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Category: Government

02/04/2023

NSW Election Epilogue

I April 2023

The NSW election is over, with the result we largely expected, Labor victory, but not enough for an absolute majority. I had hoped that they would get fewer seats so as to have more discipline from the cross bench, but they took a small target strategy and promised no privatisation and some key wage rises, so Minns did quite well. It remains to be seen if Labor has shed the fundamental dishonesty of the Obeid era and the long history of being captured by property developers and the gambling industry. Minns weak policy on the latter is cause for concern- the public are ready for serious action on the harms of gambling, but the chance may be squandered by Minns. The Australian gambling lobby are our equivalent of the US gun lobby. If Minns simply increases their taxes, it will merely increase the State’s dependence on gambling revenue and lessen the possibility of future reform.

The key structural problem of Australia’s finances remains that the States are responsible for providing the majority of services, but the Commonwealth collects the taxes and solves its own budget problems by not giving the States the money that they need, so States budgets are cobbled together with stamp duties, gambling taxes, and ‘dividends’ from State-owned enterprises like Sydney Water that have to get a profit and pay it to the government, (which boils down to water rates having a tax component).

Allegra Spender, the Federal Independent for Wentworth in Sydney’s affluent Eastern Suburbs, held a Tax Summit on 31 March as she correctly recognises that we need to address tax revenue as the Federal government seems paralysed even to get minor reforms to superannuation on people with over $3million, or cancel the silly Stage 3 tax cuts which were merely a Morrison promise to stave off election defeat, and then matched by Labor in a silly ‘race to the bottom’ for taxes, government revenue (and services). Meanwhile there is a housing crisis, caused by negative gearing pushing property prices up, then landlords trying to get a return as interest rates rise. The fact that reforms on issue like this have stalled shows the extent to which the Liberals are rule from the grave by making silly promises, wedging Labor to promise to match them, then criticising ‘broken election promises’ when Labor tries to act. Federal Labor, who lost the unlosable 2019 election to Morrison’s scare tactics are as spooked as rabbits in the headlight. Hence the importance of Spender’s Summit.

Perrottet spruiked his government’s credentials as builders of infrastructure, though his concept of ‘recycled assets’ seemed to be borrowing using the government’s credit rating to build underground freeways to give to the private sector, so we can all drive cars and pay tolls to monopoly suppliers for years. The whole scheme was conceptually flawed. The money should have been used for a good underground Metro system. Now Minns want to cap tolls for citizens, which really mean just the government endless paying the monopoly companies they have given the freeways to.

Perrottet seems to have lessened what could have been a rout by drawing attention to infrastructure as if it is a long-term good no matter what it costs and no matter what sort it is. He also tapped into the gambling issue, which Minns was weak on, but did not seem to press this advantage fully. One Liberal I spoke to was very critical of Perrottet for this policy and said that it did not have widespread support among the Liberal Right. Perhaps this was why Minns was not pursued more energetically. The general atmosphere of decadence, corruption, tiredness and the inability even to preselect candidates until the last minute seems to have less attention than might have been expected. The swing against the Liberals was 5%, but the Nationals only 0.9%.

Minns small target policy with wage increases for essential service workers, ceasing privatisations, particularly Sydney Water and subsidies to residents for tolls seem to have helped him. But the swing to Labor was only 3.8% while the swing away from parties to Independents was almost as large, 3.5%.

In terms of the overall percentages, using ABC News figures available today with 79% counted, the Liberals got 27% and Nationals 8.7% for a total Coalition of 35.7%, Labor got 37.1% and the Greens 9.4% (down 0.2%). The Shooters Farmers and Fishers got 1.5% (down 1.9), but it must be noted that two of their lower house MPs Philip Donato in Orange and Helen Dalton in Murray, left the party and were re-elected as Independents. One Nation at 1.8% increased slightly, 0.7%.

The major parties, the Coalition and Labor together polled 72.8% of the vote yet got 81/95 seats – 85%. The current preferential voting system always favours the major parties and optional preferential worsens this effective gerrymander.

There are a number of seats where the optional preferential system has resulted in a major party winning when it would not have done so if preferences were compulsory. It is because the smaller parties exhaust and the candidate with the larger primary vote wins. In the Willoughby by-election when Gladys Berejeklian resigned a little-known Independent, Larissa Penn, would have won on preferences if the exhausted votes followed the pattern of the ones that did not exhaust. That would have made a big difference to the minority government. It will be interesting to analyse this whole election. It might be noted that NSW is the only State with this inequitable system, which was introduced by Neville Wran in 1980 in reforms which otherwise allowed redistributions for equity in the size of electorates (The Constitution (Amendment) Bill, Parliamentary Electorates and Elections (Amendment) Bill- Act 39 of 1979).

Anthony Green’s blog notes that historically the Liberals have done better than Labor under optional preferential voting, but that Independents have surprisingly done even better. But when the Independents have won, it has often been in safe Liberal seats. Currently with the Greens and the majority of smaller parties favouring Labor they may be willing to contemplate returning compulsory preferential voting to NSW.

The other important feature of this election was the Teals, the name the media gave to relatively conservative independents who wanted to do more for the environment and integrity in Parliament. I have to confess to an interest here as I helped my local Teal, Victoria Davidson. The Teals won 6 seats in the Federal Election in 2022, all with women in relatively safe Liberal seats. It was taken to mean that the Liberals had moved too far to the Right, had moved away from a reasonable climate policy, and had not preselected enough women.

A number of Teals ran in the November Victorian election without success. This may have been because the Liberals in Victoria ran a very negative campaign that made the main issue the harm done to Victoria by the COVID lockdown mandated by Premier Daniel Andrews. The election turned into a referendum of Dan Andrews’ leadership, in which he triumphed and the Teals did not take seats from the fading Liberals. It was generally assumed in the major media that the Teals would similarly fall short in NSW, particularly due to optional preferential voting.

In my Teal seat of Lane Cove, the candidate had been selected by a group that derived from the Voices of North Sydney, group pf experts who had tried to influence town planning and been heard politely and ignored by Councils. So a sub-group decided to find, select and help people who had not previously been active in politics to stand as their Independents. This was similar to the genesis of other Teal candidates. There was considerable energy remaining after the success of Kylea Tink in the seat of North Sydney and this spawned the candidatures of Victoria Davidson in Lane Cove and Helen Conway in North Shore. Larissa Penn, buoyed by her near-success in the by-election stood, but was not considered a Teal.

The key feature of these campaigns that did not get much a run in the major media was the degree of enthusiasm and organisation that they generated. Victoria Davidson had 250 volunteers and door-knocked over 6000 households. A large number of homes displaying corflutes and a new publicity technique of waving corflutes at suburban intersections helped name recognition to be built quickly and with the low budget imposed by the NSW legislation. The Liberals could not hope to match the number and energy of the Independent campaigns. What they did was claim that Simon Holmes a Court was funding it all and the Independents were either crook or dupes. They used the incumbents electoral and postage allowance at the last moment they were allowed to, just before the polls were declared, and they put up many signs saying the ‘You only have to Vote 1’, which looked like electoral messages, though they had a small Liberal logo in the bottom corner.

The major media merely noted that no Teals were elected and went on about the progressive count to see if Labor could get an absolute majority. Ross Gittins in the SMH of 29 March however commented that it was ‘Voting out our political duopoly’. He recognised what many commentators have not, that a large chunk of the population have lost faith in the major political parties, which is why so many volunteers can be found for Teals and other Independents in upper middle class electorates. The figures in the 3 State seats which are part of the North Sydney Federal electorate are illustrative. The Liberals won all three.

Willoughby
Candidate	Party	Percentage
Sarah Griffin	Labor	19.7
Edmund McGrath	Greens	7.51
Larissa Penn	Independent	27.15
Michael Want	Sustainable Aust.	1.73
Tim James	Liberal	43.91

Lane Cove
Candidate	Party	Percentage
Victoria Davidson	Independent	20.88
Anthony Roberts	Liberal	45.43
Penny Pedersen	Labor	23.68
Heather Armstrong	Greens	7.85
Ben Wise	Sustainable Aust.	2.16

North Shore
Candidate	Party	Percentage
Michael Antares	IMOP	1.61
Helen Conway	Independent	22.48
Geoff Santer	Labor	16.8
Lachlan Commins	Sustainable Aust.	1.78
James Mullan	Greens	10.53
Felicity Wilson	Liberal	44.66
Victoria Walker	Independent	2.14

As can be seen, the combined primary vote of the Independent, Labor and the Greens can be compared with the Liberal primary votes as follows:

Willoughby (27.51 + 19.7 + 7.51) = 54.71 v. Liberals 43.91

Lane Cove (20.88 + 23.68 + 7.85) = 52.41 v Liberals 45.43

North Shore (22.48 + 16.8 + 10.53) = 49.81 v Liberals 44.66

It might be noted that in Willoughby and Lane Cove there were quite enough preferences to have changed the results, and in North Shore it may have needed the small parties and the other Independent, but preferences that did not exhaust could easily have changed that result also.

It is important that the Independents and Greens try to influence the Minns government to improve the voting system by introducing compulsory preferential voting in NSW.

The idea that a political duopoly is needed for stability in government is complete nonsense. The NZ electoral system was changed to ‘top up’ Parliamentary seats so that any party that gets over 4% of the vote gets extra seats so that the percentage of seats reflects as accurately as possible the percentage of votes that they got. The German parliament has a system where no party can get an absolute majority, so there is a period of negotiation after each election as coalitions are put together. The German constitution was deliberately written by Winston Churchill so that a single party could never get an absolute majority and Hitler could never rise again.

The Swiss government has 3 levels, similar to ours, and tries to make decisions at the lowest level possible (unlike Australia). They also have their politicians part-time and limited to 2 terms so that they retain good connections with the ordinary people and their superannuation is to return to their pre-Parliament job. They have a number of parties and the Parliament’s decisions can be overturned by a plebiscite with vote held every 3 months.

There are plenty of alternatives to the duopoly system that is not working very well in Australia, the US or the UK, and the success of the Teals and Independents suggest that there is a nascent move for change in Australia. The alternatives need to be publicised so a serious discussion can begin.

31/03/2023

The Arms Industry Distorts US and the World’s Priorities

31 March 2023

The word ‘defence’ seems innocuous enough, and discussion about is generally starts with a diatribe about the threat of Russia or China.

But just as the tobacco industry was responsible for the smoking epidemic, so the Arms industry is responsible for military spending and the consequent need to have wars to justify that expenditure.

The US has had continuous wars for many years; when one ends, another starts. The wars are not because of a threat to the US, but represent the US exerting global influence, and selling weapons to itself and others.

US foreign policy is hugely affected by its military and a perceived need for global hegemony. There is pressure on countries that seem susceptible (like Australia) to buy weapons systems (like AUKUS) to fit into this hegemonic world view. How long this can be afforded by US taxpayers is a key question; the Roman Empire imploded when its tax base could not pay for the mercenary armies that guarded its frontiers.

A list of some of the wars is; The Cold War 1945-1989, Korean War 1950-55, Vietnam 1955-75, Lebanon 1982-84, Libya 1986, Panama invasion 1989-90, 1^st Gulf War 1990-91, Somalia 1992-95 and 2007, Bosnia and Croatia 1992-95, Kosovo 1998-99, Iraq War 2003-2010, Afghan war 2001-2021, North West Pakistan 2004-2018, Libya 2011 and 2015-19, Iraq intervention against ISIL 2014-2021, and now Ukraine 2022-.

Obviously one can argue about the merits of any of these wars, but the success rate of them is not good from a US foreign policy perspective. The returns to the arms industry, however, are always positive.

But the opportunity cost of these wars in terms of the possibility of diplomatic settlement or the use of monies to address the problems in the warring parties is considerable. The loss of social services and infrastructure to the US population is probably the most critical part from a political level. Inequality and polarisation in the US are increasing with consequent social disharmony.

The arms industry has to be reined in. Its subsidies to the Australian War Memorial have tended to make this a temple of militarism rather than a place for regret and remembrance.

There was a book, ‘The Secret State- Australia’s Spy Industry’, by Richard Hall which came out in 1978 and compared the reports of the intelligence agencies of 25 years previously with the current affairs commentaries of the major daily newspapers of the same time. (The 25 years was the time for the release of the spy agency documents). The rants of the intelligence agencies and their fear-mongering were almost comic and the predictions of the major newspaper editorials were largely proved correct.

It seems that as ‘Security studies’ replace ‘History ‘ in university courses likely to result in graduates getting jobs, the people who teach world events are changing their perspectives, and not for the better. Our current policies with AUKUS would seem to derive from a believing a current spy’s paranoid world view. The Arms Industry is to be feared and opposed in Australia as well as the US.

Congress Has Been Captured by the Arms Industry

31/03/2023

UN Security Council Rejects an Investigation into Nordstream Pipeline Sabotage

29 March 2023

On 27 March the UN Security Council rejected a Russian motion to have a UN investigation into the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines on 22 September 2022.

Interestingly there were 3 votes in favour, Brazil, Russia and China and 12 Abstentions. No votes against! The abstentions were from the US, UK, France, Gabon, Switzerland, Ghana, Ecuador, Malta, Japan, Albania and the United Arab Emirates. The reason mostly given for the abstentions was that there are already investigations going on by Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

China’s representative pointed out that the UN investigation could encompass and cooperate with all these, and that blocking the Council from launching and investigation only raises suspicions that ‘something is being hidden’. He tactfully did not say that any national investigation would have to be filtered through that country’s foreign policy considerations.

Of course, the elephant in the room was the report published on February 8 by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh which claims that U.S. President Joe Biden and his senior White House staff ordered the Pentagon to take out the natural gas pipeline that runs along the Baltic Sea bed from Russia to Germany.

https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15243.doc.htm

15/03/2023

Fracking for Gas Destroys Farmland

15 March 2023

Some years ago, I was a farmer in New Zealand. I met a cashed-up American who was in NZ trying to buy farmland. I asked him why he was NZ rather than Australia. He said, ‘Australia is fuc*ed , mate. The governments have let them frack it all, and soon they won’t be able to farm’.

He was from the US and had seen it happen there. The problem is that politicians are mostly lawyers and accountants and do not know what they do not know. Perhaps they are easily conned by lobbyists in suits. The fact is that the surface of the earth is like a layered cake with rock strata that stop water simply going to the lowest level. If an underlying impermeable level is broken, the water which may have been kept in the overlying soil drains to a deeper level. So big mines or fracking, which means fracturing and cracking the stratum, allows gas to be released upwards, but also allows the water to flow downwards. This leaves the topsoil without water, which eventually will turn it to sand as the organic matter dies.

The nett effect is that the gas is released once, but the water escapes forever. The gas company makes its money and moves on- the yield of the land is forever damaged. The farmer is the first economic casualty, national production notices it more slowly. The chemicals used in fracking also pollute the groundwater, so bores used for stock produce undrinkable water. There is no method for removing these chemicals from the groundwater.

The advocacy group, ‘Lock the Gate’, are doing their best but are still losing the political battle and the gas companies are still expanding activities. Some of the best agricultural land is the Darling Downs in Queensland and the Liverpool Plains in NSW, which are both under threat. What is also likely to happen is that they will frack near the Great Artesian Basin, which is a huge water body under a third of Australia. It is currently unpolluted by fracking chemicals, but if it becomes polluted, which seems inevitable, there will no usable water in huge areas of arid Australia. It will be a national ecological disaster.

The words of the American entrepreneur are ringing in my ears.

Farmers betrayed by government, Shell, PetroChina “fairytales” as prime land damaged by gas fracking

15/03/2023

Keating Attacks the AUKUS Submarine Deal at the National Press Club

15 March 2023

Paul Keating attacked the AUKUS submarine deal at a conference at the National Press Club today. He was at his scathing best, and put together the arguments well, as he always does.

In essence he said that a scare campaign had demonised China with a lot of Cold War rhetoric from the ‘spooks’ and convinced Morrison, who was always happy for a headline to get some publicity for his flailing government.

Labor was scared to losing the election by being ‘soft on defence’ so went along with whatever the Liberals wanted. So Labor has been conned by the spooks and the Liberals as well.

Keating says we have a defence policy, rather than a foreign policy, and Senator Wong running around the Pacific ‘handing out money with a lei around her neck’ is not a foreign policy.

The US wants bases here, to lock Australia into their side in the confrontation with China and to sell expensive submarines. As Keating points out, at the circus in San Diego, only one country was actually paying- Australia.

He also ridiculed Australia for involving Britain, pointing out that in 1942 they left Singapore and in 1968 announced an ‘East of Suez’ policy that meant that they would not do much here. They then joined the EU, leaving the Commonwealth to its economic fate, and would have stayed with the EU, but for the mistake of Brexit, created by Boris Johnson et al who had silly dreams of bygone Empires. Since the UK has left the EU they are trying to have a ‘global strategy’, but they do not have much choice. But this is not economic relevance, and Australia is just being silly to go back to there for its military security.

As far as the submarines are concerned, he points out that the cost of 9 nuclear submarines would pay for about 45 conventional ones. If one about 1 in 3 can be at sea at the same time, which is what most navies manage, that means 3 nuclear at sea rather than 15 conventional ones. And even if the 15 have to surface, this is only about every 3 days if they are cruising, and there are 15 for an enemy to worry about. The nuclear subs are 8,000 tonnes as opposed to 4,000 tons, so are likely to be able to be found almost as easily as the conventional ones as detection technology evolves. They will also only carry the same torpedoes as the conventional ones, so their strike power will be 3 v 15.

Some years ago, I read an excellent book, ‘The Secret State’ by Richard Hall published in 1978 which looked at the reports from the spy agencies during the Cold War in the 1950 and 1960s and contrasted these with the conventional media editorials and opinion pieces of the time. The spy analyses were full of paranoia and worries about the Russian threat if we did not immediately spend a lot of money on defence. The major newspapers looked at what was happening and made more sanguine comments about economic and trade relations. Years later, things had panned out much as was expected in the major media. The spy scare stories were almost absurdly laughable. It seems that in this case the spies have convinced Morrison, who has taken the Liberals, now Labor down this absurd path that we and our children will pay for.

The Liberals have said that they will be bi-partisan as Labor makes budget cuts to pay for it. What will go? Stage 3 tax cuts? Jobseeker pay rises? Pensions? Medicare? NDIS? Subsidies to private schools or private health insurance? Tax exemptions to religious organisations or Super contributions? The Liberals were happy to cut all social welfare, but no doubt having made the initial commitment to bipartisanship will still criticise any actual cuts as they come along.

The Chinese, presumably will now continue to make our trade difficult. They are a rising power that is unlikely to invade us, and we should work within this framework. It is called realism.

Here is an article on SBS: ww.sbs.com.au/news/article/former-colonial-master-paul-keating-launches-astonishing-attack-on-labor-aukus-deal/we38qsi9s

Here is the interview on youtube:

08/03/2023

The Silicosis Epidemic- A Symptom of Wider Regulatory Failure

Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans 28 February 2023

The epidemic of silicosis amongst tradespeople working with manufactured stone was predictable, preventable, and an illustration of a broken OHS system across NSW and the rest of Australia.

Until 2011, NSW had a workplace health and safety regulator whose statutory role was to “promote the prevention of injuries and diseases at the workplace and the development of healthy and safe workplaces”. The WorkCover Authority of NSW included specialist sentinel groups that researched, monitored, inspected and educated workplaces for dust diseases, farm and rural health (including pesticides) and noise, amongst other matters. Crucially, WorkCover also employed industrial hygienists and an occupational medicine group. These groups enabled the agency to anticipate many problems before they manifested in the state. The current furore over manufactured stone using powdered crystalline silica would probably have been averted if the dust diseases group were still in place.

For example, manufactured stone was previously produced in NSW, but made with powdered talc or limestone in a fibreglass matrix. The Dust Disease group discovered an employer using the cheaper silica flour and immediately put a stop to that. Similar proactive actions by this group halted the importation of mineral-bearing products adulterated by asbestos, such as brake shoes and gaskets, before they became a problem. Issues raised by the increasing use of carbon fibre and nano particulates would also have been within the purview of the Dust Disease group.

However, following the election of the coalition in 2011, the NSW government’s focus shifted to the financial losses of the workers compensation scheme. The insurance and workers compensation schemes were split from WorkCover with the creation of iCare and the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA). Workcover also lost its independent source of premium income.

Limited funding for the remaining inspectorate and other functions such as promoting workplace injury prevention now came from Consolidated Revenue, set by NSW Treasury. Over the next few years WorkCover’s management under John Watson (the generic manager, not the Labor politician) shed many of its professionally qualified staff. New inspectors were less qualified than previously, a rule book replaced comprehensive understanding of occupational health and safety, workplace inspections decreased and in-depth investigations virtually vanished.

WorkCover’s system of Authorised Medical Practitioners, which trained GPs in occupational medicine across the state, was completely abolished. The excellent training manual for AMP’s, better than most textbooks, was written and maintained by Dr Kelvin Wooller at WorkCover. When he left, the regulator would not allow Dr Wooller to continue using the manual to train NSW medical practitioners but did nothing with it. Expertise in occupational medicine has consequently decreased in the wider medical community, making it difficult for many employers to find “a registered medical practitioner with experience in health monitoring”, as specified by the Work Health and Safety Regulation, and for workers to get a definitive diagnosis and compensation for workplace illnesses and diseases.

WorkCover was abolished in 2015, replaced by SafeWork NSW, which is now part of the Department of Customer Service, the department that is all things to all people. The government seems not to understand what its function should be.

The regulation of workplace health and safety in NSW should be handled by vigilant sentinel occupational disease groups to provide workers with proactive protection and help keep workplaces safe. A core group of government-employed professionals is necessary as a repository for learnings and information that would otherwise be lost. This is the OH&S philosophy that drives other countries.

NSW has few workplace inspections, almost no penalties for appalling workplace practices and a cost-minimisation approach to the treatment of injured workers as the government reduces the premiums of workers compensation to make NSW ‘business-friendly’ at the cost of workers’ lives. There are currently a lot of inspections of benchtop manufacturers and suggested and overdue bans of manufactured stone with silica, but reactive activity in response to a significant epidemic has not fixed the systemic problem.

This needs to be an election issue in NSW. It should also be noted that John Howard’s similar 2007 changes to the Federal government regulator –the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission, (WorkSafe Australia), now Safe Work Australia –meant that that policy/advisory body also has far fewer personnel, less expertise and a less pro-active approach. The perception of OHS as merely slowing industry’s “progress” has damaged the process nationally in a similar way to that of NSW. The Federal government also needs to act in this area.

This article was published in John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations 28 February 2023

08/03/2023

An End to the War in Ukraine?

3 March 2023

There is a still a cheerful assumption that Russia can be driven out of Ukraine, and this is accompanied by copious rhetoric about Putin’s unprovoked aggression, the need to fight for democracy, and a dismissal of his claim that it is an existential issue for Russia.

It is also hopefully assumed that the war will end when Putin falls, but that fall is extremely unlike.

Putin sees the war as an existential issue for Russia. Whether this is right or wrong, it is certainly an existential issue for him, and he needs either a victory or a settlement that saves face.

It must be noted in terms of strength that Russia has more than three times the population of Ukraine (146 v 41 million) and the per capita income in 2021 of Russia was almost three times that of Ukraine ($US12,259 v $4,594- UN figures). The casualty figures available are decidedly (and no doubt deliberately) vague.

The Chinese have a 12 point plan that, strangely, has not been seriously discussed in the Australian mass media. It was hard even to find the plan, though there was plenty of commentary that it was vague in detail, paid only lip service to territorial integrity and did not condemn Russia. A copy of it is at [1] or [2]. This is at least a starting point.

An article by Jeffery Sachs arguing for peace is below some of my comments.

Some background issues:

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and James Baker, the then US Secretary of State is said to have promised Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand to the east if Russia accepted German reunification. Russia also agreed to independence for Ukraine, despite the fact that its base was in Crimea.

After the Soviet collapse the East European countries flocked to join NATO, which accepted them. The list is extensive: the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania; from old Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Even Albania, which had been the most hard-line communist country in Europe, joined NATO.

Georgia was invaded by Russia in 2008 easily when its government tried to assert its authority over the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which were demanding autonomy and were recognised by Russia. The Russian invasion went beyond those provinces but did not occupy the capital, Tbilisi[3]. Western reaction was muted, which is said to be the reason that Putin was so emboldened and regarded the West as decadent. Georgia was Western-oriented and had applied to join NATO.

Ukraine wanted to join NATO and since the invasion, Finland and Sweden have also applied.

From a Russian perspective, NATO had been encroaching east. There had been a pro-Russian government in Ukraine up to 2014 under President Viktor Yanukovych but when he did not sign a treaty between Ukraine and the EU there was the Maidan revolution in February 2014, probably helped by the CIA. Petro Poroshenko was elected President.

The provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, collectively called the Donbas, and Transnistra in Moldova are significantly Russian oriented, and Russia supports their requests for autonomy and their separatist movements. Russian troops are ‘peacekeeping’ in Moldova as they were in the Georgian provinces. Whether these provinces want to be part of Ukraine or part of Russian is hard to determine, particularly now, but one might suspect that there is considerable division of views and that they would prefer local autonomy to the highest degree possible rather than a distant government of either flavour. A number of polls in 2014 came to different conclusions[4]. A 2020 poll showed primary concern was for local issues and fear of war[5]. Ukraine was having trouble dealing with the separatist movements before Russia invaded, so there are parallels with Georgia there. Perhaps because of the Ukrainian military’s reluctance to fight Ukrainians, the Azov Brigade[6], a right-wing privately funded paramilitary group initially did most of the fighting against the Russian –backed separatists, which allowed Russia to claim it was fighting Nazis who had killed pro-Russian Ukrainians. The actions of the Azov brigade were not popular, yet they were somewhat controversially absorbed into the Ukrainian army[7].

After the Crimean invasion, separatists seized control in Luhansk and Donetsk and declared their independence in May 2014. There was a civil war there, which led to the Minsk agreements in September 2014 and February 2015 that led to a ceasefire with the separatists having control of about a third of the provinces, with the objective to return the region to Ukraine but with significant local autonomy[8]. Russia recognised the independence of the breakaway regions in February 2022, just before it invaded.

The Russians invaded Crimea in 2014 in response to the change of government in Kiev. The provincial Parliament in Crimea was pro-Russian, and initially Putin claimed that the invasion there was from Crimea itself. There was little voting in Donetsk and Luhansk as the Kiev government did not have good control there. While ‘territorial integrity’ is taken to mean existing borders, Kiev’s demand for this means that Russia would have to agree to its naval base being isolated, and Kiev having another attempt at suppressing the pro-Russian separatist provinces on Russia’s border.

Russia currently occupies about 20% of Ukraine’s territory and now has a land corridor in the south west of the country that links it to its key naval base in Crimea. The only other link it had was via the 19km Kersh Strait Bridge, which is 19km long. The bridge was planned after the 2014 Ukrainian coup and was completed in 2018. Clearly if the government in Ukraine is hostile to Russia, it does not want to have its major warm water naval base only accessible by a bridge, and would never concede Crimea.

The US arms industry, which is immensely influential in US foreign policy, is the chief beneficiary of the war, and President Biden has pledged support for as long as it takes. The Republicans, however control the Senate, and have an increasing isolationist voice. The US President has quite a lot of discretion in waging wars, but if the US economy goes into recession there is a significant chance that the Republicans may win the 2024 Presidential election. That is quite soon in terms of Russian war thinking.

For Americans, war is an inconvenience, fought overseas. Russians have quite a different history. In WW2 Russia lost far more people than the Germans and all the Allies in Europe combined, 26 million, or 13.7% of the population[9]. Russians see WW2 as one between themselves and Germany and were very critical of the rest of Allies for not helping them earlier. The long siege of Stalingrad ended in February 1943 and the Russian armies were advancing for 16 months before the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944. So if Putin can convince Russians that it is an existential issue their expectations of what has to be sacrificed will be quite different to the US.

Volodymyr Zelensky was a comedian whose show ‘Servant of the People’ had him as a history teacher who accidentally became Prime Minister because a student filmed his rant about corruption and it went viral. He was honest and the satire on corruption was a huge hit because Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries. He was elected with his party having the same name as his comedy show. He is well intentioned, and not a US puppet as some in the leftist media has portrayed him, but it is unlikely that he can end a nation’s entrenched corrupt traditions. But recent US articles have said that US arms are getting to the frontline, which was a concern early in the war[10]. He wants the territorial integrity of Ukraine and a total victory over Russia. The question is whether he is realistic, and to what extent the West will support him if the war drags on.

If one is to explore the lofty rhetoric of democracies deterring unprovoked aggression, one would have to concede that the US actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya could be called the same. If one is to draw historic parallels with Chamberlain conceding Czechoslovakia to Germany, one could say that the difference is that Putin would know that even if he moves the border a bit to provinces that already had a Russian speaking and Russian-orientated population, he would have steep and organised resistance to any further moves in Ukraine or elsewhere.

Listening to a Chinese peace proposal sounds like a good idea.

A negotiated peace is the only way to end Russia’s war on Ukraine

[1] www:peoplesworld.org/article/china-calls-for-ukraine-ceasefire-and-issues-12-point-peace-plan

[2] www:johnmenadue.com/china-releases-12-point-plan-for-peace-in-ukraine

[3] www:warontherocks.com/2018/08/the-august-war-ten-years-on-a-retrospective-on-the-russo-georgian-war

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Donbas_status_referendums

[5] https://dif.org.ua/en/article/results-of-regional-public-opinion-poll-in-donetsk-and-luhansk-regions

[6] www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regiment

[7] www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3659853-azov-becomes-separate-assault-brigade-with-armys-ground-forces.html

[8] www.thequint.com/explainers/ukraine-separatism-donetsk-luhansk-donbas-russia-independent)

[9] Russia: military deaths 10.6 million, civilian deaths 16 million, 13.7% of population. Germany military 5.0 million, Civilian 7.2 million 8.2%; France military 210,000, civilian 390,000 1.4%. UK military 0.6 million, 67,000, civilian, 1%. Australia military 31,700, civilian 700, 0.58%, USA 407,000 military, 12,100 civilian, 0.3% of population. Wikipedia accessed 3/3/23

[10] https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/02/dod-inspector-sees-no-signs-ukraine-diverting-weapons-promises-more-scrutiny/383449/

08/03/2023

Outrageous Nonsense on China and Defence

8 March 2023

I confess I was flabbergasted at the SMH front page yesterday (7 March), which blazed ‘Red Alert: War Risk Exposed’ with an illustration of many aircraft taking off from China. On pages 4-6, there was more tub-thumping.

Today’s SMH has a front page ‘Conflict over Taiwan could reach our shores’; and pages 4-5 continue the story.

It might be noted that the Government in a foolish but bi-partisan (i.e. Liberal + Labor) decision will announce the AUKUS nuclear submarine delivery shortly.

Perhaps this silly story is to mute any criticism of the AUKUS decision.

To make a few relevant comments:

There is sadly not a Peace voice that is consulted. To be blunt the activist groups have not structured themselves effectively.

China is now a rising world power and will overtake the US, which like many declining powers is spending too much on arms, largely because the privatised US arms industry needs markets. China does not need to be belligerent. Its expansion to the Belt and Road initiative is to take it all the way across Asia and Europe by land, and merely relies on people wanted to trade with it. It is effectively the biggest market in the world. China has fortified some islands in the South China Sea, but it is the US that has bases close to China, not China to the US. No Chinese warships sail around the Caribbean.

China will eventually reach an accommodation with Taiwan, whether the world likes it or not. The US may want to delay this as the Taiwanese have the world’s best microchip technology and they do not want this to fall into Chinese hands, but most technological secrets leak eventually. The US has accepted a ‘One China’ policy for years so it can import Chinese goods. It is concerned about the ‘democratic rights’ of the Taiwanese, but the US has been very selective about whose democratic rights they support or don’t. If they seek to have a war ‘sooner rather than later’, this would seem to be a bad long-term strategy. Germany continued to rise after its WW1 defeat because its economic fundamentals were right. Militarily Taiwan does not have the manpower to hold out against China in a military conflict, 24 million v. 1.4 billion says it all. The US has aircraft carriers, but hypersonic missiles will sink them as soon as their guidance systems improve, so the carriers are soon likely to be as obsolete as battleships were in WW2.

As far as Australia is concerned, we can be a quarry, a food bowl and manufacture as we are able in the world economic system, and we should retain control of our resources and bargain intelligently with our customers. China, however powerful, is likely to accept this situation.

The AUKUS submarines are a very expensive step into nuclear confrontation. We are buying submarines at top dollar with an uncertain delivery date and huge opportunity cost for other projects, defence and civil. We will have to have a base that services them, and no doubt the US will want to use that base for its nuclear fleet. So we are being sold subs that we do not need and being locked into a US confrontation that benefits no one but the US arms industry. Since China is unlikely to attack us, and our subs would not be decisive in any highly improbable direct conflict with the Chinese, they are merely a needless insult and a decisive move into the American camp in a polarised paradigm.

It is probably true that our defence has been neglected for a decade; the decadent Liberal government had precious little coherent policy on anything, but that is not an argument for AUKUS submarines.

The Herald has been extremely disappointing. Paul Keating has said some sensible stuff. Will no one in power speak some realistic truth?

If only our current PM said this…

25/02/2023

Liberals Still Need 20 State Election Candidates: Incredible arrogance from Headless Chooks!

25 February 2023

It is mind boggling that 4 weeks out from the NSW State election the Liberals still have not selected candidates in 20 seats. There are 93 lower house seats in the State.

The idea that a candidate comes from his/her electorate, knows it and is trusted by it seems a distant memory, perhaps a dream. From the tiny numbers left in the major parties, a candidate will be selected by the factions, presumably depending on Party loyalty and their not having rocked the boat. The voters are supposed to be pathetically grateful and vote them in with a rousing cheer about ‘stable’, (i.e. win every parliamentary vote) government.

Let us hope that the Teals change this script.

Liberals still need 20 candidates a month before poll

Alexandra Smith, Tom Rabe SMH 25/2/23

The Liberal Party is scrambling to finalise candidates to run in almost 20 seats across NSW just a month out from the state election, including in the independent-held electorate of Kiama.

While Labor has a handful of electorates without a candidate, among the many seats the Liberals are yet to fill is the one held by former government minister-turned independent Gareth Ward.

Ward, a long-time powerbroker in his area, was suspended from the parliament and the Liberal Party after he was charged with sexual assault. He has denied any wrongdoing and remains before the court, where the matter is scheduled to be heard after the election. Ward is recontesting his seat.

The NSW division of the Liberal Party came under fire during the federal election campaign for delays in selecting candidates.

Premier Dominic Perrottet vowed that he would not allow similar delays to plague his campaign, but the party has struggled to find suitable candidates for many seats.

Labor wants to finish pre-selections for all 93 lower house seats by Monday, ahead of nominations closing on March 8. The Liberals, however, are yet to field candidates in a host of seats, including Auburn, Bankstown, Granville, Port Stephens, Rockdale, Strathfield, Wyong and Blue Mountains.

The Liberals hope to finalise some seats this weekend but will still have more than a dozen outstanding. Their Coalition partners, the Nationals, have had all candidates in place for some time.

Meanwhile, NSW Labor leader Chris Minns is backing a push to run former state cabinet minister Steve Whan in the southern electorate of Monaro, held by the Nationals.

Whan, who held Monaro from 2003 until Labor lost in a landslide in 2011, is seen by the party as its best chance to win the seat following former NRL Canberra Raiders player Terry Campese’s shock withdrawal as the ALP candidate. Campese quit after it emerged that he had attended a risque party while scantily clad.

The Nationals had identified Monaro, once held by former deputy premier John Barilaro, as one of its most at risk seats when Campese was running, and Labor is desperate to win it.

A captain’s pick is also likely in the safe Labor seat of Fairfield, as federal energy minister Chris Bowen moves to install his preferred candidate, former Australian Federal Police agent David Saliba.

A senior Labor source confirmed Whan and Saliba ‘‘both enjoy the support of Minns’’.

Asked when the Liberals would announce a candidate for Kiama, Perrottet said it was a matter for the party and refused to rule out preferencing Ward.

‘‘There’s obviously 93 seats to fill, so my expectation is as soon as possible,’’ Perrottet said. ‘‘I don’t set those arrangements, that’s a matter for the organisation. Obviously, the Liberals intend on running in all the seats that we have in the past.’’ He said both parties were working through their preselection processes and pointed out that the Labor Party had not yet selected a candidate to contest his electorate.

‘‘I am the member for Epping, Labor doesn’t have a candidate in Epping,’’ he said.

17/02/2023

The Triple Lunacy of Westconnex

17 February 2023

Westconnex, the underground freeway network will open later this year. Few realised the extent of it and for a period, trafffic will flow more smoothly.

But it was, is and will be a triple lunacy.

Nowhere else in the world are governments building freeway networks, let alone tunnelling them undergroup at vast cost. Cities like London have congestion taxes, some European cities are even closing their major roads, and it a subject of significant discussion (ww:://h2020-flow.eu/news/news-detail/when-roads-are-closed-where-does-the-traffic-go-it-evaporates-say-studies/). The world is trying to have more public transport to lessen the need for private cars, their cost, their parking and their greenhouse gases- except NSW!
The underground freeways will be privatised, so represent a huge subsidy from the taxpayer, as the private monopolies have a track record of huge tolls and guaranteed revenue. The tolls are already subsidised to lessen commuter pain, which amounts to continuing payments to the toll operators. Chris Minns’ Labor election platform is to subsidise motorists who spend more than $60 a week on tolls. Who are these and how many of them are there? Logistics companies? Couriers? Or tens of thousands of commuters? Naturally there will only be a few toll operators.
The money spent on road tunnels was not spent on a decent Metro system, that would have made most trips unnecessary and taken the cars off the roads. Of course a train tunnel is smaller than a road tunnel, much cheaper to build per Km, carries far more people and does not require ventilation (or very little).

One might ask why all this happened. My theory is that the RTA engineers were far more politically savvy than the State Rail Authority. The RTA were dealing with politicians and building motorways all over the state, wherever they could get the government to pay for them. The SRA confined its thinking to the existing rail network, and thought in terms of better train technology and industrial relations problems, rather than building their network and having a big part in urban planning. And of course the lobbying was probably helped by big bankers and big construction companies and by ex-politicans at Infrastructure NSW, which was set up in 2011 by Barry O’Farrell with ex-Premier and ex British-American tobacco executive, Nick Greiner in charge- a great privatiser.

WestConnex has beavered away at vast but unperceived cost and only attracted attention for its ventilation shafts in suburbia, or the chaos on existing roads as its portals were constructed. Now, for the next few years the affluent and the through traffic will have an easier time of it, and we can continue to lobby for the Metro system.

Web of steel, concrete and cable takes shape below

WestConnex is on track to open late this year, writes Matt O’Sullivan. (SMH 17 February 2023)

The scale and complexity of the final stage of the $17 billion WestConnex motorway project, buried up to 60 metres beneath inner Sydney, becomes clear the deeper workers venture into a twisting maze of road tunnels, ventilation passages and giant caverns for jet fans and substations.

Above ground, inner-city residents and motorists get a sense of the scale – and disruption whenever they pass a massive construction depot for the project on a site that was once the Rozelle rail yards, next to the City West Link roadway. However, the surface work represents only a fraction of the motorway junction below, which features three layers of tunnels.

All up, Australia’s most complex motorway project comprises 24 kilometres of tunnels beneath Rozelle and Lilyfield, about seven kilometres of which motorists will never see because it will be used mostly for ventilation. Once opened late this year, the $3.9 billion interchange will connect the recently opened M4-M8 Link between St Peters and Haberfield, the City West Link, the Anzac Bridge, Iron Cove and, by 2027, the planned Western Harbour Tunnel.

Almost four years after construction started, Rozelle interchange project director Steven Keyser said the focus was now on fitting out the finished tunnels and connecting ‘‘everything together, so it all talks to each other’’ as the targeted completion date looms. ‘‘We have the body built, but we need the brains,’’ he said of the mechanical and electrical systems.

Keyser said other road tunnel projects built in Sydney in the past decade had taught his team that fitting them out with mechanical and electrical equipment often took longer than anticipated. ‘‘We’ve got 1.7 million metres of cabling to run through all those tunnels. It’s a real spider network of cabling,’’ he said. ‘‘The back end takes a lot longer, and we’re scheduling far more intensely to get that right. And so we’re in a good position to open at the end of the year.’’

Keyser said that, while facing disruption from the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, the pandemic and wet weather, the biggest logistical challenge for the project had been ensuring equipment and componentry arrived in the correct sequence. ‘‘We had 23 road-headers [excavating] and 500 blue-collar workers starting and stopping each day, getting in and out of the tunnels. This is one of the biggest logistical exercises and that’s all hidden,’’ he said.

Like the rest of WestConnex, the Rozelle interchange has been contentious due to the disruption caused to inner-city residents, and the eyesore it has created near Sydney Harbour during the years of construction.

Transport for NSW’s deputy secretary of infrastructure and place, Camilla Drover, said the project would have been far more controversial if early plans for the interchange had been pursued. ‘‘The original scheme for this was all above ground. Can you imagine? It would have been viaduct and overpasses. But the fact that it is now all underground, and we have a park instead, that is the evolution people forget about,’’ she said.

The 10-hectare park, which includes two sporting fields, on the site of the old rail yards, will open late this year when the interchange is completed.

And Keyser said the public would see the construction site change quickly over the coming months as the park began to emerge. ‘‘We’re getting to the stage where you can see what the finished product will look like,’’ he said.

Underscoring the complexity of the underground junction, the state’s transport agency took control of the project in 2017 from a corporation set up to oversee WestConnex after only one bid from contractors to build it was received in the initial tender process. The interchange was also separated from construction of the M4-M8 Link, which forms the other part of the third and final stage of the 33-kilometre motorway project. The upshot is that the risk of delivering the interchange ultimately rests with the government.

While the tunnels for the interchange average 35 to 40 metres beneath the surface, a sump where water is collected before being pumped out is about 60 metres deep. Twin tunnels for the $27 billion Sydney Metro West rail line between the CBD and Parramatta, which will include a train station next to White Bay power station at the so-called Bays West, will be dug even deeper beneath a part of the interchange over the coming years.

For tunnellers, ground conditions have presented a constant challenge during construction. ‘‘It’s always challenging with ground conditions, no matter where you are in the world. Each time we’re digging the tunnels we’re checking the reactions of what’s happening,’’ Keyser said. ‘‘We’re always a step ahead, probing things, making sure that things are only moving to the model. We have probably 5000 instruments around measuring.’’

While sandstone is easier to excavate, softer soil conditions required so-called rock bolts to be installed closer together in the tunnel walls to provide extra support. The closest the tunnels get to each other is about 10 metres. ‘‘You’re basically doing what the Romans did – you’re creating an arch [in the tunnels],’’ Keyser said of the tunnelling techniques.

About a quarter of the $3.9 billion cost of the interchange, being built by contractors CPB and John Holland, has been spent on a labyrinth of ventilation tunnels and related facilities. Three exhaust stacks about 35 metres high, which are connected to the interchange below, have been built on the site of the old rail yards. Large caverns – some about 23 metres high – also had to be dug deep underground for electricity substations and to house giant fans for the ventilation system.

Part of the reason for the mammoth size of the ventilation facilities is the need to design the interchange to cope with a catastrophic event. ‘‘You’re always catering for what is the worst case, which is if something catches fire in the tunnel,’’ Keyser said. ‘‘The standards now are quite high and the design caters for that emergency situation. In the roof, you have a fire deluge system, which is going through its testing.’’

Greens MP for Balmain Jamie Parker, who has been highly critical of WestConnex, said the interchange’s construction had caused major disruption to nearby residents over the past four years. ‘‘Everyone is relieved that it will be over. But the local community feels like they have had such widespread impacts on their homes, and now they have to deal with the longer-term consequences of the three exhaust stacks which should be filtered,’’ he said. ‘‘The impact is really significant, and it is ongoing.’’

While acknowledging the disruption to locals from construction, NSW Metropolitan Roads Minister Natalie Ward said the interchange, along with the rest of WestConnex, would result in significant travel-time savings for motorists once fully completed. ‘‘There are always challenges in construction – it’s messy; it’s disruptive,’’ she said.

‘‘The upside is it gives local roads back to local communities. This area, you might remember, was just disused rail yards; it was overgrown … [and] you couldn’t enter. We are transforming this to see community benefits.’’