Tasmania going Green. Australia is on the verge of getting its second minority Labor government that must rely on the support of Greens to govern. On the figures in the latest opinion poll from Tasmania, the Liberals will end up with 11 members in the House of Assembly to Labor’s 10 and the Greens with four. You can get details of the EMRS polls from Anthony Green’s ABC website.

As the Liberals say they will not countenance any deal with the Greens to gain office, presumably Labor will do the same as it has in the Australian Capital Territory and make an agreement although that will be much harder to finalise than it was in Canberra because of the nature of the issues the Greens consider vital.

I certainly would not fancy the chances of Gunns getting any decisions it might need from a government next year to ensure that its pulp mill goes ahead.

Keeping Australia’s boat people in perspective. Presumably the political shouting and posturing over boat people policy will decline a little now that the asylum seekers from the Oceanic Viking are back on terra firma. That should help make it an appropriate time to contemplate just how fortunate it is for Australia that ours is a difficult country for would be illegal settlers to reach.

Not so lucky is Greece, where I noted from the International Herald Tribune this morning that 7745 illegal boat people have made it to Lesbos this year after navigating the seven kilometres wide straight separating the island from the Turkish mainland.

New Zealand purest of the pure. New Zealand has gone to the top of the annual Corruption Perception Index published by Transparency International and is now rated as the country with the least public corruption in the world. Australia comes in eighth on this year’s list, one place better than last year although the rating is marginally lower at 8.6 compared to NZ’s 9.4.

Transparency International says the vast majority of the 180 countries included in the 2009 index score below five on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (perceived to have low levels of corruption). The CPI measures the perceived levels of public sector corruption in a given country and is a composite index, drawing on 13 different expert and business surveys. The 2009 edition scores 180 countries, the same number as the 2008 CPI.

Fragile, unstable states that are scarred by war and ongoing conflict linger at the bottom of the index. These are: Somalia, with a score of 1.1, Afghanistan at 1.3, Myanmar at 1.4 and Sudan tied with Iraq at 1.5. These results demonstrate that countries that  are perceived as the most corrupt are also those plagued by long-standing conflicts, which have torn apart their governance infrastructure.

The power of gold. You only have to glance along the shelves at your local wine merchant to see the importance of wine show medals for the wine company marketing people. Those little gold, silver and bronze circles festoon all kinds of labels announcing performance at all kind of shows from the capital city agricultural society main events to little regional efforts. Goodness knows how much the industry invests in entering these competitions but must run into the millions when the entry fees, effort and energy are taken into account. As such wine shows are major part of wine’s promotional budget.

But, alas, I have to report yet another piece of evidence to suggest that for consumers the medals are nothing more than a misleading nonsense. Robert T.Hodgson, professor emeritus, Department of Oceanography, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California and now proprietor of the Fieldbrook Winery, has sat down and analysed the results of more than 4000 wines entered in 13 US wine competitions.

In a paper published by The Journal of Wine Economics Prof Hodgson’s analysis shows little concordance among the venues in awarding gold medals. Of the 2440 wines entered in more than three competitions, 47% received gold medals, but 84% of these same wines also received no award in another competition.

It is clear that many wines that are viewed as extraordinarily good at some competitions are viewed as below average at others. An analysis of the number of gold medals received in multiple competitions indicates that the probability of winning a gold medal at one competition is stochastically independent of the probability of receiving a gold at another competition, indicating that winning a gold medal is greatly influenced by chance alone.

When he takes off his professorial hat and becomes winemaker Bob, the attitude to gold, silver and bronze takes on the marketing man’s viewpoint. As he says on his website, Fieldbrook “enters some of the most competitive wine tastings in the state. Because of the relatively small size of the winery, we feel this is our best opportunity to promote the quality of our wines.”