Kookaburra

Advance Australia - where?

What a great day to be an Aussie with Cadel Evans set to win Le Tour de France. It's been an epic battle and I am completely spent from the late nights of the last week - of course my fatigue is nothing compared to how wrung out every rider must feel.

At least Cadel Evans has the Yellow Jersey and another trophy to add to his collection of world best wins on road, track and mountain biking.

He deserves every accolade as he fought back time and time again often dragging the peleton and chase single handedly up incredible mountain stages in pursuit of the daring attacks mounted by his rivals.

Cadel has often suffered some bad luck and hasn't had the full support of his team until he joined BMC.

This year was his year through thorough preparation, great team support to help him and the mental and physical depth to fight and fight against every challenge thrown at him.

He is an incredible athlete and a product of the Australian Institute of Sport - that's Aussie's taxes doing their job.

Epic achievement

• The first Australian to win the tour
• The first from the Southern Hemisphere
• Only the 4th in 50 years to win from behind

That time trial was the ride of his life and he completely smashed his opponents.

Hats off to the Schlecks and all the Tour riders - they're all incredible athletes and just continue to race incredibly hard day after day after day. I can't think of a more challenging sporting event. But this year was Cadel's year and all of Australia should applaud his success - just incredible.

Here's a great comment from this article

One of the things I love about bike racing at this elite level is that Australia gets to celebrate Cadel's victory. The Americans get to celebrate the great work of Hincapie, Bookwalter and the staff of the American registered team BMC. The Swiss, get to celebrate that a Swiss bike company, Morabito, Schär share in this Tour victory, as well as the Germans because of Burghardt, the Italians because of Quinziato and Santaromita, and the French for Moinard. A Tour victory can become a celebration around the world.

 

While we're united as a nation on Cadel's win we're all over the place when it comes to where we're going as a nation.

I am sick of the negativity and the political point scoring. Politics is the art of compromise and I don't think there's enough recognition of the successful negotiations our PM has achieved in getting a carbon tax which has the support of the majority of parliament. Is it perfect? No. It is a belated recognition that we do need to take the initiative to curb the human impact on our planet. Personally I am getting no compensation and have no problem with that - it's a small price to pay now to avoid a massive cost later.

I am also suspending my usual grumbles about Government advertising. It's a crazy situation that Government has to spend up to fight for the interests of people over the mis-information campaigns run by some business interests. We saw what happening with the mining super-profits tax - mining billionaires spent $20+M in TV ads to attack the government and thus the interests of the people. Result -
The PM of the day was rolled and tax was watered down saving these mining billionaires hundreds of millions in tax each year - great ROI on their advertising spend but a significant loss of tax collections and thus money for the people. We have an aging population and growing costs if government services - unless their is a rise in government revenue something has to give.

I have concerns about how tax collections are spent - we should be creating a sovereign wealth fund to build Australian prosperity over the long term, to sustain our commonwealth when our finite mineral wealth is exhausted. But that requires leadership and long-term thinking - only Malcolm Turnbull seems to be articulating views beyond the short-term.

What a sorry state of affairs that it appears that Mr Negative - Tony Abbott - is winning in the polls. Let's hope the Government has the guts to say "bugger the polls" let's do the right thing for the future.

As for my fellow Australians ... Is it too much to ask that we stop rewarding scare campaigns and seeking a short-term kick back (in the form of middle class welfare) and be prepared to let our Government govern. The next election is 2+ years away - the time for judgement is then.

A good starting point is to skip the reactionary tabloid journalism - News Limited is on the nose already - and look for some considered rational discussions. I favour the independent journalism of Alan Kohler's Eureka Report or the ABC.

The ABC could also take a stance by not reporting on polls or querying the PM on her reaction to the latest polls. We know she won't respond to questions on them.

We should not allow the serious business of government to be dumbed down by incessant polls.

The latest from Alan Kohler's Eureka Report sums up Australia's current domestic tussle ... As Alan says "Tony Abbott has severed all connection with the truth." it's a sorry state of affairs.

> Australian misery
>
> In Australia the politicians have got their pistols out and are firing round after round into the nation's feet. We have a terms of trade boom and the potential for a great period of prosperity but the gang in Canberra are trying hard to stuff things up.
>
> Whether you agree with the pricing of carbon dioxide emissions or not, it has emerged years of intensive work by various task forces, study groups and think tanks and used to be a bipartisan policy. As Malcolm Turnbull pointed out the other night (see link to his speech below) the vast majority of scientists and economists agree with it and so does he and most other politicians.
>
> Yet the bumbling idiots in the ALP went into the last election without a climate change policy of any sort let alone emissions trading. They then had to enter a formal alliance with the Greens to stay in power and quickly did a full pirouette on the subject, as a result of which we are now going to have a $23 a tonne carbon tax and a massive wealth transfer from exporters to households.
>
> By aligning with the Greens, the Labor Party has severed all connections with business. Relations between them are now rapidly breaking down completely. I attended a forum in Melbourne yesterday with Lindsay Maxsted, Ziggy Switkowski, David Knox and Leigh Clifford and they took it in turns to sink the boot in. At one stage Ziggy plaintively cried: "Why is the nation's economic strategy being defined by the Greens? How did this happen?"
>
> Meanwhile, Tony Abbott has severed all connection with the truth. As Annabel Crabb amusingly wrote in the ABC website The Drum yesterday (click here): "In one sense, he's living the dream. A political campaign that is 100% rhetoric is – to any politician – as a milkshake that is 100% Milo would be to any child … Once you've severed the guy ropes of obeisance to empirical evidence, many happy hours of ballooning lie ahead."
>
> He deplores Australia's goal of reducing carbon emissions by 5% by 2020 as "crazy" while simultaneously maintaining that as Coalition policy. This he week he claimed to have never supported emissions trading, even though the evidence is clear that he did. Then he claimed that the Coalition would reach its target of 5% reduction in emissions without closing any brown coal power stations in Victoria, which is in direct contradiction with the Coalition's stated policy of closing at least one generator and paying it to move to gas.
>
> With Julia Gillard going down the popularity plughole lashed to Greens, and the Coalition going off on increasingly wild flights of spin and lies, God help us all.

Europeans despair at resorts without snow

Europeans despair at resorts without snow | Science & nature | The Australian:
SKIERS heading to the European Alps for Christmas will be sorely disappointed, with resort operators staring at bare slopes as a result of the warmest winter temperatures in 1250 years.

US accepts they are subject to Geneva Convention

In a turn for the better, the US Defence Department has decided that the Geneva Convention does apply to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. It seems some parts of the US Adminstration believe in international laws and conventions.

Here's how crikey.com.au reported this good news.

Another small step forward for David Hicks

The US Defence Department seemingly bowed to the inevitable yesterday, promising to treat its detainees in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. This follows the Supreme Court's decision two weeks ago in Hamdan v Rumsfeld that the proposed military commissions to try detainees were unlawful, in part because they would violate the Conventions.

The announcement was accompanied by denials that it represents a change in policy. According to The New York Times, officials "told reporters that the memo represented an affirmation of a duty that was already being met voluntarily". But the Bush administration had repeatedly argued that the Conventions did not apply to the detainees, since they were "unlawful combatants", not prisoners of war.

The US government's strategy has been to try to have things both ways. It claims to be at war, which gives it the right to detain enemy combatants for the duration, but at the same time denies that they are entitled to the usual protection of prisoners of war. It maintains that there is some third status, different from both prisoners of war and common criminals, with the liabilities of both but the protections of neither.

This, of course, is the limbo in which David Hicks has been kept for the last four and a half years. But the Geneva Conventions lend no support to the notion of such a limbo. If enemy soldiers have fought unlawfully, they can be tried for war crimes, but such trials have to meet basic standards of fairness. If they are outside the laws of war altogether, then the only alternative is to treat them as ordinary criminals.

Despite the insistence of the likes of Janet Albrechtsen, there is no reason to think that the laws of war are inadequate for Hicks's situation. If he was really in a war, he's entitled to be treated accordingly. If he's just a member of some international criminal conspiracy, then he belongs in the civilian courts. But don't expect either the US or Australian government to accept that logic any time soon.

Average is best (when it comes to the sharemarket)

"Average is best" - a note to myself in my paper journal. A reminder to not bother trying to 'beat' the market but to be happy to accept what the market delivers - the sharemarket (in Australia and in most Western democracies) has delivered well over the longer term.

I can't control the return on my investments. I can control the risk (by being diversified; and through the right asset selection and portfolio structure). I can control the cost (by choosing fund managers which have lower costs).

I have to remind myself, that no one, least of all me, knows when the right time to buy or sell is. Or indeed what the right set of shares are to outperform the market over the longer term. With few exceptions, even the professional fund managers don't outperform the market over the long term - certainly they are not on average outperforming to a degree that pays their fees (at least that's the data I have seen). So rather than chase outstanding returns while driving up your costs and risk, accept a consistently average performance (that of the market) at a lower cost and potentially lower risk.

It doesn't make sense does it - we're all smart and intelligent (or you wouldn't be reading my ramblings!). Surely we can beat the market? No you can't. Accept it, take the average of the market and enjoy more life.

Do yourself a favour and read up on Index Funds (Vanguard is a good source of information) and invest in a copy of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" [AbeBooks]. Yes, it is about US markets, but the fundamental truths apply elsewhere.

It's a great treatise on the broad subject of investing and how not to be a mug and ultimately lose out by trying to beat the market (in the long run you can't - in the very long run, we're all dead, as a dead economist once said). I like how the author has demonstrated his methods by investing the royalties from the book in his son's name, and has successfully funded his (expensive as it's in the US) education.

Another great title is "The Four Pillars of Investing" by William Bernstein. You can read the Introduction and First Chapter online.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser. This is my opinion and it all makes sense to me. You really should do some reading and prove it for yourself. It took a long time for me to accept the paradoxical sense in "Average is best".

A nation built on myths?

Margaret Bourke-White
Bread Line during the Louisville flood, Kentucky 1937
from: Masters of Photography

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• Why does a nation need to promote itself so strongly to its own citizens?
• Why wouldn't Americans of the day not understand how this plays out internationally?
• Who coined the term "American Way" and what does it really mean? (apart from being not-communism, not-facism)
• How do these people feel queuing up for food after a natural disaster, after enduring most of the Great Depression to be standing under a poster which, to them, portrays a foreign world?

The photo looks too much like a set-up but from all accounts it is the real deal. I can't say I have answers, only questions.

Perhaps as an Australian (that's me) I was raised from the cradle to scorn people who are 'full of themselves' - as such I simply can't understand this. I am not saying it's wrong; just that in my eyes I just seems odd (specifically the advertising billboard). And of course all nations are made from myths - some develop deep within societies and some are shoved down your throat on a billboard. A current myth in Australia is our 'miracle economy' - the economy where the evils of inflation and stagnation have been as effectively eliminated as polio was for the west during the 20th century. It truly is a myth as time will surely tell.

Kerry Packer memorial service costs taxpayers $75K plus

Sure makes you think. Small change for the government but it's very strange that the taxpayer should be subsidising a billionaire's funeral.

From crikey.com.au

"As the prime minister goes on the front foot defending Work Choices, news has come through of the cost of Kerry Packer's memorial service at the Opera House earlier this year. The Oz reports it was more than $73,000 which was paid for by the federal government – ie taxpayers. It doesn't include the cost of NSW government provided security, police and parking arrangements at the Opera House. Here's how the amount was made up, according to a list provided by the PM to Sydney Labor MHR, John Murphy: "The government paid for hiring the Opera House ($28,643), advertising ($18,479), flights ($9254), administration ($8797), publicity ($6256) and Comcars ($1791)."

Contrast this with the strident defence the PM made this week of an attempt by the privately owned Spotlight company to get an employee (who votes Liberal) to agree to give up all her benefits in a new work place agreement, for an extra two cents an hour pay. This would cost her $90 a week, or more than $4,500. When he died, Kerry Packer was worth an estimated $6.8 billion and his Australian private company made a profit of $111 million last financial year. Some people, like the PM, don't know when to stop or how to get their noses out of the trough."

Firewalls - the political kind

It seems clearer than ever that we have developed a dangerous culture of unaccountability in the Australian Government. Ministerial advisors sit between the public service and the minister and act in effect like a firewall. Their lack of accountability shields the minister from knowing anything that might be dangerous to their career and public standing. Ministerial advisers are "invisible beings" that are only accountable to their minister and not the Australian parliament or the taxpayers who pay for them.

This issue existed before Howard but he has made grand use of it over the last 10 years and completely dropped any pretence of ministerial accountability. And sadly unless some one has the power and will to change it (unlikely) it will persist long after Howard is gone.

Michael Pascoe writes in Crikey.com.au's newsletter

From children overboard to AWB and all stops between, John Howard and his ministers have been accused of perfecting the art of not being told what they don't want to know. Now a former insider has spilled the beans on how it happens.

In New Matilda, we're told how it's been done by Paul Barratt AO, former Deputy-Secretary or Special Trade Representative in DFAT or the Department of Trade 1977-91, Business Council executive director 1991-96, Secretary of the Department of Primary Industries and Energy 1996-98 and Secretary of the Department of Defence 1998-99.

Hicks supporters hopeful, four years on

Hicks supporters hopeful, four years on. 09/12/2005. ABC News Online:

Today marks four years since Australian David Hicks was arrested on suspicion of involvement with the Taliban. Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and is in Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, awaiting trial before a US military commission. His Australian lawyer, David McLeod, hopes a decision by Britain's High Court on Tuesday, on a bid for British citizenship, may open legal avenues for Hicks's release.

Astounding! It is completely ludicrous for the citizen of any country to be held in (il)legal limbo for four years. Even more distressing is the pathetic attempts by the Australian government to bring this matter to a close one way or another. Obviously John Howard (Aussie PM) is a sucker for Dubya's flattery - he has called him a man of steel. Well he has certainly not used his 'super powers' to lean on Bush. Blair, on the other hand, has successfully extracted all UK citizens from Guantánamo Bay.

David Hicks is 29 with two children, 10 and 11 (according to Amnesty International) - he has spent 4 years, or close to half his kids lives in jail pending trial. Just get on with it! Better yet if you can't figure out how to try him or indeed if you have the right to pursue this military trail, free him. This whole scenario has made a mockery of US justice and the forces of democracy.

It is a pathetic indictment on the weakness of the Australian government that Hicks best solution is to gain British citizenship. At least they look after their citizens.

The real story of Australian politics

The Latham Diaries (which I don't intend to buy and read) really reflect on the sideshow of Australian politics - the Australian Labor Party - and only relevant to the general running of Australia to the extent that they explain why Labor is such a poor Opposition to the strength of Howard's Government.

The are sadly a great distraction from the main game - how Australia is governed today. It is shocking how inept the Howard government is outside the realm of economic policy. This is most illustrated by the Immigration Department which despite incarcerating and deporting Australian citizens (talk about failure to function!) seems to be above any agenda for change or indeed for anyone from Minister Vanstone down to take responsibility.

Michael Pascoe writing for Crikey.com.au nails it well.

Miserable Failure? Google has the answer

Type in the words "miserable failure" in Google and click on the I'm feeling lucky button.

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Update: It's an oldie but a goody. The BBC reported on it in 2003. Also SearchEngineWatch uses this as an example of the weaknesses of Google's design. It is a limitation of Google which is being exploited, rather than Google itself/themselves passing a political judgement.