Roads that lead nowhere

A new registration system can fix congestion problems
 Source: Flickr

I seriously do not understand the fetishism the Federal Government has with insisting that outdated road policies are the way of the future. For a PM that wants to call himself the "infrastructure Prime Minister", ignoring a Productivity Commission report that highly recommends a change to the road registration system and a call for governments to stop implementing expensive, "popular" and "sexy" projects, and instead focus on ones that are more worth while, you'd think he should listen!

But it's a great big new tax! 

The very phrasing that Tony Abbott gave (as reported by the ABC AM program), is that

"Tolls are a fact of life. We pay for road tolls, we pay for roads through our taxes, we pay for roads through our registration and we pay for our vehicles, so there's already a significant form of user-charging. This new form of user-charging, I suspect, is unlikely to ever be adopted by any government."

But changing the road registration scheme where users pay per km they drive, rather than a flat registration fee, is more equitable and reflective of a user-pays-toll-system. Someone who drives 100km a day will pay substantially more than someone who drives only 50km a week. It effectively becomes a user pays subsidised system; everyone pays taxes to have roads available, and those who use roads more pay more in tax (though their vehicle registration fee) for that service.

Who would it affect? 

It seriously is baffling to see why there is no public interest in this type of system. The only increased cost that would occur would be to those to travel a lot via road (such as affluent people) and transport businesses (taxis, trucks etc). Yet these are the groups that need the greatest incentive to change their transport behaviour. It is trucks and city commuters that clog up arterial roads during peak hour times. If they were charged more based on their driving habits, it would change some drivers behaviour, creating more space on the roads. And this would all magically be done without having to create new roads!

Saving money on future infrastructure costs, creating a more equitable user based system and encouraging more efficient transport usage.... yep, no government would ever want to adopt that.


Sources: 
Making road users pay could clear infrastructure gridlock - The Conversation
Tony Abbott rejects pay-per-kilometre plan in Productivity Commission report aimed at drivers - ABC AM radio program

Bugger off Bolt

Source: Flickr

Opinion articles of seething rage don't often attract my attention. It's interesting to read scathingly wicked prose written behind the protection of a keyboard, but it does not often change my mind about anything. So I hope to do something different here and provide a little more detail, even though the essence of it is Andrew Bolt, bugger off you attention loving, small minded git! 

I'm probably preaching to the choir here but there are a lot of reasons why people don't like Andrew Bolt. Let me just focus on one thing; this article. It has all the hallmarks of a very informative [read: trashy] article from the Herald Sun. A catchy simplistic title that appeals to "us all", pictures of footballers training and a good opinionated dash about Bolt's own family history and innocence. That, and it's riddled with rage inducing crap. Yes. Crap. 

1. The way Bolt clearly misinterprets Goodes' words: (Read Goodes' actual comments here). 

"That process starts with understanding our very dark past, a brutal history of dispossession, theft and slaughter. For that reason, I urge the many fair-minded Australians who seek genuine prosperity and equality for my people to find the courage to open their hearts and their minds and watch Utopia." - Adam Goodes

Nowhere does it say that you should feel shame, guilt and a personal responsibility for what occurred. Understanding is the key word that is employed here. Yet you, Bolt, take it as a personal attack upon yourself to feel guilt and shame. Goodes is appealing to the rectification of a historical event and ongoing inequality. You Bolt, are just trying to deny the existence of the issue.

2. Making the issue about Bolt's own views, and not the issue at hand

 "Adam, my grandparents committed no thefts, rapes or murders." - Andrew Bolt 

Adam Goodes never claimed your grandparents did any of those things. He neither claimed that it was an entirely 'foreign' force that is to blame and that his entire linage is innocent. He states that it is

"Europeans, and the governments that have run our country, have raped, killed and stolen from your people for their own benefit" - Adam Goodes

So why personalise things Bolt? Is it because you want to try and remove yourself from the issue by laying a duty of responsibility upon a few, which you then go on to say were a minority? Then you go ahead and implicitly (and explicitly) defend their actions. Andrew Bolt, you have misconstrued Adam Goodes' writing to make an issue that is just really you voicing your own opinion and trying to pin blame on others. No one is attacking YOU, yet you see it as so. For that I just pity you.

3. Hypocrisy and half told truths. 

"So why didn’t he praise the good as well as acknowledge the bad of our past — a bad that he seems to have grossly exaggerated" - Andrew Bolt

A) Ummmm, Goodes does! Did you even read his article!?
B) The little fact you get from Geoffrey Blainey's positive book about the successful lives of Indigenous Australian's pre European settlement, is GROSSLY EXAGGERATING your case. Not to mention the "per capita" reference.
C) In the same decision where the South Australian Supreme Court found that ruling, they also gave $755 000 compensation to Bruce Trevorrow, a victim of the Stolen Generation, for being forcibly removed from his family. That court decision doesn't prove the Stolen Generation didn't exist. It just cleared one party (the SA government) from orchestrating it.

4. Worst of all, the way Bolt obfuscates the issue to deny the existence of inequality. 

The start of Bolt's article highlights the benefits that Adam Goode's has received, and how positive his life is. This statement is also true

"Life for many Aborigines then was brutishly harsh and often included appalling rates of violence against women, as established by paleopathology expert Stephen Webb from the evidence of fractured skulls" - Andrew Bolt

But police and hospital reports from 2014, not 1700, show that an alarming rate of Indigenous women are subject to violence. Today, there is still massive inequalities in healthcare, education, and employment between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians. Yet your small minded focus on proving that things have improved from being "brutishly harsh" misses the fact that life for most Indigenous Australians isn't even acceptable by Australian government or international standards.

"Our history is not as simple as Goodes claims. Nor is our guilt" - Andrew Bolt

You have the audacity to say that an issue is complex, though only deal with terrible facts that suit your case, and IGNORE the blaring issue of inequality existing today; a major theme of Goode's piece. 

Andrew Bolt, your weak attempts at looking like a professional journalist and commentator only serve to highlight how narrow minded and convoluted your theory of Australian history is, and your ongoing agenda to ignore the attempts at rectifying Indigenous inequality. 

History is written by the victorious Mr Pyne

Christopher Pyne: Education Minister. Source Flickr (edited)

Really! Really Mr Pyne. The Australian History curriculum doesn’t “celebrate” Australia enough. The whole subject is about teaching the history, development and transformation of Australia into the state it is today. It covers everything from political, cultural, social and natural events. The fact that during the ice age you could walk from Victoria to Tasmania, does not need to be celebrated. It’s just a fact. The abhorrent treatment of the Indigenous population isn’t something that should be celebrated either (and I hope that no classroom in Australia does celebrate it). But ANZAC day. It is not celebrated enough? Really!? Let’s look at it.

ANZAC Day. A National Day of Remembrance, which is also a National public holiday. A day in which every capital state’s Remembrance Day march is televised live. Sporting codes celebrate it with particular matches. Local councils hold numerous events. Even if you were NEVER educated in Australia, being in the country on the 25th April, it would be pretty damn difficult to not recognise that the day signified something. It’s a day of public demonstration of remembrance that rivals (and arguably is more prominent) than Christian messages and symbols at Christmas.

So tell us, Mr Pyne, in what way is ANZAC day not being celebrated at the moment? Remembrance Day stretches beyond the history classroom; from examining letters and texts from the time of the diggers in Gallipoli in an English classroom, to Australia’s geopolitical alliance with UK in a politics class, to having the day off school or a special Remembrance Day assembly. Celebration of western influence over Australian culture is celebrated widely in the history and general academic curriculum of Australian schools. The change you’re proposing, Mr Pyne, is one of ideology and methodology.

The individuals heading up this exercise, of not rewriting the curriculum, but proposing a rewrite, are objectively biased. There is the conservative education commentator Kevin Donnelly, and who just so happens to be a former chief of staff to Liberal minister Kevin Andrews. Then there is Ken Wiltshire who publicly supported the Coalition since the 2010 election. Though it is Pyne’s public statement that he wishes to remove the “partisan bias” from the National Curriculum (by what, making it your own conservative partisan bias?). Even more shockingly, is the way in which these academics wish to change the methodology of teaching. This is a quote from Kevin Donnelly:

“[the current] curriculum airbrushes Christianity from the nation’s civic life and institutions and adopts a postmodern, subjective definition of citizenship, one where ‘citizenship means different things to people at different times and depending on personal perspectives, their social situation and where they live”

So you want kids to stop questioning and developing an understanding of what citizenship means contextually, socially and how it can be a dynamic thing, and instead memorise a textbook definition of what citizenship is! Yet he also claims he wants a ‘child centric view’ of learning. It is clear here that his political views of what should be taught and how it should be taught (to make sure it is enforced) is the most important aspect of reform. Politics first, education second.

It may have been Foucault who started the philosophy of “history being written by the victors”, but Mr Pyne, you sir, are becoming living proof of this theory.