Monday, April 24, 2006
Excuse me, Mr Costello!
To be sure there are some pretty big oil supply issues – tension in/with/over Iran, Nigerian extraction is down, Venezuela remains touchy and Iraq is not yet at production capacity.

But crude demand is soaring, hence prices are rising; to $75 per barrel overnight. This is not quite the real price reached in 1979, following the Iranian Revolution ($88.72 adjusted for inflation), but a continuing price rise seems now inevitable.

Last year, The Economist magazine explained why rising oil prices are not quite the danger to general inflation as they once were; pointing out that economies now using oil more efficiently at the margins and we live in a more service-orientated economy, using more brain power rather than hydrocarbons.

But obviously oil price rises are inflationary and many services on which we rely and expectations we have are built on access to relatively cheap and abundant oil. Travel, food production, consumer products, global trade etc.

A recent meeting of the G7 finance ministries declared that there is enough potential for this current oil shock to knock the global economy off its steady course.

Figures out in Australia have also revealed that supply prices are now rising, with a potential to feed into consumer price inflation, causing higher wage demands and demand for other services to fall and beginning an inflationary cycle.

Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, recently conceded this:

“Now, we're living through a very difficult time here. We're basically living through another oil shock. World oil prices are at all-time records. The first two oil shocks. back in the '70s, set off a wave of inflation. We have to be absolutely vigilant that this oil shock doesn't set off a wave of inflation.”

However, Costello is upbeat. He said “I believe we can contain it,”

But actually, when he means ‘we’, he really means Australian business. He continued “as long as businesses that use petrol don't use that as an excuse to move secondary prices, because then you would get a second movement back into the Consumer Price Index.”

Err, excuse me, Mr Costello….. I am not sure it is the role of the Federal Treasurer, let alone the Federal Treasurer of a Liberal government, to be telling businesses which costs they can and can’t pass on to the consumer!

Alternatively, if our Treasurer is such a fan of socialistic policy levers, like price controls, it is the taxpayer who should foot the bill, not business.

This quite blatant and unwarranted buck-passing is designed to get Costello and his dickhead colleagues in government off the hook, if [when] things go belly up.

This government has built its electoral base on the back of steady economic growth, due in equal parts to a growing population, a raging resources sector and access to easy energy. Now this is all at risk of crumbling, the government is looking very keen to distance themselves from the causes.

Suddenly inflation will be the fault of ‘greedy business’ and an ‘external oil shock’ which will be ‘beyond the control [fault] of this government.’

But these are straw man arguments. If the Australian economy begins to suffer from inflationary pressures promulgated by rocketing oil prices, the government only has itself to blame; for its unpreparedness, its greed and failure to adopt more sustainable energy policies.

Costello should shut up and get on with building a more resilient economy.

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Thursday, April 20, 2006
Mount Warning
Mount Warning forms the central core of a shield volcano on the NSW-QLD border, which last erupted 22 million years ago.

Photos >>

Since then, the gentle slopes (typical of a shield volcano that spews forth lava of low viscosity) have been eroded away to form steep escarpments and rugged peaks, surrounding the core.

As a result of this recent volcanic activity, the region is fertile and green, and with plenty of rain, the mountains’ slopes are predominantly rainforested. Mount Warning now forms the heart of a series of National Parks, which are World Heritage listed.

Mount Warning was so named by James Cook, to warn (presumably) future navigators of shoals (dangerous ones, I guess) on the coast, at a place he named Point Danger. (See box right.)

It is a pretty stunning peak, and seems to rear up at you from odd angles as you drive along the roads in the Tweed Valley below it.

At the outset, I was pretty confident of getting our 5 year old (what’s his name again) to the summit. Then I read this: Big Volcano, which paints a slightly harsher picture of the climb, all “legs at melting point” and “hearts racing at130 beats per minute”. But all the time I was reading this I was thinking ‘yeah, but my Mum got to the top!’

The local national parks guide states that Wollumbin (to give the peak its local Aboriginal name) - like Ularu - is a sacred site and as such, people (actually, the “uninitiated”) are requested to consider not climbing it. Despite this polite plea, about 20,000 people each year do and few things typify the cultural chasm that divides Western and Aboriginal conceptions of the natural environment.

Whereas Aborigine people consider Wollumbin a “sacred mountain and […] therefore of considerable spiritual and cultural significance. [A] place where the Law Men gathered to receive guidance from Babara (God) and put Natural Laws into practice for the wellbeing of Marmeng (Mother Earth), people of a liberal Western philosophy, like myself, see it as a “bloody big mountain, which therefore requires conquering.”

Whilst both philosophies can sufficiently justify the mountain’s protection and respect of such places, for one of them the mountain is spiritually tied to a fuller understanding of one’s place in the environment, to another it is ‘a really good day out, offering stunning views of the surrounding countryside.’

The climb itself is not too stressful; the very personal story of suffering and exhilaration was somewhat over-egged. Whilst it boasts a peak of 1,185m, the drive up the valley to the parking area probably drags you up 400m of this.

You climb-up through a changing succession of habitats as the microclimate gets progressively wetter, then steadily drier and more exposed towards the heathland on the top. There are some fine gnarled old mountain ash trees, just before slabs; big trees grinding out a living on soil no deeper than a few inches.

The final section at the top of the track is a steep scramble (with chain assisting) up the last 200 metres of altitude to a round, flat peak with several viewing platforms.

The views from the summit are fantastic and thus worth the trip. When it is cloudless, as it was, you get 360 degree views of the region. Northwards you see the piffling man-made effort of Q1, pushing up through 300m. To the West you get a sweeping vista around the Lamington NP plateau and over the crest to Mounts Lindsay and Barney. To the South and East you can see the lighthouse at Cape Byron.

The walk down was easier than the walk up, pretty much every step descending.

Photos are here >>

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Bloody hell - he's done a Gillespie!
After the somewhat ludicrous situation in the First Test, which saw Bangladesh run Australia close (3 wickets, I think), normality has once again returned to the world of cricket.

Or so we thought….

Just after lunch on the fourth day of the rain interrupted Second Test, we were treated to the somewhat surreal event of Australia fast bowler, Jason Gillespie, knocking up a double-ton.

For sure, Dizzy-Gillespie is no rabbit and has often performed stirling deeds stopping up one end when the middle order has mostly failed. But a double hundred – notwithstanding it being against Bangladesh – is really quite an accomplishment.

In honour of this feat, Australia now has a new colloquialism – “Doing a Gillespie”.

When you have performed way beyond your and your colleague’s expectations, you are now said to “have done a Gillespie”.

Ironically, that’s just how I feel right now, having landed a job in the Corporate Web Team, in so doing, jumping a massive three pay grades ($20,000)!

Anyway, check out this scorecard.

Whoh, freaky..

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Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Australians beat the world, again
Not satisfied with whipping the British Empire in the Commonwealth Games, Australians have thrashed the entire world in competition for paying kick-backs to Saddam Hussein, during the Oil for Food program.

Indeed, the Australian competitors in question were so far ahead of anyone else, they ought to have been awarded the special “Uday Hussein Memorial Prize for Services to the Baathist Party”.

Silver medal went to a Thai rice trading company, Chaiyaporn, which, during the scandal, bunged Saddam a cool US$40 million.

But undisputed champions, head and shoulders above the rest – just like those Aussie athletes in Melbourne – was the Australian Wheat Board.

The Australian Wheat Board (now AWB Ltd) is the monopoly exporter of Australian wheat, at the time (in the mid 90s), a wholly-owned trading arm of the Federal Government.

AWB’s ‘cost of doing business in Iraq’, from just 17 separate contracts, amounted to a whopping US$220 million, nearly 5 times as much as anyone else. It represented over 14% of all the dirty money payed to the Iraqi government, uncovered by the UN inquiry.

$220m buys an awful lot of guns. But as the free market makes no value judgements, there is of course no irony that many of these guns would have been pointing straight back at Aussie diggers on the frontline.

Once the UN Volker Inquiry had fingered AWB, the Australian government quickly moved to set up the Cole Inquiry to investigate the illegal activities of ‘certain Australian companies’.

Inevitably Cole has raised questions about just how much the Howard government knew about the illegal kick-backs.

Now if this was simply the case of a small-time grain trader bunging the odd bent government commissar a few bucks to grease the wheels of a shipping contract, I wouldn’t expect anyone higher up the food chain than the Departmental cleaner to have been made aware of it.

But the scale of AWB’s corruption was really quite breathtaking. Over time, AWB began to act like shoplifters – getting increasingly drawn-in to ever bigger bribes by the ease of it all. Eventually it became ‘normalised’; its just how things get done in Iraq….

But as Cole delved deeper, it became clear that some people in the government knew about the bungs and did nothing. But then, why would you wish to jeopardise an export deal worth over $1 billion?

The big question is, did Ministers know? Would we get a government scalp from this inquiry?

So far, three Ministers have been asked to present statements, including the Prime Minister.

It appears that the Ministers were certainly sent cables by officials wich raised concerns about corruption. But did they read them? If they did, why didn’t they act on them?

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer’s defence rested on the “I don’t remember” routine.

And yesterday John Howard stated, "I believe that I did not receive or read any of the relevant cables at any time during the relevant period,"

"I believe that the contents of the relevant cables were not brought to my attention at any time during the relevant period."

Hummm.

But hang on a minute…. Being well versed in the Don Watson school of Weasel Words, I smell a rat. Read those two John Howard statements again.

Howard has chosen his words VERY carefully. By prefixing those sentances “I believe”, he has protected himself from perjuring the inquiry. Howard has used weasel words to provide wriggle room, should he be found out.

Howard’s strategy appears more watertight than Downer’s. It could be proved that Downer did remember (if for example someone came forward asserting that Downer had mentioned it to them at some point). However, it could not be disproved that Howard never believed that he saw the cables.

Even if there was irrefutable proof that Howard had seen them, if he didn’t believe he had, then at worst he is merely incompetent; but no a liar.

Alas, this government is dirty. It just doesn’t seem ludicrous that Howard et al could not have been made aware of corruption on such a scale. When a trading arm of your government is invoiced US$180 million for transport grain a few kilometres, does nobody raise an eyebrow?

Moreover, it seems the majority of Australians believe their government knew too. A recent survey showed that 70% believed the Government knew about the kickbacks.

Unfortunately, 55% of voters said this has not changed their opinion of the government. During the Cole Inquiry period, the Howard Government’s ratings have increased one point, while the Labor party has fallen by two points. How can it be that we assign such lowly standards to our government?

The Howard government appears to be untouchable. Incompetent liars, but untouchable.

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John Howard tells another lie
The Howard government has been shown up for what it is again.

A couple of weeks ago, its new “Work Choices” legislation came into effect, freeing thousands of workers from the stifling regulations that interfered with their freedom to work longer hours; freeing them to earn less on public holidays and to form an individualised bond of trust with their employer.

From now on, collective bargaining will be consigned to history; all workers will be free to negotiate an individual ‘Australian Workplace Agreement’ (AWA).

Life will better we have been told. While John Howard wasn't going to give any guarantees that no worker's wages would be cut, he was confident there would no no erosion of working conditions.

Disputing this, an internal email memo has leaked to the Australian Council of Trades Unions (ACTU), outlining a certain organisation's changes to its policy on self-certification of sickness. It was entitled "Howard breaks promise".

Its original policy read (summarised):

"Where a line manager has sufficient grounds to believe that employees are abusing sick leave, that line manager may request that a doctor’s certificate is produced for absences of one day or more."

Now this is fairly standard practice and is even currently written into Brisbane City Council’s latest Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. No reasonable employee would argue that such a policy is fair to them, and offers sufficient safeguards to an employer.

The email went on to state that all new AWAs will demand doctor’s certificate for absences of one day or more.

Self-certification is dead. Everyone must now drag yourself out of bed to visit a doctor on any one day they are ill. No sick note, no pay.

This new policy will eventually become standard practice for all employees on ABAs at this particular organisation. Within 2 years, all employee conditions will be covered by this agreement.

So when, on 10 November last year, Prime Minister John Howard said "Labor is putting around the line that you've got to get a doctor's certificate every day you are off sick, not true", he was in fact, lying. (SKY News, 10 Nov 2006.)

And when on the same day, his Workplace Minister, Kevin Andrews told Federal Parliament "... the ALP (Labor Party) and ACTU have been running another inaccurate scare campaign, arguing that under the Work Choices bill employees must provide a separate medical certificate for every day that they take off on sick leave. That is absolutely wrong." He too, was lying. (Federal Parliament 10 November 2005)

Ironically, the leaked email was not from an enterprise known for its poor working conditions (ie a retail giant or fast food restaurant), or from some small struggling new start-up company. Sadly from Kevin Andrews own government department.

I am not sure Mr Howard is "breaking a promise" as the ACTU press release accredits him, or even being 'economical with the truth' to use political cliché.

Where I come from, its called something else: 'lying'.

In an ideal world, there would be outrage. Two ministers have told bare faced whoppers to the media and to federal parliament.

Incisive TV and radio journalists should be chomping at the bit, eager to get their teeth into the them. Citizens would be throwing up the barricades around Parliament House.

Unfortunately, we do not live in this world. Instead, we reside in political dystopia, where we do not expect any reasonable standards of decency from our elected representatives.

We be expect them to lie, to be evasive, to hide the truth when given an opportunity and then to retire from their political career into a lucrative positions with the companies their government has signed million-dollar contracts with.

Our political leaders then take our indifference to their shoddy behaviour as carte blache to continue to act in a dispicable manner, thus perpetuating the political apathy.

When politicians take no pride in their behaviour, nobody does.

As long as we’re making money, working longer hours, buying bigger houses and more stuff, why give a stuff?

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Tuesday, April 11, 2006
May you live in interesting times
Things in Australia are going to become a lot more interesting.

Despite the latest Australian tourism advertisements inquiring "Where The Bloody Hell Are You?", Australia has generally been something of a global sideshow: the Lucky Country Down Under, where everyone is sanguine and simply gets on with milking their sun-drenched lifestyle, in an utterly inconspicuous manner.

There have been no bloody revolutions, no military coup d'etats; democratic institutions have evolved in their own - typically Australian - unassuming way.

Military adventures have been limited to aiding the Mother Country in the early part of the 20th century and then backing up the replacement major power in the latter. Australia has only gone-in alone once, to help secure a tiny province on the island of Timor.

Sure there's the sport. Here, Australia punches well above its weight in a range of pursuits, which sometimes makes others envious. But it is, after all, just sport.

In industry, Australia has had its fair share of success, but then again, not too many 'firsts' or 'greatests' or 'biggests'.

So there's nothing terribly complicated about the place. And, on the whole, that's just how the Australian people like things to be.

So why the growing interest in this quiet little backwater?

Though subject of intense debate, it is certainly a possibility that the global economy will experience "Peak Oil" in the next few years. Many knowledgeable analysts predict that between 2008-12, crude oil production will peak - half the world's reserves will be expended - and then begin a slow decline.

Continuing rising energy demand will push crude prices skywards, generating huge disruptions in not only the world's economy, but also its politics.

And this where Australia comes in.

Australia sits on world's largest uranium deposits (around 40% of the total known) and hence will become a major player in the post-oil world.

Renewable fuels, lack of interest in reducing energy consumption and concern over anthropogenic global warming all make it likely that nuclear power will start to take up the energy slack created by diminishing oil supply. This, despite nuclear power's inherent flaws and the salient fact that no one has yet come up with a plan to actually deal with its waste, other than making it someone else's problem.

The global economy's insatiable desire for ever-more growth will ensure that energy consumption (and thus demand for uranium) will therefore continue to grow. Any regulations or wimpish concerns over the appropriate use of nuclear material, which stand in the way, will be swept aside.

The world will then begin to take an interest in Australia and its mineral deposits. (Actually, it already is.) Already, international bilateral relations have shifted and such intrigue is only more likely to effect Australian politics. Are we to become the next Middle East, a region beset by the machinations of foreign interests, whose only motive is the exploitation of what lies beneath the sand?

Ironically, the one thing that might save Australia from the same fate as the Middle East is John Howard's growing willingness to sell uranium, to just about anyone.

Howard has recently signed a deal to sell uranium to China for "peaceful purposes" only. Though Australian uranium may not directly find its way into Chinese warheads, its import will of course free-up more of China's existing supplies for use in making bombs. There is no real difference, other than in rhetoric.

China is not a democracy. China is consistently criticised for violating human rights. China has also made clear it will deploy its nuclear deterrent if its claim to sovereignty over Taiwan is threatened.

Two weeks earlier, George W Bush agreed to sell US nuclear technology to that other awakening global giant, India, again with only cursory safeguards stipulating how such technology could be used in weapons programs. India needs Australian uranium. Soon, it will get it, despite India being a non-signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, which thus blocks Australian companies from exporting uranium to India. It is only a matter of when, not if, yellow cake starts making its way to India.

Howard has proved that he would sell his grandmother, if there were a dollar in it for him. To hell with non-proliferation and irksome international treaties.

These three policy shifts underline the centrality of energy in the dynamics of global politics and war. They have no doubt been inspired by US concerns over future oil supply and are an attempt to pre-empt growing competition for the remaining crude reserves. If India and China expand nuclear technology for their growing energy needs, that leaves all the more oil for Uncle Sam. When there's suburban SUVs to fill-up, who wants to worry about global security?

So can we expect the world's energy guzzling superpowers to start meddling in Australian politics, or stationing military bases in Kakadu National Park, or perhaps running covert insurgency wars against any State Labor government which refuse to expand uranium mining?

The Middle East could soon drop off the media radar as it ceases to be of interest to the world and, like Africa, will become just another forgotten basket case of failed economies and polities.

Instead, Australia will become the new battleground for the latest round of energy-inspired wars. Australians will find out how much fun it is to live atop of the world's biggest energy source.

Australians will suffer collateral damage, doors being kicked down in the middle of the night and punitive arbitrary military justice. The US, China and India will all be jostling to assert military dominance, arming friendly regimes, assassinating errant State Premiers and executing a ceaseless, low-intensity war, sapping the will of Australian people. And no one will care because for most people, it will be something that is happening 'somewhere else'.

So things are going to become a lot more interesting for Australia.

Food for thought, anyway.

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Monday, April 03, 2006
Q1
Though pretty quick, our great steel elevator failed to gather enough speed to break through the roof, instead stopping at level 77 to let us out on the observation ‘deck’ of Q1.

Follow this: At 323m Q1 is the world’s tallest residential tower and the world’s 20th tallest man-made structure. It is the tallest tower in the southern hemisphere – taller than the Eureka building in Melbourne – but at 92 floors the Melbourne tower is the tallest to the roof. Q1 boasts the highest publicly accessible beachside observation point in the world and the penthouse is probably the world’s highest dwelling. Q1 also boasts the fastest elevator, climbing 77 stories in just 43 seconds. From the top on a clear day you can see 80km, making it theoretically possible to see the skyscrapers in Brisbane’s CBD.

The design of Q1 was inspired by the Olympic torch (Sydney 2000, of course) and the arches of Sydney Opera House. It was also inspired by money and prestige. That Q1 is purely residential is an indication that despite the Gold Coast economy slowly diversifying, it is still a tourist town, relying on tourist dollars and the spending habits of Asian visitors and second home owners.

What is not disputed is that – for a couple of years anyway (until two nearby towers at 240m and 220m are completed) – Q1 is massively taller than anything else on the Gold Coast. Just a year ago the view up the beach from Burleigh Head to Surfers Paradise was reminiscent of a view of Miami Beach.

Now, what were impressively tall apartment blocks lining the coast, have been diminished to mini-Lego sets in comparison. Q1 is probably twice as tall as anything else in Surfers.

Though we couldn’t see Brisbane, we still get a thoroughly impressive view of the entire length of the Gold Coast, from Coolangatta to South Stradbroke Island and the beautiful hinterland from Mount Warning in the distance, the Lamington/Springbrook Plateau, through to Mount Tamborine.

You also get to see the shark nets lying off the beach and the miles and miles of ostentatious, suburban, canal-side Gold Coast living. This is what the brochures and ad-men define as ‘lifestyle’; the primary goal of all aspiring Australian new money.


Tall and regimented, Q1, from its base.


View south, across suburbia, towards Mount Warning
on the horizon, the mountain we are climbing this weekend.





View north to Southport and Main Beach


Beach-going ants at Surfers Paradise


Q1 casts its shadow on Surfers Paradise's raison d'etre


Q1's shadow on the beach was
a cause of local concern.
When you are famous for your beach
and no one gets the sun, what's the
point?

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