Double Backflip With a One and a Half Twist

I've reconsidered my position on the bill that the US Government has presented for the RAAF's use of its bombs during the recent war. I think, on the whole, it's quite reasonable that our government should pay for them.

The situation is analogous to one that some parents may have faced: you send your brat round to play with the neighbour's ankle biter and then get news that, in a moment of over-enthusiasm, the little bugger dismembered his host's GI Joe and melted an entire battalion of plastic soldiers into a scorched green blob. Under such circumstances I think any decent, responsible parent would feel constrained to make good the neighbour's losses and lay down some firm guidelines on how junior was to behave when playing with other kids' toys.

So it's time to stop complaining, and stump up the money. And time for Defence Minister Robert Hill to get onto the RAAF and let them know that, next time the US Air Force invites them over to play with the heavy ordinance, they're to make sure that it all gets returned in good working order. As a true friend, it's the least we can do.

I've also reconsidered my post on Hugh Mackay's call for our community's intelligent people to recognise their obligations to society, get off their arses and do something for the benefit of their fellow Australians. It was brought on by a story Zeppo Bakunin told at last Thursday's trivia quiz.

Way back in his misspent youth, Zeppo worked at the Tramways for a while. One day, while he was on a break, one of his colleagues - a gnarled senior trammie of many years experience - turned to Zeppo and said: "You went to Uni didn't you?"

"Yes" Zeppo confessed.

"Y'do Physics?"

"Only first year." answered Zeppo, a little apprehensive.

"D'you study any Relativity?"

"A bit." Zeppo answered, a little more apprehensive.

"Good. Perhaps you can help me out." His interrogator said, and produced a sheet of paper on which he scribbled out a string of incomprehensible equations of the

dt = {2L/c}*{1/[1-(v^2/c^2)]^0.5}

variety. Pointing to one he said: "The thing is, I don't understand this transformation here."

I think this bloke is a good example of the sort of person Hugh was complaining about. If he'd gotten off his arse and done something with his intellectual resources he might have made something of his life. Instead, he was content to waste his life as a trammie, occasionally pestering the better educated with pointless questions about the Theory of Relativity. What a waste.

Local News

I did a bad thing on Saturday night: I stole the front page of the Moreland Leader from the local fish and chip shop. The front page story was about a local planning dispute that may end up in Victoria's Supreme court, thanks to the intervention of Planning Minister Mary Delahunty:

Minister blocks plan

A RARE 11th hour amendment by Planning Minister Mary Delahunty could signal the end of a five-year battle to stop a controversial townhouse development in Brunswick East.

Last Friday Ms Delahunty allowed Moreland Council to amend its planning scheme just hours before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal was to consider an application for a second townhouse at 42 St Phillip St.

The site-specific amendment prevents a second building on the property.

"The Bracks Government does not intervene lightly in the planning process," Ms Delahunty said. "In this case it became necessary to take action ... the matter raised issues of fairness and public interest, which are grounds for intervention."

The decision ends five years of protesting by affected neighbours Steve and Ronnie Whitmore.

The wrangle began when the council refused an application for a dual townhouse development. The tribunal upheld the decision on appeal in 1999. [my emphasis]

This is where the fun really starts, if the events that followed can really be described as fun. I'm not going to comment more than that at the moment: Victorian property developers can be a touchy lot. Just ask that pensioner couple who had to spend $10,000 or so on an advertisment in The Age apologising to a property developer for various comments they made in the objections they made to their local council to one of his developments. It was either that or face the cost of defending a libel action in the Supreme Court. On with our story:

Property owner Vito Bartucca then changed the property title from two to one, which allowed him to build a two-storey townhouse on part of the site. Under planning laws single dwellings can be built without a permit on lots greater than 300 sq m [my emphasis]

You can probably guess where the Mr Bartucca put the townhouse. Here's how the Moreland Leader describes it:

The townhouse was squeezed on to one half of the block closest to the Whitmores, overshadowing their 140-year-old Victorian cottage.

It infuriated the Whitmores, who camped on the front steps of Parliament HOuse but failed to persuade then Planning Minister John Thwaites to intervene.

The next section doesn't really require any comment from me either. If you sussed out that the first townhouse was going to be placed according to the original development plan, it's likely that you've already more or less worked out the next bit too:

The current application, lodged with the council last May, was for a single storey dwelling on the vacant half of the block. It was on appeal because the council took more than 60 days to process the application Outside the hearing, Ms Whitmore said she believed justice had been done.

The Whitmores may be (more or less) happy, but the same can't be said for Mr Bartucca. After reporting that he might pursue costs against Moreland Council, the Moreland Leader sounds this ominous note:

The Bartuccas [sic] can also appeal the legality of Planning Minister Mary Delahunty's decision to the Supreme Court and ask for the tribunal hearing to be reinstated.

For some reason, the whole thing reminds me of the "Wade House" case. Well, now that I've blogged it, I suppose I'd better see what I can do about sneaking the purloined page back into the fish and chip shop, where it belongs.

What I'm Reading This Week

I picked up Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil at the local library yesterday. It's incomplete: there are a couple of damaged pages early in the book. Here, for example is the first paragraph of Chapter II as it appears in my library's copy:

n of Karl Adolf Eichmann and Maria nee Scheefer-
a suburb of Buenos Aires on the evening of May 11,
Israel nine days later, brought to trial in the District
alem on April 11, 1961, stood accused on fifteen
er with others" he had committed crimes against the
, crimes against humanity, and war crimes during
riod of the Nazi regime and especially during the pe-
Second World War. The Nazis and Nazi Collaborators
nt) Law of 1950, under which he was tried, provides
erson who has committed one of these ... offenses ...
to the death penalty". To each count Eichmann pleaded:
guilty in the sense of the indictment."

Reading on, it's pretty obvious that there's something crucial missing on the torn off corner of paper - so if anyone can provide me with the full text, I'd appreciate it a lot. Well, a bit anyway. What has me stumped is how, short of someone running out of matches and needing to light their cigarette off the gas heater, that big a corner can get torn off the page of a book in the first place.

You Drop It, You Pay for It

news.com reports that:

Australia is to be billed several million dollars by the United States for bombs dropped on Iraq.

Weeks after George W. Bush's public thank you to John Howard, the bills are due to arrive – including the cost of US food eaten by some Diggers.

What has me puzzled is this section of the report:

The Australian Defence Force is now being asked to share the costs for its part in toppling Saddam Hussein under the "user-pays" principle of modern warfare.

Australian jet fighters fired a number of US laser-guided bombs – each worth a five-figure sum.

The F/A-18 Hornets flew 350 combat missions, dropping 122 precision-guided weapons.

ADF officials will not specify the types or quantity of bombs dropped.

But defence analysts believe they include US-owned MK84s and GBU-series 220kg and 907kg weapons, worth $28,800 and $35,900 respectively. [My emphasis]

Does this mean that we're being billed for US-owned bombs that the RAAF dropped for the US military, or that we got them on one of those "90 Days Interest Free" deals or what? It's obviously too late to argue about the cooling off period but, given the amounts involved we should at least insist on having the cost of any unexploded bombs that we may have dropped taken off the bill.

For the Record: James Russell beat me to this item by a good two days. Excuse me while I go wipe the egg off my face.

Gubernatorial Speculations

I think it's well past time that I put in a comment or two on the Hollingworth debacle. There's not much I can say on the conduct of the various players in this political spectacle that hasn't been said repeatedly elsewhere, so instead I'll just jump into the general speculation on who the next Governor-General will be, with maybe a comment or two on the constitutional issues, which are being canvassed around the place, sometimes where you'd least expect it.

There's been some comment that the way Peter Hollingworth was hounded out of the job will make it difficult to find a successor. The idea is, that given the level of scrutiny that the next Gubernatorial appointee's past life will be subjected to, no prominent Australian in his (or her) right mind would go near the job. To be nominated as the next Governor-General, it is argued, is as good as being handed the chalice from the palace. Or was it the vessel with the pestle? The flagon with the dragon perhaps. Whatever - I'm getting side-tracked. Personally I'm indifferent on this score: anything that helps to prevent Rene Rivkin or Rodney Adler from taking up residence at Yarralumla is fine by me. Still, in the interests of putting this behind us, it would be best that the next Governor-General be someone who won't be shifted from the office in the way that Peter Hollingworth has.

I doubt that John Howard will take up the other suggestion that has been floated, that the new Governor-General should be endorsed by a two-thirds majority of Parliament. As a constitutional monarchist, I'm sure that he will recognise this for what it is: an attempt to sneak in the minimalist republic, rejected at the 1999 referendum, through the back door. It's more likely in my view that he will take one of those bold steps forward into the past that typify the Howard style of politics.

Let's not forget that John Howard is, as George Bush said, a man of steel. He showed, in taking us into the war with Iraq that he is prepared to go against public opinion when moved by personal conviction so it's reason able to expect that he will be equally firm and resolved when it comes to the much less difficult issue of appointing a Governor-General. My tip is that, in line with his monarchist beliefs, John Howard will give us a Governor-General who truly represents the Queen. An English Governor-General, to represent our English Queen. Very soon, Australia will have an Iron Lady to match our Man of Steel, Baroness Thatcher herself.

You may call this idea far-fetched, but it has a lot going for it, both from John Howard's point of view and the Queen's. History will remember John Howard as the first Prime Minister to appoint a woman to the job of Governor-General: this might make up for his failure to put his personal stamp on the Constitution with the new "comfortable and relaxed" preamble. The idea that Lady Margaret could be hounded out of office by the media is, frankly, laughable. And for the Queen there would be some payback for all the scoldings she allegedly received from the Baroness back in the days when she was a mere Prime Minister.

Afterthought: if you're wondering why the Stalin joke is missing, it's because plenty of other people have used it already.

Thanks to Stewart kelly for this illustration of human stupidity:

A Florida woman is preparing to sue the producers of Jim Carrey's new film "Bruce Almighty" after being inundated with calls from people seeking God at a phone number given in the movie.

It's about time that somebody was held to account for the number of dickheads there are in the world.

Minor Quandary

News that boynton's trivia team is between venues has brought on a small personal dilemma. Like blogging, the pub trivia quiz is a valuable outlet for formidably bright people who coast through life under-utilising their intellectual resources, and I know from personal experience that prolonged periods of trivia withdrawal can be as difficult to endure as those occasional periods when you desperately want to blog on something - anything - but can find little intelligent to say. Yes that's obviously a petard so go ahead, hoist away.

Here's the problem: I do the trivia thing once a week myself (with the occasional week off when I'm feeling totally disgruntled with the other members of the team - working out how it hangs together at all, let alone well enough to win occasionally would make a good doctoral research project for an up and coming group psychologist) and the generous, sympathetic thing to do would be to fire off an e-mail in Ms Boynton's general direction with details of my own trivia venue. On the other hand, the competition is already pretty stiff (especially when the big prizes are on offer) so self-interest and team solidarity (such as there is of it) weigh against doing the Mr Nice Guy bit. It's probably too late for tonight's quiz anyway, so I've got another 7 days or so to think it over.

Scratchback

Mark at infiniteBabble serves it up to Phil Ruddock.

Where There's Muck (3)

There's just time to correct a minor omission in Where There's Muck (1) before I start serious work for the day. Take this exchange between Senator Santoro (Liberal, Queensland) and Russell Balding:


Senator SANTORO: Thank you. Are you aware that Mr Uechtritz is on the board of the CEW Bean Foundation, which was established to honour CEW Bean and to commemorate Australian war reporting?

Mr Balding: Yes.

Senator SANTORO: If in fact you find out that it is Mr Uechtritz’s view that the military are lying bastards, do you believe it is appropriate for him to be on the board of the CEW Bean Foundation?

Mr Balding: Again, I would like to look at that in the context of those comments and what was said.

Senator SANTORO: If you found that they were as offensive as some Australians find them, would you think -

Mr Balding: It would not be my decision; that would be a decision for the board of that foundation.

So I need to add "Max Uechtritz holds offensive opinions which make him unfit to hold a position on the board of the CEW Bean Foundation" to Senator Santoro's charges against Max Uechtritz. I'm not sure what this has to do with ABC finances or the Budget Estimates process - offhand I'd say bugger all. I suspect it was introduced into the committee's business under the long-standing bipartisan convention that unsubstantiated personal smears are normal business for any Parliamentary session.

Update: you can check out the CEW Bean Foundation here.

Where There's Muck (2)

Putting together a precis of Senator Santoro's various charges and innuendos about bias at the ABC is turning out to be more work than I realised I was getting myself into. Take this little exchange between Senator Santoro and Russell Balding:

Senator SANTORO: I am grateful for your assistance. I want to perhaps take up the challenge of my esteemed colleague Senator Conroy and talk about other issues relating to bias and balance. On the issue of balance and objectivity in ABC news and current affairs, I would like to get your comments on a number of issues. On 15 April last year, Four Corners ran a story that it headlined "To deter or deny." The program aired allegations that electric cattle prods had been used in a detention centre. What evidence did Four Corners have that cattle prods had been used on detainees? Did the ABC verify this allegation with the relevant authorities? Does the ABC today stand by that allegation?

Mr Balding: Can I take that on notice.

Of course I couldn't resist taking a look at the program transcript, where you will indeed find allegations of the use of electric batons, but not in detention centres. The precise allegation, made by a number of asylum seekers, was that they were used by the Australian Defence Forces during Operation Relex:

MAN 4 (translation): When the commandoes came into the ship, they covered their faces.

They put electric batons against the badges on their shoulders.

When the wires touched them, there was a spark so we could see they were electric batons.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: This family refused to leave.

They say they were hit with an electric baton.

WOMAN 3 (translation): It was like a black stick.

About this size.

(Indicates a point up to her elbow.)

When they pulled it out, they first hit the shoulders.

They had badges on their shoulders.

When it hit, it gave off electricity.

Immediately after this segment, the program included these remarks from Defence Minister Robert Hill:

SENATOR ROBERT HILL, MINISTER FOR DEFENCE: At your request, I asked the Defence Force whether they use such equipment and I have been advised that they neither have it nor use it.

As for the ABC's current position on these allegations, there's this update page on the 4 Corners web-site.

I'll have to be disciplined about this, otherwise even the most perfunctory background checks on Senator Santoro's allegations are going to seriously interfere with my inadequate work ethic. Still, there's a certain perverse pleasure in finding a senator who's a worse committee performer than George Brandis who played such a memorable part in the Senate Inquiry into a Certain Maritime Incident.

Where There's Muck (1)

Bias in the ABC looks like being the hot topic for the next couple of days, at least as far as the Ozbloggeist is concerned. If you're wondering just what goods Senator Alston has to back up his claim of anti-US bias a good place to start looking is page 32 of this transcript of Monday's proceedings of the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Committee [PDF file]. It's all in Senator Santoro's "questions" to ABC Managing Director Russell Balding.

In yet another cheesy and insultingly obvious attempt to get linkage, I've gone over the earlier questions, to collect together all the muck that Senator Santoro has raked up on Max Uechtritz, the ABC’s Director of News and Current Affairs. I'm even going to try to present it without comment.

At the second annual Newsworld Asia conference in Singapore last August, Uechtritz remarked, "We now know for certain that only three things in life are certain: death, taxes and the fact that the military are lying bastards."

Uechtritz also said, at the same conference, "The lessons of war? So much technology, so many outlets, so much ignorance."

According to Senator Santoro, Uechtritz’s predetermined view about the military being lying bastards found a loud echo in the ABC’s coverage of the Iraq war.

According to a November 2001 bulletin of the Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Mass Media project, Uechtritz attended a session at a Barcelona conference which examined

... the extent to which the rights of asylum-seekers, internally displaced people and refugees are catered for by the media, and consider how broadcasters can communicate the complexities of their amazing stories without losing audiences or exacerbating internal and international tensions.

In a report on the Barcelona conference The Guardian said:

Max Uechtritz, director of news and current affairs at the ABC network in Australia, pointed out that at least 1,000 fewer people had died in New York than perished in Srebrenica, when "people were taken out and shot" in an even more horrific manner than the instant deaths on September 11. "Because it was a western capital, the scale seemed bigger," he said.

Uechtritz also attended the Eurasian Media Forum 2002 held in Almaty, Kazakhstan in April 2002. He was also listed on the program as a participant in a session titled "The role of media in international conflict."

Uechtritz weighs the same as a duck therefore he must be made of wood.

This is Plain Ridiculous

Over the weekend I decided it was time to take a break from reading the sort of crappy books that others insist that you must read before your opinions on current issues are worth considering and refresh my memory of an old favourite On Certainty by that Wittgenstein bloke. It seemed like a good idea at the time: I was less likely to have one of those waspish fits of bad temper that end with the book cringing in the corner of the room, fearful that you're going to fling it at the wall again. Also, as it's my copy of On Certainty, it's free of those irritatingly cryptic marginalia like "!!", "??" "How true!" and pointless random underlinings that some idiots feel compelled to add to the text of library books for the edification of later readers. I was having a good time, till I got to this bit:

102. Might I not believe that once, without knowing it, perhaps in a state of unconsciousness, I was taken far away from the earth - that other people know this, but do not mention it to me? But this would not fit into the rest of my convictions at all. Not that I could describe the system of these convictions. Yet my convictions do form a system, a structure.

A couple of pages later, Ludwig is musing on whether anyone has ever been on the moon. Now, while Wittgenstein is, or at least used to be, my favourite philosopher there are limits to how much slack I'm prepared to cut even a favourite philosopher in the interests of a so-called fair-minded reading. While he might be on the money on the subject of the impossibility of anyone ever being on the moon it's difficult to read the remarks I've cited above without calling to mind all the solid anecdotal evidence that sometimes unconscious people really do find themselves far away from the earth, suffering painful and humiliatingly intrusive physical examinations. So while Ludwig's scenario might have appeared ludicrous in the 1950s, to be skeptical that one might be taken away from the earth while unconscious makes as much sense in the modern world as clinging to the belief that crop circles are the work of human beings.

It's disappointing, because I was hoping that reading Wittgenstein might give me the opportunity to produce one of those more cerebral posts which I'm apparently capable of. Or at least occasionally. I might even, so I mistakenly thought, have a chance to say something favourable about a book for a change. Instead I'm left with the conclusion that as a philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein would have made a very good hospital porter. Perhaps I have an attitude problem or something.

Help Wanted

I spent this weekend off-line, with only the rainforest edition of The Age for company. So I was a little nervous this morning when I took my first plunge into the blogosphere: if Tim Blair or Stanley Gudgeon had picked up on this crie du coeur from Hugh Mackay, all I'd be left with to start the week's blogging is the mystery of why I have 3 referrals listed from the ABC News Home Page.

It seems that Hugh has had one of those unpleasant moments of self-discovery that confront us all eventually, and he's not too happy about it. He's realised that there may be people in the population who are more intelligent than himself. Here's what he has to say about them:

But there's another payoff from genetic roulette that is too often confused with achievement: intelligence. One of the craziest features of our culture is the way we rate intelligent people as superior to unintelligent people. We treat intelligent people as elite creatures needing to be "developed" and "accelerated"; we speak disparagingly of unintelligent people as "stupid", "brainless" or "losers".

By definition, more than half the population has "average" intelligence or less. Unfortunately, many people of above-average intelligence are not quite smart enough to realise that their intelligence was handed to them, just like their height.

The issue is not how intelligent you are, but what you do with what you've got. Formidably bright people who coast through life, under-utilising their intellectual resources, squander a valuable genetic gift. Unlike beauty, it's a gift that could be used to benefit those who, because of their more modest intellect, find it tough just coping with the demands of everyday life.

If you're a formidably bright person who coasts through life, under-utilising their intellectual resources, you could probably do worse with your abilities than to ghost-write Hugh's future columns for him. Unfortunately, there's no E-Mail address at the bottom of Hugh's article, but you can probably reach him (eventually) here.

Phil's Amnesty Badge Speaks Out

A Tug Boat Potemkin Exclusive

After Monday night's episode of 4 Corners, I decided enough was enough: it's no more Mr Nice Badge. I got in a good start on Tuesday morning, by snagging myself on the interfacing under the navy blue serge. That got Phil nicely frustrated so I got the chance to sink a good quarter centimetre of point into the ball of his thumb.

I guess that was the high-point of the day for me: from there it was on to the dreary round of public appearances. The radio interviews, like the one Phil did on AM, are the least embarassing: if it's done over the phone nobody gets to see me hanging around with Phil. Even the in studio interviews are tolerable: most of the reporters and production staff are used to seeing me and they don't make too much of a fuss about it these days. I think they understand how it is between Phil and me.

It's the television interviews, like last night's 7.30 Report interview with Kerry O'Brien that are really hell. Even with the ABC's low reputation and ratings, you can't help thinking about the hundreds of people who look up to you as a sort of symbol and how disappointed they must be at the company you're keeping. The next time he leaves me pinned to his suit when he sends it to the dry cleaners, I'm off. Let's see him try to get a replacement.

What Ken Said

(Give or take the occasional quibble)

Tonight's Four Corners program, depicting conditions in the Woomera Detention Centre, was truly horrifying. Although some of the detainee behaviour would have been very difficult for even well-resourced, trained and motivated management to control effectively, it's clear that the US-controlled Australian Correctional Management was none of those things. Conditions and senior management attitudes of the sort recounted on Four Corners have no place in any civilised country. I suppose we should make some allowances for the possibility that some of the interviewed former ACM staff may have had personal axes to grind, but the sheer number of staff interviewed and the remarkable unanimity of experiences recounted mean that the program's allegations can't simply be rejected and ignored (although that's probably what Minister Ruddock will try to do).

... more

Budget Impressions

I missed Simon Crean's reply to the budget on telly last night: Thursday is always trivia quiz night. Today I'm sorry that I did: according to AM on everyone to the left of Ken Parish's ABC, Crean gave a fine impassioned performance, undeterred by interjections from the Government benches. Peter Costello, perhaps miffed by the way he had been blindsided by Crean's use of his reply time to Labor's alternative policy on Medicare, was less impressed:

Labor hasn't learned a thing. Labor supports budget deficits and higher taxes. Now, this was an absolutely irresponsible budget speech, because this wasn't, in truth, a reply to the Budget. This was a speech to Labor Party faithful, and when Simon Crean speaks to the Labor Party faithful he tells them what the Labor Party stands for – budget deficits and higher taxes.

The Minister for Budget Surpluses at All Cost's response neatly encapsulates a couple of the basic truths of Australian politics, each an example of The Truth that is Established by Frequent Repetition: the ALP never learns and Labor stands for budget deficits and high taxes. Federal Health Minister, Senator Kay Patterson also resorted to the enunciation of repetition verified truths in her interview with Matt Brown:

MATT BROWN: Well he's [Crean] given us a fair amount of detail about how he's going to fund it, and there is some money there in the surplus, presumably. Let's just look at the effect of the package that he's outlined, and the reaction to it.

Ken Mackey, from the Rural Doctors' Association, you've just heard say that under the Labor plan more country practices would be encouraged to boost bulk-billing. In other words, more country people would get a better chance of going to a doctor and not having to open their wallets.

KAY PATTERSON: But it doesn't guarantee bulk-billing. It also gives rural people and people in outer-metropolitan areas, they're treated as second-class citizens.

...

MATT BROWN: Let's look at the lower target for country doctors, before they can quality for their tens of thousands of dollars in incentive payments. Isn't setting a lower target for that just making it easier for them to qualify, just making it more realistic for them to try and meet that bulk-billing target?

KAY PATTERSON: No, what it's saying is that you don't have to reach the same target in a rural area as you do in a city area, so it will be still harder for country people to find a bulk-billing doctor at the same rate.

Now that treats them ...

MATT BROWN: But what's the average rate of bulk-billing in country areas?

KAY PATTERSON: ... as second class citizens. [My emphasis]

Having scored two memorable soundbites, Paterson uses the rest of the interview to demonstrate her excellent ducking and weaving skills:

MATT BROWN: What's the average rate of bulk billing in country areas?

KAY PATTERSON: There are people in country areas, on low incomes, who don't ever have a bulk-billing doctor. Our package increases the likelihood that people on low incomes will be able to see a bulk-billing doctor.

Also, under the Crean package, if you have a doctor who charges a gap, you get a lower rebate, you have to pay the upfront fee, you have to either wait for the Medicare check or go into a Medicare office.

The other thing that he's done is he's said no to our new safety net, both for people on concession cards and for people who are not on concession cards. What he said is, if you're very sick, then we don't care about you, we don't care about the fact that you have unexpected bills that you may not be able to meet, we're going to scrap that safety net.

So there are a lot of losers in the Crean package.

Translation: I don't know what the average rate of bulk-billing in country areas is, but Simon Crean's proposal sucks.

MATT BROWN: You've spoken about people who can't easily find a bulk-billing doctor being disadvantaged by the different rebates that will be paid to doctors who do bulk-bill. But under the Labor plan wouldn't there be a pressure on that doctor who doesn't bulk-bill to keep their fees down because they know their patients might have a better chance of going somewhere else to see another doctor who is being encouraged to bulk-bill?

KAY PATTERSON: There is nothing in Mr Crean's package that will guarantee, and he said, and he's been saying for months, "I will guarantee the 80 per cent bulk-billing".

He cannot guarantee 80 per cent bulk-billing, and now what he's done is backtracked and said I have a target of 70 per cent for people in rural areas, a target of 75 per cent for people in outer metropolitan areas, and a target of 80 per cent.

Translation: I can't answer that point, but Simon Crean's proposal sucks.

MATT BROWN: What target have you set?

KAY PATTERSON: He will not achieve that. My goal is to ensure that people on very low incomes, people on health care cards and concession cards, have a greater chance of being treated the same, irrespective of where they live.

Crean's package does nothing to do that, in fact it makes rural people and outer metropolitan people second class citizens, and if the people can't find a bulk-billing doctor they get a lower rebate. That is the first time in the history of Medicare that we've seen a different rebate for people depending on whether a doctor bulk-bills or not. [my emphasis]

Translation: We haven't set a target, because we might not achieve it, but Simon Crean's proposal sucks. And incidentally don't forget that he's treating country people as second class citizens.

MATT BROWN: And just briefly, new figures are out today on bulk-billing rates. If they show a fall, what will that mean to you?

KAY PATTERSON: I've said that the bulk-billing rates, the overall bulk-billing rates, don't show the inequities, where you get very high bulk-billing in city areas, very low bulk-billing in country areas, and the people who suffer the most from that are people on low incomes, people on health care card and concession cardholders.

Translation: Don't bother me with questions about facts, you impertinent bastard. Simon Crean's proposal sucks.

MATT BROWN: Why not put up a target though? Why not put up a target, the way Simon Crean has, for what you want to see bulk-billing return to?

KAY PATTERSON: Because Mr Crean cannot guarantee that target. He said, "I will guarantee bulk-billing for 80 per cent". Now he's backtracked. He hasn't funded it. He needs to come out today and say whether he's going to keep the private health insurance rebate or not, because I suspect that's how he's going to fund it, and the nine million ...

Translation: We won't set a target, because we might not achieve it, but Simon Crean's proposal sucks.

MATT BROWN: He said he won't scrap it, if you're asking for no tampering with it.

KAY PATTERSON: He has shilly-shallied around about the private health insurance rebate. He needs to come out today. I challenge Mr Crean to come out today and say to the nine million Australians who have private health insurance, we will not touch the 30 per cent rebate. If he does, it will mean and $800 hike in tax for Australian families.

Translation: Simon Crean's proposal sucks and I refuse to believe him when he says that he isn't going to scrap the health insurance rebate.

MATT BROWN: Kay Patterson, thanks for joining us on AM this morning.

KAY PATTERSON: Thanks very much, Matt.

Translation: Thank Christ that's over.

The overall impression I got from both interviews was that Crean's speech has put the Government on the back foot. I might have more to say on the budget, once I've read Costello's Speech and Crean's response (Hansard in PDF. Crean's speech starts on page 88 of the file).

Stewart Kelly reports that a vanity search for Stewsblog on Yahoo turned up this. I did a self-Google yesterday and found that some charitable soul in Japan is mirroring my site. Dont' forget to check out the link in the top left hand corner of the page - if you're lucky, it might take you somewhere interesting.

Chinese Government experiments with traditional cure for SARS

Another Waste of Public Library Shelf Space

I turned up a copy of Keith Windschuttle's The Killing of History (How a discipline is being murdered by literary critics and social theorists) at my local library on Sunday. What I really wanted of course was a copy of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History but that doesn't appear to have arrived on the shelves yet. So I settled for The Killing of History (etc): I though reading it might help me catch up a little on the current state of received opinion.

It's an irritating read, especially Chapter 7 "History as a Social Science", where Windschuttle presents an extended rebuttal of Kuhn, Popper et al drawing heavily on the work of David Stove, who is to Windschuttle as SL MacGregor Mathers is to Aleister Crowley. I have to admit here that it pisses me off when historians and philosophers pontificate about science in a way that makes it perfectly obvious that they know jack shit about that whereof they speak. Reading this chapter is as agonising as watching some klutz with a hair-triggered Uzi point it playfully at his own feet.

Chapter 7 begins:

History is a discipline that straddles both the humanities and the social sciences. History's credentials as a science derive from three of its objectives: first, it aims to record the truth about what happened in the past; second, it aims to build a body of knowledge about the past; third, it aims to study the past through a disciplined methodology, using techniques and sources that are accessible to others in the field.

This bold claim is what leads Windschuttle, the apostle of history as science to his disastrous excursion into the history and philosophy of science. After David Stove, Windschuttle takes Kuhn, Popper et al to task for using causal [sic] expressions (such as 'is defeated', 'is removed') as if they were logical expressions, such as 'is refuted' (p 201). This is shortly followed by a spectacular howler (the first of several):

... By applying Stove's distinctions to the most common example used by the radical sceptics, we can put these myths in their place. Even though the Copernicus [1473 - 1543] -Galileo-Kepler theory that the Earth and the planets orbit the Sun has now been replaced (a sociological concept [sic]) by far more sophisticated and adventurous Einsteinian theories of cosmology, the central findings of the seventeenth century [sic] thesis have not been refuted (a logical concept) by the newer theories. The planets still orbit the Sun, just as the scientists of the Renaissance discovered 350 years ago ... [my emphasis]

Here Windschuttle has tripped over his own petard. Earlier in the chapter he has denounced Kuhn, Popper et al for:

... their attempt to resolve questions of logical value by appealing to matters of historical fact.

There's also an obvious logical howler here: if modern cosmology fails to refute Copernicus, then equally, Copernican cosmology failed to refute Ptolemaic cosmology, or Tycho Brahe's alternative geocentric cosmology.

Reading further in Windschuttle's defence (after Stove) of Knowledge accumulation, we find this bold statement:

Even if we concede to Feyerabend that Einstein's theory does not share a single statement with its predecessor, this is not an argument against the accumulation of knowledge. Einstein, as a matter of historical fact, wrote his theory of relativity in response to Newton's mechanics.

I'm not sure where Windschuttle got this historical fact from, but it's a gross oversimplification: for one thing it ignores the importance of James Clark Maxwell's electrodynamics to Einstein's theory: it was from Maxwell, not Newton, that Einstein got the idea that the speed of light was constant in all frames of reference.

One last example (because I'm getting as bored by this as you probably are by now): at the bottom of page 202, we get this:

Another furphy in this debate is the claim that all observation statements are already preladen with theory. Now, if all observations were laden with theory, we could ask of any observation which particular theory it is laden with. Once we do this, it becomes apparent that the claim cannot be sustained. Consider the case of Galileo's observation through a telescope of the planet Jupiter and its moons in 1609. ... would anyone imagine that if a supporter of the old Ptolemaic theory of astronomy had looked through a telescope at the same time he would have seen anything different? Would we expect the Ptolemaic theorist to see the moons not in orbit but roaming the skies above Jupiter as his own theory might have expected ... ?

Once again Windschuttle is resorting to historical example as a substitute for logical argument. Worse, as a soi-pissant historian, he is ignoring the social, intellectual and above all technological context in which Galileo made his observations. Windschuttle also conflates what Galileo saw with what he inferred from what he saw. It's not as if Galileo pointed his telescope at Jupiter and saw the moons whizzing around the planet at amazing speed. A Ptolemaist would have seen precisely what Galileo saw through his telescope: most likely a vague greenish dot (Jupiter) with some smaller dots (the moons) around it. What he might infer from that observation is anyone's guess: possibly that Jupiter was falling apart and that the end of the world was nigh. As most of Galileo's contemporaries preferred Tycho Brahe's cosmology, the point is moot anyway.

In his introduction (p 4), Windschuttle tells us how he intends to defend history from the murderous hordes of literary critics and social theorists:

Apart from the first, introductory chapter of this book, each of the others can be regarded as a road test of one or more of the latest season's theoretical models to see, first, how it handles the rougher terrain of actual historical subject matter, and second, how it stands up to competition over the same ground from those empirical jalopies that the new crew want to consign to the junk yard.

I think Keith drove his own anti-theoretical Land Cruiser into a tree and wrote it off.

Letters From Mum

Thanks to this AM report on the procedures involved in the Governor-General stepping aside, I learnt a new phrase the other day: Letters Patent. Apparently, Peter Hollingworth can't stand aside as Governor-General until John Howard gets her Maj to change the Letters Patent. It reminds me of the letter from mum I forged when I was in 5th Form, to give myself permission to skip Religious Instruction. From memory, that one went something like this:

Dear Petit-Bourgeois Lackey of the Capitalist Expropriators,

I demand that you immediately desist from poisoning my son's mind with reactionary religious dogma. His father and I both agree that he gets no educational benefit from weekly doses of the opium of the masses.

Yours,

Gummo's Mum

According to AM, the process works something like this. First, the PM has to write to the queen:

Dear Mrs Battenburg-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,

Please change the Letters Patent to allow Peter to take the day off from being Governor-General as he is in bad odour with the Australian media and the Australian people.

Yours,

John Winston Howard

Then the Queen writes back:

ELIZABETH THE SECOND, by the Grace of God Queen of Australia and Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth,

Greeting:

WHEREAS, by the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, certain powers, functions and authorities are vested in a Governor-General appointed by the Queen to be Her Majesty's representative in the Commonwealth:

AND WHEREAS, by Letters Patent dated 29 October 1900, as amended, provision was made in relation to the office of Governor-General:

AND WHEREAS, by section 4 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth, the provisions of the Constitution relating to the Governor-General extend and apply to the Governor-General for the time being, or such person as the Queen may appoint to administer the Government of the Commonwealth:

AND WHEREAS We are desirous of making new provisions relating to the office of Governor-General and for persons appointed to administer the Government of the Commonwealth:

NOW THEREFORE, by these Letters Patent under Our Sign Manual and the Great Seal of Australia-

The Governor General can take a few weeks off while this unholy mess is sorted out.

GIVEN at Our Court

at Balmoral
on 21 August 1984

By Her Majesty's Command,

(JOHN HOWARD)

Prime Minister

PS: Don't forget to publish this in the Commonwealth Gazette.

PPS: Try not to let this happen again.

This is going to take a few days, so in the meantime, Peter Hollingworth will just have to bunk off and hide behind the shelter sheds. Which is what I did, after my brilliant forgery had been exposed.