Rudd:

Martyn Smith writes: Re. “Dear media — are we all vented now?” (Friday, item 2). I think Bernard Keane was spot on in his article, but having watched Kerry O’Brien’s interview with Rudd I feel Bernard was far too kind to O’Brien, who came across as ill informed, overbearing and unfair. I think overall the insulation program was a good idea and successful considering insulating Australia’s houses is a no brainer — even the climate change denialists would agree it saves energy. I’m surprised it hasn’t been done automatically when new houses are built.

I know something about this highly technical operation, having put  pink bats in the roof space of my house thirty years ago, without killing myself,  setting it on fire, falling through the ceiling, falling off the ladder, and (isn’t this incredible) without “training” of any kind … Garrett and Rudd have now put in some regulations on how this should be done. This is probably about time!

Only a very small percentage of insulators have been casualties and few houses have gone on fire. No one takes the bad experiences lightly and if there’s been negligence it has to be dealt with. It doesn’t follow the program was at fault.

The insulation “package” helped keep Australia out of recession. People fed their families because of it. How easily we forget this important fact.

In Australia we have our fair share of shonks, idiots and people who are destined for the “Darwin Awards”. Getting anything done here is not easy in any case and some people will always try and find their way around rules and regulations.  Anyone who doubts this should watch our tabloid TV shows, where dodgy builders feature prominently.

Those who want everything checked and inspected are against the Australian ‘way’. Self regulation seems to be the ‘go’  in Australia, probably because an army of inspectors would cost money and slow down ‘entrepreneurism’.  We can’t have it both ways.

Whilst the media may have no sympathy for Rudd (I would be surprised if the media respected or sympathised with anybody), I do indeed have some sympathy.  I think the government did a reasonable job on this program  and that Rudd hasn’t had a fair go from the Media including Kerry O’Brien. It’s likely that the government will now put the whole thing behind them, helped by Kerry O’Brien’s interview with a penitent Kevin Rudd, though I doubt that was O’Brien’s intention.

Tasmania:

Bob Joyce writes from Penguin, Tasmania: Re. “Tasmania just became one of the most political places on the planet” (24 February, item 12). In the current election in Tasmania it appears very unlikely that any of the parties will end up with an outright majority. In the 25 seat house, the result will probably be something like 10/10/5 Liberal/Labor/Green. This is a result of Tasmania’s wonderful Hare-Clark electoral system, with multi-member electorates, which accurately reflects the wishes of voters. Statewide, if any party can command 20% of the vote, they will most likely end up with about 20% of the MHAs.

Anywhere else in the world, in a situation like this, where any two parties could combine to form government, it would be expected that the two parties with the most in common would negotiate an agreement to form government.

On looking at the policies of the major parties, there is not much between them. The historical labour/capital dichotomy has disappeared as both parties have moved to the middle ground. Both want to encourage private enterprise, improve health care, create better transport and education systems, lower taxes, and institute user pays wherever possible. Any differences are only in the fine detail. In short, Labor and Liberal are much closer to each other than either of them are to the Greens. Taking this to a logical conclusion would lead to a Liberal/Labor coalition, leaving the Greens in the wilderness (no pun intended).

Such a coalition would better use the parliamentary talent pool, allowing the premier to have a much wider choice of personnel. It would also prevent the Greens from having a say far beyond their parliamentary numbers. Although the Greens will end up with only five or six members in the house, in coalition with either Labor or Liberal they would have a disproportionate level of influence.

In Australia, however, the major parties (or at least the electorate) have such a rigid mindset of Labor versus Liberal, that a Labor/Liberal coalition would be rejected out of hand. Both the major parties are national organisations, and such a coalition would be a total embarrassment to the federal parties, by demonstrating that there is virtually no difference between them.

However, remember that in Tasmania the Liberal and Labor parties have already united once to meet the Green threat, when they combined in 1998 to amend the electoral act to reduce the number of members from each electorate from seven to five. Although this was dressed up as a budget measure, no serious political observer doubts that it was aimed squarely at reducing the power of the Greens. The change in the number of members per electorate increased the quota required for election from 12.5% to 16.7% of the vote. If the 1998 election had been conducted with seven members per electorate, the Greens would have retained the balance of power with four or five members.

As the Green vote continues to increase, there will come a time, within the next couple of electoral cycles, when Labor and Liberal will again combine to meet the threat of the Greens, either to form a coalition government, or to again move the goalposts to disadvantage the Greens.

Debt:

David Lodge writes: Either very cleverly or very stupidly, Sean Hosking (Friday, comments) confuses budget deficits with debt and federal government service delivery with that of the states. In fact, all of his gripes centre on services delivered by state governments who have followed the “deficits are ok!” mind set. I’m not sure where he’s getting it from, but nowhere did I say governments are incompetent nor did I claim that governments themselves are superfluous in any way. The fact that I’m attacked as holding certain views because I advocated a specific course of action says more about Mr Hosking than it does of any views I may or may not hold.

In any case, it will be obviously to all readers (or anyone who cares for that matter) that I specifically referred to federal budgets owing to the existence of the vertical fiscal imbalance. Indeed in such an environment, only debt can facilitate that kind of “nation building” as I’m sure Mr Hosking would put it. In fact, only state governments have responsibility for that kind of service delivery. Being that that the federal government is essentially in control of state purse strings, I’d say it’s more than prudent for the federal government to regularly run surpluses for the apparently desirably profligate states, wouldn’t you?

In contrary to Mr Hosking’s claims that public spending “generates economic activity” I would merely point him to the fact that Australia’s first class economic growth, and indeed the world’s at large, has come from private sector investment and the absence of public intrusion into markets. You wouldn’t be advocating a return to centrally driven economic activity now would you Mr Hosking?

Rod Metcalfe writes: In my comments of last week I made the statement that: “But not all surpluses are bad and not all deficits are bad”. This was a philosophical comment on the present debate. However, if you want to see it in economic terms here is an example. Most of us have been in personal deficit. We borrow to buy a house.

The mortgage is a personal deficit. If you then blindly pursue the view that all deficits are bad, then you will never own a house.  Instead, you will enrich someone who has probably gone into deficit to buy the property you are renting. You will also presumably have a personal surplus, but to what good? The philosophy of deficits and surpluses appears to have been overlooked in this current debate.

Deficits can be good if put to use investing in the future (i.e. the gas projects on the North West Shelf — those companies are running big deficits just now — it is called “borrowings”). The blind pursuit of a surplus however, can mean that things which should/could/need to be done (i.e. buy a house; investing in infrastructure) are left undone and everyone can be worse off as a result.

And has also been shown today, the poor use of a deficit can be equally bad.

Stats:

John Taylor writes: Re. “Don’t let the evidence get in the way of evidence-based policy” (Friday, item 10). I read Bernard Keane’s article because I’m a statistics junky. Everybody knows that 57.42% of statistics are made up on the spot, while the other 61.29% are unreliable.

Climate change:

Kieren Diment writes: Tamas Calderwood (Friday, comments) is determined to maintain his delusional approach to the subject.  Pre 1860 the effect of CO2 was too small to be detectable over other effects, particularly solar ones.  For some years after 1800 the Krakatau eruption caused significant global cooling.  Between 1910-1940 we again see the effect of CO2 on the global temperature record (although the effect of solar variability is about twice the size at this time), but after this, until the regulatory mechanisms for controlling pollution came in, the effect of sulphate and particulate pollution were increasing, masking the effect of CO2.

Post 1975 we see a clear global warming signal again.  The current post 1988 pattern is no different to other trends visible in the post-industrial temperature record during either cooling or warming periods.  All of this is published in the scientific literature, and easy to find for anyone with an interest in the facts.  In addition, post 1975, we can clearly show through statistical analysis that CO2 emissions account for about 80% of warming, while solar variability only accounts for about 20% of variability.

Tamas needs to take information out of context to maintain his argument, and constantly has to disregard the big picture and the facts in order to maintain the pretence of a coherent argument.

I tend to agree with Nigel Brunel (25 February, comments).  The letters page of Crikey is not a suitable location to discuss these complex scientific issues.  I also don’t believe that the Crikey editorial staff have the scientific expertise to assess the claims of their correspondents.  Unfortunately when the usual suspects parrot out their delusional nonsense, I believe it is important that these lies and misinformation are rebutted properly, much as I would prefer not to do so.

Failing to do this confers an unwarranted veneer of respectability on their fact-less opinions.  I would much prefer that Crikey stopped publishing letters on the scientific basis of the climate change debate, especially while the usually irritating, occasionally hilarious Climate Change Cage Match thread is still open.

Matt Andrews writes: Tamas Calderwood asks how it can be that there have been periods over the last 150 years with warming just as rapid as we are experiencing now, given that CO2 levels have been increasing throughout.  I seem to recall us having exactly this discussion last year, but let’s celebrate Groundhog Day again.

Surface temperature is influenced by several factors, each of which can have a warming or cooling effect.  Earlier last century, greenhouse gas levels were lower, and cooling factors like atmospheric aerosols and frequent volcanic eruptions were at times enough to balance things out, so we saw plateaus or temporary drops in surface temperatures.

At other times, aerosols have been low, so greenhouse gases and other factors such as increasing solar intensity were enough to cause periods of warming.  As greenhouse gases have steadily risen, they have overwhelmed the cooling effect of other factors: they have been the single dominant factor since the 1970s.  There are also some positive feedbacks — such as loss of ice cover — which are adding to the overall warming.

Overall, the last century has seen an enormous rise in greenhouse gases and a large rise in surface temperature, and we expect the warming to continue. Much of the CO2-related heating is still “in the pipeline”, such as extra CO2 that has been absorbed by the oceans and that will be released to the atmosphere as the oceans warm up.

And, again, the really big picture – as shown by satellite measurements that more energy is entering the Earth than is leaving, and ocean heat measurements, where the vast majority of warming is happening – is unequivocally that the planet is heating up.