What message would you really send by switching your vote from the ALP to the Liberals?

There’s been some discussion in the comments to the previous post about whether it really matters if Abbott becomes PM. Won’t that be a start for fixing the problems in the ALP, from its factions to the corruption they had in NSW to Gillard making promises she can’t keep to their gutless aping of conservative idiocy like mandatory detention?

Well, no. No, it won’t.

Because all of those are things the Liberals – and this current mob of Liberals at that – do as well. Obviously Labor’s anti-refugee policies are nasty and they deserve censure – but the Liberals’ are even worse. The Liberals are riven by factionalism just as much as Labor, and the NSW-style corruption is a factor of the kind of unrestrained power the ALP had there – the kind of power that Campbell Newman is now abusing in Queensland, and – if the polling is right – Abbott would be free to enjoy federally. The best way to minimise big party corruption is with minority government so the government has to negotiate in parliament, rather than behind closed doors. And if anyone thinks the Liberals in power don’t hand out favours to mates and punish anyone who dared stand up to them – again have a good look at Newman and O’Farrell in particular.

(All recent efforts to punish dodgy state Labor governments – NSW, Victoria, Queensland – have led to even dodgier state Liberal governments.)

Gillard’s promise thing is no better or worse than Howard’s “non-core” promises or Abbott’s admission that if it’s not written down, you shouldn’t believe what he says. I think it’s a pretty poor way to campaign, and I don’t vote for parties that do it – but it’s hardly a reason to vote for the Coalition.

So what does happen if you vote LNP to teach ALP a lesson and hopefully get it to reform?

Well, the ALP and the media immediately conclude it didn’t go far-right enough. The dodgiest candidates tend to be in the safest seats, so the party loses such progressive talent that it had and becomes even more of a rabble. They learn that vacuous populism such Abbott’s is the only way to win in Australia and so they start aping it even more (for an example, see Victorian Labor leader Daniel Andrews’ recent idiotic and costly promise to let juries start making pronouncements on appropriate sentences).

Worse, they learn that they must never ever stand up to News Ltd. Whatever Rupert wants from now on, he gets. (As opposed to if the Liberals lose despite the most partisan media campaign the country’s ever seen – that would be a fantatsic slap in the face for “the king maker” and a massive boon for our democracy.)

Meanwhile, if the Liberals get in, that will be considered confirmation that Australians don’t care about refugees, are happy to let people starve on NewStart, oppose marriage equality, want tax cuts for the rich at the expense of public services. It’ll be carte blanche to get on with further castrating the ABC. They’ll flog off to their mates the NBN we’ve paid for, and when the recent mining investment pays off for the miners, the rest of the country will see little of it because they’ll have repealed the MRRT. Australia will abandon action on climate change and give up on trying to persuade other countries to act (at which point we’ll be in the terrifying position of having to hope that cranks like Monckton and Bolt actually were, against all the odds, right and we can throw whatever we like at the atmosphere with no consequence).

If you want to send the message that you do not care about the poor or refugees, that you want Australia run by News Ltd and all future governments to give it whatever it wants to keep it on-side, that you want us to roll the dice on climate change and you don’t care about equality before the law – then by all means, vote LNP. That’s what your vote will say.

If you want to send the message that Labor’s behaviour has been dodgy and you’re disgusted with it and you want them to actually be a progressive party – then the choice is obvious. Vote for the Greens and preference Labor above the Liberals.

That’s what your vote does. It tells the decision makers which way the electorate wants policy to go. In broad terms – further to the right, to inadequate services for the poor, to cruelty to refugees, to whatever Rupert Murdoch wants; or to the left, towards adequate welfare that doesn’t lock people out of employment, to humane treatment of refugees, to civil liberties.

Please be careful with it.

HOW TO WIN: The ALP needs to make it impossible for voters not to notice that “Tony Abbott is trying to pull a fast one”

The ALP can still win this election, and the way to do it is to take a leaf out of John Howard’s book.

That leaf is cunningly shifting concerns about your honesty into concerns about what the hell this crazy opposition leader might do. The trick Howard pulled before the 2004 election, when even his own party was calling him a “lying rodent”, was to audaciously turn that around by making the word “trust” not about his general dishonesty and “non-core promises” and shiftiness, but about the fear people had that Latham might be a bit of a loose cannon as PM.

Same thing applies to Abbott. It’s clear from polling that even those voters who don’t like Gillard don’t like Abbott much either – and the reason for that is that their gut tells them not to trust him.

Which is why hammering the “fast one” he’s trying to pull will resonate. Tony Abbott is trying to pull a fast one.

What is this “fast one”? You know already. It’s that he’s trying to trick voters into thinking he can cut taxes, reduce revenue, whilst not creating a huge deficit, and not cutting any services voters care about either. Which, when you stop to think about it, is not just too good to be true, but absurdly so. And isn’t the thought that he thinks you’ll buy it more than a little insulting? He thinks you’re an idiot!

And you can’t console yourself that maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe he’ll just cut stuff you don’t care about – because if that were the case, he’d come out and say it! If he’s trying to keep it quiet, it’s pretty obvious why. Because it IS the stuff you care about.

Once you’ve thought about it, it’s impossible to miss. You can’t help but notice every time you see him. Every interview Tony does, every speech he gives, he dodges the critical question about what he’ll slash to pay for his promises. Every TV appearance he refuses to specify the slashes to public services that he must be planning to engage in to balance the budget.

And every press conference he physically flees to avoid the questions gives the ALP fresh material for a devastating montage of Tony Abbott running away from scrutiny like a gutless wuss (particularly combined with that footage of Abbott scrambling to the House of Representatives exit with the “gazelle-like” Pyne), which also conveniently neutralises the “strong bloke” image he’s been attempting to cultivate.

Make him confront the same problem that confronted Gillard in 2010 – that everybody strongly suspects he’d do what he’s trying to avoid admitting he’d do. Make it impossible for him to get over the line without nailing his colours to the mast and making some promises that would haunt him in government.

“Tony Abbott is trying to pull a fast one.” It will resonate because it’s true, and because it’s what people actually fear about him anyway. Give a name to their fears, and make it not matter that the media cover up for him – because every evasion reinforces that he is, indeed, trying to pull a fast one.

ALP MPs need to dismiss the crap about Craig Thomson (the response is: Thomson is not an ALP candidate, and he’ll be out at the next election – what will actually affect voters is whether Tony Abbott gets to pull a fast one or not) and ALP MPs resigning (when should they retire? After they’ve committed to another term?). Point out that these are questions about the past, and the big question is what could follow the 2013 election if Tony’s shifty gang slips over the line into government. How confident can you be that you won’t be the victim of his cuts when he doesn’t want you to know what they are?

Tony Abbott is trying to pull a fast one. Remind everyone you know.

PS Another phrase we should hear a lot of: “just like Campbell Newman has done in Queensland”.

Underlining the word “Plan” doesn’t make it one

Seriously, media. If a politician seeking to be elected PM releases a policy document claiming to be “fully costed” and full of “detail” and has the word “Plan” UNDERLINED TO SHOW JUST HOW MUCH OF A REAL PLAN IT IS, but then refuses to release any of said costings or detail… would you mind please making that the story? Because it really is the story.

And if he runs off from press conferences refusing to answer questions on his “Plan”, then that is ALSO the story.

Cheer up, guys, you might just get away with it.

Because voters need to know precisely what this candidate for high office actually will do. Or at least what he says he’ll do, so that they can hold him accountable if he does something else. But you’re just letting him get away with vague, impossible claims, claims that he can magically increase revenue whilst cutting taxes and decrease debt whilst only specifying revenue decreases and not slashing services. He can’t do all these things at once! He has to make a choice! Make him make a bloody choice!

He’s going to have to make these choices eventually, if he manages to slither across the line to being PM. Voters kind of deserve to know which choices he’s going to make before that happens.

Oh, and there’s another one now – he reckons government should be able to pay for disasters like the floods out of general revenue without increasing taxes, slashing services or blowing out the budget. HOW? How would he achieve this miraculous feat? Has he discovered an impossible, elusive type of economic magic, or is he just an ordinary politician telling everyone what they want to hear and not caring that he won’t be able to deliver?

That’s what you’re there to test! For god sake, please do your jobs!

Riders on the Rainbow

These major key transpositions of famous songs – Losing My Religion, Nothing Else Matters, Riders on the Storm and Minor Swing – by “Major Scaled TV” are both technologically brilliant (not just covers, that actually is Jim Morrison’s voice singing in a major key) but also shift the way you think about the music.

Incredible work.

Ignore this

#7162952

Publishers, Retailers, Consumers: 1-1-0. How about 1-1-2, instead?

There are three main players in the videogame market: publishers, retailers, and consumers.

And the last five years have demonstrated fairly clearly how the market arranges itself to screw consumers, to the ultimate detriment of all.

Let me explain, with reference to the last two big fights between the publishers and retailers: second-hand games, and online publishing.

Each is in the interests of one, at the expense of the other.

Retailers found that they were quite good at running a marketplace for used games, where consumers could trade in their old games just in the very physical location where they were likely to spend that money on a new game. Retailers took a cut (and at the margin between what they were paying customers for the used games and the price they were reselling them, a very substantial cut) on each exchange. The publishers became increasingly antsy at all this economic activity from which they weren’t directly profiting (although they were, indirectly, by consumers having more money with which to buy new games and by consumers feeling that the almost hundred bucks they were about to spend on a new game wasn’t going to be completely lost).

So the publishers started crippling games so that critical features were available to the first purchaser – and only that one purchaser, no longer could a couple purchase a game together and each play the whole thing. Second-hand purchasers found themselves unable to play significant parts of the games they’d just bought.

The publishers thereby seriously slashed back a revenue stream for retailers.

In return, when it came to online sales of games, the retailers – now with one revenue stream curtailed – put their foots down. You must not undercut us with digital sales, they demanded, even though without a physical copy of the game the production and distribution costs are significantly lower and consumers know that they are paying full price for a product that costs you less and requires that they pay the distribution costs themselves (by way of bandwidth) and forsake their right to resell it.

And so the publishers charged full price, even on games that were discounted physically in stores. Digital copies of games often cost more than the physical counterparts, even though this makes no sense whatsoever.

In regions where the retailers overcharged customers substantially, like in Australia, where a 50USD game retails at EB Games for $110 Australian (ie, more than double, particularly when the Australian dollar is actually worth more than the US one), the online retailers were required by the publishers to similarly overcharge. So on Steam, which actually charges Australians in USD anyway, new games will be 50USD for Americans, and 90USD (or worse) for Australians.

The number of sales lost to consumers who simply refused to buy games at that markup apparently didn’t occur to the publishers. Nor did it occur to them that they should be doing everything they can to encourage consumers online, where they can have a higher margin even with a lower price, boosting sales and revenue at the same time.

So – two fights, and each side won one and gave ground on the other. Only they both took the sides that screwed consumers. One each for the publishers and retailers; nil on both for consumers.

Instead of the retailers selling second-hand games uncrippled, and the publishers selling online games at a reasonable price, thereby encouraging consumers to buy, they chose the options which reduced sales. They each carved out ground from the other – but the wrong ground if they want consumers parting with their hard-earned.

They forget – videogames are a discretionary entertainment expenditure. Consumers have plenty of choices for their entertainment dollar, both within and without the field of videogames. Nobody likes feeling cheated or ripped off, and in industries where consumers simply can easily go elsewhere, it’s surely not a good idea to leave them with that feeling.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that so many publishers (eg THQ) and retailers (eg GAME) have struggled or gone out of business this year.

Maybe they should consider renegotiating their faustian pact. Maybe the retailers should say – okay, we’ll agree to you selling games online at an appropriate discount from physical retail, if you’ll agree to stop crippling second hand games. You can increase revenue from online distribution, and we’ll increase revenue from what we’re good at, facilitating a physical marketplace for these products between consumers. We both give and gain ground – and the consumers win and will be willing to buy more of our products. And the retailers the same in reverse.

And that’s what would happen.

If the market actually worked.

Rise Up Australian Stomachs

Danny “abortion causes bushfires” Nalliah’s new wacky “Rise Up Australia” party, to be launched by internationally-renowned crazy person Christopher Monckton (who’s finally found some people even less creditable than he is) at the, no seriously, National what the hell are they thinking Press Club in February, raises a number of questions. Will Labor and the Liberals try to cosy up to Nalliah’s band of muslim-fearing (I mean really fearing, they think they’re about to impose Sharia law on the country on behalf of SATAN HIMSELF), hysterical (seriously, at their services they encourage vulnerable older people to have fits and think it’s being “filled with the Holy Spirit”) fundamentalists – or will they demonstrate that they don’t prefer crazies to lefties by putting them last? Will the ALP pull another Family First, cunningly giving us a Senator even more unbalanced than Steven Fielding instead of a Green? Will the Australian political media attempt to portray Nalliah’s lot as equivalent to the Greens, just on the right? (Yes.)

Meanwhile, check out their “policy principles“. I think my favourite is the one that says:

To protect religious freedoms; this means that no religion or religious practices are to be forced on another person, and that faith-based schools have the right to employ persons with values consistent with their faith-basis…

Yup, they completely contradict themselves in the very same sentence. Religion not to be forced on anyone – except children. Religious freedom protected – unless your employer doesn’t like yours, in which case convert or be sacked.

Also, apparently they think Centrelink “funds same-sex marriage, bigamy, polygamy and similar practices”. Perhaps they mean that Centrelink now cuts off payments for gay partners just like straight partners, although “stopping funding” is not exactly the same as “funding”.

But what am I doing? This isn’t a serious party worthy of genuine debate. These are the people who are presently demanding that a council refuse building permission to another religion because it doesn’t agree with them about Jesus. These are the people who think Australia is full of “demons” that need “driving out”. (Not metaphorical demons, either – literal demons. Seriously, any journalist talking to these people, just ask them if they think supernatural demons are real and threatening Australia.)

I think what annoys me the most about Nalliah (apart from the preying on vulnerable people at Catch The Fire) is the sheer dishonesty of this new effort. Like “Family First”, “Rise Up Australia” does its best – from its name* to its entire “policy” statement – to deny that it’s a christian fundamentalist party, pretending that they stand for religious freedom whilst their founders campaign to block other religions from even having buildings.

If we have even vaguely competent political media in this country, though, the “Rise Up Australia” candidates will expose themselves pretty quickly. I suspect the actual candidates will be just aching to say the sorts of things the party organisers are trying so hard to avoid mentioning.

* Of course, other parties’ names don’t describe the full extent of what they represent, either – the “Liberal” party is only “liberal” in regards to low taxes and regulations for big business; the “Greens” are a progressive party as well as an environmental one; and the “Labor” party has even sold out on industrial relations. But at least these names describe something about the parties’ political philosophies. “Rise Up Australia”? “Family First”? Those names mean nothing. They are deliberately opaque.

UPDATE: The call for “even vaguely competent political media” is heard and declined.