Bicycling Along a Tightrope

Guest Author Uncategorized

Another fine post from Catalyst, which (and whom) I wish would be the catalyst for changing the hearts and minds of the rich and super-rich elites of this country. Thank you again, Catalyst.

(Image credit: State Library of Victoria H96.160/2603)

Bicycling along a tightrope was how Harold Macmillan( Britain’s Prime Minister 1957-1963) explained how demanding formulating economic policy was and is. After the war and the subsequent years of bleak austerity, Macmillan famously reminded Britons that You’ve never had it so good.

In Australia too, Prime Minister Robert Menzies (1949-1966) was in the fortunate position of presiding over a high growth period. And it was prosperity that reached almost all Australians.

As Andrew Leigh writes in Battlers and Billionaires: The Story of Inequality in Australia:

There was a fridge in 97 percent of Australian homes in the 1960s, an appliance that most Britons, Germans and Italians did not yet possess.

(Image credit: Attic Paper)

He adds that Australians also took for granted owning a washing machine, a vacuum cleaner, a radio, and a television.

When we arrived as migrants in the early 1970s I was overawed by the variety of small electrical appliances for sale and which were present in so many ordinary homes.

(Image credits: Hoover washing machine; Electrolux vacuum cleaner; radiogram; PYE TV receiver)

Working conditions in Australia were better, the pay was better, the flat we rented was superior to the one we had left. What’s more, people were friendly, quick to help and the weather was so good. If it wasn’t quite a land of milk and honey, it was certainly a very favourable place to be.

Dreams that had seemed impossible were realised here: a home of our own with a swimming pool. Four weeks paid holidays (introduced 1974), penalty rates, and a more relaxed lifestyle.

Life was good, and it began to change so slowly that at first it was hardly noticeable. Management in the 1980s suddenly became the preserve of the young, and American ideas flourished. Pie charts and motivational talks were the order of the day. Personnel departments – alarmingly – were now presumed to manage ‘human resources’ .As the terminology changed, people became just another disposable asset

No longer could people expect lifetime careers. The rich list flourished and flamboyant millionaires indulged their sporting and others passions, while they sold off their companies. Alan Bond, Christopher Skase, Rene Rivkin, and Laurie Connell bought and sold companies and spent money lavishly: polo ponies, racing yachts, Van Gogh paintings and extravagant parties. Businessmen suddenly became the corporate elite and excess became commonplace. Think of the gloss and glamour of the TV shows Dynasty and Dallas.

(Image credits: Alan Bond; Christopher Skase; Rene Rivkin; Laurie Connell)

(Image credits: Dynasty; Dallas)

As the 80s came to an end some of the tycoons were jailed, some exiled themselves, some died, and some just faded from the limelight. The gulf between them and us had widened, Australia had become less interested in being egalitarian.

Interest rates climbed: rising from 12% they spiralled to 18%. In the early 1990s we had “the recession we had to have”. The boom mentality had led to a spending cycle which could not last. Dreams collapsed, firms failed, and jobs were lost. Many people were retrenched, in some cases (like mine) more than once. Houses went up for sale, as people could no longer afford their Australian dream. Firms merged or closed, leaving staff afraid for their superannuation. People found their job “rationalised” or downsized and the job for life disappeared, to be replaced by increased part-time and casual work.

(Image credit: The Age)

Insecurity was in the air, and like a game of snakes and ladders the assets that had climbed so high tumbled in value. If the 80s had been one long high, the 90s were a much more sober affair. But for some the party never stopped – while those on the lower rungs of the ladder were reeling, those at the top just kept on making money.

In 1992 Lang Hancock died worth about $150 million – a sizable fortune. These days, though, his daughter Gina Rinehart’s “worth” is estimated as $29 billion. In Battlers and Billionaires, Andrew Leigh asks:

Is she really 190 times more ingenious than her father?

He concludes that the income boost is due mostly to a tenfold increase in the price of iron ore.

At the same time he estimates that half of Australian families have an annual pre-tax household income of $77,220 or less. Many people take home considerably less. Life at the lower income levels needs clever budgeting and an unenvious spirit. Ingenuity, not cash, is the order of the day: bulk buying, home cooking, op shopping and the ability to amuse yourself and seek out free events can make life better, even at this income level.

As someone commented to me,

I can always tell middle class kids – even in op shop clothes – they’ve got straight, white middle class teeth.

They may find it fun pretending to be poor. Many don’t realise that not everyone enjoys private schooling, with Foxtel and broadband on tap, an iPad, a job lined up by daddy or mummy, access to the latest books and films and their own car, not to mention annual holidays, often overseas. These kids have known nothing else, but older people have less excuse for ignoring the growing inequality in our society.

(Image Credit: Dental Implants Review)

Why should a TV personality – an ‘ordinary mum’ type – reportedly be paid $700,000 a year? How much should her opinions be allowed to influence the rest of us? How can these people speak for and represent the majority?

And if she is out of touch, what about those at the very top, the rich and super rich? Their share of economic prosperity has tripled in the period 1984-2012 from 0.8% to 2.8%, according to Andrew Leigh. At their income levels these percentages really add up. So does their lack of understanding of those who will never make the rich list, who are not members of what some have dubbed the lucky sperm club.

(Image credit: The Age)

PLEASE NOTE: This was the Australian Rich List for 2011

That’s why we need a Labor government: to encourage people, not exclude them. To keep the fair go alive, to represent the majority of people, the ones that the elites like to forget about, so that we don’t end up with a more divided society, the enclaves of privilege contrasted to the rest of us.

If we have been fortunate, whether by inheritance or education, by intelligence or health, don’t we have an obligation to the rest of society? Shouldn’t we use our gifts to help others? Or will we allow the user pays mentality to take hold and grow, forgetting that not everyone has the capacity to pay?

© Catalyst 2013

596 thoughts on “Bicycling Along a Tightrope”

  1. Even Lyndal Curtis is gradually turning her hair blonde from dark brown. I expect Virginia T and Annabel C to have at least a few blonde streaks soon.

  7. leonetwo,
    I bet you’re not impressed by the near-certain eventuality of Dr Ken Gillespie representing you into the future in federal parliament in Lyne?

  8. C@tmomma
    Not at all impressed. Back to the dark age of National Party neglect for Lyne. Back to being the seat that gets one mention only on election night, at the very end, when they do a run-down of all the seats no-one cares about.

    The really sad thing – there is not one candidate running here who is worth voting for. I’m seriously considering just writing ‘No thanks’ on the ballot paper. My #1 son is refusing to vote Labor, he’s still furious about Julia Gillard being dumped. He says he’s going to vote for the Justice League of America. He’s also feeling very bereft because Rob Oakeshott isn’t running, he’s been doing election night figures for Rob since he went indie, he’s going to miss all that.

    There’s only one thing making me even bother to turn up – my senate vote. Labor first, of course.I’m going to number every candidate so I can put Pauline Hanson last.

  10. BB , Obama met Murdoch and Roger Ailes. They refused to budge,so Obama ignored them and went social media. Guess that’s OK in a voluntary voting system,but not here. You are right. Rudd has to engage robustly on the issue. In fact – make Murdoch an issue by linking it to the NBN. Murdoch is putting his pocket first and the nation last.

  12. C@t
    What a ripper! That front page may finish up with as many reincarnations as the Hitler clip!

  13. Free article, lots of background to what’s going on in the company

    http://www.afr.com/p/national/allan_puts_punch_back_into_news_hHeGfA2cYTy02WpFU7AUjJ

    Allan puts punch back into News
    PUBLISHED: 9 HOURS 9 MINUTES AGO | UPDATE: 4 HOURS 27 MINUTES AGO

    INSIDE STORY JAMES CHESSELL AND ANNE HYLAND
    When Col Allan, legendary editor of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, was in Australia for a family holiday earlier this year, he did not like what he saw.

    The tabloid newspapers produced by Murdoch’s local media business News Corp Australia lacked punch.

    Allan, who had edited The Daily Telegraph in Sydney during the 1990s, was particularly unimpressed with the ­Sunday editions, which he believed were boring.

  15. The AFR live elelction blog is worth a look. See latest post. I also saw Malcolm Farr tweet about this, maybe he spotted it first.

    http://www.afr.com/p/national/live_rudd_targets_abbott_over_election_Ad6VJoK6KfuGELu6clKhdJ

    11.01am: This is interesting – the Queensland abattoir where Mr Abbott will shortly appear in front of the media, probably to talk about scrapping the carbon tax, previously welcomed the $4.4 million in federal government funding it was given as compensation for the tax.

    Dinmore abattoir near Brisbane, run by a company called JBS, was allocated the money back in February.

    “Dialogue with Greg Combet’s office has led to better understanding. The Australian Meat Processors’ Council has also played a leading role in providing the technical detail on the impact of the tax, but more importantly detailed a way forward with carbon mitigation projects to deliver better environmental outcomes,” director John Berry told The Land earlier this year.

    “The dollar for dollar funding has helped accelerate the number of carbon mitigation projects in Australian abattoirs.”

    http://www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/agribusiness/general-news/jbs-cuts-carbon/2645270.aspx

  16. Oops – didn’t close that quote properly.

    Will Newman appear with Abbott today, or has he been “disappeared” for the campaign?

    All fixed, Jaeger. F

  18. A follow-on from my earlier post –

    I think I’m going to cry….a while ago, when Rob Oakeshott announced he was not running again, I sent him a thank you and best wishes email. Now the election campaign is finally on and he has some free time he’s replying to everyone who sent him messages. He’s doing it individually, rather than sending out a form letter. Mine just arrived, and I’m not sharing because it’s personal.

    In typical Rob fashion he’s giving us locals all the credit for his achievements and thanking us for making it all happen. God I’m going to miss him.

  22. For anyone interested, our donation problem has been solved. Tweeted ALP, Zoomster replied, donated double the amount to ALP Indi candidate, as our poor fellow here doesn’t stand a chance even though we’ll vote for him. Also told zoomster about the Friday night raffle here, hope she comes to have a bit of fun.

  23. I have no doubt the The Telegraph’s front page has been planned for months, and was initially aimed directly at Julia Gillard. It would have screamed…

    Finally now you have the chance to… KICK HER OUT

    …alluding to the disgusting Alan Jones comment re putting her in a chaff bag and throwing her out to sea, reigniting their bullshit “gender wars”, and pandering to the lowest misogynistic attitude out there.

    They are filth!

  24. @EvanMMJames: @chrismurphys @TonyAbbottMHR @KRuddMP Nationwide News offers public apology for any suggestion RAMJAN lied. Any comment Mr Abbott?

  28. Leone, I share your tears. Oakeshott, Windsor and Gillard brought a rare burst of integrity to the House.

  30. Leone – he’s jumping the gun again. Caretaker mode does not begin until parliament has been prorouged, which is expected to happen late this afternoon. Once caretaker mode has begun, I believe it’s business as usual unless both parties agree to make changes – good luck with that.

    Once a bully, always a bully.

  31. Tony today, “(Labor) just throw money around like confetti. I want to say to the Australian people, I have more respect for your money”
    You certainly do Tony. You have claimed enough of it in dodgy travel expenses..

  32. Of course, News journalists know exactly where and when Rudd leaked to them, and what he said. Diaries would have been kept about those kinds of happenings.

    Expect many mothers of revelations, as News tries to do to Rudd what they did to Gillard in 2010, re. reporting of confidential backgroundings and cabinet leaks.

    Rudd: live by the sword, die by the sword.

    It’s a bloody mess, with the only encouraging sign being News’ jumping early at the starting gate. It’s far too early for that, but they’ve gone ahead and done it anyway.

    There are clearly big issues at play.

    Foxtel’s infrastructure is based on an optical fibre to the pit on the corner, then copper from there to the home. If Turnbull’s #Fraudband goes ahead the entire country will be effectively wired as “Foxtel Ready”: optical fibre to the node, copper thereafter.

    No more messy and expensive construction problems needed as loss leaders.

    Everyone will be ready, infrastructure-wize, for Foxtel’s crappy programming.

    It’ll be a turkey shoot, as Foxtel rates plummet because they don’t have to amortize trench digging.

    Abbott (i.e. we) will pay for all that. Optical fibre will have more than enough room for internet and telephone, with Foxtel the cherry, plonked on top.

    Foxtel is the only business unit of News (Australia) that makes a profit. It should, if other countries where Murdoch has Pay TV systems are any indication, have been bundled in with News Entertainment when the breakup occurred.

    That it did not shows just how important to Murdoch Foxtel is. If he can’t make a go of profitability in his home country – where he owns or controls 70% of the media infrastructure, a television network (TEN), and half the Pay TV monopoly, with Telstra… and don’t forget… the pits belong to Telstra – then he’ll be a laughing stock, world-wide.

    “Can’t bat. Can’t bowl. Can’t even make money when he bought the government, the umpires, the bat, ball and stumps, and dug up the pitch.”

    It’ll be another MySpace.

    This is what happens when “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” goes belly-up.

    Rudd is not blameless here, either.

    He used News to purvey his termite infested message about Gillard: she was fat, lived in Boganville, hated pensioners, an athiest, couldn’t control cabinet, hated in the burbs, she couldn’t do anything right… not like the Golden Boy.

    Well, it’s payback time. Whatever Rudd promised Murdoch, or whatever Murdoch thought Rudd had promised him, has turned to shit. No Australia TV, no winding back of the NBN. It’s full steam ahead.

    Rudd didn’t have much choice on keeping the NBN. It was his project from the start. And it’s absolutely key to the future economic viability of Australia, if Australia is not to be just a quiet client country, gratefully gobbling up table scraps from whatever the world, especially the Murdoch world, wants to offer it.

    Our role – in Murdoch’s mind – as a nation, is to dig up our dirt, flog it off to earn a subsistence, and then be loyal consumers of Murdoch’s and his mates’ shitty media product. Oh yes, and to sell each other real estate and insurance policies, play footy against each other and generally be good little customers in a closed community ruled by lazy robber barons.

    For a song, a few supportive headlines, a couple of pissy donations out of petty cash, they buy governments, they buy newspapers, they buy casinos and television networks, even entire mountain ranges made of almost pure iron ore, and politicians fall over each other to make excuses as to why these thieves are so wonderful, and how they’re so vital to our future.

    Today’s technology is almost at the point where the old 18th century model of “cottage industry” is due to make a big comeback.

    You no longer need millions to kit-up a sophisticated engineering enterprise. You no longer need billions to get your view published to a target audience, anywhere and everywhere.

    If you want to start a TV station, or make a film, you can buy the gear – full broadcast quality – at your local camera store, and edit it together perfectly with cheap software on a standard laptop – technology, just a few years ago, when it was expensive and exclusive, that was able to demand and get a credit at the end of major commercial features, alongside Kodak, Panavision and Dolby. Now it’s ubiquitous.

    With an NBN you can stream it, or upload it cheaply, from your home, whether your home is in Sydney or Bullamakanka. And if you aren’t the movie-maker, you can watch it from the same places.

    Maybe you’re into journalism, or creative writing, or music. It can, with an NBN, all be done and purveyed while you stay in the family home, looking after the kids, or a sick dog. Customers don’t need to buy a printed copy of a book, or a plastic copy on CD of the music, or even get out of bed to go down to the supermarket and pay $3 for an environmentally harmful dead-trees version of your product.

    They can just download it. All of it.

    No wonder a man who owns newspapers, Pay TV networks, book publishing businesses and movie studios doesn’t want the NBN.

    In the future to come, an NBN is anathema to centralized control by media moguls (and all that comes their way with it by way of political influence), and it’s anathema to businesses that need hundreds of millions of dollars as seed money and salaries for the hundreds of journalists required to output a half-decent and informative product.

    No matter that the educational, health, communications, commercial, infrastructure – and other benefits yet to be seized on and turned into enterprise – and the general benefits to the nation from bringing it into the 21st century, and beyond, are simply collateral damage to Murdoch’s megalomania in stopping the NBN, simply so that his outdated river of cable gold won’t be diverted to another course, or to oblivion.

    Murdoch’s view of “New Media” has already been soured by his MySpace disaster. Ironically, he complains about the crap on Facebook, yet spreads this same, and worse crap about himself, at inflated prices on cable TV… Celebrity Pawn Stars anyone?… and in his tits-bums-and-schlock-horror newspapers.

    It’s not the content he’s worried about. It’s the control. If he can’t control it, he doesn’t want anyone else to control it, either.

    But the beauty of the coming age of Mass Customization (or the New Age of high tech cottage industry) is that no-one controls it. That’s good for democracy, and bad for Murdoch. Worse, if Australia gets a successful optical NBN up and running, other countries might like it, and emulate it. There’s an argument to say they will have to copy it, or go backwards.

    This, then is our choice: an Australia weaned off digging dirt for a living (as it was weaned off reliance on the sheep’s back), developing into one we can not only be proud citizens of, but which can compete with the best in the world in more than mining, swimming and sandy beaches.

    It’s ideas that count, not the means of production that shapes the medium, or owning the infrastructure and charging outrageous prices for it.

    The NBN will set ideas free, and that’s something Rupert Murdoch doesn’t either like, or want… unless they’re his ideas, making profits for his businesses.

    And that – who runs Australia, and who benefits from it – is the coming election in a nutshell.

    And that is why the Daily Telegraph and News, with it’s offices full of sycophants, company men, assassins, bovver boys, lurk merchants, spivs, shonks and pen-pushers for money is going so hard, so early.

  33. The Daily Smellygraph should be taken up the back paddock and put out of its misery. It is a kinder fate than being Murdoch’s alley-bitch.

  36. Barbara Ramjan v Michael Kroger is being settled.

    “In a remarkable twist that could reignite debate about Mr Abbott’s alleged punching of a wall after losing a student election in the late 1970s, News Limited’s barrister read an extended apology in the NSW Supreme Court on Monday on behalf of The Australian to the alleged victim of the intimidation, Barbara Ramjan, as part of a settlement of a defamation action.”

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/news-limited-apologises-to-barbara-ramjan-over-tony-abbott-punch-story-20130805-2r8si.html

  39. Bob Watch

    Bob continues to improve. He ate a hearty breakfast this morning (once his wally legs, continuing dizziness and poor eyesight allowed him to navigate to his bowl, with a little help from yours truly).

    The next stage is to get him to do a poo. There’d have to be a fair amount of you-know-what stored up inside his little body, from the various Dog Gunk, Peck’s Paste, chicken soup and solid food meals he’s had since last Tuesday.

    He’s exercising – by which I mean walking around in circles, but energetically so – and doing a little bit of exploring of the back deck, his world for the forseeable future.

    But I’m conscious he can have a relapse at any time, so I’m not letting my hopes get too far ahead of the day-to-day small improvements he’s been making.

  40. Bushfire Bill,
    Clap. Clap. You finally got to upend a bucket of bile on Kevin Rudd on Day 1 of an election campaign that is vital for Labor to win. Feel better now?

  42. Can anyone explain why Kevin Rudd and Labor agree to debates on SKY TV? Shouldn’t they be accessible to all Australians-? I believe 97% own a TV set and can get ABC.

  43. I get the feeling this will be a bit of a “dam-wall” election campaign, with the usual roles reversed.. Abbott and the LNP have got the impression that they’re the custodians of the Prime-Ministership, and that they have to defend grimly against the ALP under Rudd. So they’re the ones protecting their ‘record’ (such as it is) – that’s the benefit of what they would call their ‘incumbency’ due to good poll numbers for so long. They really can’t fight the ALP on policy, so they’re just running with the message, “they shouldn’t be there anyway”. As if the ALP were challenging them.

    So, despite what the Telegraph are trying to portray it as, the campaign is all about the ALP and (particularly) social media battering away at the image of the Coalition – whose policy suite is really ‘Ghost of Howard’ stuff – while NewsCorp runs a defensive line and counterpunches where it can. The dam wall has cracks all over it, and is barely holding together. So either it survives past the election or it falls completely to pieces.

    The Telegraph headline is pure bravado. They ran the line that the public prefer Rudd to Gillard to the point of nausea, and they damn well know it. This about-face is typical of them, but it creates a lot of confusion out there. That they even went with a headline like that indicates how frightened they are. They’d love nothing more than to have their boy get up while they ran a bi-partisan line, but they know that can’t work. They have to get in the trenches as well.

  44. catlyst
    I understand SKY said they would make the debate feed available to all networks.

  45. I had heard that SKY offered for any other networks to pick up their feed. But it does mean we’re stck with Specious Speares or Fool Gilbert.

    The old-fashioned Labor would have done the reverse and had it all through ABC free-to-air. But Rudd views all that as too much ‘class warfare’.

  47. From a few days ago. Not a regular poll.

    http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5082-reactor-qanda-july-29-2013-201308020244

    Forget the Leader – it’s all about Policy
    August 02 2013 Finding No. 5082 Topic: Special Poll Federal Poll

    Roy Morgan’s Reactor tested Australians’ responses to the appearance on ABC’s Q&A on Monday night of Minister for Employment Participation and Early Childhood and Childcare Kate Ellis, and Liberal Member for Kooyong Josh Frydenberg. Over 150 Australians reacted as they watched and listened to selected discussions from the program.

    Australian electors don’t want to hear politicians promoting their leader’s achievements – instead, they want to hear about policy, and about positive, bi-partisan politics the latest Roy Morgan Reactor study finds.

  48. http://www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/aug/01/andrew-robb/Debt-growing-faster-now-than-history/

    http://www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/31/tony-abbott/coalition-says-labor-adding-red-tape-adding-21000-/

  50. The old-fashioned Labor would have done the reverse and had it all through ABC free-to-air. But Rudd views all that as too much ‘class warfare’.

    The old-fashioned ABC wouldn’t have had partisan “technical difficulties”.

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