bombshell goes phut

If you hurry (as the great majority of professional journos reporting it have not) to the homepage of the Select Committee on the Scrafton Evidence you can download the entire day's proceedings. It's worth doing because the transcript bears little resemblance to most media reports.

According to the fat and bloated old media, Senator Brandis produced evidence that showed Scrafton's phone call to the prime minister only ran for 51 seconds. No such thing happened. Brandis claimed to have evidence of two calls, one lasting 9 and a half minutes and one lasting 61 seconds.

CHAIR—If it is a point of order, you may intervene; if it is a question, you will need to seek Senator Brandis’s acceptance that you interrupt his questioning.

Senator BARTLETT—I guess it is for a ruling from the chair—and I know you have raised it a bit. I appreciate that Senator Brandis wants to put all this on the record, but can we have an overarching recognition from the chair that saying all these repeated statements that this establishes, this is a fact, this is now acknowledged is simply not the case. We have not seen these records. Even if we did see them, we would have no way of knowing whether or not they are accurate.

Senator FAULKNER—I do not believe anything the Prime Minister’s office says about anything.

Senator BARTLETT—Can we have a suggestion or something rather than this continual assertion that this is fact all the time?

Senator FAULKNER—And I do not believe anything the Prime Minister has ever said about anything. He is a known liar. Senator Brandis knows that—and says it.

CHAIR—Order, Senator Faulkner! It is up to this committee to evaluate, in the long term, all the evidence we hear, and everyone can put their assertions. It is not up to me to make a ruling on Senator Brandis’s credibility here today. I have indicated to Senator Brandis that I think I have given him what I regard as reasonable latitude out of the chair to set up the direction of his questions.

Senator BRANDIS—And I have done that. I have finished doing it.

CHAIR—You have well and truly done it is the point being made. Let us just get on with the questioning. I do point out that I have not had the chance to ask any questions yet. I am waiting patiently. Senator Brandis, you have got the call.

Brandis is a QC. He knows his stuff when it comes to examining a witness. Presumably, he also knows that leading evidence from the bar table carries no probative value at all. All he's done is wave about a document he says shows the phone records. He's refused to table the document. The media should really have picked this up.

clucking about the speaker

The ALP has promised an independent speaker. This is a customary opposition promise. John Howard promised it in 1996. It was meaningless then, it is meaningless now, and it will be meaningless in three years time when whoever is then opposition leader again promises it. In 1996 John Howard promises

The Coalition will seek to invest the Speaker of the next parliament with greater independence similar to his or her counterpart at Westminster.

In 2004 Labor promises:

An independent Speaker for the House of Representatives and improved Standing Orders.

The constitution provides:

35. The House of Representatives shall, before proceeding to the despatch of any other business, choose a member to be the Speaker of the House, and as often as the office of Speaker becomes vacant the House shall again choose a member to be the Speaker. The Speaker shall cease to hold his office if he ceases to be a member. He may be removed from office by a vote of the House, or he may resign his office or his seat by writing addressed to the Governor-General.

An independent speakership is impossible under those provisions. The Australian speaker is endowed with powers unknown to the House of Commons, including unilateral suspension. No governing majority is going to vest those powers in an independent speaker. No political party is going to (or should) declare one of the 150 house electorates off-limits to election challenges. More to the point, the electors are not going to take kindly to being told they are not allowed to elect their own MHR because he happens to be speaker. Most of all, when a speaker is unwise enough to name a government minister, as Speaker Cope discovered in 1975, the majority will not back the speaker who then has little choice but to resign.

If you asked any speaker since federation if they were independent and impartial they would all insist they were. Short of drastic constitutional change that situation is not going to change in the future.

weak on rights

I do not often agree with the Man of Steel. But there's always a first time.

John Howard on the 7:30 Report

They will always remember that and they will always remember the Government was strong on border protection and the Labor Party was weak.

Sadly, this is true. Labor's weakness in defending human rights alienated many of its supporters and drove them to vote for minor parties. There is a real issue in border protection, but it can't be exploited unless Labor does something unprecedented - admit a mistake and announce a new policy. Labor's recent performance over rights issues, not just gay marriage but also the treatment of foreign gay marriages and the children of those marriages, suggests it's not going to happen any time soon. The growing minor party vote should perhaps encourage them to change their mind.

Inquiry sliced as ALP abandons ship

Labor has executed an early campaign backflip and will not subpoena ministerial aides to appear before a new inquiry into the children overboard affair.

The decision for only an abbreviated, one-day inquiry into the saga before polling day came after the Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, had said days earlier that he favoured forcing aides to be scrutinised. The inquiry will also report after ballots are cast, and further witnesses may be called after the election.

The former Defence adviser Mike Scrafton is likely to appear as early as tomorrow and expand on his allegation that the Prime Minister, John Howard, lied and knew that there was no evidence to back his claims during the last election campaign that asylum seekers threw their children into the sea.

The senior military officers who supported Mr Scrafton's claim, Major-General Roger Powell and Commander Mike Noonan, may also be called, but the intention was for the newly convened inquiry to run for just one day.

While there were plenty of brickbats slung at the Government benches in a rowdy question time yesterday, the decision by Opposition senators means that the public may be denied the full facts on the children overboard affair before they vote.

Labor also declined to subpoena witnesses during the first children overboard inquiry, including Mr Scrafton.

The Government and other critics said it had shied away from taking this step so it could hide its own "dirty laundry" should it form government.

Key figures in the saga yet to be questioned include Miles Jordana, the Prime Minister's then adviser, Ross Hampton, the press secretary for the former defence minister Peter Reith, and Peter Hendy, Mr Reith's chief-of-staff.

Mr Scrafton also worked as an adviser to Mr Reith.

Sacrificing scrutiny for the need to get out on the campaign trail, senators have handed Mr Howard his first big tactical coup of the campaign.

Really, really bad call. Without any examination of the ministerial advisers involved in the truth overboard matter the credibility of the Senate committee will be about zero. This probably throws away Labor's chance of seizing the initiative at the campaign's outset. A cynic might think one motive is Labor's anxiety about the calling of ministerial advisers in a prospective Labor government.

starting gun

The ADF will fire a 19-gun salute on Federation Mall immediately after the dissolution is proclaimed in Parliament House at 5pm tomorrow. Why parliament gets 19 guns and the governor-general gets 21 is not immediately obvious.

Media coverage seems to be all about the Senate debate on Faulkner's motion for a select committee on the Scranton evidence. Inexplicably, the opposition has decided not to subpoena ministerial advisers during the election campaign. Unless and until advisers become part of the regular machinery of government and account to parliament for their actions the executive will be able to get away with the abuse of power the select committee is to investigate.

A few sites worth looking at:

• The Poll Bludger
  
• At a glance
  
• All you need to know
  
• ABC Election Guide
  

Howard was fairly obscure on the question of whether a 65-year old prime minister will serve a full term at yesterday's press conference. That forced Costello to promise not to challenge for the leadership. It's only a small thing but it doesn't speak for a lot of message discipline in the Coalition. It's also frankly ridiculous for Costello to promise not to challenge for the term of the next parliament.

The Senate debate is still running. After weeks of phoney war it still feels like the campaign has not started. That may change tomorrow once the House is formally dissolved.

Scrafton ready for new Senate inquiry

A new Senate inquiry into the children overboard affair will be set up tomorrow and immediately move to call Defence Department whistleblower Mike Scrafton.

The inquiry will continue for at least the early days of the election campaign, focusing on what Prime Minister John Howard was told about the episode before the last election and the truthfulness of his public comments.

Several senior defence personnel who can corroborate that Mr Scrafton told them he had informed the Prime Minister that the allegations that asylum seekers threw their children overboard were false will also be asked to appear.

Mr Scrafton told The Age that he was ready and willing to testify before the new hearing, indicating he may have further revelations to make.

The inquiry will ensure a continued focus on the episode and on Mr Howard's credibility during the initial days of the campaign. Labor will also use the Senate sitting to grill Defence Minister Robert Hill on the overboard affair and a United States report slating an Australian officer for allegedly helping to gloss over claims of abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Although the House of Representatives will not sit, the Senate will meet today and tomorrow and its committees can continue hearings throughout the election campaign.

Greens leader Bob Brown even raised the prospect of recalling the Senate during the campaign if matters of "national importance" emerged from the overboard inquiry.

Labor leader Mark Latham said Mr Howard was trying to avoid further parliamentary scrutiny of the children overboard affair by calling the election.

Mr Howard said the issue had been "done to death" and he had no further comment on it. He said the public would deliver its verdict on election day.

The Opposition leader in the Senate, John Faulkner, last night released the draft terms of reference for the new inquiry, saying that "the Senate must get to the bottom of this sorry chapter in Australian politics". They say the inquiry will examine Mr Scrafton's statements about his conversations with the Prime Minister.

Mr Scrafton said he would provide further details on the affair if asked by the inquiry. He conceded there were other areas he could "cast light on", including his conversations with then defence minister Peter Reith and Mr Howard's international adviser, Miles Jordana. The inquiry is likely to invite Mr Jordana and other Howard staff to appear, testing the Government's gag on them.

The two military investigators who backed Mr Scrafton's stance, Major-General Roger Powell and Commander Michael Noonan, are also likely to be called.

The Governor-General has the power to prorogue Parliament - ending a parliamentary session in order to hold an election - on the Prime Minister's instructions. The Senate may still be able to sit, according to its clerk, Harry Evans.

This constitutional debate may explain why Mr Howard's announcement allowed the Senate to sit until tomorrow afternoon.

I think Howard has given away the first week. The Senate will sit tomorrow and Tuesday. The Senate inquiry on the Truth Overboard incident will be reconvened. Last time, it failed to get to the bottom of anything because Labor voted with the government against the issue of subpoenas to ministerial advisers.

Paragraph 9 of Senator John Faulkner's draft terms of reference reads:

9. That the committee and any subcommittee have power to send for and examine persons and documents, to move from place to place, to sit in public or in private, notwithstanding any prorogation of the Parliament or dissolution of the House of Representatives, and have leave to report from time to time its proceedings and the evidence taken and such interim recommendations as it may deem fit.

The first two days of this week will be dominated by the Senate sittings. The last three days will be dominated by the Senate committee. Without parliament sitting and with the campaigns still gearing up the media is going to have a feeding frenzy at the committee. The constitutionality of a Senate committee during a prorogation has never been tested, but there is not really any venue in which it can be tested. The government staffers could refuse to obey the subpoenas, but that's not going to be a good look at all for Honest John.

From Australian Senate Practice

On many occasions, Senate committees have continued their activities after the dissolution of the House of Representatives or prorogation of Parliament, including by taking evidence and presenting reports. The absolute privilege of these activities has not been called into question and the practice is now firmly entrenched in standing orders as well as being confirmed by declaratory resolution (22/10/1984, J.1276). The power of the Senate to authorise its committees to meet derives from the Senate's character as a continuing House and from the Constitution. (For the major discussion of the effects of prorogation, see Chapter19, Relations with the Executive Government, under Effect of prorogation.)

The 1984 resolutiuon (passed without division) says:

That the Senate declares that where the Senate, or a committee of the Senate which is empowered to do so, meets following a dissolution of the House of Representatives and prior to the next meeting of that House, the powers, privileges and immunities of the Senate, of its members and of its committees, as provided by section 49 of the Constitution, are in force in respect of such meeting and all proceedings thereof. (22/10/1984, J.1276)

This will be a really interesting week.

To get on the electoral roll

Pick up an enrolment form from any Post Office, AEC office, State/Territory Electoral Office or from the internet.

Fill it in, remember to have your signature witnessed, and post it back (reply paid envelopes are provided at our Post Office stands).

If you use the form from the internet, the form must be printed out, completed, signed and mailed to the AEC. The enrolment form cannot be e-mailed back as the AEC requires a hard copy of your signature.

If you wish to send the enrolment form electronically, you may send it via fax to the relevant Divisional Returning Officer. No other kind of electronic communication will be accepted. By faxing this form you agree that the time of receipt is the time when the message has completed printing from the relevant AEC fax machine, and that you will not hold the AEC responsible for any deadlines missed or losses incurred. For further information, please refer to www.aec.gov.au or call 13 23 26.

You can call into an Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) office and enrol on the spot. Click here for Divisional Office addresses

OR

Ring 13 23 26 for further information.

So go and do it. Now. You've got until 7 September.

Syndicated Morning Herald

The Sydney Morning Herald has discovered RSS feeds. Ditto The Age. At last. Now for the ABfrigginC...

9 October

The governor-general has agreed to the prime minister's advice for an election as follows:

• parliament prorogued and dissolved 31 Aug
  
• rolls close 7 September
  
• general election 9 october
  

All 150 representatives, 6 of the 12 senators in each state, and both senators in each territory will face election.

I blogged 23 or 30 October. I got it wrong, but then I did not expect the last 3 weeks where the Man of Steel has shown he's getting a little rusty with a tin ear for for the truth.

More when the transcript is available. You can check your enrollment here.

Journalistic error

From The Australian

A serving Indonesian president once told me Indonesia's biggest problem was its judiciary. The extent of that problem can be gleaned from the latest issue of the American journal Foreign Affairs.

Lex Rieffel, from the Brookings Institution, has written a determinedly up-beat, almost Panglossian assessment of Indonesia's democratic reform. Yet he comments: "Lacking a tradition of impartiality, commercial court decisions are still often delivered to the highest bidder."

The decision on Tuesday that the Indonesian terrorist Idris, who has confessed to an integral role in the Bali bombings -- which killed 202 people, 88 of them Australians -- could not be tried over Bali because the Constitutional Court had ruled retrospective anti-terrorist laws unconstitutional, was sickening for Australians.

Idris was instead jailed for his part in the Marriott hotel bombing in Jakarta, but the prosecutor indicated, bizarrely, that he would not now be charged under normal criminal laws for his role in Bali.

This is a shocking development that throws into doubt the commitment of the Indonesian judicial and political systems to confronting Jemaah Islamiah terrorists.

Indonesia has had 5 presidents - Sukarno, Suharto, Habibie, Wahid and Megawati. The first two were outright dictators. Habibie was Suharto's vice-president and successor. It would be fun to know who Greg Sheridan's 'serving Indonesian president' is and it would be even better if we got some argument for this judicial threat to Indonesia apart from its presidential source.

The Sheridan piece moves on to denounce the Indonesian commercial court as corrupt and then mentions the constitutional court as though the second followed automatically from the first.

We then get an implied demand for the constitutional court to rule on what does or does not sicken Australians rather than the content of Indonesian law. It's a clever piece the first time you read it. The second time round you realise that most of his conclusions actually do not follow from his premises.

If you then turn to the allegedly Panglossian article Sheridan denounces, you find it a rather better analysis.

An independent judiciary (despite the concern of serving Indonesian presidents and Greg Sheridan, is a good thing. A smart pun calling the decision on retrospective laws 'Constitutional terror' is not. The Indonesian transition undoubtedly has major problems. There are continuing low-intensity conflicts in Aceh and West Papua. Corruption is rife. Human rights are not universally respected. Those problems will not be solved by corrupting the constitutional court.

Howard acts to settle unease over poll date

Prime Minister John Howard will end speculation about the election date within the next 24 hours when he announces a firm timetable for seeking a historic fourth term.

Alarmed at growing community agitation over the phoney campaign, Mr Howard was locked in talks with key ministers and advisers yesterday.

In a first for Australian politics, Mr Howard is expected to "calm the waters" by announcing what day he intends to go to the Governor-General to seek the dissolution of Parliament.

A strongly-tipped scenario was that he would announce Friday or Saturday as the day he would seek permission from Governor-General Michael Jeffery to hold an October 9 election.

Mr Howard spent yesterday afternoon and evening on the phone from the Lodge refining the dates with his leadership group - Treasurer Peter Costello, Senate leader Robert Hill, deputy Senate leader Nick Minchin and National Party leader John Anderson.

At 3pm yesterday a cavalcade of cars carrying his most trusted confidants arrived at the Lodge. They were his chief of staff, Arthur Sinodinos, political adviser Tony Nutt and federal Liberal Party director Brian Loughnane. At 5pm, the Liberals' official pollster, Mark Textor, joined them.

The unusual step of announcing an election timetable allows Parliament to sit this week, where Mr Howard will face his accusers over the three-year-old "children overboard" affair.

I'm confused. The government has been pushing hard to get the electoral rolls closed on the day the election is called. That was nasty, in that it's thought Labor does better with last minute enrollers than the Coalition, and the bill was deservedly thrown out in the senate. By giving a week's notice the Man of Steel effectively doubles the time for last minute enrolments. Facing parliament with the most recent revelations of the Children Not Overboard affair does not seem like a tactical plus either. The Senate Commitee will certainly take evidence from Mike Scrafton and that could be devastating for Honest John.

And John Howard is not the man to give the opposition any chances if he can avoid it.

Michelle Grattan's take is fairly persuasive:

But just firing the starter's gun, whether today or in a week's time, won't blow away the curse of "children overboard". "The Australian public is saying to me that they are fed up with this issue," Howard says. But the "link" is to "truth in politics" and that's harder to shrug off. "If he's lied about this, then what else is he lying about? And what else will he lie about in the forthcoming election campaign?" asked Labor's Julia Gillard in a Friday Lateline debate.

Howard says people are "bored" with children overboard, which is "ancient history". While true, this is also bluff, a variation on the tactic that the PM used in 2001 to divert the media. It would be the ultimate irony if we in the media first failed to get to the truth of "children overboard" in the last election campaign and then, having now had it thrust in our collective faces by Scrafton, swallowed the PM's line that the issue was old news.

The notion of a "statute of limitation" on the truth in politics is a dangerous and slippery slope.

The letters from the military that Howard released on Friday carry another salutary message. Details of what was allegedly said to the PM were spelled out to an official inquiry, but haven't seen the light of day until now, and would never have done so if it hadn't been for Scrafton outing himself and the PM's subsequent action.

It's not new to have important but embarrassing "truths" hidden at election time. In 1983, Howard was briefed by Treasury about a looming $9 billion deficit. He told Fraser, and wanted him to get this uncomfortable "truth" out. Fraser declined.

After the election loss, Howard, as the one still in politics, wore the pain of that concealment for years.

Truth, mistreated, often extracts its toll.

This week promises to be a long time in politics.

MPs plan to impeach Blair over Iraq war record

Read A case to answer and then compare it with the prewar conduct of the Man of Steel. Australia's parliament probably retains the power of impeachment under Section 49 of the constitution. Sadly, the chances of the house of commons or the house of representatives impeaching either prime minister are vanishingly small.

MPs are planning to impeach Tony Blair for "high crimes and misdemeanours" in taking Britain to war against Iraq, reviving an ancient practice last used against Lord Palmerston more than 150 years ago.

Eleven MPs led by Adam Price, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, are to table a motion when parliament returns that will force the prime minister to appear before the Commons to defend his record in the run-up to the war.

Nine of the MPs are Welsh and Scottish Nationalists, including the party leaders, Elfyn Llwyd, and Alex Salmond, and two are Conservative frontbenchers, Boris Johnson, MP for Henley and editor of the Spectator, and Nigel Evans, MP for Ribble Valley.

A number of Labour backbenchers are considering whether to back the motion, though it could mean expulsion from the party.

The MPs' decision follows the commissioning of a 100-page report which lays out the case for impeaching Mr Blair and the precedents for action, including arguments laid down in Erskine May, the parliamentary bible, on impeachments dating back to medieval times.

Both the Jull report and the Flood report speak about similar exaggerations by the Man of Steel. Flood calls the prewar intelligence on Iraq 'thin, ambiguous and incomplete'. somehow the thinness, ambiguity and incompleteness did not make it into the parliamentary speeches of the Man of Steel. Nor did the intelligence advice that the enterprise of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat.

We're losing the arms race with North Korea

Clearly, this argument is counterintuitive. It may, at first glance, seem absurd. But stick with me.

The missile-defense complex in Alaska is designed specifically to help shoot down long-range ballistic missiles launched from North Korea. But a limited missile-defense system�which is the most we can expect over the next decade�is more likely to multiply than nullify this threat.

A look at history is useful. In 1972, Richard Nixon signed the ABM Treaty, which severely restricted�and, in a subsequent addendum signed by Gerald Ford, banned�the deployment of ballistic-missile defenses. Why? Contrary to right-wing myth, it was not because of some doctrinal aversion to defenses. True, the theory of "Mutual Assured Destruction" held that the two superpowers should remain vulnerable to nuclear attack so that neither leader would launch a first strike knowing his own country would be destroyed in a retaliatory second strike. But MAD�as the theory was often called�was more theory than policy.

The real reasoning behind the treaty was purely practical. If the United States deployed, say, 50 defensive missiles�and assuming they all worked perfectly�the USSR could outwit the system and break through the defenses simply by deploying 51 offensive missiles. And the cost of those 51 offensive missiles would be a lot cheaper than the cost of the 50 defensive missiles. Finally, the USSR could stay ahead of this game much more cheaply still, because�even under the most optimistic projections�not all of our 50 defensive missiles would work. (For more about the reasoning, click here.)

In short, American, and eventually Soviet, decision-makers realized that missile defenses would trigger a costly offense-defense arms race, which the offense would inevitably win. Moreover, if nuclear war did break out in the middle of this arms race, the damage inflicted would be far greater. Each side would fire many more offensive missiles than it might have otherwise, calculating the need to saturate the other side's defenses. If the defenses turned out not to work so well (as many scientists predicted, back then as well as now), then those extra offensive missiles would simply blow up more territory, spread more radioactive fallout, and kill more people.

The parallel between then and now is not precise. North Korea does not have the resources that the Soviet Union had at the height of the Cold War. But with the deployment of the new missile-defense system, the United States has entered into an arms race with the North Koreans�an arms race we are likely to lose�and nobody in the White House or the Congress seems even to be aware of it.

Missile defence is the kind of strategic drivel which the Man of Steel is eagerly signing up for -- a system that does not and cannot work. There is a certain kind of conservative who fears thought itself. Clear thought about our alliance with the US is not beyond the Man of Steel's capacity. It may just be beyond his character.

Clarke, Dawe and Mastermind

KERRY O'BRIEN: And now, John Clarke and Bryan Dawe with their own version of 'Mastermind'.

(JOHN CLARKE AS JOHN HOWARD, BRYAN DAWE AS INTERVIEWER) INTERVIEWER: Your special subject is John Howard.

Your time starts now.

What will John Howard never bring in ever?

JOHN HOWARD: A GST.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

When did John Howard bring in a GST?

JOHN HOWARD: 1st July, 2000.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

What are weapons of mass destruction?

JOHN HOWARD: Hang on, is that George calling?

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

If you know people want a republic, how do you get them to vote against it?

JOHN HOWARD: You ask them to vote for a republic where they don't get to vote for the president.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

What is the Kyoto agreement?

JOHN HOWARD: Something to do with coal pricing.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

What is the environment?

JOHN HOWARD: Pass.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

What were being thrown overboard into the sea just before the last election?

JOHN HOWARD: Nothing.

INTERVIEWER: I beg your pardon, I'm sorry, I misread that question.

What did John Howard say were being thrown overboard into the sea just before the election?

JOHN HOWARD: The children of asylum seekers.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

And what did he do to prove it?

JOHN HOWARD: Showed film of it not happening.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

And who told him the children were being thrown into the sea?

JOHN HOWARD: The Defence Minister said he had been told that by the Navy.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

And what did the Minister for Defence do when the Navy denied that?

JOHN HOWARD: He resigned and got a job selling defence contracts to the Australian Government.

INTERVIEWER: And was there a conflict of interest involved?

JOHN HOWARD: No, it was Peter Reith.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

What about some of the other people in the Howard ministry when they retired?

Where have they retired to?

JOHN HOWARD: They've got jobs with companies dealing in the area where they used to be the minister.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

And would this have been worked out beforehand?

JOHN HOWARD: Shut your face.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

What does the expression 'integrity' mean?

JOHN HOWARD: I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

If you made a promise and don't keep it, what is it?

JOHN HOWARD: A non-core promise.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

Who can get married in Australia?

JOHN HOWARD: Marriage is between men and women.

INTERVIEWER: What if they don't like each other?

JOHN HOWARD: It doesn't matter if they hate each other's guts, as long as one of them is a man and one of them is a woman.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

Why don't we have to listen to senior members of the Defence community criticise the Government on defence?

JOHN HOWARD: Because they're too old.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

Why don't we have to listen to ex-public servants criticising the Government's use of research information?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, they're the scum of the earth, aren't they, public servants?

INTERVIEWER: Can you be more specific?

JOHN HOWARD: Get stuffed.

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

And at the end of the round, your house is worth three times what you paid for it.

JOHN HOWARD: My house is worth three times what I paid for it!

INTERVIEWER: Congratulations!

JOHN HOWARD: Thanks.

Oh, fantastic!

INTERVIEWER: Low interests rates -- you're worth a bloody fortune.

JOHN HOWARD: Jeez, he's great, that John Howard, isn't he?

INTERVIEWER: Correct.

KERRY O'BRIEN: 'Mastermind' a la John Clarke and Bryan Dawe.

Some things just have to go on the blog record.

But did they blog home?

Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion in Siberia almost 100 years ago, the Interfax news agency has reported.

The scientists, who belong to the Tunguska space phenomenon public state fund, said they found the remains of an extra-terrestrial device that allegedly crashed near the Tunguska river in Siberia in 1908.

They also claim to have discovered a 50 kilogram rock which they have sent to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk for analysis.

The blast in Tunguska, a desolate part of Siberia, remains one of the 20th century's biggest scientific mysteries.

On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated more than 2,000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

Tribe without names for numbers cannot count

A study of an Amazonian tribe is stoking fierce debate about whether people can count without numbers.

Psychologists, anthropologists and linguists have long wondered whether animals, young children or certain cultures can conceptualize numbers without the language to describe them.

To tackle the issue, behavioural researcher Peter Gordon of Columbia University in New York journeyed into the Amazon. He carried out studies with the Pirah� tribe, a hunter-gatherer group of about 200 people, whose counting system consists of words which mean, approximately, 'one', 'two' and 'many'.

Gordon designed a series of tasks to examine whether tribe members could precisely count and conceive of numbers beyond one or two, even if they lacked the words. For example, he asked them to look at a group of batteries and line up a matching amount.

The tribe members struggled to perform these tasks accurately after the numbers were greater than three, Gordon reports in Science 1; and their performance got worse the higher the numbers climbed. "They couldn't keep track at all," he says.

This sounds like a really obvious conclusion, but the Sapir/Whorf hyposthesis has been controversial for almost a century. Chomskians get so excitable over it you'd almost think they have a deep grammar for refuting it. I do not think many Chomskians have ever worked in computer support and tried to help newbies without first teaching them any new words.

What PM's man knew about photos

A senior adviser to the Prime Minister, Miles Jordana, was told in early October 2001 - almost a month before the last election - that photographs purporting to show asylum seekers throwing their children overboard were misrepresented.

The photographs, distributed by the Government to buttress its claims of "un-Australian" behaviour by boat people, were splashed in newspapers and on TV across the country as proof that the alleged incident had occurred.

However, senior Defence officials and the office of the Defence Minister, Peter Reith, were aware that they were not authentic the day they were publicly released on October 10.

The Herald has been told this information was promptly passed on to Mr Jordana, John Howard's international adviser and point man on the issue.

Mr Jordana was told unequivocally that the photos were of the sinking of the refugee boat on October 8 - the day after the Government said the children overboard incident occurred.

The Government never corrected the misrepresentation, or conceded that the event had never happened, until after the November 10 poll which returned Mr Howard for a third term.

This is all bcoming a bit of a problem for the Man of Steel and his groupies in the blogosphere. Expect the customary defence:

• It didn't happen.
  
• Even if it did happen, it didn't matter.
  
• Even if it did happen and it did matter, the Australian people are too stupid to understand.
  

Latham wrestles back a poll lead

But the poll also shows Labor's primary vote has fallen for the third consecutive month, drifting down from 43 per cent in May to 39 per cent this month. Over the same period, the Coalition's primary vote has increased from 39 per cent to 42 per cent - although it dropped two percentage points this month from its July high of 44 per cent.

Underpinning Labor's rising two-party-preferred vote in the face of a falling primary support is the growing vote for the Greens and the strong flow of preferences to the ALP.

The Herald Poll shows support for Greens is now at 9 per cent - almost twice as high as the 5 per cent it attracted in the last election three years ago. It also shows a surprise 10 per cent surge in support for One Nation in Queensland, but Mr Stirton urged caution because of the small sample size of 300 in that state.

Mr Howard hinted yesterday that the election could be as far away as late November.

Although the two leaders are now level-pegging on their personal approval ratings, Mr Latham has not been able to topple Mr Howard as preferred prime minister all year. Mr Howard is still preferred by a margin of eight percentage points.

The gap between Labor's primary vote and their two party preferred vote is interesting. It's what happens to a party that persuades itself (for example) all those lovely religious right voters are just dying to vote Labor so the gay vote can get screwed because they have nowhere else have to go. It also opens a danger for Labor for the rest of the campaign.

I doubt that the Man of Steel is ever going to have much luck with scare campaigns again. The Scrafton evidence is just too damning. That will not stop him putting a lot of energy into finding a way to drive a wedge straight through the triangulation gap between the primaries and the preferences.

Howard was told the truth

A central figure in the children overboard affair has broken a three-year silence, directly contradicting John Howard's election eve statements of November 2001 that children had been thrown overboard from an asylum-seeker vessel the previous month.

Mike Scrafton, at the time senior adviser to then defence minister Peter Reith, in three telephone conversations with the Prime Minister on the evening of November 7, 2001, conveyed his view that the children overboard claim was inaccurate.
Mr Howard, in his remarks to the National Press Club the next day and in subsequent interviews until polling day, continued to claim children had been thrown overboard - contrary to the advice provided by Mr Scrafton and air force chief Angus Houston to the Government up to November 7, the day The Australian first exposed the claims as wrong.

The affair was a decisive factor in the November 10 election, with the Howard Government using the incident to stoke public anger against asylum-seekers and divide Labor over border protection policy.

Mr Scrafton's exclusive letter to The Australian is the crucial missing link in establishing the extent to which the Howard Government misled the public about the children overboard affair in the 2001 election.

Mr Scrafton, a former senior defence department bureaucrat, was gagged by cabinet from giving evidence to the 2002 Senate committee set up to inquire into the children overboard affair.

'The question of the extent of the Prime Minister's knowledge of the false nature of the report that children were thrown overboard is a key issue in assessing the extent to which the Government as a whole wilfully misled the Australian people on the eve of a federal election,' the Senate report found. 'Its inability to question Mr Scrafton on the substance of his conversations with the Prime Minister therefore leaves that question unresolved in the committee's mind.'

A spokesman for Mr Howard last night declined to comment until the Prime Minister had read the letter.

This is actually not all that new. Scrafton's gagging more or elss gave the game away when the Senate committee investigated the affair last year. What is new is that the Murdoch press has given it front page treatment and that means the Man of steel has got too grimy for even the Dirty Digger to handle.

This won't decide the election, but it will probably mean that Latham will win this week as decisively as he won the last 2 weeks. It is no wonder Howard told Sunday yesterday that he thought the election would be in October.

Athens 2004: Opening Ceremony

We can be certain Greek male athletes will not compete in the nude, as Tony Perrottet tells in the just published The Naked Olympics (Random House, $24.95), a book of enchanting detail which explains how these pagan spectacles began in 776BC with a single footrace won by Coroebus, a cook.

There were no team sports, no marathon and no torch-lighting ceremony (introduced in Berlin in 1936).

Corruption began in 336BC, when Euplos of Thessaly bribed three boxers to throw their fights. Cheating became a Games staple; the culprits were fined and the money used for statues of Zeus. False starts earned a thrashing from the official whip bearer.

Women were not permitted to watch the events but off-course sexuality was rife. Perrottet claims details of a sexual position known as 'the lion on the cheese grater' are "regrettably lost".

Australian bloggers seem to be fascinated by the torch. The arguments are running hot between a megaphallos and an unconscious representation of the kind of cigarette that Bill Clinton claims not to have inhaled. Thank God none of us knew about lions and cheese graters when we watched.

Democrat pleads for rethink on gay marriage ban

As a new law banning gay marriage raced through the Senate yesterday, Andrew Bartlett stood on the floor of the chamber choking back tears.

Overcome as he tried to read speech notes contemplating how he would have felt if he had been banned from marrying his wife, Julie, the Democrats leader spoke instead of how the new laws might hurt gay teenagers contemplating suicide.

'It offends me so much - it is so disgusting, this legislation,' he said. 'It can not only be hurtful - it can be fatal.'

Emotions were just as strong on the other side, with Nationals senator Ron Boswell saying the overwhelming majority of Australians wanted marriage preserved as an institution between a man and a woman.

'The people that elected me feel very strongly about this issue,' he said.

The emotional debate came after the Government reversed its bid to prioritise a ban on gay marriage above new terrorism laws. After The Age asked on Thursday whether the Government thought gay couples were a greater threat to Australia than terrorists, tacticians reorganised the Senate agenda yesterday to pass the anti-terrorism laws first.

Gee it's a great feeling knowing that rights are safe in the bosom of Australia's parliament and we don't need a bill of rights. I mean it's not as if Labor would trade off anyone's rights for mere electoral gain.

I suppose I still want Labor to win. Maybe all the religious right voters streaming into the Labor column will compensate for a lot of very angry perverts. Not.

Do pigs fly? Never mind

Once upon a time, Cowboy George bragged about the 80 COWs (Coalition of the Willing) in his ranch. He and his Halliburton pals were whooping it up so much they didn't notice that a lot of COWs were jumping over the fence and going home. Last week, he counted his COWs and discovered he had only 32 left. Bush realized his Iraqi barbecue would end if all the COWs went home so he decided to try a new way to herd them back into his corral.

Everybody knows that pigs don't fly, so what would attract more curiosity than pigs sitting on a fence?

Iraqi sovereignty is one such pig on a fence. A recent cartoon describes it best. The cartoon shows two men talking on the phone. One man says, 'What the heck? They transferred sovereignty two days early? Now I have to cancel my Iraqi Sovereignty party!'

The man on the other end of the line asks, 'What happens at an Iraqi Sovereignty party?'

The first man replies, 'You tell your guests they're in charge, but they can't drink without your permission.'

Nevertheless, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) gave wings to the pig. According to our Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), 'The U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1546 last month that restored Iraqi sovereignty, pledged international assistance to the Iraqi reconstruction, and delineated the role of the U.S.-led multinational force in keeping the peace in the embattled country.'

Then, I guess, you go to Najaf and explain that some pigs are more equal than others.

The Real Farm Subsidy Scandal

From 1995 to 2002 the U.S. taxpayer doled out more than $114 billion to farmers, and in 2002 President Bush upped subsidies to $190 billion over the next ten years. For perspective, consider that in 2000 alone U.S. spending on farm subsidies exceeded the total output of more than 70 nations.

With so much money being freely handed about, the GAO report should lead to some tough questions for USDA officials on Capitol Hill. Yet for all its detail, the 75-page report artfully avoids the bigger question that no lawmaker wants to hear: why do we even have farm subsidies?

One popular misconception that contributes to support for farm subsidies is that because they result in lower food prices, they are a boon to consumers. This ignores the fact that taxes pay for these subsidies. Any reduction in supermarket prices is paid for by your taxes -- or someone else's -- whether you buy that ear of corn or not.

Farm subsidies are not intended to reduce the cost of food significantly. If prices fell too much, farmers would lose money. To prevent this, Congress also has 'environmental' conservation subsidies that pay farmers to not cultivate their land, resulting in higher prices for crops made more scarce. Consequently, from 1995 through 2002 we paid $14 billion for farmland conservation subsidies that increased the price of our food!

And remember, folks, the free trade treaty that says not one word about US agricultural subsidies. In fact the treaty maintains quotas and traiffs on beef, dairy and sugar. Fortunately the treaty places no limits on trade in smoke and mirrors (unless they're the subject of a copyright or patent).

Sauron Pie

A long long time ago
I can still remember how that Ring used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
I could make those Numenorians dance
And maybe they'd be off my case, for a while.
But Isildur made me shiver
With every digit he did sever.
Elf host on my doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I heard that my Balrog died.
But something touched me deep inside
The day the One Ring fried.

There's more, a lot more...

IP overreach

Copyrighting the President

In practice, however, the matter isn't that simple. Because copyright law is so uncertain, and because insurance companies that indemnify films don't much like risk, the practice among auteurs seeking major distribution is to cut any clip for which permission isn't granted - fair use notwithstanding. The costs of defending a fair use right in court - and, more important, the costs if any such defense should fail - make the risk prohibitive for most filmmakers. Defense of fair use could run hundreds of thousands of dollars - several times the budget of a typical documentary. And losing this type of claim could expose the filmmaker to $150,000 in damages for each copyright infringed. In a world in which Fox News sues comedian and author Al Franken for parodying 'fair and balanced,' a cautious director can't be too careful.

Greenwald's struggle demonstrates a more fundamental point. Many are concerned about the ever-expanding reach of copyright law. More are concerned about the ever-increasing concentration of the media. Greenwald's dilemma highlights how the two trends are linked: As media becomes more concentrated, competition to curry favor with politicians only increases. This intensifies during an election cycle. Networks able to signal that they will be 'friendly' - for example, by ensuring that embarrassing moments from interviews won't be made available to others - are more likely to attract candidates for interviews and so on, than networks that don't. Concentration tied to copyright thus gives networks both the motive and the means to protect favored guests.

Media Watch | Politicians in the ABC archive

Not nearly as unorthodox as the ABC's plan to let politicians veto the use of news footage in documentaries.

Robyn Watts tried to convince Media Watch that unless Howard, Ruddock, Reith and Vanstone gave the OK before footage was sold to Judy Rymer �

�the ABC could be exposed to the risk of claims under the Trade Practices Act or pursuant to the tort of Passing Off.
Robyn Watts fax to Media Watch, 23 July 2004

Here's some free legal advice Robyn: that's rubbish.
No one has, no one will rush off to court because some old news clips turn up in a documentary.

Perhaps the ABC could offer its assistance to Iraq's new higher media commission.

Iraqi commission to restrict media coverage

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has established a new media commission that will impose restrictions on print and broadcast media, the London-based Financial Times reported.

Media advocacy groups are worried that the committee will threaten press freedom in the war-torn country.

The Higher Media Commission will issue a set of restrictions -- called 'red lines -- for Iraqi media. Ibrahim Janabi, who heads the new committee, said the restrictions are not yet final but will include unwarranted criticism of Prime Minister Allawi.

Media groups are criticizing the decision. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) sent an open letter to Allawi on July 29, saying the commission is a potential 'threat to press freedom.' CPJ urged Janabi to to ensure that any actions of the Higher Media Commission comply with international standards of free expression.

'The restrictive media regulations and censorship described by Janabi would undermine the very foundation of a democratic society by restricting the free flow of information,' CPJ Executive Director, Ann J. Cooper, wrote in the letter.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is also urging Iraqi leaders to abandon plans for new media bodies that might compromise free speech and press freedom.

'Democracy in Iraq will be won by defending human rights and the people's right to know, not by returning to the bad old days of censorship and intimidation of journalists' said IFJ General Secretary, Aidan White.

Just more of the inevitable advance of democracy in the new Iraq. The Iraq Transitional Administrative Law's bill of rights is proving about as effectual as the same lists in other Middle Eastern constitutions, such as the one in Kuwait which has just banned Fahrenheit 911.

No doubt human rights crusader George Bush will shortly be acting on his principles and speaking truth to power about these attacks on the freedom of the press.

Whatever happened to Fay Wray, That delicate satin draped frame

Sadly...

Fay Wray, who played the screaming girl kidnapped by the giant ape in the 1933 film King Kong, has died aged 96.

Coalition of the nation-building

Judge: Warrants issued for Chalabi and nephew

Iraq has issued an arrest warrant for Ahmed Chalabi, a former governing council member, on counterfeiting charges and another for Salem Chalabi, the head of Iraq's special tribunal, on murder charges, Iraq's chief investigating judge said Sunday.

The warrant was a new sign of the fall of Ahmed Chalabi from the centers of power. Chalabi, a longtime exile opposition leader, had been a favorite of many in the Pentagon but fell out with the Americans earlier this year.

His nephew, Salem Chalabi, heads the tribunal that is due to try Saddam on war crimes charges.

"They should be arrested and then questioned and then we will evaluate the evidence, and then if there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial," said Judge Zuhair al-Maliky.

The warrants, issued Saturday, accused Ahmed Chalabi of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars -- which had been removed from circulation following the fall of Saddam's regime last year, he said.

Ahmed Chalabi appeared to have been hiding the counterfeit money amid other old money and changing it into new dinars in the street, he said.

Police found the counterfeit money along with old dinars in Ahmed Chalabi's house during a May raid, he said.

Salem Chalabi was named as a suspect in the June killing of the Haithem Fadhil, director general of the finance ministry.

Both men were reportedly out of the country Sunday.

Government shuts down Al-Jazeera offices in Baghdad

Reporters Without Borders today denounced as a "serious blow to press freedom" the Iraqi interim government's order to the pan-Arab satellite TV network Al-Jazeera to close its Baghdad office for a month and called for an immediate explanation.

"We are extremely concerned about persistent episodes of censorship in Iraq," it said, noting that the government has obstructed Al-Jazeera's work before.

Interior minister Falah al-Naqib told the US TV network CNN that the 7 August order was aimed at protecting Iraqis and that the government did not want Al-Jazeera or anyone else endangering civil peace in Iraq. The minister had said a few days earlier that some stations were encouraging kidnapping by showing pictures of hostages under threat of execution.

Reporters Without Borders strongly protested against a month-long ban in February on Al-Jazeera covering the activities of the then transitional Governing Council.

The Council had also shut down the local operations of the satellite TV station Al-Arabiya on 24 November last year until it promised in writing not to encourage terrorism.

Iraq Transitional Administrative Law

Article 13
(A) �Public and private freedoms shall be protected.

(B)� The right of free expression shall be protected.

Not only is Ahmed Chalabi, once the trusted white knight of the coalition, now wanted for counterfeiting, but his nephew, the director of the tribunal to try crimes against humanity, is charged with murder. meanwhile the TAL's guarantee of press freedom is being ignored. All in all, not a terrific few days for the glorious and inevitable progress of democracy in Iraq. And that's without mentioning the recent dead in Najaf.

Full text of the 'truth in government' declaration

We believe a re-elected Howard Government or an elected Latham government must give priority to truth in government. This is fundamental to effective parliamentary democracy. Australians must be able to believe they are being told the truth by our leaders, especially in situations as grave as committing our forces to war.

We are concerned that Australia was committed to join the invasion of Iraq on the basis of false assumptions and the deception of the Australian people.

Saddam Hussein's dictatorial administration has ended, but removing him was not the reason given to the Australian people for going to war. The Prime Minister said in March 2003 that our policy was 'the disarmament of Iraq, not the removal of Saddam'. He added, a few days before the invasion, that if Saddam got rid of his weapons of mass destruction he could remain in power.

It is a matter for regret that the action to combat terrorism after September 11, 2001, launched in Afghanistan, and widely supported, was diverted to the widely opposed invasion of Iraq. The outcome has been destructive, especially for Iraq. The international system has been subjected to enormous stress that still continues.

It is of concern to us that the international prestige of the United States and its presidency has fallen precipitously over the last two years. Because of our Government's unquestioning support for the Bush Administration's policy, Australia has also been adversely affected. Terrorist activity, instead of being contained, has increased. Australia has not become safer by invading and occupying Iraq and now has a higher profile as a terrorist target.

We do not wish to see Australia's alliance with the US endangered. We understand that it can never be an alliance of complete equals because of the disparity in power, but to suggest that an ally is not free to choose if or when it will go to war is to misread the ANZUS Treaty. Within that context, Australian governments should seek to ensure that it is a genuine partnership and not just a rubber stamp for policies decided in Washington. Australian leaders must produce more carefully balanced policies and present them in more sophisticated ways. These should apply to our alliance with the US, our engagement with the neighbouring nations of Asia and the South West Pacific, and our role in multilateral diplomacy, especially at the United Nations.

Above all, it is wrong and dangerous for our elected representatives to mislead the Australian people. If we cannot trust the word of our Government, Australia cannot expect it to be trusted by others. Without that trust, the democratic structure of our society will be undermined and with it our standing and influence in the world.

I'm still hunting for a full list of signatories.

Labor hails former public servants' attack on Howard

The Federal Opposition Leader has accused the Prime Minister of barely being able to 'lie straight in bed', after reported criticism of John Howard by more than 40 Australian military chiefs, departmental heads and diplomats.

The high profile group is expected to release a statement claiming voters were misled over the reasons for going to war in Iraq, and calling for Australia to stop 'rubber stamping' United States policies.

The signatories include former chiefs of the Australian Defence Force, six former department heads and prominent figures in the intelligence and diplomatic communities.

They want 'truth in government' from whichever party wins the election.

Serving officers share concerns: ex-ADF head

A number of serving defence force officers shared the concerns of a group of 43 former defence chiefs and diplomats who wanted a return to truth in government, retired defence chief General Peter Gration said today.

Mr Gration, who headed the Australian Defence Force from 1987 to 1993, said he and the other signatories believed Australia joined the invasion of Iraq on the basis of false assumptions and deception of the Australian people.

'I can tell you that number of serving offices do share these concerns and serving diplomats too, I guess. But quite properly in their present positions, they can't speak out,' he told reporters today.

'Demonstrably, over the last year or two, truth in government has been less than it should be.

Earleir this week the Man of Steel produced 'legal advice' that the Labor amendment on patents could not be drafted. Now he's ready to agree to the undraftable amendment. Perhaps it was noncore legal advice.

The prime minister has rejected the statement 'on its merits' without reading it. That is par for the course for a guy about to pass an amendment he said on Thursday his departmental advisers told him was undraftable.

Evidently it's a tough thing when you got excoriated for noncoring.

Dramatic differences found in matter and antimatter

The international BaBar collaboration working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the US has found the most dramatic evidence to date for the difference between matter and antimatter. The experiment has found that the number of decays observed for a class of particles known as B mesons is 13% higher than for their antiparticle equivalents -- anti-B mesons (arXiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0407057). The results could help explain why the universe is dominated by matter, rather than anti-matter, or why it does not contain equal amounts of both.

That's a really, really understated headline...

Free Spin Agreement

Milking the free trade deal for all it's worth

Australia and the United States announced their intention to legislate a bilateral trade deal in February, and at that time Goldman Sachs JBWere asked its company analysts to consider who might be affected.

Like its investment banking competitors, Goldman Were concluded quickly that the economic consequences of the deal in the near and medium term would be muted. And it discovered few specific impacts on listed Australian companies.

Listed beef producer Australian Agricultural Co and Futuris, which owns Elders, would benefit over time from better access to US markets, Goldman Were said, adding that there was another "small positive" for Futuris's vehicle air-conditioning business because residual US tariffs on car parts would go.

It thought also that higher trade volumes and business activity between the two nations would also provide long-term support for transport groups including Qantas, Toll Holdings and Patrick Corporation. One possible casualty of the FTA deal was identified in CSL: the drug and plasma group's exclusive fractionation agreements in Australia will be reviewed between now and January 2007 as part of the FTA deal, and could be opened to competitive tender.

In most cases, however, the investment bank discovered that for listed companies, the FTA simply doesn't matter. Slightly lower barriers to entry to the US would, for example, have "minimal impact" on car-parts maker Ion, which already had secure contracts with US groups. The phasing out of 3 per cent tariffs on US imports of Australian wine would have "immaterial impact" on the short-term earnings of local wine groups, and any impact of the financial sector depended on the outcome of a two-year scoping study under the FTA umbrella.

Writing their own scripts

Ironically, the Government's major argument against accepting Labor's amendment to its free trade legislation to protect against evergreening is that it would inhibit research - an argument which is the reverse of the truth, Henry says.

'As a result [of evergreening], we've had a flattening off of the drug discovery process for many diseases. We're not getting many new drugs. If you look at what manufacturers are making, it's things like new versions of Viagra, which the world doesn't really need.'

An example: no new class of antibiotics has been produced since the 1970s - though some have been tweaked - despite the rapid increase in the number of germs resistant to the old drugs (due in part to the over-prescription of antibiotics and to the fact an estimated 70 per cent of antibiotics are given to farm animals, but that is another story).

'The drug companies don't make as much money from drugs that you only take for five or six days, like antibiotics, compared with antidepressants or Viagra, which people take for 10 years,' Henry says.

Australians pay less for drugs than almost anywhere else in the world - far less than Americans do - and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which keeps prices down by subsidising only the most effective drugs and acting as a monopoly buyer and provider of them, is the major reason for that. The drug companies hate it, which is the reason they wanted it included in negotiations for the trade deal.

The Government, of course, insists there is nothing in the agreement with the US to worry about. In the words of Dr Ruth Lopert, the senior Health Department official advising on the trade agreement, it neither 'encourages nor prevents' evergreening.

But the deal includes measures placing new obligations on the makers of generic drugs and gives the drug makers greater involvement in the processes of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

More and more the whole thing feels like an exercise in shadow politics where the real costs and benefits of the preferential trade deal disappear in favour of guesswork about what might please the electorate. The economic benefits are nowhere near as great as the thing's supporters say and evergreening is not a significant threat under the deal, although the PBS as a whole may come under US pressure.

There's also the interesting question about whether Labor's amendment on local content can override the text of the treaty itself and the much more interesting question of why a 21st century constitution allows the prime minister to sign and ratify a treaty without parliamentary approval.

No, Prime Minister, you can't see into the future

Sir Humphrey: 'Alas, there are grave problems about circulating papers before they are written.'

John Howard's government, it appears, can do what Jim Hacker's could not. It can not only circulate materials not yet written, but have them legally analysed and rejected as well.

The only conclusion one can draw, following yesterday's parliamentary debate about the threat presented to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme by the trade deal with the US, is that the departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Foreign Affairs, Health, Industry and Attorney-General employ large numbers of people who are both lawyers and clairvoyants.

I confess I was not aware of this elite corps of legal parapsychologists until question three in the House of Reps yesterday.

That was when, with considerable flourish, Howard produced what were purported to be legal opinions from all those departments, all concluding there was no way, none at all, absolutely for sure, that the Opposition's proposed amendment to protect the scheme from being rorted by big drug companies would work.

What makes his gambit extraordinary is that no one outside the Labor Party has seen exactly what Labor is proposing.

To suggest that any lawyer could give a firm view on the basis of no document whatsoever is, you would have to say, to make a heroic assumption. All the more so because the lawyers were apparently working off a brief similar to that from which the various government members were, which misrepresented even the limited information the Opposition has provided.

The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, pushed the issue furthest, claiming that Labor's plan was that 'all patent claim applications [not just those on pharmaceuticals] that are rejected get fined'.

This week's been good fun all round for everyone except perhaps the prime minister. Sadly, ever-greening is not the main problem with the preferential trade agreement and Labor's amendment will not make it into a good deal. The agreement privileges the intellectual property sector where the US has an advantage and does nothing very much at all in the agricultural sector where Australia has the advantage. US agricultural subsidies are untouched. Even after Labor's local content amendment the PTA drives a truck through our efforts at cultural sovereignty.

Canada managed to escape cultural restrictions. Why did the Howard government sign such a bad deal?

President Signs Defense Bill

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

I wish I could clarificate myself that well... But in the kingdom of the blind a gaffe is never a gaffe and a clanger is never a clanger.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush's misstatement 'just shows even the most straightforward and plain-spoken people misspeak'.

'But the American people know this president speaks with clarity and conviction, and the terrorists know by his actions he means it,' McClellan said. ">

If the president speaks with clarity and conviction, it follows he is thinking of new ways to harm his country and his people. On the other hand, if he doesn't want to harm his people and his country then he's not speaking with clarity and conviction. Even in the kingdom of the blind, logic still rules.

Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap

Critically for Bashir, the central pillar of the Sudanese state - a cabal of security officers who have been running the wars in Sudan since 1983 - was still in place. Faced with a revolt that outran the capacity of the country's tired and overstretched army, this small group knew exactly what to do. Several times during the war in the South they had mounted counter-insurgency on the cheap - famine and scorched earth their weapons of choice. Each time, they sought out a local militia, provided it with supplies and armaments, and declared the area of operations an ethics-free zone. The Beni Halba fursan , or 'cavalry', which had been used against the SPLA in 1991, was an obvious instrument to employ in Darfur. The northern camel nomads, including former Islamic legionnaires, were also on hand. Some claim that their name - the Janjawiid - derives from 'G3' (a rifle) and jawad ('horse'), but it is also western Sudanese dialect for 'rabble' or 'outlaws'. Unleashing militias has the added advantage for the security cabal that it may derail the near complete peace process with the SPLA and allow them to retain their extra-budgetary security agencies; it also immunises them against being charged in the future with committing war crimes.

The atrocities carried out by the Janjawiid are aimed at speakers of Fur, Tunjur, Masalit and Zaghawa. They are systematic and sustained; the effect, if not the aim, is grossly disproportionate to the military threat of the rebellion. The mass rape and branding of victims speaks of the deliberate destruction of a community. In Darfur, cutting down fruit trees or destroying irrigation ditches is a way of eradicating farmers' claims to the land and ruining livelihoods. But this is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as the 1992 jihad against the Nuba was, or coldly determined to secure natural resources, as when it sought to clear the oilfields of southern Sudan of their troublesome inhabitants. This is the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide by force of habit.

Sheikh Hilal's world, with its stable cosmos and its relaxed reciprocity between farmer and nomad, has disappeared, as he feared it would. Unrelenting poverty has been transformed into violence by misgovernment and imported racisms. What to do now in the face of genocidal massacre and imminent famine? Legal action - trying Musa Hilal and his sponsors as war criminals - is essential to deter such crimes in future. But condemnation is not a solution. The Janjawiid's murderous campaigns must not obscure the fact that Darfur's indigenous bedouins are themselves historic victims.

As they did twenty years ago, the people of Darfur face destitution, hunger and infectious disease. Apocalyptic predictions of mass starvation were made after the 1984 drought - up to a million dead, aid agencies said, if there wasn't food aid. The food didn't come, and many died - around 100,000 - but Darfur society didn't collapse because of the formidable survival skills of its people. They had reserves of food, they travelled huge distances in search of food, work or charity, and above all they gathered wild food from the bush. Today, food reserves and animals have been stolen, and what use is the ability to gather five different kinds of wild grasses, 11 varieties of berry, plus roots and leaves, if leaving a camp means risking rape, mutilation or death? Predictions of up to 300,000 famine deaths must be taken seriously.

A huge aid effort is grinding into gear. But the distances involved mean that food relief is expensive and unlikely to be sufficient. It's tempting to send in the British army to deliver food, but this would be merely symbolic: relief can be flown in more cheaply by civil contractors, and distributed more effectively by relief agencies. The areas controlled by the SLA and JEM contain hundreds of thousands of civilians who are not getting any help. As soon as an intrepid cameraman returns with pictures of this hidden famine, there will be an outcry, and pressure for aid to be delivered across the front lines. There's no reason to wait for the pictures before acting, although it's clear that cross-line aid convoys will need to carry armed guards.

The biggest help would be peace. In theory, there's a ceasefire; in practice, the government and Janjawiid are ignoring it, and the rebels are responding in kind. The government denies that it set up, armed and directed the Janjawiid. It did, but the monster that Khartoum helped create may not always do its bidding: distrust of the capital runs deep among Darfurians, and the Janjawiid leadership knows it cannot be disarmed by force. When President Bashir promised Kofi Annan and Colin Powell that he would disarm the militia, he was making a promise he couldn't keep. The best, and perhaps the only, means of disarmament is that employed by the British seventy-five years ago: establish a working local administration, regulate the ownership of arms, and gradually isolate the outlaws and brigands who refuse to conform. It took a decade then, and it won't be any faster today. Not only are there more weapons now, but the political polarities are much sharper.

In some ways this sounds like Ex-Yugoslavia where members of the national political elite used local ethnic identifications to build up their national power. Milosevic went from being an unknown central banker to the presidency by promising the Kosovo Serbs they would never be beaten again. The ecological fragility gives ethnic cleansing (even with ethic groups that essentially did not exist 20 years ago) a horrific scale. The African Union is considering military intervention with a force of 2000.

BOB on Board

However: if we are to expect airplane captains and flight attendants to make important security decisions, they need to be properly trained. The flight attendant who discovered the airsickness bag didn't react from reason, but from fear. And that fear was transferred to the captain, who made a bad decision.

Fear won't make anyone more secure. It causes overreactions to false alarms. It entices us to spend ever-increasing amounts of money, and give away ever-increasing civil liberties, while receiving no security in return. It blinds us to the real threats.

Speaking about the person who wrote those three fateful letters on the airsickness bag, Transport Minister John Anderson called him 'irresponsible at the least and horrendously selfish and stupid at the worst.' Irresponsible for what? For writing his name? For perpetuating common flight-attendant slang? It wasn't the writer who did anything wrong; it was those who reacted to the writing.

We live in scary times, and it's easy to let fear overtake our powers of reason. But precisely because these are scary times, it's important that we not let them.

Prime Minister John Howard praised the crew for their quick reactions, diligence, and observation skills. I'm sorry, but I see no evidence of any of that. All I see are people who have been thrust into an important security role reacting from fear, because they have not been properly trained in how to sensibly evaluate security situations: the risks, the countermeasures, and the trade-offs. Were cooler and more sensible heads in the cockpit, this story would have had a different ending.

Unfortunately, fear begets more fear, and creates a climate where we terrorise ourselves. Now every wacko in the world knows that all he needs to do to ground an international flight is to write 'BOB' on an airsickness bag. Somehow, I don't think that's the outcome any of us wanted.

The response, especially by Anderson and Howard, is about avoiding blame for future events.

Back in 1973, Mossad, the Israeli security service, adopted The Concept, by which they persuaded themselves Egypt would never attack until it had gained parity in fighters and pilots. This was not expected until 1975. Safe in the Concept , Mossad ignored signs of the Egyptian/Syrian military buildup on its borders. They also ignored a last minute warning from King Hussein of Jordan. Mossad has since devoted considerable resources to not getting caught out again. Their intelligence assessments now always veer towards the red zone.

Stalin rejected ample warning of the German invasion, including warnings from his own spymaster in Tokyo, Richard Sorge.

Human intelligence on al-Qaida is nonexistent. Signal intelligence and measurement/signature intelligence really do not work well. A politico trying to avoid getting caught out may not stop an attack but they can adopt effective strategies to escape blame.

Staying hyperalert and hyperalarmed all the time is not going to achieve much in the way of repelling terrorists. The military experience is that the worst thing you can do to a force-in-being is trying to keep it action-ready at all times. But it does let the prime minister say: "I told you so.'

Voting the AUSFTA up or down

A few people are floating the idea that the Senate can amend or qualify the preferential trade agreement with the US. The Senate committee disagrees. As the inquiry's chair wrote in the preface to their June interim report:

A vote which gives all the relevant bills passage without amendment triggers the Agreement. Any amendment to or rejection of a bill will have the effect of abrogating the whole Agreement.

If Labor decides to pass the beast with amendments that means only that they are trying to spin one past the electorate. If the thing needs changing then the changes must be renegotiated with the US.

Update
The Senate Committee has recommended ratification and Labor will undoubtedly follow that advice. There's a growing mountain of parliamentary reports:

• Voting On Trade
  
• Senate Interim Report
  
• Senate Final Report
  
• Joint Standing Committee on Treaties Report
  

They are all mountainous PDFs and you can make your way through that lot I congratulate you. Voting on Trade is probably the most useful and it's mercifully brief. Recommendation 2 is the most important point in the report.

3.91 The Committee recommends that the government introduce legislation to implement the following process for parliamentary scrutiny and endorsement of proposed trade treaties:

a) Prior to making offers for further market liberalisation under any WTO Agreements, or commencing negotiations for bilateral or regional free trade agreements, the government shall table in both Houses of parliament a document setting out its priorities and objectives, including comprehensive information about the economic, regional, social, cultural, regulatory and environmental impacts which are expected to arise.

b) These documents shall be referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade for examination by public hearing and report to the parliament within 90 days.

c) Both Houses of parliament will then consider the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, and then vote on whether to endorse the government's proposal or not.

d) Once parliament has endorsed the proposal, negotiations may begin.

e) Once the negotiation process is complete, the government shall then table in parliament a package including the proposed treaty together with any legislation required to implement the treaty domestically.

f) The treaty and the implementing legislation are then voted on as a package, in an ?up or down? vote, ie, on the basis that the package is either accepted or rejected in its entirety.

The legislation should specify the form in which the government should present its proposal to parliament and require the proposal to set out clearly the objectives of the treaty and the proposed timeline for negotiations.

Labor coudl take some of the sting out of this decision by undertaking to enact Recommendation 2 which mirrors what happens in the US.

Trade deal a free kick for US software racketeers

The outcome for Australia is clear. We are a net importer of software. So software patents, by allowing monopoly profits with monopoly pricing and monopoly standards of quality, can do us a great deal of damage.

A large quantity of the Australian software budget is spent overseas buying such monopoly products. So encouraging the already existing drift towards US-style software patent laws that favour the existing incumbents could result in this expenditure increasing indefinitely.

This is especially sad since there is one area in software where Australia punches well above its weight, and that is in collaborative open source software. In the open source model, when a number of people and companies find they have a need for a software product, they co-operate to create it.

This allows firms and individuals to gain access to the product for significantly less than it might otherwise cost them. Since the cost of replicating software is almost zero, a free licence to use the software is granted to all comers, who are then free to improve it themselves and feed those improvements back to the original users.

Software built on this principle is widely used. It runs most of the internet, most of the world wide web, and provides a vast number of free and open tools for software engineers. It is also used as part of many, many commercial products, such as Apple's OSX operating system, IBM's web products, Sun's java offerings and so on.

Australian software developers excel in this area, and are enthusiastic and frequent participants in world software.

Unfortunately, open source software, and open competition based on open engineering standards, represents a serious threat to those existing software producers who are too inefficient to compete on a level playing field, or who simply want to lock past successes into an indefinite tax on the future.

Like the canal owners of old faced with the threat of railways, some desperate (or greedy) businesses are attempting to use the courts as a substitute for talent.

Already in the US litigation and threats of (often unspecified) patent and copyright violation are used regularly by software giants to either suppress completely, or acquire on favourable terms, smaller and more innovative firms.

Importing this legal circus to Australia could only harm the smaller players in the local industry, both open source developers and independent software companies.

I don't think it is at all clear that either major political party knows what the FTA's impact on the country will be. The current farce of Labor planning to announce its policy as soon after the Senate inquiry reports as the government did after the JSCT reported suggests that it's about spinning the electorate rather than analysing the beast's impact. Tony Windsor told the House of Representatives during the FTA debate:

Independent Member for New England, Mr Tony Windsor has joined with other Independent Members of the House of Representatives Peter Andren (Calare), Bob Katter (Kennedy) and Michael Organ (Cunningham), to oppose the Federal Government�s attempt to push the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States of America through the House of Representatives before proper scrutiny has been applied to whether the FTA is in Australia�s best interest.

�This so called �Free� Trade Agreement should not be allowed passage into legislation before it has undergone strong scrutiny and the public should not be fooled by Government attempts at a pretence that proper scrutiny has been carried out.

�I am on record through a question to the Prime Minister in Parliament in February this year when this arrangement was first proposed, as requesting the Prime Minister to hand the agreement to the Productivity Commission for an Independent and thorough review.

�The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCoT) delivered the first attempt at a report on the FTA yesterday, yet within twenty minutes, the Government has attempted to drive the agreement through the Parliament in the next day,� Mr Windsor said.

The thing is being rushed by both sides and no-on is reading the footnotes.

The US just isn't paying attention

There are those who worry about the fate of society in a nation of wilful non-readers, but I worry about the fate of democracy. The consequences of not paying attention are wide-ranging. In corporate America, it's become a problem that workers do not fully read the key corporate documents employers issue for their benefit. Think 'Enron ethics code'. And in public life, details get missed, wrong impressions formed. Headlines substitute for reading past page one.

Total ignorance, one might argue, is in fact better for democracy than a partial ignorance that masquerades as knowledge. At least the totally ignorant sense their limitations. Skimmers, on the other hand, may well occupy the ranks of power and feel a mastery of the information around them. But in truth they have faulty intelligence. After listening to the 'executive summary' on their drive in to work or on the treadmill, they have a false confidence that they know what they need to know.

Little wonder that there is a call to declassify the one-page summary of Iraq intelligence prepared for President George Bush before the invasion. The sheet reportedly omits qualifiers and nuance, creating a much starker sense of the world situation. The Administration's refusal to release the brief document is based on the grounds that it's irrelevant because the full National Intelligence Estimate was released and, according to one official, 'we expect people to read beyond one page'. But most people at home know that they themselves might have read only the cover sheet. They wonder: did the President or his advisers flip past it, or did they stop after glancing at the Cliffs Notes?

Indeed, even the President's chief opponent, John Kerry, acknowledges that he did not read the admittedly lengthy NIE before voting on whether to grant authority to invade Iraq. Skimming, clearly, is a nonpartisan issue.

Sadly, sometimes it seems we are forced to wonder whether any of our leaders ever read their briefing materials at all. Before we blame them, though, let us look at our own habits, and ask whether we are really reading what is before us.

When Nick Greiner replaced Neville Wran as premier of New South Wales in 1988 he came in with a Harvard MBA and a passion for administrative tinkering. A friend worked in 6 different departments during the Greiner premiership without ever changing his actual job.

Greiner inherited a small equal opportunity unit in the Premier's Office. They drafted regulations, the premier approved them and the public service was bound by the premier's directives. Greiner out-posted EEO to agencies. Everyone suddenly had an EEO co-ordinator who drafted an EEO plan that the agency itself promulgated and theoretically followed. The focus shifted from carrying out the centralised EEo directive to having the best plan. Now 1988 was the techn dark ages so EEO plans only circulated among co-ordinators by sneakernet.

Yesterday I had a long talk with my favourite cousin. They've just been promoted from a Sydney job to policy stuff in Canberra. I muttered about the great sneakernet EEO plan binge of 1988. She muttered about the email driven action plan binge of 2004.

I really wonder if the flood of documentation moving through various public and private bureaucracies ever gets read or acted on.

Australia and its allies have just fought a war over weapons of mass destruction which do not exist and human rights abuses which have been grossly exaggerated in order to defeat an enemy who was not there and who was actually strengthened, not weakened, by the war.

Perhaps if we read things a little more slowly the combined intelligence agencies of the coalition of the willing might have been able to out-perform the blogosphere in deciding what was likely to be happening in Iraq. We are now arguing if the failure of intelligence was getting the state of the world wrong or just skimming the papers. The state of the world matters. Who read or failed to read which footnotes does not.

We need a movement for slow government.

World trade talks reach agreement

"It's good news for the world economy, it's good news for developing countries and it is very good news for Europe because we have always prioritised WTO and multilateral rules- based trade openings as a major objective of EU trade policy," said the European Union's trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, before the final vote.

Talks had been extended into Saturday after WTO negotiators failed to reach a previous deadline of midnight on Friday.

Developed countries have recognised that agricultural trade with a heavy subsidy component is not free trade.

But even with the latest agreement, the details will still have to be hammered out, and that could take at least another couple of years, says the BBC's John Moylan in Geneva.

"Developed countries have recognised that agricultural trade with a heavy subsidy component is not free trade," said Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath.

A small group of African countries also claimed a major breakthrough on their key agricultural product of cotton, said our reporter.

After hours of talks, key WTO nations, including the US, the EU, Brazil and Japan, agreed to eliminate export subsidies at a date to be set, to limit other subsidies and lower tariff barriers.

In return, wealthier nations, among them the EU's members, are insisting on better access to markets in developing nations.

The US FTA could suddenly become a good deal less important. Australia's real trade needs are access for primary products and that's precisely what the FTA does not give. On the other hand, if the WTO process suddenly comes alive the FTA looks a lot less like a safe harbour and a lot more like a Free Tampa agreement.

Iron Mark will be making a terrible error if he ratifies the FTA. Rightly or wrongly it will be seen as another small target exercise, but one that permanently trades off cultural sovereignty and the PBS in return for SFA. The FTA is less generous on cultural matters than the Canada/US agreement. The FTa also ties us into a US economy that sooner or later has to start contracting.

From superpower to dinosaur: America's destiny

To stabilise its debt at this level by 2013, US imports from the rest of the world will have to decline by $US90 billion to $US375 billion in today's dollars, depending on various assumptions about future US exports and the value of the American dollar.


The report argues that "it is not possible to construct a plausible scenario in which the US can even sustain s its current levels of imports. Measured in real terms, the extraordinary growth in US imports over the past 12 years clearly will not be repeated".

What this means is that if Australia is banking on expanding its exports to make up for the concessions it has made in areas such as intellectual property rights, rules governing investment and government procurement, it will have to be at the expense of other exporters to the US, such as Canada, Japan and China.

While the Centre for Economic and Policy Research doesn't single out Australia, it states that "for most countries, the costs of such concessions can be expected to exceed any gain they might anticipate from increased access to a shrinking US market for their exports".

The contraction in US imports is unlikely to be smooth or without great cost to the world, especially those tied to the US through free trade agreements.

The Bush Administration has turned Bill Clinton's $US5.6 billion surplus into an unsustainable deficit - before counting the $150 billion a year cost of its unsuccessful occupation of Iraq. And there is a mulish determination to avoid developing an Iraq exit strategy, higher taxes and the other policies necessary to avoid another global recession that could see the US transformed from superpower to dinosaur.

Trade policy really needs to have a hard edge. It does not need to be built on the nebulous desire of the Man of Steel to make himself one with the Great Dubya.

Update
Kick AAS has (as usual) done the hard work of ploughing through the WTO Draft General Council Decision of 31 July 2004, and says:

Great! But hang, on, there is no date set. Does that mean it could take 20, 30 or 50 years? Agreeing to end subsidies without a date is a bit like rich nations deploring subsidies in general (because they offend free trade) but doing nothing about it in practice (ie the situation before these talks started). It is the same problem with the end of cotton subsidies over which African nations claimed a late victory. The end has been agreed but with no date attached. It�s as bit like writing a will with the amount of the legacy left blank.

W are told Augustine of Hippo used to pray: 'Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.