Channel Nine’s dirt-loving critter only dived lower, and faster, when the Prime Minister’s heir apparent, Peter Costello, chimed into the great debate from the cheap seats.

But, what does it all mean? This is a multiple choice question and, by way of preparation for November 24, the options are: a) bugger all, b) sweet FA, and, c) not a lot. See, isn’t democracy wonderful.

What we got in the great debate was two boring white men, chanting the party line to an audience of sycophants who weren’t supposed to interject, boo, or, even, clap politely. Not exactly the material for a ratings winner. Little wonder the majority of Australians flicked to Kath and Kim or did something relevant, like checking the Melbourne Cup form, or going for a walk.

Those who sat through the bore-a-thon, however, would have understood what this federal election has come down to – cretins at 20 paces – or 2000km, depending on the campaign schedule.

The 2007 contest is more an auction than a contest of ideas and, it raises the question, what are modern governments supposed to do? Pretty much nothing, if you listen to Howard and Rudd.

Handouts are at the centre of their worlds and they were slap-bang in the middle of the debate. Our choice, apparently, is about what disguise we would prefer them to travel under.

Howard and Rudd love Australian families. They express this devotion by lavishing short-term handouts and completely ignoring the nation-building, society-strengthening options that could make a real difference to the way they live.

Howard rocked into the debate swinging multi-billion tax cuts like an engorged todger. Rudd responded with a quick peak at shapely computers that will flicker in kiddies bedrooms across the continent, courtesy of some tax-break or other, before he signs off on Howard’s programme.

By the time this pair have finished, we’re going to have tax breaks, vouchers and Christ-knows what other form of individual subsidy, coming out our ears. All means-tested, of course.

How does this mentality flourish under “economic conservatives”, wedded to the ideals of personal responsibility, hard work and aspiration?

Wouldn’t it be better if you just restored our rights to negotiate our own wages, and working conditions, instead of pushing everyone onto the public teat?

Fellas, in case you haven’t noticed, the country’s got a health crisis; a housing crisis; the technological revolution is passing us by; public transport, in the big cities, is rooted; the bush is short of water; and the whole joint is going to burn up if we don’t do something substantial about global warming. Meanwhile, our armed forces are off pouring petrol over the fires of international terrorism.

Multi-billion surpluses mean a government worthy of the name could make significant inroads into some of these problems. Unfortunately, on the evidence of the great debate, such a government will not an option at this election

The only time, in 90 dreary minutes, anyone came near nation-building was when Rudd spoke about his plan for high-speed broadband, across the continent.

Even the worm perked up and looked, briefly, for a better world.

The post Worms And Other Low Lifes appeared first on Manic Times.

Lindsay would be a rural seat if Sydney grew like a normal city, instead of growing with tentacle-like strands of suburbia along the Great Western, Hume, Pacific and Princes Highways. Lindsay is neatly bisected by the Great Western Highway, with its borders reaching as far south as Wallacia and as far north as Agnes Banks (both of these suburbs, along with many others, were excised in a redistribution after the last election).

The heart of the seat is Penrith, and both major candidates’ have their local offices there, no more than 300 metres apart on the city’s High Street.

If the main street of a suburb is any reflection on its inhabitants, then High Street paints an interesting picture. A man’s haircut goes for $14, but with extra charged for longer hair. ‘For Lease’ signs are common, and even what appears to be the street’s most popular store, Meredith Music, advertises a ‘closing down sale’. The massage parlours are discreetly identified by their street numbers – ‘373’, ‘423’ – with the exception of the delightfully named ‘Oh Zone’. The St Nicholas of Myra Catholic Church tells me that ‘God answers knee-mail’, whilst Odin’s Oath Biker Accessories does a strong trade in bandanas, balaclavas and belt buckles.

Lindsay is also home to the University of Western Sydney, though the university also has satellite campuses at Parramatta and Bankstown. The Liberal member for Lindsay, Jackie Kelly, famously angered many local residents in 2004 when she rejected the notion of more funding for UWS on the basis that “no one in my electorate goes to uni”, adding that the seat was “pram city.”

“There’s this ‘westy’ culture where people think we’re all a bunch of bogans who just drink, get stoned, and do burnouts”, says University of Western Sydney student Whitney Eagle when I meet her at the university’s expansive Werrington campus.

Eagle moved to the area from Manly to attend UWS, ignoring the looks of consternation she received from her Stella Maris College classmates. Eagle shares the embarrassment felt by many locals at Kelly’s characterisation of the area as the domain solely of poorly-educated yobbos, which was exhibited most prominently in 2004 when she presented the Prime Minister with an “I Love Penriff” t-shirt.

Eagle points out the more sophisticated aspects of the area such as the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre – which regularly stages classical music concerts and stage plays – and the recently expanded Penrith Regional Gallery. Lindsay was, after all, named after famed artist Norman Lindsay.

Nevertheless, High Street lends pretty strong support to Kelly’s hypothesis, with the ‘westy’ stereotypes out in force. There are mullets everywhere. The women wear either too much make-up or not enough, and many of them are indeed pushing prams.

Like most of suburbia, however, the majority of commerce has moved indoors to the local Westfield, in this case Penrith Plaza. With the usual suspects on show – Cotton On, JayJays, Starbucks, Portmans, Supre, Myer, Boost Juice, JB Hi-Fi – you could be anywhere in Australia.

Penrith itself is almost a perfect reflection of the leisure outsourcing which has swept through suburban Australia, where business districts don’t just happen anymore, they’re given a designated 50 acres with a 1500 spot carpark. So too the nightlife has shifted away somewhat from the pubs which dot the main drag and towards Panthers, the mini-casino which sits opposite the local NRL team’s home ground.

The Australian Arms, Penrith and Embassy Hotels are practically empty after 6pm when I stop in for a beer. Whilst admittedly I have made my visits on a Tuesday night, Panthers, I find, is packed with post-work traffic. American travel writer Bill Bryson was quite impressed with “the vast tinkling interior” of Panthers in his book on Australia, Down Under, describing how “hundreds of pokies stood in long straight lines, and at nearly every one sat an intent figure feeding in the mortgage money”, but I am left somewhat cold by the faux glamour.

I shouldn’t worry too much about High Street, according to David Bradbury – Labor’s candidate for Lindsay – who points to NSW Government plans to turn Penrith into something of a regional city rather than a suburban outpost.
“There will be a fairly significant re-development of the town centre over the coming years”, Bradbury said. “So one of the focuses of that exercise will be to try and ensure that there’s as much vitality – not just during the day but also in terms of nightlife – in the city centre as possible.”

Bradbury is contesting Lindsay for a third time, having been defeated by Kelly at the 2001 and 2004 elections, though the signs are better for him this time. The Liberal Party currently holds the seat with a 2.9% margin over Labor, with Kelly’s 5.3% lead after the 2004 election cut down with the recent redistribution.

The redistribution should help Labor further at the coming election with the incorporation of suburbs like St Marys and Colyton on its eastern side, and the exclusion of the more rural suburbs to its north such as Londonderry. As you would expect, Labor has tended to poll better nearer the Labor-held seats (Chifley, Prospect) on its eastern side than it does in the booths nearer the Liberal-held seats to its north and west like Macquarie and Greenway.

More importantly, however, Lindsay is one of Howard’s ‘battler’ seats. It is very much a part of the aspirational mortgage belt vote that Labor is seeking to capture. As Crikey points out, “on demographics and on state results Lindsay looks as if it should be a Labor seat … Labor won’t win government if it can’t win seats like Lindsay”.

Kelly was originally elected on the back of ‘Howard’s massacre’ in 1996, with the seat recording an 11.8% swing against the ALP, the second largest in the state. However, the Liberals will be without Kelly’s star power this time, with the former Parliamentary Secretary quitting the “harsh, unforgiving, relentless” world of politics to spend more time with her family.
This time Bradbury will face off against Karen Chijoff, a local resident who curiously did not respond to my frequent requests for an interview. Her website, however, emphasises interest rates as a key issue for her.

“Like many other local families, my husband and I work hard to raise our family and pay the mortgage”, the message on her homepage reads. “That is why it is important to us that the economy is well managed. We certainly could not afford the high interest rates we had when Labor were last in power.”

Interestingly, Bradbury also identifies interest rates as one of the key issues for Lindsay.

“The local issues are very much the national issues, but with their local dimension”, he says.

“We’ve had nine significant interest rate increases. They call it a mortgage belt seat and that’s a fairly accurate description. So the increases in interest rates, along with the other increases in the cost of living, mean that many local families are really finding it tough at the moment.”

DANIEL FITZGERALD

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Richard Broinowski, a former senior Australian diplomat and author of Fact or Fission – The Truth about Australia’s Nuclear Ambitions, said the amendment “clearly could open the way to nuclear weapons-related research at ANSTO.”

He’s not alone. Academic and Friends of the Earth Nuclear campaigner Jim Green agrees that the amendment is intriguing. “I’m not a lawyer, but it seems that the explicit ban on weapons research/production in previous legislation has been replaced by a statement that ANSTO can work on nuclear weapons.”

Steven Freeland, Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Sydney was more moderate in qualification, “In an extreme reading the words are extremely broad. Though this is typical in matters regarding security and defence [related legislation], because we just don’t know what is going to happen.”

While ANSTO could develop nuclear weapons for the nation’s safety, it may well provoke our neighbours rather than protect us. Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand all plan on developing nuclear reactors, and if weapons development goes ahead in this country it could force neighbouring nations to step up to the next level. It could be a case of Mutually Assured Destruction ASEAN Style.

“Any or all of them would feel threatened if Australia embarked on an enrichment program, and would be prompted to develop their own weapons-capable programs. We couldn’t possibly keep such an endeavour secret, and as soon as it leaked, our neighbours would put the worst possible interpretation on it,” said Broinowski.

Australia has quite a record regarding the nuclear non-proliferation treaty it signed in 1973. Most recently, Prime Minister John Howard announced an intended commitment to sign an “in-principle” agreement to sell uranium to India, a country that has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1998.

Australia’s disregard for nuclear non-proliferation grows with this latest ANSTO amendment. “In my view, the amendment to the ANSTO Act is clearly in breach of Australia’s obligations under the NPT. We are treaty-bound not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons, yet this amendment gives us the right and capacity to pursue such a course under domestic law,” said Richard Broinowski.

Luckily Australia doesn’t have to worry about repercussions outside the region. Yet.

Dr Mohamed El Baradei, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General, realised the potential for a nuclear insurance policy under the NPT in a December 2005 lecture: “Under the current [NPT] regime, there is nothing illegal about any State having enrichment or reprocessing technology, or even possessing stocks of weapon-grade nuclear material.”
“If a country with a full nuclear fuel cycle decides to break away from its non-proliferation commitments, a nuclear weapon could be only months away,” said Dr El Baradei in expanding on the theme that this backdoor to nuclear insurance was a dangerous loophole under the Treaty.

Even without the push for a tightening of the Treaty by the International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General, Australia’s nuclear insurance policy is under threat. Many are concerned locally. The Wilderness Society sought advice from the Environmental Defender’s Office (EDO), seeking clarification as to what the amendment actually meant as “there is no corresponding definition” of what purposes relate to the defence of the Commonwealth when it comes to ANSTO’s nuclear research activities.

EDO made clear in its response that ANSTO has no military power, and could only provide advice to Australian State and Federal Governments in the event of a terrorist attack.

It would seem that the amendment would most likely be used to allow ANSTO to clean up after a terrorist attack. Both EDO and Associate Professor Freeland have come to a similar conclusion. EDO said: “it would be contingent on the need to respond to a threat to national security from nuclear waste.” For Steven Freeland: “[The amendment] is highly unlikely to do with nuclear weaponry. It probably has more to do with combating attacks against Australia.”

It is unlikely the Federal Government will want to clarify the intention of its policy until after the election, but, for now, Australia has acquired a level of nuclear insurance through the legal system. When the legislation will be addressed again by a future Government, be that Labor or Liberal, remains to be seen. As Steven Freeland explained: “This law could later be challenged in the courts to rectify any concerns”.

I don’t have the cash for that, but I think we all deserve some assurance.

BLAKE ARTHUR

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Honour. Loyalty. Pride. All traits the Japanese cherish. In a land where business is conducted like warfare, codes must be upheld. For what have we, if we don’t have our dignity?

It’s therefore perfectly understandable that, upon learning that his employer had ignored his gift of jelly desserts, a Japanese worker took a truncheon to his boss’ office, destroying 22 computers and, possibly, the delicious jelly treats.

Many in Japan maintain the tradition of imparting gifts to important business contacts when the season changes, an act of respect that, apparently, should not be taken lightly. That being said, not everyone likes jelly, and perhaps chocolate swirls would have been a safer option.

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Already highly unpopular with the public, the move risks alienating NSW voters who will be crucial in the upcoming federal poll.

Sources close to the state government say it will be the first shot in a privatisation war that will also target Sydney ferries and rail maintenance. They say Iemma wants it done and dusted by Christmas while union adversaries are blindsided by John Howard and the national picture.

Galaxy polling, last week, found 62 percent of people opposed selling off the power industry; 60 percent were against flogging parts of the rail network, and 59 percent opposed the privatisation of Sydney Ferries.

Unions NSW assistant secretary, Mark Lennon, said the size of the numbers indicated the Iemma Government would have struggled to have been returned to power, if it had come clean before the state election.

Lennon challenged the NSW state government to hold a plebiscite on its privatisation plans.

Only 25, 28 and 20 percent of respondents, respectively, supported propositions that will be unveiled by Treasurer, Michael Costa, at next week’s Cabinet meeting.

Galaxy found that one in three Labor voters would have been less likely to have supported the party if they had been aware of sell-off plans.

image : https://infrastructuremagazine.com.au/

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The scalping came with the NSW Supreme Court decision to block access to records that would unmask lenders behind escalating house repossessions.

Basis Capital Yield Master Fund, an offshoot of hedge fund Basis Capital, went tits up on Thursday with the appointment of a liquidator to freeze overseas assets. Joint liquidators were named in the Cayman Islands, Britain and Australia.

Problem investment in collateralised debt obligations have been identified. These instruments have been savaged in the credit market slide.
Non-bank mortgage lender RAMS Home Loans Group has also seen its share price plummet.

Basis Yield news broke as the NSW Supreme Court refused the Australian Bankers Association and the Consumer Credit Legal Centre access to records that would finger the real lenders behind the surge in home repossessions.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported, last week, that $500 million in Australian subprime loans were technically in default. The vast majority of this finance is arranged through the non-bank sector.

Repossessions are enforced through Supreme Court actions. Last year, the NSW Supreme Court, ordered 5363 repossession writs. But Supreme Court Justice, Jim Spiegelman, said about 18,000 court files would have to be reviewed, raising issues of privacy and practicality.

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Experienced union officials, including one fingered as a bully by politicians, have been taken aback by abuse and threats hurled by a Sydney boss.

Independent producer, Brad Diebert, cut up rough after Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance official, Simon Whipp, told performers on his gangster movie they were entitled to a better deal.

“Listen here, Simon Whipp, you slanderous motherfucker,” Diebert warmed up. “You are up for it buddy … so, fuck you … listen here, motherfucker, you and me see each other in the street and you better walk away, you cunt, because I am going to rip your fucking eyes out.”

We know this is exactly what Diebert said because, not being the sharpest tack in the drawer, he left his message on the MEAA answerphone.

Victorian ETU secretary, Dean Mighell, said Diebert’s negotiating strategy was flawed.

“Profanity without principle is worthless,” Mighell told Manic Times.

“He (Diebert) sounds like the sort of guy who would benefit from some union training. I think he would find that a little more professionalism would go a long way, and get better results.”

CFMEU mining division secretary, Tony Maher, said Diebert’s approach was not unique among the employing class.

“We have all had experiences of being stood over by employers,” Maher said. “Personally, I have had the CEO of a mining company try to intimidate me in a courtroom.

Employers are not beyond this sort of thing and never have been.

“But, it’s not very smart and it lacks professionalism. I think Kevin should throw him out of the party.”

Whipp told Manic Times he had been shocked and a “little bit amused” by Diebert’s grubby tirade.

“We had had a couple of exchanges of emails and a couple of conversations that hadn’t been particularly heated. What got him upset was that, based on the budget he had supplied, we had told him there was enough money to pay performers the minimum rate for turning up on the day.”

Unions NSW assistant secretary, Mark Lennon, said the Diebert outburst highlighted the hypocrisy of the federal government.

“We haven’t heard boo from them,” Lennon said. “If this had been a union official talking to an employer, there would be hell to pay.”

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Senator Bill Heffernan has stopped just short of apologising to Rooty Hill High School after launching an expletive-riddled tirade at a teacher and the parent of a student at the school.

According to teacher Dean Newbold, the attack took place on August 15 as he and parent Greg White met with Senator Marise Payne in her Canberra office to discuss the school’s funding shortfall, with Heffernan saying to the pair, “Don’t give me that shit, what are you fucking doing about it?”

The Rooty Hill pair were not aware that Heffernan was even planning to be at the meeting with Payne, with the controversial NSW Senator refusing their offer of a personal meeting. Payne had mentioned to Newbold in the weeks leading up to their meeting that Heffernan might be planning to attend, but later changed this, saying that Heffernan would definitely not be attending.

However, Newbold and White arrived at Payne’s office to find Senator Heffernan sitting on the lounge, with Heffernan beginning his tirade “from minute one”.

“I should have read from the body language that we were in a bit of trouble”, said Newbold. “It was clear to me from early on that we were sport, that he was there for a good time, and his idea of a good time was making us suffer.”

“There was no build-up. It was from the start, go for the throat.”

Newbold, a history and geography teacher at the school, claims he did not respond in kind to Heffernan’s attack as he “was there representing the school”.

Newbold and White then tried to concentrate their efforts on ignoring Heffernan and “talking sensibly” to Senator Payne, but were again thwarted by Heffernan.

“He wasn’t impressed by that”, said Newbold. “He got out of his chair and was marching around the room, leaning over people and pointing in at their chest. It was really ugly.”

“The poor parent who was with me, he’s a bloke that doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t swear; his jaw was on the floor.”

So embarassed was White by Heffernan’s behaviour, he even apologised to Payne at the end of the meeting, with Payne replying, “That’s just Bill’s way. We might not use the same language but we agree on the policy”

The next day Newbold faxed an angry letter to Prime Minister John Howard slamming Heffernan for his “insulting and bullying behviour”.

Just over an hour after sending the fax, Rooty Hill High School’s principal Christine Cawsey received a conciliatory phone call from Heffernan, where it is understood he offered his assistance to the school in receiving funding for a new sewerage system.

This week, Senator Heffernan’s office initially claimed that the senator could not be contacted regarding the incident as he was in Kununurra, but later changed this saying that he was simply “tied up with other meetings”.

“I assume it’s going to be biased report anyway”, ‘Jane’, the staffer from Heffernan’s office who returned Manic Times’ calls, replied.
Jane was able to confirm that Senator Heffernan is planning to visit the school with the federal Labor member for Chifley, Roger Price, in the near future.

Senator Payne’s office did not respond to Manic Times’ inquiries.

HEFFO’S GEMS
Whilst his preferred pastime in 2007 has been interrupting other people’s press conferences, Senator Heffernan has built a strong reputation for saying stupid things and then apologising for it:

2002 – Used parliamentary privilege to accuse High Court judge Michael Kirby of using a government car to pick up male prostitutes. He later had to withdraw his claims and resign as Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet after his evidence was revealed to be false.

2006 – Was forced to apologise to Nationals Senator Fiona Nash after an altercation with her at Canberra Airport during which he told her to “blow it out her backside”.

2007 – Declared in an interview with The Bulletin that deputy opposition leader Julia Gillard was unfit to lead the nation because she was “deliberately barren”. Classy.

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Once, when I was just getting my start in global finance, a very clever corporate finance lawyer explained to me what happens when you default on a loan contract. I thought of him this week.

“The damages you pay are to repay the loan, plus interest,” he explained, “but that’s what your contract says you have to do anyway.” He paused, and then he added, “I suppose that’s why everyone lies to the banks.”

We are in the midst of a global financial crisis. It is not clear what proportion of a crisis comprises its ‘midst’, but it is clearly significant, since our presence in the crisis’ midst is now well-established and it appears we’ll be stuck here for some time to come.

Global terms of credit are tightening, as banks seek to reduce risk. Corporate borrowers, many of whom require financing at specific and pre-determined times in the year (when bonds are falling due or are reaching the end of existing credit facilities), face increased costs. Perceptions of risky loan portfolios coupled with falling revenues drive down the price of bank stocks, making it harder to source capital to fund fresh loans. As a result, global terms of credit get tighter. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This cycle was triggered (we now know) by over-excited lending into the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage market in the US. Typical sub-prime loan terms include the ‘2-28’ loan, so-named because it offers an initial low interest rate that is fixed for two years and that then shifts to a higher rate (for example, five percent over standard variable rates) for the remaining 28 years.

Financially, this reflects well on the ability of markets to incorporate a risk premium properly. In previous centuries – before the clever bank marketing departments had come up with the catchy and friendly term ‘second-chance lending!’ – the technical term for this sort of arrangement was ‘indentured servitude’.

It may help to clarify the sensible and socially responsible nature of this market if we reflect on the fact that the worse the likelihood of a loan ever being repaid, the greater the return on the mortgage demanded by the lender and, hence, the more attractive the investment prospect. In principle (according to the economist who I have trapped in my basement and to whom I throw toast crusts and food scraps when it pleases me) these factors cancel out, with the perfectly rational market pricing risk according to expected returns.

In fact, the bank takes the prospect of the higher repayments and uses it to talk up the value of their own shares now, whereas the risk of default is accrued when the loan is issued. In short, they bank the profit and forget about the extra risk. This is one of the reasons why I’ve stopped feeding the economist, at least until he comes up with a better theory.

In the last few years, up to one in five loans issued in the US were sub-prime – a real measure of the generosity of spirit of the banking industry. Although it is hard to source precise figures, this also implies that the effects are just beginning. Many more future loan-defaulters are likely to be still in the initial low-interest rate phase of their loan. Which is good news, if you are looking for a straightforward way to sound clever by explaining to others why this is going to get worse, not better. But, it does have the important collateral implication that we’re all doomed.

Of course, the global business press would not leave us to face such a crisis armed with only our own puny critical facilities.

As soon as the crisis broke, a vast wave of commentary from the world’s business columnists swept around the world, like a great, big, huge, tasteless and inappropriate tsunami metaphor, unstoppable in its bigness and lethal in its effects – if by ‘lethal’, we mean moderately impoverishing to a small number of very rich people, and perhaps – having a very small effect on the wealth of a very large number of other people over the next few years. Not classical lethal, but ‘lethal’ – in the sense I mean it here – nonetheless.

But from this oceanic wall of punditry, there is still a chance to save a few plucky insights, tenacious nuggets of fact that have clung to the palm-trees of perception while the swirling vortex of hysteria has washed away their kin.

It turns out that those very smart people in investment banks are, on occasion, slightly wrong. “The people at Goldman Sachs,” the Economist dryly noted, “lost a packet when something happened that their computers told them should occur only once every 100 millennia.” Good call, that computer. It isn’t clear whether a call was put into Goldman’s IT support help-desk – and did no-one think to switch it off, then wait a few minutes and switch it on again to see if it came up with the right answer?

More importantly, it is now clear that the poor are to blame. For several centuries now, modern principles of debt and credit have established that if you own nothing, you aren’t merely poor, you’re squandering important opportunities to own considerably less than nothing. Sub-prime borrowing was designed to assist those who were unable to obtain regular mortgage finance to achieve the American dream, by assisting their bank to own their own home.

Many of these loans are backed up by full and detailed information, to enable a borrower to consider carefully the questions of financial probity and risk assessment before they borrow (but take care, many of the more important points are often on the back of the pamphlet).

Now that the dust is settling, it is clear that despite this willingness by banks to meet lenders on their own terms, something totally unforeseen has gone badly wrong amongst the poor. We all know that the poor are likely to under-perform the average Joe on a variety of measures but I don’t think that anyone could have imagined that they would prove to be so irresponsible when it came to money. And who could have guessed that so many of them can’t seem to hold down a regular job?

It isn’t easy being a bank. But who could have possibly imagined that on top of it all, people would lie to you about whether they would repay their loans?

Name Withheld is a London-based global financier and lawyer, who wishes to remain anonymous so that he can continue to make far more money than he is actually worth. You can assume Name Withheld holds stock in pretty much every company he mentions.

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