everyone will have to be greener, not just nice people like you.
It works. Green campaigners from Australia to Canada to Japan have successfully banned the old lightbulbs, so only the energy-saving lightbulbs are on offer there now. Green campaigners have prompted the Mayor of London to force SUV drivers to pay a punitive £6,000-a-year premium to drive through our city, forcing many of them to shift to greener cars. These are the first tiny steps towards banning – or massively restricting – the other technologies that are unleashing Weather of Mass Destruction.
Of course, some sincere and well-intentioned people have libertarian concerns about this approach at first glance. Why should we force people to choose the green option? Isn't it better to rely on persuasion and voluntary choice? But even the most hardcore libertarians agree that your personal liberty ends where you actively harm the liberty of another person. Greenhouse gas emissions are undeniably harming tens of millions of people – and endangering the ground on which all human liberty rests: a stable and safe climate.
Just as no libertarian would argue you should have the right to buy and fire a nuclear weapon, no libertarian should argue you have the right to burn unlimited greenhouse gases. Once confronted with this argument, the only people who cling to a libertarian defence of fossil fuels are people who take money from the fossil fuel industry itself, like Spiked Online. They have to scrape together any old excuse.
So enough with the placebos. Enough with the fake-libertarian excuses. As the climate that sustains human life unravels around us, we are long past the moment when we need real medicine – and the only one we have is hard government legislation.
j.hari@independent.co.uk
India scores
Andrew Bolt
The big story of the Indian Cricket League auction is really the astonishing emergence of India from a famine-riddled basket case to a honey-pot - all within just a couple of generations:
Dhoni ... grossed more than double what Adam Gilchrist did ($700,000 from Hyderabad)… In the third round, featuring the star players from outside India, [Andrew] Symonds was bought by the Hyderabad franchise for $1.35m… Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden - two other Australians auctioned in the same round - were not fought for nearly as hard and went for $400,000 and $375,000 respectively… Irfan Pathan, whose bidding started at $200,000, was finally bought by Mohali for $9,25,000. His brother, Yusuf, and Cameron White, another largely untested player at the international level, were bought for $475,000 and $500,000 respectively.... David [Hussey] actually found more takers than brother Mike, and was bought by Kolkata for $625,000...
When I was a boy I remember seeing aid appeals for victims of India’s famines - probably the last the country ever suffered. Now I see the money coming the other way, phenomenal salaries for Australians to just play cricket.
Nor is that the only sign of one of the most uplifting and least commented stories of our times. Check the good news behind the higher food prices:
Crop prices have soared as much as fourfold this decade because of increased demand for food in India and China, where hundreds of millions of people are moving up to the middle class and can afford to eat more meat from animals raised on grain- based feeds...
And as Michael Moore (the sane one who was Director-General of the World Trade Organisation) points out:
More wealth has been created in the past six decades than in all previous history, and it’s reduced poverty. The number of people living on less than $1 a day dropped from 40 per cent in 1981 to 18 per cent in 2004…
The evidence is clear, open economies, open trade, open societies - those that cherish the rule of law, property rights, labour rights and democracy - do better.
Capitalism - eventually let loose in India - and technology have achieved a miracle that none of us students in the 1970s were told was possible. We were taught instead that the only TV footage we’d see from India was of people dying in famines - famines that would grow only more devastating with time:
Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, The Population Bomb, taken as gospel then, stated ”India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980,” and “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971.”
But here we are watching Indian cricket carnivals instead, played with Australian players paid a fortune to please India’s new middle classes.
Terrific. The real story of the Indian Cricket League is that free markets can transform beggars into spenders.
The day cricketers sold like stocks
Sidharth Monga in Mumbai
On-field action aside, we could have just witnessed the most eventful day in cricket's history, one when players were bought like stocks at a share market. In the frenetic Indian Premier League auctions, which lasted 10 hours in the Hilton Towers in Mumbai, six players raked up more than a million dollars each, and over 70 others earned immediate financial security. In one day of tradings, the face of world cricket has been changed: for better or worse, is for time to tell.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Andrew Symonds were the big winners on a day when Indian and Australian players were the most wanted. A whopping US$14.6 million was spent on 25 Indians, including big sums for those on the fringe, while the 13 Australians were worth US$6.7 million, with relative unknowns like Cameron White and David Hussey thriving among the big daddies.
The auction wasn't without its surprises. Glenn McGrath was not picked up in the first set of bids and needed to wait till the end before he was bought at the base price. In contrast Ishant Sharma, a bowler just two seasons old, benefitted immensely from the recent performances, ending as the costliest bowler in the pool.
The trends were hard to miss. Teams have not looked to buy just match-winners; they have invested in a mix of cricketers and brands. The fact that Dhoni is getting more than double of what Gilchrist will is a case in point. As for the young players, especially the batsmen, the franchises have all preferred the popular over the proven: Robin Uthappa was worth more than Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting put together. Stunningly Yusuf Pathan, who's played just one Twenty20 international, was deemed about three times more valuable than the experienced Scott Styris.
The day kicked off with the blockbuster news of Dhoni being bought for US$1.5 million by Chennai. That set the ball rolling, and no other player was able to catch up with it by the end of the day. Dhoni was part of the first group of players (the marquee players) to be auctioned and grossed more than double what Adam Gilchrist did ($700,000 from Hyderabad). It took the franchises only about 20 to 25 minutes to decide the teams for the six biggest names in the fray.
The second round of bidding featured some more senior players for sale, and surprisingly McGrath and Mohammad Yousuf didn't find any takers. It was later learnt that Yousuf was a disputed property as he had been asked by the court not to participate in any league that is rival to the Indian Cricket League (ICL). Harbhajan Singh and Sanath Jayasuriya were the big draws in this round and Mumbai dug deep into their pockets to procure the two. While a $975,000 salary might not be too high for Jayasuriya, Harbhajan's taking away $850,000 did come as a surprise.
After a brief lunch break, the kind we see in a rain-curtailed ODI, Andrew Symonds came pretty close to beating Dhoni. In the third round, featuring the star players from outside India, Symonds was bought by the Hyderabad franchise for $1.35m. The franchises would have known of Symonds's decision to not tour Pakistan later this year, because Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden - two other Australians auctioned in the same round - were not fought for nearly as hard and went for $400,000 and $375,000 respectively. The New Zealanders, Brendan McCullum and Jacob Oram, were interesting picks as they drew $700,000 and $675,000 from Kolkata and Chennai respectively.
Bangalore, who were relatively quiet till then, surprised all by digging deep into their coffers to procure Jacques Kallis for $900,000, while Kolkata bought Chris Gayle for $800,000 in the fourth round of biddings, which featured stars who were perhaps one rung lower than the top draw.
By the end of the fourth round, one could vaguely look into how the teams were going about their selection. Hyderabad, for example, were going all out for big hitters: Symonds, Gilchrist, Herschelle Gibbs, and Shahid Afridi had cost them $3.3m by then. Mohali were looking for solid batsmen (Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara) and a fiery pace attack (Brett Lee and Sreesanth).
Kolkata were going for a more equitable distribution of salary, not bidding outrageously for superstars but looking to get as many good players as possible, while Jaipur kept their cards close to their chest, having spent only $1.15 by the end of four rounds.
In the fifth round, Delhi surprised everybody in the auction for wicketkeepers - spending $825,000 for two wickekeepers, Dinesh Kartik getting $125,000 more than AB de Villiers. Bangalore followed their trend of banking in safe players and picked Mark Boucher for $450,000.
The allrounders, the hot properties in Twenty20 cricket auctioned in round 6, had more surprises in the offing. Irfan Pathan, whose bidding started at $200,000, was finally bought by Mohali for $9,25,000. His brother, Yusuf, and Cameron White, another largely untested player at the international level, were bought for $475,000 and $500,000 respectively. No-one, though, was ready to pay a dollar more than his base price of $175,000 for Scott Styris.
When it come to the young batsmen, it was down to the real box office. India's dashing Twenty20 stars were showered with money while Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina and Manoj Tiwary - those not part of the World Twenty20 squad, got their share too. David Hussey was the only non-Indian lesser-known batsman, to draw a favourable response from the bidders. David actually found more takers than brother Mike, and was bought by Kolkata for $625,000; bidding for him started at $100,000.
By the time we moved to the last round of auction, for the lesser-known bowlers, the franchises were spent, both physically and financially. Umar Gul, one of the best bowlers in the Twenty20 world championships, was bought for a mere $150,000 by Kolkata, while Chaminda Vaas, Makhaya Ntini, and Dilhara Fernando all went for their base prices. But Kolkata offset the Gul steal and stung the last surprise of the day by buying Ishant for a whopping $950,000.
Things have happened too fast to make a sense of it or predict where we are headed, but in one day one thing was proven: in a free-market environment, the players' worth and selections would not be judged by how they played, but as a commercial commodity.
Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year, Potash Says
By Christopher Donville
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Grain farmers will need to harvest record crops every year to meet increasing global food demand and avoid famine, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. Chief Executive Officer William Doyle said.
People and livestock are consuming more grain than ever, draining world inventories and increasing the likelihood of shortages, Doyle said yesterday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Global grain stockpiles fell to about 53 days of supply last year, the lowest level since record-keeping began in 1960, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
``If you had any major upset where you didn't have a crop in a major growing agricultural region this year, I believe you'd see famine,'' Doyle, 57, said in New York.
Potash, the world's largest maker of crop nutrients, has more than doubled in market value in the past year as record crop prices allowed farmers to spend more on fertilizer to boost yields. The company has more than doubled net income in the past two years to $1.1 billion and expects gross profit from potash to expand to $8 billion within five years from $912 million in 2007. Potash is a form of potassium that helps plants grow.
Potash, based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, rose C$7.90, or 5.3 percent, to a record C$157.25 yesterday in Toronto Stock Exchange trading.
Mosaic Co., the world's largest producer of phosphate fertilizer, rose $6.18, or 6 percent, to $109.55 in New York. Agrium Inc., the largest retailer of crop nutrients in the U.S., rose C$3.22, or 4.9 percent, to C$69 in Toronto.
China and India
Crop prices have soared as much as fourfold this decade because of increased demand for food in India and China, where hundreds of millions of people are moving up to the middle class and can afford to eat more meat from animals raised on grain- based feeds, Doyle said.
Soybean futures rose to a record $14.2875 a bushel yesterday on the Chicago Board of Trade, capping an 85 percent gain in the past 12 months. Wheat prices, which have more than doubled in the past year in Chicago, reached a record on Feb. 11, and corn climbed to a record on Feb. 6.
``There is a dietary shift occurring in China today, particularly amongst the young,'' Hugh Grant, chief executive officer of Monsanto Co., the world's biggest seed producer, said in a Feb. 6 interview. ``As protein consumption increases, as they move from fish to chicken, chicken to pork, and pork to beef, the demand for commodities increases almost by an order of magnitude.''
`Enormous Pressure'
``We keep going to the cupboard without replacing and so there is enormous pressure on agriculture to have a record crop every year,'' Doyle said. ``We need to have a record crop in 2008 just to stay even with this very low inventory situation.''
Planting more crop land in Brazil and boosting yields from existing fields in China and Russia, where agricultural productivity has lagged behind the U.S. and Canada, may be needed to avoid food shortages, Doyle said.
``The agriculture fertilizer sector offers tremendous fundamentals that will prove unique in an otherwise challenging and eroding macroeconomic environment,'' Robert Koort, a New York-based analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said in a Feb. 13 report. He recommends buying Potash shares.
Potash Corp. is expanding output of potash by about 7 million metric tons a year in the next eight years as farmers seek to boost crop yields. The company currently can produce about 10 million tons.
``You won't have a global shortage of food because you don't have enough potash,'' said Doyle, whose company also makes phosphates and nitrogen-based nutrients.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Donville in New York at cjdonville@bloomberg.net
Global poverty can be overcome
By Mike Moore, Special to Gulf News
Here's some figures that you won't believe if you read only the headlines about global poverty. More wealth has been created in the past six decades than in all previous history, and it's reduced poverty. The number of people living on less than $1 a day dropped from 40 per cent in 1981 to 18 per cent in 2004.
In the same period, the number of people living on less than $2 a day has dropped from 67 per cent to 48 per cent. Too many people still live in poverty, half a billion on $1 a day, and 2.6 billion on less than $2 a day. The evidence is clear, open economies, open trade, open societies - those that cherish the rule of law, property rights, labour rights and democracy - do better. Closed economies are always run by the most unpleasant and oppressive leaders. If they don't let people decide their economic rights, they are most likely to suppress their human and political rights. No two democracies have ever gone to war and there's never been a famine in a democracy with a free press.
'Sustainable development'
Every now and again a serious report emerges that nails the issues and its ideas are put centre stage, and success is when they become cliches. A report generated by German leader Willy Brandt, invented the words, "North/South", and put the idea of 1 per cent aid as an obligation of rich countries to poor countries on every nation's agenda. Norwegian Bro Bundland's report on the environment put the phrase, "sustainable development", into popular usage. Now every political manifesto feels obliged to put the word "sustainable" before every policy statement.
I'm the least distinguished member of a UN Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, chaired by former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, and Peruvian Economist Hernando DeSoto, and includes outstanding individuals; a former US Treasury Secretary, and a US Supreme Court Justice, a former president of Tanzania and Ireland, a Nobel Prize winner from Iran, and former finance ministers from Egypt and Afghanistan. We had our final meeting recently, the Commission's report will be profound and may change the thinking on how we alleviate poverty.
Poverty is a man-made thing so we can fix it. What's the common denominator in success and failure? Open economies always do better. Trade and competition drive up better results and are powerful weapons to drive out corruption, as well as allocate resources more efficiently. Private ownership, spread through society, works. The tragedy of large scale privatisation in countries such as Russia was the brutal insider wealth grabs. A free market without solid, trusted institutions, property rights, independent courts, a professional public service and democracy is not a free market but a black market.
Firm, predictable civil institutions create a vital factor to promote success. Trust. Trust in the courts, in contracts, is a serious issue. People are driven underground when they don't trust their institutions, which is why 40 per cent of the economies of developing countries is in the informal economy. Why register a company if it costs so much? This relegates local businesses to the back streets.
Secure property rights boosts investment. Evidence abounds that when trust emerges, investment increases. When China established de facto securitisation of property and liberalised agriculture, productivity jumped some 42 per cent between 1978 and 1984. Its more open economy has lifted hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty.
This Commission is focusing on the legal rights of the poor. Over 7 in 10 children in the poorest countries have no birth certificate or legal identity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that everyone has the right to recognition everywhere before the law. Without secure, property rights, poverty will endure, corruption remain endemic, and investment wither.
Informal capital in Peru is estimated to be worth $74 billion, Egypt $248 billion, Tanzania $29 billion, Albania $16 billion, and Mexico $310 billion.
Eighty per cent of all real estate in Latin America is held outside the law. The poor and indigenous people are not without assets; in Egypt the assets of the poor are 50 times greater than all foreign investment ever recorded. But in Egypt it can take 500 days, 29 visits and 29 agencies, compliance with 315 laws, and costs 27 times the monthly minimum wage just to establish a bakery. In New Delhi, there's an estimated 500,000 bicycle rickshaws driven but only 99,000 licences allowed for legal drivers. Same story for street hawkers who are kept in limbo and pay up to a third of their incomes to stay in business. Licensing and restrictions create opportunities for the bureaucrats to take bribes and steal. In the Philippines, 65 per cent of homes are unregistered, in Tanzania 90 per cent. This explains why millions build their homes and business illegally.
Bringing people out of the shadows formalises what they already own and safeguards them from predatory politicians, bureaucrats and local mafia. It widens the tax base which in turn makes people want to hold their politicians accountable for expenditures not favours.
Access to justice, getting your case heard is important, even when appropriate law is enacted. India has only 11 judges for every million people, and some civil cases can take 20 years to reach court. Around a million cases are pending in Kenya, the average judge in the Philippines has a backlog of nearly 1,500 cases.
We can establish property and collective rights which will encourage people into the formal economy where they are protected by the courts, can borrow formally against their assets and live better.
This is not rocket science, the pattern is clear. Those countries that are doing better are those that are adopting these principles of good governance.
Mike Moore is a former prime minister of New Zealand and former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation.
U.N. Climate Scientists Write Off Africa
by Patrick J. Michaels
he United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly believes that Africa is incapable of developing a 19th-century market economy in the 21st century. Where's the outrage?
In particular, I am referring to the just-released "Policymakers Summary" of an upcoming UN report on "Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability." It predicts that "agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries and regions is projected to be severely compromised by climate variability and change....This would further affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition on the continent."
With a diversified economy Africa and the world can easily deal with declines in local food production brought upon by bad weather. Nations of the world do it all the time, every year. The mechanism is the global market.
Many nations on earth do not produce, in requisite amounts, all the raw material required for the diets people desire. Even vegetarian diets are complicated, requiring a proper balance of amino acids that can come from mixing legumes (soybeans, lentils, etc.) with rice and maybe some corn. How many small countries have sufficient agrodiversity and productivity?
More people like meat. Meat that isn't grass-fed (i.e. about 99% of what's in the store) requires a more complicated production catena: corn and soybeans, ground into food, are transported to intensive feeding facilities (quaintly and erroneously called "family farms"), fed to cattle, pigs, and chickens that are trucked to slaughter, packaged, chilled, shipped, bought and cooked.
No one person can do all this economically, nor is it likely that it's best done even in one county or state. Some large countries might do it all, but not many others. Instead , the world relies on markets. People good at producing soybeans and corn (like the U.S.) may export feed to other countries that don't have such a fortunate climate or favorable land (say, Mexico), and eventually the beef appears on a taco in Toluca, bought by a worker at Daimler-Chrysler's billion-dollar plant that produces PT Cruisers for U.S. consumption.
Sometimes the weather is bad in the U.S., or we might divert a lot of our corn into politically-correct ethanol, reducing the supply (and resulting in some grumbling south of the border). The price will rise, but someone else will produce more, where the weather or political climate are more favorable, and there will still be a supply.
In Africa, there's a tremendous amount of labor available for manufacturing, and it is in a terrific location to supply Eurasian markets. Why condemn the continent to low-yielding agriculture and poverty? If Mexico produces cars now, why can't Africa industrialize? A relatively constant stream of capital will purchase food more reliably than what local weather can produce.
The UN is also assuming that agricultural technology in Africa will not change, in this century, in a fashion similar to what happened in much of the rest of the world in the last century. Rather, Africa's food supply, and that of nearly nowhere else on earth, will be threatened by climate change.
The resilience of modern agricultural technology is obvious. Consider a climatically diverse state like Virginia. Temperatures average 6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the agriculturally intensive southeast than they do in the in the Shenandoah Valley to the northwest. The southeast gets over 25% more rain than the northwest. But, corn yields are the same.
Operationally, there's little difference between a farmer moving to another climate or the climate moving around the farmer. In resilient economies, both adapt.
Yet the specter of famine is a constant theme. How many American adults were taught in school that India -- now populated with over a billion people -- was on the verge of starvation? Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book, The Population Bomb, taken as gospel then, stated "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980," and "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971."
Obviously Ehrlich was wrong. India adopted high-yielding "Green Revolution" wheat in the early 1970s, followed by similar advances in rice production, at it became a substantial net exporter of food, as it is today. And, even if there were widespread crop failures, the now-diversified Indian economy would have little problem purchasing food on the international market.
Apparently the UN does not believe Africa is capable of emulating India. The IPCC believes Africa will remain so undeveloped that it will be unable to diversify its economy enough to avoid famines in a world that is awash in food.
In other words, the UN is saying that Africans are incapable of existing in the modern world for the coming century. One might ask, on what cynical model of international development is such a pejorative outlook based? And what gives the UN's climate scientists such special knowledge that they predict that Africa will not enter the world's market economy?
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