PPP

This is your public-private partnership – the public purse lines the pockets of the bourgeoisie. According to this article, the Sydney Harbour tunnel cost $550 million to build. Rather than pay this money, the shifty NSW government of the day got a private company to build it, to operate as a toll road, to recoup vast profits from the users. However, just to make sure they'd build it, the government removed the element of risk on which capitalist enterprise supposedly thrives, and guaranteed not simply the investment, but the profits.

What is the point of such a deal? Well, it means that the state can avoid an initial outlay. But it also means that they are deliberately foregoing a revenue stream that they know will be profitable. Since it will be run as a near-monopoly (actually in competition only with the government's own harbour bridge), there is no likely advantage to consumers or profitability having it privately-run. It's thus simply short-termism.

The claim that the tunnel cannot generate enough revenue to run is total nonsense – the problem is not that the tunnel is not financially viable, but that it's not profitable, that it cannot make the giant returns required by finance capital for them to get out of bed in the morning.

Why the short-termism? Two reasons: firstly neoliberal ideology, and secondly the shambolic Australian federalism. The influence of the first should be obvious enough: cutting taxes is good, private industry is good. The second is less noticed, but operative: the state of NSW is hard-pressed to afford serious infrastructure investment. Nationally, however, it becomes possible for the government to invest $1 billion dollars in an infrastructure project in Sydney, on the understanding that the next time it has money it'll go to Melbourne. To some extent the existing federal government already does operate like this, but imagine what it could do if it had all the money in one pot, and if proportional representation cut out the pork-barrelling.

The strong arm of internet censorship

Two incidents in a short period of time seem to presage things to come with new internet laws; these pertain to existing laws about the depiction of children on the internet.

A 60 year-old Queensland man arrested for uploading an already widely disseminated video of a man playing with a baby in a way that is dangerous, although not evidently harmful to the baby and asexual.

A NSW man is convicted for possessing (not disseminating) a video depicting Bart and Lisa Simpson engaged in sexual acts, which is covered by the child pornography laws according to the presiding judge, though he sensibly rules that this is not as serious as the depiction of actual children. Nevertheless, the very fact that the mere possession of a single video of actual children is said by this judge to warrant incarceration seems deeply OTT. I could right now (I presume) with a few clicks and keystrokes find and download an image of such actual child pornography, possibly in error. The mere possession would then potentially earn me a jail sentence, despite the fact that there would be no link between my actions and any abuse depicted in the video.

Appeal for contributions

Though I never intentionally stopped maintaining this site, I must concede that it has ceased to function in fact. It was never my intention to maintain this site by myself – it began as a group blog with the intention of the group of bloggers expanding, but it's dwindled to no-one. I believe that this blog is still necessary, and I hope that someone will put their hand up to revitalise it with contributions. I am still willing to operate it in an editorial capacity. Anyone in any way interested should contact auswatch at gmail.com

NT Occupation furthers cultural genocide by using law to smash traditional cultural arrangements, does not prosecute paedophiles.

Garnaut

Condemnation by climate scientists of the Garnaut report is well placed.

Garnaut is an economist, and as such is concerned with the stability of the economic system. He recognises climate change, and tries to put in place a feasible plan for reduction of human activity related to warming.

The scientists however deal in objective reality: we need to radically reduce emissions now, or we're going to die. You can talk about whether other countries should be reducing their output and what is achievable, but all the while we're literally destroying the ecosphere. Preventing this destruction is something in the order of an absolute: we just need to do it, and other costs pale in comparison.

APEC exclusion lists

We are not surprised by the nature of the APEC exclusion lists, namely that they were devised with the purpose of preventing demonstrations, not at preventing riots or terrorism. Actually, probably the most surprising thing about the news story is that the lists were obtainable under freedom of information protocols at all, which in Australia are notoriously unfree. Of course, the names had been removed from the lists, but I'm still surprised they didn't manage to keep them hidden for decades.

Quotes on mandatory detention

From an article in the SMH today:*

Labor MP Michael Danby on the $396 million Christmas Island detention centre: "giant Liberal steel prophylactic, a rusting stalag in the Christmas Island jungle and a monument to the folly of the previous government".

Deputy PM Julia Gillard: "We've always said that if people arrived unauthorised, they will have to be detained for health, security and identity checks." (This is a pretty minimal detention regime, more akin to mandatory quarantine. However, it's premises are dubious. Why do unauthorized arrivals have to be detained for such checks? Plenty of people can enter Australia without health checks and with only the security and identity checks in the immigration and customs halls in the airport terminal. The reason to detain immigrants is not for such tests, but precisely to prevent their entry into Australia. As such, the process must lead either to deportation or indefinite detention.)

Former detainee, Morteza Poorvadi: "The Iranian government could break our bones but not break our spirit; we were fighting for some reason. In Australia they break your spirit, they make you feel you are nothing, not in control of your life, they tell you when to sleep, eat, watch TV, what time to smoke. They say you are nothing and if you don't like it, just go back."

*The weird tagline to this article is "The question is not whether we detain asylum seekers, but on what terms, writes Connie Levett." Weird, because Levett does not phrase the debate in this scurrilous way – rather, it is phrased this way by the former detainee at the heart of the article, Morteza Poorvadi, and by the federal parliamentary inquiry, according to Levett.

Right to annoy constitutionally protected

Australian federal judicial authorities have struck down the outlawing of annoying behaviour towards World Youth Day pilgrims in NSW. This is a significant, but of course incomplete, victory. Political activity that disrupts physically ('inconveniences') the operation of the shebang is remains illegal.

Update: Interesting article in the Herald today by two UNSW legal scholars. Their claim is that the judgment is really anomalous: it's based only on the claim that parliament somehow did not intend to pass an element of the legislation it did pass. As such, it's really a dubious judgment, one that is more by accident than by any check or balance other than the sheer existence of judicial oversight. This really boils down to something that everyone should know, although probably rather few do, namely that there is no overarching protection of freedom of speech in Australia.