The annual fiction edition of the Griffith Review is out and my review of it is up on artsHub: Griffith Review No 34
There are stories by Nicholas Low, Benjamin Law, Chris Womersley, Romy Ash, Amy Espeseth and, well, stacks more!
Dear Blog,
Yesterday I had to get up very early. This isn’t something I particularly like doing, especially in the dark, wet and cold of Melbourne but I was going to the Sofitel to listen to an economist talking about the arts.
This turned out to be quite interesting.
A lot of people would recognise Saul Eslake forward facing grey hair from his many grabs for the media. He’s now Director of Productivity Growth Program at the Grattan Institute, and he used to be the Chief Economist at ANZ . The other speaker was Lynne Anderson, Managing Director of Repucom International – Australia and New Zealand. She’s headed up the research AbaF have done on private sector support for the arts.
Eslake noted four key and closely linked observations on the current condition of the Australian economy. First, despite coming through the GFC unscathed Australians are seemingly indifferent to the way the government, our banks generally and our financial institutions prevented a crisis happening here as it did in the US and Europe. Perhaps gratitude or thank-you card were always unlikely but he said, ‘somehow the government has been spectacularly unsuccessful in selling that achievement.’
Instead of being relatively optimistic, Australian consumer sentiment is subdued. We’ve stopped spending and started saving. Saving should be a good thing but it has had a negative effect on areas of the economy directly affected by household expenditure such as the retail sector.
The second point is that Australia is experiencing the largest mining boom in our history thanks to the growth of China and India. This is a fortuitous situation that is likely to continue for another 15 or possibly even 25 years. When it is over however, to state the obvious, it will be over. What we do with this unprecedented and likely never to be repeated wealth is a critical question for Australia.
The third point was that the mining boom is having a combination of negative effects. It’s affecting the exchange rate, making imports cheaper and thereby harder to compete with for local producers and bringing less tourists and foreign students to our shores. As yet, it has not spawned the sort of broad based inflation that can occur in booms as resources are pulled from other areas of the economy to fuel areas of growth, even though our economy has been at near full capacity for some time. Perhaps the GFC has been helpful.
It was odd that Eslake didn’t mention, the technological changes and the rapidly shift of Australians to online vendors particularly those overseas. Personally, I think this has had as much of an effect on the decline in Australia’s retail sector as subdued consumer sentiment. The business models of the big retailers seem hopelessly inflexible when it comes to e-tailing, but I get annoyed when they blame the carbon tax instead of their own lack of foresight.
Eslake’s point about the exchange rate also seemed a bit simplistic. Mining is an obvious and tangible demand for our currency dollar but speculation and the falling US currency relative to ours has also been a big factor. The mining boom isn’t the only reason, for that. It’s as much to do with the effect of the GFC elsewhere.
And while I was pleased to hear his balanced, more or less apolitical observations of the world I did worry about the linear and prescriptive economic development model he suggested. That is that economies will more of less move through almost pre-destined stages of economic development, from rural to industrial to service industries – at least that was the insinuation I thought he was making.
However, India unlike Australian and Europe in many ways has always had a more service based economy due to its large population – it seems unlikely they will go through an industrialisation stage similar to ours of 200 years ago and the uses of labour and the make up of economic growth are likely to be very different. History is not linear and nor is economics. I think he would agree, but he didn’t go into it for this event.
Eslake point out that the areas of the Australian economy that are doing less well are where most people live and work and that is consequently fuelling far more political tension for politicians. The south east corner of the country feels like it’s ‘doing it tough’. But there are other parts of the country experiencing levels of growth not seen in 100 years. (I’ve written more about this on ArtsHub).
Private contributions are up, but sponsorship has dropped just a little. Even so, Lynne talked about the strength of sponsorship. While the arts may have had a fall, other areas have grown, particularly community and grass roots areas. The appetite is there – you just have to tell the right story.
Jane Haley (CEO AbaF) backed that up. She said the growth in private sector contributions to the arts has not been wholly serendipitous, pointing to the strategic approach taken by many major performing arts organizations and peak cultural collecting institutions to drive donor programs. But there are two things that AbaF hears strongly from businesses considering relationships with the arts she says: a desire for more creative approaches and a need for measurable evidence to show how the arts can achieve the objectives and goals that a business is pursuing.
She did try to say that they had expected a dip in sponsorship as previous experience overseas was that there was a ‘lag’ of 18-24 months in contributions to the arts when businesses fell on leaner times. That would suggest the results are still to be felt as the worst point of the GFC was March 2009, hence the effect should’ve been felt at the end of 2010 and early 2011. Yet, Australia has escaped a ‘recession’ so why would there be any effect at all?
So oddly, the arts should be winning as it’s coming and as it’s going. Not only is investing marketing dollars in the arts effective in harder economic times such as those being experienced by some sectors, it is more justified when it comes to engaging with audiences as the media landscape contorts and stretches people’s attention. Then for those companies and high-net worth individuals who are flush with cash thanks to the mining boom there ‘should’ be a capacity to give back to the community and the arts far more. It remains to be seen whether they will.
Here’s some more of Saul Eslake had to say (transcript):
I want to emphasis three points about that before saying some things about the cultural legacy of the period through which we’re likely to be passing for the remained of this decade.
Although you’ve heard lots of times before, Australia was one of only a handful of countries that came through the world financial crisis unscathed. Along with Poland and Korea we were the only OECD countries that didn’t have a recession as it is conventionally defined as consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth. And yet somehow the government has been spectacularly unsuccessful in selling that achievement. We didn’t escape a recession solely because anything that the government actually did. After all it was the generally prudent behaviour of Australia’s banks compared with those of the banks overseas. The generally better regulation of those banks by our authorities, the Reserve Bank and APRA, than was the case of regulatory authorities in the United States and various part of Europe. The willingness of Australia’s Reserve Bank to put interest rates up during the first half of the 2000s rather than leave them too low for too long as central banks did in most other Western countries in the first half of the 2000s that prevented Australians from becoming quite as over-indebted relative to their capacity to service their obligations as unfortunately turned out to be the case in the US in particular but also in a number of smaller European economies.
But our government did contribute to Australia’s capacity to withstand the worst phases of the financial crisis and as I say they’ve been spectacularly unable to reap any political dividend from that. Perhaps because we didn’t experience a financial crisis of our own and we didn’t get thrown into a recession by other people’s financial crisis’s the public at large thinks that there is nothing to be particularly grateful for either of the government of the day or those responsible for the better management and regulation of Australia’s banks in the lead up to the financial crisis.
But none the less it is and this is my first observation of the Australian economy, striking how despite the fact that Australia’s experience over the past three years has been world’s away almost literally from that of the people of the United States and Europe among other places, consumer sentiment and other feelings about the way the economy is travelling are deteriorating so markedly over the last twelve months.
The second point I would make about the Australian economy is that we are experiencing the biggest mining boom of our history. Not in Melbourne to be sure, or in Sydney. But in what are none the less undisputed parts of Australia’s economy, we are experiencing the largest upswing in the prices of we receive for the things we sell to the rest of the world relative to what we pay for what we buy from the rest of the world in over 140 years of history. That’s not really our doing it’s rather a by-product of the fact that the two most populous nations in the world, China and India, are passing through a stage of economic development at which, during which, the demand for commodities, with which nature or God depending on what you believe has happened to so richly have endowed this continent and the waters that surround it. And that’s a phase which in my view is likely to run at least until 2024 and maybe run to as late as 2037, before India passes out of that stage of economic development and moves into being a building economy where most people’s income is spent on services that in turn don’t use a lot of commodities in their creation or on-going use. But we are in as I say, as a result of what’s going on in China and India an extraordinary phase in our history which will generate an extraordinary amount of wealth.
My third observation is that the mining boom is having some serious side affects many of them unpleasant for other parts of the economy, and I’m referring particularly to the strength of the exchange rate and to a lesser extent higher interest rates, which are making life particularly unpleasant for the tourist sector for parts of the manufacturing industry, for some but by no means all of our agricultural sector, and certainly those parts of it which compete with imported product and indeed for our higher education sector which over the last 15 or so years has become increasingly dependent on the full fee paying foreign students of whom there aren’t nearly as many coming to Australia as there were two years ago.
And those unpleasant side affects have also coincided with a fourth important trend, which is after a long period during which Australians ran down their savings so much so that in the first half of the decade Australians collectively spent more than they earned, Australians appear in the last three or four years to have rediscovered the virtues of saving and are now saving a higher proportion of their incomes than at any point since the mid-1980s. Now from many a perspective, that’s a good thing. Among other things it means that the risk of Australia experiencing its own version of the financial crisis is diminishing. It also means that more of the present mining boom which inevitably given its scale is going to call for a large amount of debt and equity finance, more of that mining boom is being financed by our own savings and less of it by foreigners. But the corollary is that retailers are experiencing their toughest conditions since the recession of the early 90s. That doesn’t mean its as bad as it was in the early 90s but it is fair to say I think that its worse than anything they’ve experienced since.
And particularly because the industries that are in the politicians trite phrase ‘doing it tough’ or ‘struggling’ as they seem to say employ far more people than the mining industry and tend to be concentrated in the south east corner of the country where most of our media comes from and where most of our economic commentators live and where most of the population is employed there is a sense being created now that the economy on the whole is doing badly.
Parts of it are, as I acknowledge but there are parts of it that we don’t see here in the south-east corner in our daily lives which are as I’ve also said, experiencing the best conditions in over a 100 years. And so it’s a very difficult economy to encapsulate by any single figure or by pointing to any particular barometer that may have been reliable or painted a broadly acceptable general picture in the past.
But I think it is still fair to say that Australia’s economy is doing, and will continue to do, remarkably well by comparison with the countries that we used to compare ourselves with in north America and Europe in particular, for whom the legacy of the financial crisis and the ongoing burden of public debt that is partly also a legacy of the financial crisis but has its roots in bad decisions made before the financial crisis ever struck there, the experience that they’re going to have will be much worse than ours.
The greatest resources boom in our history, which is what we are experiencing, is something that should enable us to build and to bequeath to our descendents a better society. Just over a month ago The Economist magazine, devoted its lead editorial as well as 15-page supplement to the Australian economy, and it had on the front page a map of Australia shaped like, or pictured as, a gold nugget and it offered the comparison between Australia’s potential and that of California as it seemed to be in mid 1850s at the time of the gold rush. And in its lead article The Economist said, ‘Australians must now decide what sort of country they want their children to live in. They can enjoy their prosperity, squander what they don’t consume and wait to see what the future brings. Or can they actively set about creating the sort of society that other nations envy and want to emulate. Such society cannot be conjured up overnight, least of all by government; they’re created by the alchemy of artists, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, civic institutions and governments coming together in the right combination and the right time. And for Australia this is surely such a moment. ‘ Let me emphasis this was The Economist running this, not the Manchester Guardian or some sort of cultural publication, but the Economist. A fair question to ask is what kind of society, what cultural legacy will beneficiaries of the present mining boom and wealth created by it leave future generations of Australians…
We Australians’ like to think of ourselves as generous people and in some ways we are. We have one of the highest rates of volunteering in the world, we’re generous with our appeals for the victims of natural disasters both here and abroad, thousands of Australians sponsor children in developing countries. But our richest citizens with some very honourable and outstanding exceptions are not, I’d suggest among them. According to Australian of the Year Simon mcKeean who is one of those honourable exceptions, of about 8000 Australians reported that reported taxable incomes over a million dollars in 2008/9, the latest figures that are available, more than one third did not make a single charitable deduction, at least not one for which they claimed a tax deduction. Tax payers with taxable incomes more than a million dollars in 2008/09 donated 1.71% of their income. That’s a considerably higher proportion than that given away by other income groups except curiously those earning $6,000 or less but affluent Australians are less generous than their counterparts in other countries who according to the annual Merril Lynch cap Gemini survey give away between 3-11% of their wealth annually. There are now 860 private ancillary funds in Australia, foundations which as many of you probably know have to give away at least 5% of their assets annually in order to qualify for various tax breaks, and those 860 funds gave out assets of over $2 billions dollars. But according to peter Winnike who is the head of phillanropic services at the myer family office, given the number of Australian earning over a million dollars are year there should be at least 8000 private ancillary funds in the country.
Private sector support for the arts has risen as you’ve just heard from 112m in 2001/02 to 221m in 2009/10 that’s an increase of 98% and its in large measure of the efforts of AbaF in promoting greater private sector support for the arts. Within this the overall the value of outright giving as distinct from sponsorship has risen by more than 161% over the past decade to $123m or 56% of total private sector support for the arts, up from 42% in 2001/02. Private sector support for the arts now accounts for 10.4% of the total income of Australian arts organisations, up from 6.7% ten years ago. So the trends in the right direction. But this has been a decade of extraordinary growth in income and wealth. Notwithstanding the impact of the financial crisis on share market values towards the end of that period. Aggregate personal disposable income rose by 69% over this period, while household net worth rose by 83%. As a proportion of GDP which rose by 66% over this period, the increase in private sector support for the arts represents just 0.002 percentage points from 0.015% to 0.017% That’s a figure that needs to increase if the arts in Australia are to flourish and thrive, especially given the increasing fiscal constraints under which state governments in particular now find themselves operating given their dependence on the GST which is in turn adversely affected by Australian’s increasing propensity to save, as I mentioned before.
There might be some merit in suggestions that governments match in some proportion donations by individuals and small businesses to the arts as happens in south Australian and Tasmania and Western Australia through premiers funds that have been established under the auspices of AbaF, but it would be I think surely even better if for example of their peers some serious and wealthy Australians made large and well publicised donations to cultural activities and institutions and encouraged and challenged others to do likewise as Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet have encouraged their fellow rich Americans to do.
Being in a room you haven’t paid for would seem to be the best way to travel and the more luxurious the upgrade the better. Yet, at least for me, it intensifies the conscientiousness and guilt. It just seems to make me very serious. Why am I here and what am I supposed to say? Do I, should I, say it? How objective, how critical should I be given I’m only here because they’ve paid for me to come. Of course, journalists are supposed to take it all in their stride, not be influenced by anything. But that’s rubbish and everyone knows it.
The view is nothing to speak of, a twin curtain contraption covers the floor to ceiling view of the building across the street. There’s a black out curtain to avoid all light and a gauze haze curtain to avoid the view. Whenever I enter the room I switch off the air con. It’s too cold. I open the curtains, I want to see outside. I want the tropical humidity to seep in, even if the windows themselves can’t open. The sounds and smells can then rise up from the street of frying and vegetables in bins, calls, shouts and horns and clatter.
There are plants dying on the building opposite just above my high level from my room, for some inexplicable reason they’ve been planted in pots four storeys in the sky, propped within a narrow balcony. They’re large plants, potentially trees and desperate for more water than the rain seems able to provide or their pots are able to absorb. They’re left deficit and struggling, plants trying to grow for too long too far from the earth.
Within the room, however, there are amusements and distractions. A very large TV with very many TV stations sits on a low bench thus creating a separation in the open space between the lounge area and the bedroom area. There’s a gym down the hall where people sweat for pleasure and on the top floor an infinitiy pool.
To the side of the lounge however, near the door is where I spend most of my time, at the desk with the plugs offering international power choices. There’s a bar fridge filled with items I dare not touch, some crockery in cupboards, and the Nescafe machine that it has taken me two days to decipher. A selection of very nice teas has been my beverage of choice though, particularly the Chamomile at 3am when I’m stilling staring at my laptop. From the wide desk, I stare across the empty room out the window, feel the patter of day and night. Even when it’s 4am I refuse to dampen this places daily cycle with my own screwed up one.
The international business travellers privilege is to turn off the solar rhythm others abide by and follow their own internal tick, should they be able to find it. But I want to be in this place, even if all I seem to experience is within walls that could be anywhere. This is Singapore, it could be anywhere but it’s not.
It is comfortable, familiar and foreign in comfortable balance and I only have four days.
I’m supposed to be writing about how the NSW election is shaping up for the arts industry but instead find myself musing on the election more generally. In part this is because finding much on the arts policy initiatives is difficult in part because the rout expected is so extraordinary.
I lived in Sydney for four years around the turn of the century, yes, that’s sounds like such a long time ago, 10 years. To be nostalgic for a moment, it was a time when we were excited about the Olympics and Sydney was proud. There hadn’t been Tampa or 9-11, or Iraq or Obama or the GFC. Houses were ridiculously expensive, but they were to get more so, and those who owned them were very happy. Everyone seemed to be watching renovation shows and imagining themselves as property tycoons, shares were going up, the we-can-all-be-millionaires bug had well and truly bitten and climate change and environmental catastrophes were something only fringe dwelling loonies thought was really happening. Ah yes, the good ol’ days.
Looking from afar at the upcoming NSW election, it seems incredible how vicious and angry an entire Australian state has become. The spite is being thrown straight at the Labor government, perhaps deservingly, but it seems that that’s just one of the splashes coming from a molten pool of resentment. Perhaps the government is more representative of the people than any would care to admit to? More than anywhere else in Australia, NSW seems to embody all the political extremes as though the nation is torn through east-west and north-south in the one state.
But what’s also strange is that for all the anger when you try to look at the issues supposedly causing this resentment, they seem somewhat selfish. People don’t want to ride on trains that don’t have air-conditioning. They don’t want to wait for trains. They want the trains to go faster. They want their bills to be lower. They want fewer immigrants. They want their roads to be cheaper and easier to drive on, less congestion. They want hospitals to be more efficient, to not have to wait. But they don’t want to pay more in taxes. They want services but don’t want to pay the real costs of providing them. They want politicians to not help their developer friends and corporate buddies, while for years they’ve believed in the Howard era rhetoric of individualism’s ascendancy over social responsibility, private industry and free market efficiency and have turned a blind eye to the outcomes of avariciousness and getting ‘deals done’. To be fair a media ‘they’ is unlikely to represent anyone well, these collective nouns dwell on generalisations.
Still, it seems a bit late at stage to be getting cross about a lack of infrastructure when government has been so enthusiastically progressively stripped of it’s legitimacy to tax, borrow and build for the people by the people in favour of an outsourced society; one where private interests have benefited. Surely someone will now see the logic that if you tell governments they can’t do things well, they’ll stop trying too? Or, someone will point out that economically efficient public services and infrastructure are ones that are of a lower quality than we’ve had in the past, that the costs of high quality services are unworkably costly, ie. not profitable. Of course, they never were but it used to be we didn’t mind.
But the other killer seems to be a perceived in-action or inability to ‘do something’ and that seems to come down to division. Division and factionalism seem to have been the real killers. Left and right are blurred by the self-interest of a handful of people who purport to represent each side, when the real basis of the split is not ideological but Machiavellian.
Yet for all that resentment, is it so bad? Really? With the plasma screens and the new kitchens and the cheap clothes and the gourmet foods and the astounding constant connectivity to a global community, are we actually so badly off? Why suddenly are people calling for better public services when for so long all they’ve cared about is having more for themselves? I’ve upgraded all that I have, why hasn’t the government upgraded all the things I want from them too? Greed is a beast.
The call for vision that seems to be coming up at every level of politics in Australia and perhaps around the world, not just this NSW election campaign should be seen with more clarity. It’s a call for unity. Unity comes from purpose, laying aside some individual goals for the benefit of a greater communal goal.
The irony is, our successes, our wealth, our achievements having been made leads to this very state of being. Achievement is what has diminished the power of our communal goals and unleashed the destructive competition of narcissism. Is it that when we achieve goals of greater wealth and a ‘more efficient, productive economy’ as we have pursued so vigorously for 20 years, we don’t know why we got here? Sadly, it seems we just need an upgrade, Vision 2.0.
No one really knows what’s happening but they know we’re not keeping up. People have every reason to be uneasy as our economy is morphing before our eyes, not just jobs but careers, business models, climates and beliefs, families and governments. The impact of globalised decentralisation is going to break-up and erode everything that was built in the 20th Century into a new model. We’re atomising.** That can be a good thing. It’s certainly an exciting thing. But it will be a very different world, to live in, to work in and to govern.
I find it fascinating that the ALP may be reduced after this election to the lowest level of representation they’ve had since they first contested a NSW Election in 1908. Now, we really know we’re in a new century, when things devolve and start again.
** Oddly, or perhaps not, the best place to see this global change most clearly in its infancy is the independent arts, that underground arena where change and creativity meet.
Well, we had an election over the weekend. It rained – a lot. We did our democratic duty and ate sausages cooked as an opportunistic fund raiser for something or rather.
It seemed an underwhelming day and I’m in two minds about the result. I can’t say I’m surprised by it. It seemed like there were enough things out there that really annoying people, combined with shirty ‘give the other bloke’ a go’-ness, that it was an near impossible task for the ALP to win another term.
Having a political week writing wise was interesting week too. Looking at the policies and talking to the various parties about what they think is important at the moment. I was disappointed that the stuff I personally think really matters most was almost entirely off the agenda until 48 hrs beforehand, so it got no traction or discussion.
This week seems to have flown by – more so than usual. A funny week too, which has shown me yet again the wild variations that writing for ArtsHub proivdes.
Starting this week I was talking to Dr Kim Walker from the Sydney Conservatorium. She spent the week before at the 70th Anniversary Celebrations of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. It would seem from her description that like just about every other field of endeavour China has decided to make sure they’re the best in the world. They’ve invested in training classical musicians as well as musicians in traditional Chinese instruments and providing them with the best infrastructure they can.
We were talking about the way musicians, orchestras and academics are transposed around the world to build their careers, and how that breeds cultural understanding. As we talked however, I learnt far more about how Conservatoria around the world are trying to coordinate their degrees and courses to catchup with the way musicians are now working. There were a lot of things I had to look up afterwards, like the Bologna Accord. And to think about, Walker talked about how students today have to learn the theory and music of every age that has been, classical, baroque, new classicism, and presumably contemporary as well, but fit learning it into less time.
Then, the next day I got to have coffee with Lindy Cameron, the crime writer. She’s starting her own publishing company, Clan Destine Press. I’d missed the launch on Saturday night, so she was filling me in. She’d spent six years working for Lonely Planet when it was a much smaller company, and so she’d asked Tony Wheeler to launch Clan Destine for her, which he had. Being someone who’d started small, stapling his books and carrying them round himself basically, she figured he was sympathetic to the enterprise. It was fun to talk about genre writing and how we enjoy sci-fi and fantasy.
Lindy was getting so enthusiastic someone from the table behind us chipped in and started a conversation about the romance and metaphor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Gallactica’s social relevance. Not something that often comes up in interviews, but the danger of cafe venues, I suppose. Most exciting Lindy invited me along to a writing group session. This is very cool, and hopefully will getting me scribbling my own fiction more vigourously, as my NaNo month has not been going well.
Next week, I’ll be writing about the Queenscliff Music Festival, a Hip Hop Street Art ‘festival’ and considering the various political parties arts policies for the Victoria election.
Thursday night was quite an experience. I had no idea what to expect from Wladimir Kaminer’s Russendisko, which in retrospect seems a bit silly. I also hadn’t even thought I’d make it, with a deadline pending, and wasn’t in a great mood to go. What a mistake. Now, my main regret is that I didn’t take everyone I know along with me. Talk about letting loose. Either I need to go to Russia and find some night clubs or they need to get more of that music out here. It’s the sort of silliness that 80s retro nights are made of but with far more polka – and that has to be a good thing.
Other things this week, given the slow down on the festival circuit at this time of year were an on-going investigation on what managed to capture the eye of AbaF for their awards. Things out west are always of interest and talking to Shane Colquhoun about what they’re doing to try and slow the brain drain was interesting. I was also intrigued that Trent Suidgeest’s name came up again – as he was a bit of a star in another story I did a few weeks back about the Artstart program. They really are doing something right over at WAAPA. So many years ago, when I thought I’d be an actor, the dream was to get into WAAPA, far more than NIDA for me, more exotic and intriguing. Alas, a lack of talent is a bit of an impediment for some of us.
My last minute assignment of the week was looking into what Arts OutWest are doing next week. Tracey Callinan was lovely and I was amused to hear that Marcus Westbury had been out there last year, having just spoken to him just last week about all things Renew Newcastle. I find both Arts OutWest and the Creative Industries Innovation Centre interesting places. Especially given what Marcus has been saying about the way arts communities and enterprise reinvigorates regional areas. I’m not sure how much will come out of the Bathurst region as far as arts exports go as a result of these events, but in terms of small business enterprise it seems that creatively minded industries have a growing economic importance. There’s definitely something happening here in terms of small but globally connected people that should be watched by governments and policy makers.
This week saw me have the opportunity to investigate Renew Newcastle a little further. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do since talking to Marcus Westbury about Renew Newcastle in early October, and thanks to their winning of the AbaF national partnership award – there was an excellent reason to.
Marcus as usual was amazingly helpful and forthcoming about and Renew Newcastle really is a passion for him. Talking to David Sleet from The GPT Group, however, really put a different slant on it.
Dear Blog,
I’ve got about five minutes to write to you now before heading off to take child to school and get on with what’s going to be a full on day that will likely not end until the wee hours once again. My cup of tea is on it’s third top up of hot water, having been left to go cold over and over again. Frankly it’s not worth drinking.
My new promise to write to you more often hasn’t gone to well has it? I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and feel better having read Jo Case’s post about her experiences yesterday. It was another blog/twitter link I’d followed, only to be left as a tab open on my web browser for days on end un-gotten to. But it made me re-think.
I get so worked up about blog posts. Shouldn’t they say something meaningful? Have a point? What if someone reads it, it needs to stand out as diffferent to all those other blogs? To be a writer you have to present yourself as a writer etc etc. But all that’s led to is this list of blog posts half finished because I’ve got bogged down in my own impediments about what it ‘should be’. As if they would be some literary gem given enough time. Of course that’s stupid and I’m missing the point. That’s not what blogs are about. And given that I hardly ever update this site this really is just my opportunity to talk to you. And you I hate to tell you are sort of me.
Thanks. I’m going to try and lighten up. I’ve had so many thoughts rushing around in my brain that I’ve wanted to blog about and but trying to make everything worthy of the Age’s opinion pages or some cosy column about ‘so, did you ever think it’s funny about cereal…’ blah blah..
Just you and me kid,
But now I have to take a brush to my girl’s hair before she goes to school looking like a scruff bag, and make important decisions about which is the stranger toy to take (her criteria not mine) a reindeer (It’s not a reindeer, Mum, it’s a dog with antlers) and a yellow cat.
Melbourne Writers Festival Day One – late afternoon,
Friday 29th September 2010 4.00pm
BMW Edge
For the various things I did earlier in the day – those are up on the ArtsHub website. In retrospect, I wish I had stuck around and listened to this session for longer. Lenore Taylor offers a very intelligent analysis of the GFC and much of what she said was echoed by Malcolm Fraser who I saw a few days later. I saw Loretta Napoleoni a few days after this session too, and found her fascinating. She is a woman with incredible resources and a very different perspective, and frankly she shows just how poor and unilluminating economic analysis and commentary in Australia is.
As I hurry into the BMW Edge I can hear Ross Gittins up on stage being quizzed by Gideon Haigh before I can see them. Gideon has one of those voices you just instantly know, and he’s playing devil’s advocate. They’re there to talk about economics, along with Loretta Napoleoni (Terror Incorporated and Insurgent Iraq.) and Lenore Taylor (ShitStorm with David Uren and national affairs correspondent for Sydney Morning Herald) in a session entitled What Really Make$ the World Go Round? Obviously the title with that cute little s replacement thinks it knows the answer.
Gittins (Gittins’ Guide to Economics and Gittinomics), whose namesake always strikes me as a perverse example of nominative determinism, is economics editor for the Sydney Morning Herald and an economics columnist for the Age and he’s saying economics should make us happy. The purpose of economics, of all public policy, should be Happiness. Having dabbled in economics myself, this is essentially true, 101 stuff, we’re not on the topic of the talk just yet.
This is still the introductions so I haven’t missed much. Napoleoni is invited to speak next about her book on the global financial outcomes of the War on Terror. In her bouncy-toned Italian accent (she speaks so many languages expertly it’s embarrassing, as someone who can barely speak her native tongue) she comments that economics often thinks happiness is related to wealth, and we are the wealthiest we have ever been, but are we happy? It hasn’t worked out she says, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, On the contrary the response to 9-11 and in the last ten years that has lead to this financial crisis, In 2001 the world economy was going too fast..it was overheating…
She was really interesting, but despite myself I started to tune out. I’m looking around the glass box that is the BMW edge at Fed Square, at the tones of wood, the light grey cast from a cloudy day that is being shot through with gold as the wintery sun descends.
I’m brought back by Loretta explaining that in order to sell the US debt and fund the war on terror without raising taxes, the US government decided to lower interest rates. Thereby this made US Government bonds relatively more desirable than ‘money in the bank’. This is Eco 101 stuff I can follow. US interest rates went from around 6% at the time of 9-11 to 1.2% in 2003.
I’d never thought about it in those terms before, perhaps swallowing the argument made by the Fed at the time that it was to stave off a recession from all that global uncertainty. But really it was not seeing the trend, now I’m listening very carefully.
The incredibly low price of money of course was the root cause of very poor people being able to take out mortgages far greater than what they could afford, and created the subsequent sub-prime market and its securitisation, the risk-spreading, that got us in the fix we are now.
My interest is peaked but isn’t that a bit of a conspiracy theory, could it be true? I delve into my trusty festival programme covered in notes and realise I’ve booked myself in to see her on Sunday night at one of the Big Idea’s Sessions.
Now we move to Lenore, with an excellent play at getting her book ‘Shit Storm’ into the discussion in this opening. The question from Gideon is why did it take so long for Australian politicians to understand how serious the GFC was going to be.
Lenore, breaks into explaining how at the same time as the US sub-prime meltdown was starting we were in the 2007 Election between Howard and Rudd. How far away that seems. The slogans on both sides were about economic growth, not crisis. Who could manage the economy? Who could keep growth going?
It wasn’t until Rudd and Swan went to the US after they were elected they really understood what the potential impact could be and suddenly policy had to take a hand-brake turn, like realising you’re paddling towards a waterfall, the ores start going madly in reverse. The Australian public had been focussed on growth for a very long time, and people just didn’t get it.
In 2004 Treasury had done a great deal of modelling of past recessions and had a lot of ideas about what had to be done. And this most recent near miss will be fed into those same models for the next time we need to apply some lessons learnt.
They knew they had to put out a lot of money and do it fast to deal with this crisis. However, Taylor said they may not have had to spend as much as they did. You can’t just suspend all the checks and balances and all policy caution she said. Someone should have looked at the set-up of the insulation scheme and seen it was going to draw out every shonky operator out there.
It was inevitable there would be some wastage and some error with such an enormous and quickly acted upon change in policy. But the Rud government took the blame for the incompetence dolled out not by them but by state governments, particularly in NSW. Where the Federal government had direct control, such as the funding to the private school sector there were almost no complaints.
It’s all ‘in retrospect’ stuff, but it’s a shame we didn’t understand it all at the time. We were like the airplane passengers seeing the ‘fasten seat belts’ sign go on, with no comprehension of the warning lights flashing and fast thinking in the cockpit.
Gittins agrees and starts talking about how not many people would remember the Red Scheme, and the recession of the 70s. The BMW Edge microphones are playing up again and there’s fiddling. Conservative governments are always accusing the ALP of waste, whenever they get near a recession. Which is fair enough, but then he goes off into a slow bombastic diatribe of the inefficiency of workaholics and how someone who is efficient does not need to work long hours. Lenore’s starting to roll her eyes, as wild generalisations burble about and Gideon’s got the light in his eyes as he considers all the ways to skewer Gittins from here.
There are interesting people in this session but I’m getting the feeling I’m going to be irritated, and there’s another session happening that I think might interest me more – so I bail and head to ACMI.