Crispin Hull

Tragedy leading to higher living standards

You could replace the words “Black Death” with the words “Covid 19” in the following quote from a Medieval historian: “The Black Death was a great tragedy. However, the decrease in population caused by the plague increased the wages of peasants. As a result, peasants began to enjoy a higher standard of living and greater freedom.”

Covid 19 has not and will not cause the death of between a third or half the population as the Black Death did between 1349 and 1370, but in Australia (with immigration on hold) it will produce a significant slowing, if not falling, in population growth.

Endemic stacking and corrupting

Revelations in the past week of branch stacking in the Labor Party in Victoria and misuse of travel allowances across the political spectrum come just as voters’ confidence in politicians and politics was increasing as a result of their handling of Covid 19.

Every now and then someone gets caught stacking or rorting and is removed, but the endless recurrences across all parties suggest the problem is endemic. To use a domestic simile, the institutional response is like someone cleaning the kitchen benches and floor which will have to be done again and again, instead of acknowledging that vermin have infested the whole kitchen and radical, more robust, and permanent solutions are needed.

Coalition regresses to the mean

In the past week, the Coalition Government has slowly but inconsistently wound back the concessions it made in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. It said it would end free childcare but would continue tax concessions to business. This is the Coalition going back to its old tricks of helping well-off businesses while at the same time kicking the less fortunate in the guts. This is regression to the mean – in more ways than one.

Lessons from Sheean VC case

In the new environment of political leaders being more willing to accept expert advice, it seemed a little perplexing that the Government would reject the unanimous recommendation of the Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal to award Ordinary Seaman Teddy Sheean the Victoria Cross.

The tribunal’s membership is sprinkled with Admirals, Generals, Air Marshals and administrative-law heavyweights.

PM on Sheean’s VC case

Prime Minister Scott Morrison in reply to questions from Australian Community Media about Teddy Sheean:

Australia will remain eternally grateful for the service, dedication and sacrifice of Ordinary Seaman Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean.

I can understand the frustration, commitment and passion of those petitioning for Teddy Sheehan to be recognised through the posthumous awarding of the VC. His bravery and sacrifice was exemplary.

Education: quagmire of blame and cost shifting

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s admission that “the Commonwealth has no line of sight” on vocational training spending and that “where targets do exist, they are aspirational. If not met, there are no consequences” applies equally to all spending on education at all levels by all levels of government.

Education funding in Australia is a quagmire of blame shifting, cost shifting, and caving in to lobbying and special interests.

Trump’s deadly badge of dishonour

President Donald Trump’s assertion this week that the US having the world’s most Covid-19 cases should be seen as a “badge of honour” epitomised all the failings of irrational, autocratic decision-making. And in this crisis, decision-making has been a matter of life and death.

Trump, like his fellow autocratic strongmen (and they are invariably men) in Brazil, Russia and China, has inflicted massive unnecessary pain on his people.

Virus puts economics in back seat

More fundamental questions must be asked. People, quite reasonably are drafting wishlists for a post-Covid world – such as action on climate, energy, tax, water, industrial relations and so on – but that risks a return to politics as usual.

Rather we should be asking: what sort of economy do we want; what is the economy for; what role should government play and who should decide how government acts?

With luck the ABC can be saved

This week’s report on ABC funding should alarm Australians.

The death by a thousand cuts of the ABC and the slow strangulation of Medicare have become woven into in Liberal Party’s DNA since John Howard turned Robert Menzies’ broad church of a liberal-conservative Liberal Party into a purely conservative one by shutting out almost everyone left of the nave.

We can withstand Chinese pressure

We have been here before, so do not worry. If China wants to boycott Australia over our perfectly reasonable request for an independent inquiry into the Covid-19 virus, it is their problem, not ours. The inquiry is not political brinksmanship but essential for reasons I’ll come back to.

There was a time in the 19 th century when 70 per cent of our imports came from Britain and 80 per cent of our exports went to Britain. By the turn of the 20 th century still half our exports went to Britain. We were still heavily dependent on Britain when it went in to the European Economic Community in 1973.

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