Caveat Emptor: Team Abbott Confused Between Election Campaign and Guthy-Renker Infomercial

Source: Opposition Leader Tony Abbott revealed on Thursday evening that he would not be providing final costings and a full budget impact statement until deep into the last week of the campaign. [SMH]



$200 for relationship counselling for heterosexuals looking to legally marry? Thanks Tony! But wait, there’s more! Bailouts to the chocolate industry in Tasmania? Hey, Tasmania likes chocolate, *and* jobs! What a top bloke! But wait, there’s more! How would you like to be paid your actual wage to stay at home and have children, women who are usually on quite a good wage? How do you get this shiny, shiny, life-changing deal, I hear you ask…?

There can be no real sensible reason to refuse to price policy announcements, particularly in light of a promise to return to surplus with deadline. It seems like a sales tactic, an emotional mugging. Do they really think that voters will be so emotionally invested with, say, the prospect that they can start a family sooner without having to tighten the purse strings - that by the time the cost is announced they won’t even care how much it costs, and won’t be rationally linking it with job cuts in the public service, reduced infrastructure in health and education, and another long delay before Australia gets up to a global standard with internet speeds?

Does Australia want a puppy? C’mon, hold the puppy. Love the puppy. Give the puppy a name. Oh, look, the puppy loves you! How much for the puppy? Let’s not talk about that just yet, we haven’t told you yet that you’ll get a free lead! In *any colour* you choose. But wait, there’s more! Book now and get 50% more cute for *free*! How do you get this fabulous, life-changing deal that may also cure cancer and make you attractive to the opposite sex? Do you even care at this stage? Look at the cute puppy. You want the cute puppy? You *need* the cute puppy. Okay, for the low low price of 26 easy installments of $899.99, (what a steal!) the puppy is yours! If you call in the next fifteen minutes, we’ll throw in some plastic stuff that also looks pretty good at the moment. And another free puppy! And because no exciting infomercial package is complete without them, handy-dandy steak knives! They cut things! How can you live with yourself if you don’t take up this offer RIGHT NOW?

Worse, though - at least at 3am when you cave to the hypnotic tones of the Lifestyle channel and concede that you need a puppy, your 26 easy instalments are a capped and predictable final fee. Policy costings like vouchers for marriage counselling cannot really be subject to an accurate and finite figure. Costs sometimes blow out, and if the costings are not done independently and with sufficient time that they can be subject to critique - they are more likely to do so.

If nothing else, a group hoping to run the country should be expected to demonstrate that they are able to be upfront with the electorate about the realities of their policies, including the costs, in a timely manner that doesn’t look like a sales technique - so that rational decisions can play some part in the ridiculous circus that is the election campaign.

After all, unlike exercise equipment and beauty treatment pseudoscience, an election result can’t be mailed back within 14 days for a full refund.

Does Andrew Bolt Love Horse Cock? (Or: Why Freedom of Speech is Relative)

I confess I was looking avidly forward to the result in Eatock v Bolt, on the basis that the decision would either result in the expansion of the implied constitutional freedom of political communication in Australia, or it would result in Andrew Bolt receiving a widely publicised kicking and his followers engaging in highly entertaining championship tantrum-chucking.

Either one of these outcomes contained sufficient silver-lining to offset any negatives I could see. In the wake of the public spanking delivered to Bolt by the Federal Court, several things about the nature of free speech in this country have become clear.

Firstly, Andrew Bolt's free speech did not in fact extend to making factually innaccurate claims about pale-skinned indigenous Australians which had the effect of damaging them as a class . By the way, ragey tantrum-chuckers of the libertarian fringe, this doesn't mean that we live in less of a democracy than we did before Eatock v Bolt. A right against Bolt in such circumstances against racial vilification was only one civil option - the standard vanilla defamation proceedings would probably also have been successful.

Bolt's free speech didn't extend in this way because no one's does. It has always been limited by injunction, defamation remedies, rights to privacy and non-disclosure policy, and expanded and protected through alliance to a limited right to political information, which is derived from the notion that since we must vote, we have a right to make that decision without having access to that information hindered. That right has been extended to broadcasting material obtained of animal rights abuses while trespassing (Lenah Game Meats), prohibiting the government banning political advertising in the lead-up to an election (ACTV), or reasonable political critique (Lange). What is clear from the case law is that we're talking, with the possible exception of parliamentary privilege defences, of a situation where free speech derives from a right to be informed. It clearly runs into problems where the speech is baseless opinion misrepresented as authoritative fact.

As well as these restrictions, freedom of speech is, and has always been, a right which is correlative and accountable to other rights. It has never been unlimited. My right to photograph you in the shower and publish those photographs does not trump your right to privacy, and it shouldn't. Nor do I have an unqualified right to publish an article about someone who is not a public figure, making accusations about them without bothering to check the factual accuracy, or, knowing there is no fire, to shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre. This should not be mistaken for state censorship -there is nothing preventing me putting that speech out there in the first place save my own awareness of the consequences, legal, ethical and practical, of so doing. If one is trampled in a panicked mob trying to flee a theatre which is not in fact on fire, well, that is a consequence of having shouted 'fire'. Similarly, a group of people you have attacked in a nationally syndicated newspaper bringing a civil claim against you is a consequence of the initial decision to publish. There's a reason for the phrase 'Publish, and be damned!'.

For example, if I were to make the claim that Andrew Bolt is routinely indecently engaged with farmyard animals. This is a claim that I cannot verify based on my current experience, nor one which I am basing on an authoritative source or considerable research. I could perhaps look through some of the columns he has written, and make use of innuendo to suggest such things, but on the face of it, I am likely only to turn up enough to suggest Andrew Bolt hates PETA and has changed his mind a few times on the live animal export issue. Our defamation law works such that even if it were true, publishing would as a starting point be grounds to sue for defamation simply as something likely to impair the reputation of the ordinary reasonable person - because, again irrespective of truth- we assume everyone's reputation is good at common law. Were I able to show any of a range of defences - such as truth, genuinely/honestly held belief - or make arguments on the mitigating factors, I may still get away with publication of such vicious rumour and defeat any defamation suit that's brought.

Most major media organisations have in-house legal counsel, whose job it is to answer questions about whether publication of a particular article is likely to open the organisation up to legal liability. Often, in practical terms, the decision may come down to not 'Is this libelous?' but rather 'Is the person we are libelling likely to sue?'. In the case of Bolt, the gamble is that Bolt's abrasive style and casual bigotry sells copy, and sales of copy mean the lifeblood of advertising revenue continues to flow. If no one sues - or if they reserve their right under the Australian Press Council to file a complaint (and thus waive a right to sue), then the paper wins out by publishing anyway, even when they know it's likely to be libellous.

In this case, one more attempt by Bolt to chip away at the credibility of indigenous rights in Australia did not go unchallenged. If you're outraged there's a law saying your free speech is limited by hate speech legislation, you should probably be even more outraged about the overuse of injunctive relief in interim civil cases and the use of defamation law to shut down critique of those with the money to launch applications for injunctions with relative ease. If you're not - if you're just angry that Bolt got slapped around for making a (not particularly well-informed) point about light-skinned Aboriginal people having access to government funding and grant programs, a group who initially didn't even seek damages, simply a judgement against - then maybe you should be wondering what your free speech is worth. When someone is allowed to pump untreated sewerage and profitably sell it as Evian, the marketplace of ideas needs a rethink.

Heads on Spikes Are Sooo c.1650.

In an address that stopped a nation, President Obama confirmed for the world what twitter had been guessing for a few hours; Osama Bin Laden, significant Al Qaeda figure and the face of the twin towers attacks nearly a decade ago, was dead.

He had been killed in a firefight in a mansion in Abbottisbad, Pakistan. The body had been dumped at sea. The conspiracy theories began circulating almost as fast and loose as this falsely attributed Martin Luther King quote: "I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy."

A quote like this goes viral because it resonates with a sentiment which we feel we cannot express for ourselves - perhaps we feel unqualified, or ineloquent, or alienated by the more mainstream sentiments being expressed. In this case, this quote validated that feeling that there was something barbaric about the jingoistic fervour, the chants of "U-S-A!", the self-congratulatory ceremonies and celebration over a violent death.

I watched horror-struck as the plane flew into the second tower nearly a decade ago, as the buildings collapsed. As people jumped to their deaths to escape the smoke and flames, the uncertain death that their workplaces had turned into. As the death tolls climbed and the pieces of human wreckage were pulled from the rubble. I make no apologies for those who planned this nightmare, saw to its execution, and celebrated the fear, suffering and trauma that was its aftermath.

The world sat largely silent as the US launched first strikes against Kabul, bringing shock and awe into our living rooms and the horror of industrial warfare into the lives of Afghani citizens too poor to flee. There seemed to be a sense that such a response was necessary, because how do you wage a war against dead hijackers? How do you wage a war against a force which has no state? How do you feel safe as a citizen of this world, and how do you protect your own state? There was a sense in which even though the links between 9-11 and Afghanistan were tenuous*, the world recognised that America needed to do something other than lick her wounds and worry about what happens next.

I was disgusted at the parties in the West Bank, the comments that the US somehow deserved September 11. The sense that there was anything righteous, anything to be celebrated in the death, destruction and grief of that day left me cold. Commentators rightly came out to condemn these displays.

Where were those commentators when the mobs gathered to chant "U-S-A!" and pump their fists in the air? Where were they when an ex-judicial slaughter was described with gravitas by the President of the United States as 'justice' having been done, as though justice and vengeance are synonymous? I am not sad that Bin Laden is dead, but I am sad that this event reflects that humanity hasn't progressed much ethically beyond heads on spikes, saber-rattling, primitive, barbaric. A grave recognition that a violent act may be necessary is not the same as cheering for an execution.

Martin Luther King did say:

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

There is something unevolved about an eye for an eye, something dark, primitive and regressive that reflects the very worst motivations in human behaviour, that makes us all less safe. Our world is littered with political speeches claiming moral high ground against an opponent, but it is our conduct which defines who we are. If we are attempting to celebrate the ending of a life from the moral high ground, it may be time to cede our claim to it.







* You may recall that the grounds were that the Taliban, repressive and evil but not fantastically well-resourced, did not hand Bin Laden over to the United States when asked to do so. This would be the very same Bin Laden it has taken one of the wealthiest, most technologically advanced military powers of the world nearly ten years to locate.

Cigarette Smoking is the New Ugly Green

Actually -- I'm not a smoker, and I've never really aspired to smoke.

It smells unpleasant, yellows teeth and skin, has various associated health risks and was immensely popular with all the people I aspired to be nothing like in high school. Add to that it's rather addictive and relatively expensive, and not smoking is a fairly easy decision to make.

The example of the inimitably cool Hunter S. Thompson and the romance of the smoke-filled press-rooms of yore, , the fact that it gives the socially awkward something to do with their hands and a quiet space to bond with others, and that it apparently helps maintain a svelte figure and looks cool in film noir is still not enough to convince me to buy and smoke cigarettes. My disapproving Grade Three teacher mentally looms Obi-Wan Kenobi style over my mid-twenties consciousness, tutting over the barest inkling of a thought that smoking might be that elusive step I need to take to be cool. Realistically, of course, I'm so far from cool that the minor image rhinoplasty of rebelling against relative good health is not going to be much help anyway.

This means I'm probably not the target for either the new mandatory snot-green plain packaging measures designed to make smoking less trendy, or even the reaction campaign by cigarette companies concerned to make the colour of cigarette packaging a civil liberties issue. By the way, congratulations Australia - if this is the direst emergency for individual rights going around, we might've just won best country in the world. Yeah -- Suck it, Sweden.

Cigarette companies are conscientiously very worried for small businesses, who are apparently going to find it time consuming and expensive dealing with selling cigarettes without conspicuous branding and it's going to put them all out of business... and, we're reminded, it won't work to stop smokers smoking anyway and it's an entirely pointless exercise of minor irritation.

If we look at the market for cigarettes, we'll see that it's made predominantly out of pre-existing smokers and prospective new smokers. Since this is a product which eventually kills most of its consumers, attracting people who don't currently smoke to the path of lung cancer is the way to increase profits and market share. We also know that smokers tend to be fairly brand loyal, and this is despite the decrease over time in allowable cigarette advertising, because smoking and purchasing cigarettes eventually become habitual behaviour. This means that it may be easier to increase sales by attracting new people to smoking than it is to convince a smoker to switch brands.

Given what we know of the behaviour of smokers as consumers, it seems odd that cigarette companies feel genuinely threatened by the advent of plain packaging. If all brands are forced to have the same shite packaging, this actually removes an element effectively creating a branding demilitarised zone, where all of a brand's competitors are being compelled to behave in the same way.

This surely means that cigarette companies are more concerned that olive green packaging will stop people taking up smoking in the first place, and so impact their bottom line. If the risk of lung and throat cancer's not going to do it, I hesitate to suggest an ugly package will have that much impact - but why else is Big Tobacco splashing out on these campaigns?

Funding public information campaigns for corporate self-interest is not new, and it makes sense as entirely rational behaviour for a corporate entity to engage in - if a new tax will cost your business $1 billion, but you can stop it with a $6 million television, radio and print media blitz aimed at convincing the average punter that your interests are their interests, then it makes rational sense to do so. We've seen it with the Mining Super Profits Tax, too (Clive Palmer really cares about your superannuation, kids, that's why so many of his profits stay in Australia). We'll see it again as various interest groups come out against carbon pricing, too. What these campaigns tell us is that someone within the corporate interest group has crunched the numbers and discovered that even a very expensive campaign will be cheaper than the cost of successful legislative reform.

So, cigarettes are doing us damage and green packaging is apparently going to make fewer people take up smoking, even the tobacco giants are placing their bets there. Cue half the Australian denizens of the internet calling for the government to show some stones and raise the excise by more than 50 per cent in line with the recommendations of the preventative health taskforce. Why, if the government wants to make a moral statement about cigarettes, do they not just raise the excise to price addicted smokers out of the market, or ban cigarettes altogether?

Libertarian moral panic inevitably follows, trailing conspiracy theories about how wedded to the income from tobacco excise the Australian government really is, so much so that it's worth the extra costs to the healthcare system which smokers inevitably bring. If the government really wanted people not to smoke they'd make it much more expensive, they say, with the kind of po-faced ignorant sneer typical of those who find the arguments presented on bumper-stickers compelling.

Smoking excise is a regressive tax. It's a tax targetted disproportionately at those of lower socio-economic backgrounds who are more likely to smoke. As an addiction, it becomes for some households a necessity in the family budget. Making cigarettes cost more means some families will buy less bread, milk, schoolbooks, and moreover it leaves the government open to accusations of cash-grabbing by the sorts of people who think speed cameras exist purely to raise revenue.

A balance needs to be struck between disincentivising smoking through pricing signals - because we don't want to be seen as promoting risky behaviour amongst the poorer groups within society- and recognising the nature of addiction means that people will often buy the product of their addiction even when they cannot afford to.

Sure, if the government really wanted to stop people smoking, they could ban it entirely (because that worked so well for alcohol in 1930s America). They could legislate that cigarettes have to taste like rotting arse, too. They could require that they be available only under prescription, thus making doctors waiting rooms places of cranky withdrawing nicotine addicts and week long queues for a check-up. Sadly, an excise on cigarettes does not exist in a vaccuum, and public policy considerations are necessary.

It was never going to be an uncontroversial move, but by making the available options less palatable but still allowing the individual free choice to smoke or not to smoke, the Labor government has come in for ridicule rather than aggressive criticism based more firmly in social justice, equity and civil liberties.

Even though Phillip Morris and Co are quaking in their large tobacconist cowboy hats at the prospect of generic packaging, I think the politicians have underestimated the appeal of communist chic with the indie/hipster kids generation. While I'm manifestly not a cool kid, and hence can't be certain about this, I suspect the kinds of kids who drink Pabst Blue/Melbourne Bitter for the irony value will lap up the plain packaging for the faux anti-consumerist trendy it will impart.

It is therefore possible that government is just starting a populist campaign to get rid of annoying hipsters, one diseased lung at a time, as they all rush to accessorise with some ironically topical tobacco products. As the spoilt indie kids come out to play once more with the conspicuous traits of the working class, the working class just might be so disgusted with the mirror being held up to them that there'll be a rush on cissy Nicabate and smoking will be something done exclusively by trendy elite of wankers. Chuck us the Winnie Greens, will you love?

A Land of Flooding Rains

Australia, the land I call home, is currently experiencing flooding on a natural disaster scale. The clean-up bill is going to be immense. All misanthropic glee at the statistical likelihood that several thousand copies of Stephanie Meyers' back catalogue were made even more unreadable as they washed down the flooded streets does take a back step to genuine sorrow and concern for people who have lost family, friends and homes. However, there is something about nationalism at a time like this which makes me wonder anew about the correlation between flag capes and desperately low IQ scores.

News.com.au is, as always, a shining beacon for the intellectually challenged. Stories about the situation in Brazil, where the floods have been coupled with mudslides and a significantly higher loss of life, are without fail followed by reader comments almost all of which bearing some form of disclaimer that the commenter is obviously more concerned about the tragedy in Queensland, but wow, that's a lot of dead people for another country, as though simply recognising the scale of disaster in Brazil without first reassuring fellow bogans of an awareness of Queensland is somehow treasonous. The sentiment 'thank goodness we're not as destroyed as Brazil!' has to be one of the uglier expressions of bogan worldliness meeting nationalism.

But the bogan is not the only group which seeks to gain some advantage from the rhetoric of compassion following a flood, and we are seeing in droves groups desirous of linking their cause to the natural disaster which is taking up all of our news time. Senior journalists up to their knees in water have eyes glowing with avarice for the Walkleys they hope to scoop up out of this mess.

The worst reporting is, as is reasonably to be expected, coming from the commercial channels, with one Channel 9 reporter making a story out of letting an isolated old man cut off by floods use the station's helicopter to visit family who thought he was dead. The station somehow managed to reach crass new heights of self-promotion - cameras rolling, asking the man how he would like to visit his family and announcing the set-up like he'd won some kind of gameshow, rather than nearly died in a natural disaster. He was frail and shaking as he struggled with a barrage of questions designed to hype the maximum drama from the moment. Then, family reunited, lots of tears and hugging, and a big Channel 9 boom mic right behind their heads, catching the emotional tragedy porn for the nightly news crowd. Crass, mishandled, and taking advantage of the vulnerable, but then, almost every channel is doing it - asking people fishing their lives out of the mud that now cakes their living rooms what it feels like to lose everything, and keeping the cameras rolling for every tear. So often, the arm of the reporter snakes around a shoulder and they murmur words which are presumably meant to be comforting. But this is not journalism, not really. We can hear these people's stories, which are tragic, without needing to question them until they cry and then film it.

But the media, for all they are a soft target, especially when engaged in this style of reporting, have done reasonably well in keeping a steady flow of relatively reliable information coming out of Queensland. This is what ABC News 24 was, in many respects, made for. While there are some who deserve to be beaten over the head with a boom microphone until they learn some human decency, others have drawn the line with more sensitivity. Our politicians, too, are caught in the social expectation that they somehow need an appearance in the disaster zone. This, to me, is somewhat counter-productive. In the event of my being caught up in catastrophic floods, I want my politicians to ensure the state endures sufficiently to keep emergency personnel working at their best. I want announcements of government relief aid, assistance with official documentation, and pressure on the private sector to show some compassion for the duration of the emergency. I don't much care if they do or do not cry on television, what they wear, or even if they're in the same general location. Credit is due here to Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, who waded out into his electorate to provide genuine assistance to constituents and helping others to evacuate, and didn't stop to do a piece-to-camera about it. The counter-example to that is Julie Bishop, acting Opposition Leader, who wanted to make sure the nation knew that she had helped make ham sandwiches at a refuge hours earlier, thus nullifying the act of any substantial altruism. Still, I guess a ham sandwich is a ham sandwich, whether or not the person who made it for you did it to score political kudos or because they genuinely wanted to help you.

Once we get past looters, scammers, Bing Lee and the various other scarcely evolved creatures that scurry out in the aftermath of any tragedy, I have to concede that the media and politicians, despite their foibles and some pretty disgusting attempts to profit from human misery, are still trumped by Australia's answer to Westboro Baptist Church, Catch the Fire Ministries, who like to issue press releases placing their own spin on natural disasters. Victoria's disastrous bushfires in 2008 led to outlandish claims by Pastor Danny Nalliah that the fires were the wrath of God for decriminalising abortion. This media strategy having apparently worked so well for them in the past, the church has claimed that the floods are caused by a fairly standard diplomatic remark from Foreign Minister Rudd regarding Israel's responsibility to allow its nuclear facilities to be inspected by the UN. God is apparently in favour of the rampant misuse of nuclear weaponry in the Middle East, who knew? As PZ Myers adroitly put it, it's a poorly targeted and somewhat opaque sign from God that takes out half a state but doesn't even back up the sewerage of the person you're apparently cranky with.

Accordingly, the very first C is for Curmudgeon 'I'd Smote That' Award for being such a despicable member of humanity that the aggregate quality of the human race would be so improved by your absence that, if global hegemony and god-like metaphysical powers were mine, I'd have you followed by electrical storms until you look like something the Colonel would serve up, goes to Catch the Fire Ministries for the attempt to use natural disaster to manipulate foreign policy, with the quiet implication that they are metaphysical terrorists, happy to call in another drenching flood or scorching flame if it gets their legislative agenda up. Congratulations!