peteg's blog - noise - politics

The ALP has pulled out all the stops to win this election; Sydney gets a spray from Paul Keating, and Melbourne one from RJL Hawke.

I voted in the Australian Federal Election at the Consulate just now. According to the lonely Kevin07 guy out the front, that 45 people lined up on Monday morning to vote signals a change of government.

And here was I hoping to see how his Senate campaign unfolded...

This is so strange; somehow in these past few weeks UNSW has garnered a lot of press for what look like pretty shitty reasons:

• The Arts faculty can't afford teaching support staff (tutors). While I sympathise with this predicament and fully expect the students' experiences to slide even further down the crapper, I'm not sure Senior Associate Dean of Arts and Social Sciences Dr Sarah Maddison is completely right to sheet the blame home to the Feds:

  "The Federal Government has abandoned the humanities in higher education funding and we are bearing the brunt. It has consistently underinvested in this area over the past decade and we are now at a structural disadvantage when compared with other disciplines."

  My understanding (and I'd like to be corrected if wrong) is that the funding decisions at the Faculty level are handled by the Chancellery, within the uni. Sure, the Feds may well have decided that a NICTA-like entity for the social sciences would be tantamount to offering an arse-cheek to a tiger, but that is about research, not teaching. Let them blame Professor Fred Hilmer, I reckon, then sack the lot of them.

• In the same Smage article, the uni has announced that it will reduce the academic session to twelve weeks from the current fourteen. Justification?

  The staff cuts follow the announcement of a number of streamlining measures at the university, including the reduction of the teaching semester from 14 to 12 weeks and a review of the bachelor of arts degree. Under the review, the number of courses in which students can major will fall from 45 to 37 in 2009.

  The university administration claims the changes are designed to "streamline teaching and learning".

  In a message sent to students on Monday, the pro-vice chancellor, Professor Joan Cooper, said the reduced semester would bring "UNSW in line with other Australian universities" and "facilitate new pedagogic practices".

  Yep, I regret that my education was not streamlined. According to JAS the main operational implication is that all courses need to be adjusted (mangled) into this new format, and apparently the Chancellery is yet to propose how this will be funded. Blame Professor Fred Hilmer I reckon. You'll note the reasoning is similar to his world class policy on general staff numbers. Still, I'm sure the clown will be all cashed up for another year of hijinks. "I came to UNSW for the morale of the student body," I can hear it now.

• Strangest of all is the closing of the Singapore campus (UNSW Asia) after less than a session:

  The university has already spent $17.5 million on the project, but it had guaranteed a further $140 million for the construction of a permanent campus in South Changi.

  Professor Fred Hilmer said the university had lost $15 million in not reaching its anticipated enrolment numbers, and as a result it was unable to borrow the money it needed. "I don't want to play a blame game [but] I inherited a situation," he said.

  Those enrolment numbers, from an email he sent to staff:

  The UNSW Asia campus currently has 148 enrolled students, with some 100 of these being Singapore residents. The anticipated enrolment for the initial intake in 2007 was 300 students. Second semester enrolments were anticipated at 480 students but it is clear that this target would not be met.

  Those enrolment numbers, from the advertising agency:

  Singapore - The University of New South Wales Asia (UNSW Asia) has awarded its regional creative and media accounts to AGI Communications - the agency won the business without a pitch.

  The new tertiary institution made the retainer appointment - understood to be valued at around $1.5 million - on the back of its launch in Singapore, in an effort to achieve its first year admission target of 1200 students through attracting students from across Asia.

  Still, I'm glad he can exercise the wagging figure this time, for otherwise one might get the impression there's something rotten in the administration of this world-class institution.

Now, if they were in any way serious about bringing "UNSW in line with other Australian universities" or being even more world-class they'd be looking at the University of Melbourne's "Melbourne Model" and wondering if they couldn't interest the Sydney market in something similar, or perhaps even better.

Today:

Police Commissioner Ken Moroney says more responsibility needs to be taken for the problems caused by binge drinking.

"I've made no secret of my feelings of the role of alcohol in anti-social behaviour, hooliganism and crime in all of its manifestations," he said.

"I believe it is a greater scourge than the illicit drug problem."

Seven years ago:

"It was quite amazing," a senior Bondi police officer told the Herald after Sydney's millennium celebrations in 2000, one of the most trouble-free New Year's Eves in years. "The big topic of conversation among the officers on the night was how the widespread use of ecstasy has really calmed things down. It has changed the whole scene."

(There was an incredible backlash to this observation at the time.)

Instead of, as expected, resolving which of the two re-distributed parts of his current seat of Calare he will stand for, Peter Andren has opted to stand for election as a Senator for NSW. The Smage spins this as a failure to do something useless, viz becoming the "most successful independent of all time". I think they mean "electorally successful", which is not the same thing.

Is anyone else disturbed by this?

A recent survey of students at the University of NSW found an invisible malaise had fallen over the campus.

"Students felt that university had become too serious, too purposeful, too qualification-driven and there wasn't enough fun and joy, so the vice-chancellor responded to that in a number of ways and I'm one of those ways," says corporate comedian Rodney Marks, who this year took up a post as a visiting professor at large at the university.

Marks will give 52 comic hoax lectures on campus as part of a plan to bring a little more frivolity to study.

"I am the 2007 version of the wizard who was at the university 40 years ago and he took a lot of the anger out of rebellious students in the late '60s and early '70s, and the university was the most successful campus in managing that revolutionary angst."

Oh well, Vice Chancellor Professor Fred Hilmer's usual idea of "fun and joy" is sacking general staff, so I guess this is an improvement. Somehow the powers that be have slept through the last ten years.

On a related note I was a bit shocked to find that UNSW has an oral history project, complete with an interview with the Wizard (bio). Still can't find anything much about the upside down tree though.

I think we need an apathy index, drawing inspiration from Schmidt's work on sting pain.

I was a bit shocked to see that infamous smirk on the news telling anyone who might organise or encourage a boycott that they may face damages for doing so. Would this apply to the Green Bans? You can bet your animal-product-free underpants it would, but the article makes it clear the existing laws already did.

I'm not sure what the limits of these new laws will be (sometimes being a lawyer would be most helpful) but I speculate they must also apply to Linux and Free Software proselytisers pushing a "Boycott Microsoft" line. Does it matter if one pays for an equivalent product, or is the word "boycott" a sufficient trigger? What about encouraging the free downloading of Debian, is that costing someone a sale? How about a system for "boycotting" ads on time-shifted TV?

The key observation is that, like the industrial relations laws, the government increases its discretionary role in this process. Rather than leaving it to the courts and (say) the National Farmers' Federation, we have the ACCC organising and funding the actions. Fair? Of course! Farmers are doing it tough. Heck, even Channel 9 is doing it tough. Remember everybody, have three kids and make sure they eat a pig at each and every meal.

Somewhat amazingly K.Rudd has managed to get Peter Garrett, my local member, onto his front bench as the environment and climate change spokesmodel. I find this slightly perplexing as Garrett is already a polarising figure, and modern politics is purportedly all about appealing to the middle in marginal seats, people who are probably worried that climate change will kill the last tree before they do. As the arts spokesmodel he looked harmless enough, and if they really wanted him for the greenie gig they could have parachuted him in after the election.

I hope I'm just being cynical here.

Take a gander at the political compass questionnaire. It's an oldie but a goodie. I come out as more libertarian than leftie by a small amount, though extreme in both directions. I'm not sure that's justified, given there aren't "I don't have an opinion on this one" options.

Hosting a faux-News Ltd. general meeting in Adelaide, Murdoch uttered a whole string of things I more-or-less agree with:

• The tax system is a shambles. I think there's a greater need for clarity and fairness reform than a general decrease in rates, but still.
• The government surplus is somewhat useless, being, to my mind, really a John Howard re-election fund.

• Broadband internet in this country is crap. I don't know if the government should pay to improve the situation, but surely he's right to say that the crappiness will bite us on the arse in the long run. Our communications minister is unfortunately clueless on these issues; now it's not so much about availability as cost and quotas. As I say to anyone who listens, I used to pay $30 a month in Göteborg for a 100Mb/s connection connected to a gigabit-ethernet backbone with a traffic quota of 15Gb per day. Yes, you could and did pull eight megabytes a second on that thing. That was in 2004, and things can only have improved in Sweden by now.

  We may be the second fastest country in the OECD to take up broadband, but I'm sure every other country really did take up broadband.

• On Mrs Clinton, blue sky Madame President:

  "I can tell you she's running and I'd bet heavily on her winning the nomination but I wouldn't bet on her winning."

Who would have thought.

Beazley was stoked to have someone of import attacking the government, but as the big man's policy is to only back winners he couldn't expect a pat on the back himself.

(There's some more details at The Australian. Yes, he's trying to feather his own nest. It just so happens to be mine too, in this instance.)

Oh, the irritation, the irritation: John Howard on Lateline, putting up climatic strawmen. Paraphrased, symbolic gestures won't help, signing a piece of paper won't help, nothing will help except nuclear f'ing energy. (Does anyone else have a Denis Leary flashback?) I fear we're screwed until the last boomer carks it.

The show was redeemed somewhat by Martin Amis talking about his two-month-old essay The Age of Horrorism. (Could there be another writer more diametrically opposed to Islam's philosophy of modesty?) As always there's no real debate as neither Tony nor (to a lesser extent) the big man has any faith that the audience has a clue. He looked remarkably uncomfortable the entire time, almost as if he was in danger of sobriety. Watch out for the VODcast, email me if you're desparate for a copy.

(Aside: I'm reading Amis's London Fields (1989) presently, where he has a huge preoccupation with crappy and extreme weather.)

This is Barry's long-in-coming autobiography. The launch itself was another in-conversation-with Jennifer Byrne, who surprisingly managed to get some words in edgeways without talking over the big man. Bazza's schtick has always been to ramp up the geek in a self-deprecatory and seemingly oblivious fashion, though it is a pretence that he can't keep all the time. His anecdotes (e.g., roughly, "the return of Halley's Comet may well be the single greatest achievement of the Hawke government", uttered to the press gallery in his role as Science Minister, circa 1987.) make him human, but he also likes to use the ramble to avoid answering uncomfortable questions. Still, it's more entertaining than the bald dissembling and visionless blandness of the current mob.

Interesting in the light of Petro Georgiou's recent spray was his claim that Bob Menzies, late in life, gave up voting for the Liberals and went for the DLP instead.

Today in the Smage, Emeritus Professor Harry Messel suggests cutting the uni management staff by 50%, hoping to reduce the buzz word bingo. Whilst I applaud the sentiment I can't but think that the unis are just reacting as well as they can to the Fed's bums-on-seats policies, which Barry Jones so rightly sheets home to Dawkinisation. (That's not to say that the Liberals have done much to help things in more recent times.) Perhaps we can conclude that the AVCC is now just a cheese, wine and Jaguar club after all the good it's done in the last ten years.

Any attempt to reshape education has to address the skills shortages, and that means getting serious about TAFE. A Federal education minister with a half-life of more than a year and an eye for public policy might also help.

There's a great article by the University of Melbourne Vice Chancellor Glynn Davis in a recent Griffith Review on these problems. I must have missed the ensuing "intense debate".

Update: Ross Gittins says something similar about the broader skills shortage.

Continuing in his bid to win the hearts and minds of the working classes, Professor Fred Hilmer has announced a slash and burn policy for the general staff at UNSW. I might suggest — cynically, some may say, after the CSE redundancies — that the academics' union is just too strong for the central admin to try this stunt on them, and that the sackings will cost more than forecast, the reduction targets will be over-reached, and we'll have a new bunch of frown-lined faces working fifty-percent harder... after a bout of corporate amnesia.

The general staff union proposes that the uni normalise the ratio of general to academic staff by employing more academics. I appreciate their humour.

Professor Fred Hilmer has already spent the money on buying school leavers. I guess this is what happens when the feds shape the market with a bums-on-seats policy.

The best thing about a principled cave-in is that you can get things past the voters that smelt pretty bad last time and concomitantly do some beneficient back scratching.

According to the Smage, John Howard says: "last week's interest rate rise was not something that anybody in the community welcomed". I'm not sure what community he's talking about here, but the mortgage-free money-in-the-bank crowd are cheering, as are those who benefit from the resulting increase in the exchange rate.