A cliché riddled rant

the fact of the matter is thus: if the population truly cared about the impact they had on the people surrounding them, their physical surrounds and the  wider environment, they would be willing to compromise and sacrifice to find a viable solution to all of the planets human and natural challenges : Flood, famine, drought, obesity, fire, war, fear, financial distress, the list is almost endless. 
Stop the apportioning of blame, and start thinking of solutions and ways to implement them. There has to be a limit to the amount of time, effort, energy and money spent politicizing problems and point scoring for the sake of popularity, if any true reform is to be undertaken. Leaders must be able to think altruistically, and believe that they are doing the right thing for the future, irrespective of their standing in the polls. Knowledge, expertise, Foresight and insight: we must allow those who have these qualities to have their voices heard, and their ideas publicised, as revolution can be just as important as evolution. If we allow populist opinion to run our nation, and consequently run the world, the human tendency to stagnate, to fear and resist change will overcome our basal tendency to live long and prosper, sometimes, we have to be the change we want to see in the world, there's no point waiting for the world to change, not when the people changing it currently are making it worse, if the people with power can't handle the responsibility, maybe its time to transfer the power.  

The Problems with Australian News-Media

The Australian news media love a good tale. Not unlike other news services, the australian New stations like a story that captures and engages their target audience. But how often do they actually report the news that matters.
The last month has seen some big news around the world. The furore over alleged voting irregularities in Iran, the upcoming elections in Afganistan, the continuing wars in Afganistan and Iraq, the world-wide spread of Swine-flu, the response to the Global Financial Crisis, and of course the seemingly out-of sight,out-of-mind human rights abuse in Dafur.
In Australia, the government has been making news with its attempts to get an Emmisions Trading scheme through both houses of Parliament, coupled with an equally controversial Clean/Solar Energy Bill. Indian students have been making their presence left over the last few weeks, after being a string of allegedly racially motivated assaults in Victoria and New South Wales.

But the news media, on TV, radio and the interent don't ever do any real analysis of the underlying issues. Why bother when you can lift a piece for a news scource like Reuters or AAP, and make bold headlines that attract attention without accurately representing the story. I'll give you an example. On Friday, the Age.com.au reported under its breaking news header,"Australia's First Swine-Flu Death". Without a doubt, it grabbed my attention, i was pretty relaxed about swine flu, as all the reports i had read from Mexico and the USA said that the people who had died from Swine Flu had died because of other illnesses and that the strain of influenza known as Swine Flu was virulent but had mild symptoms and was overall, not very dangerous. The story took some time unfolding on the Age's website, and after 10 or so minutes, it revealed that the person who had died, had Swine Flu as one of many other chronic illnesses, which caused complications leading to his demise. IN summary, a poor bloke living out in the middle of desert in Western Australia, miles away from any decent health care, had died from complications to his various chronic ailments, and he so happened to be diagnosed with a disease that's currently a buzz-word for news paper editors!

Another grievance i have with Australian News outlets is their lack of detailed analysis of the GFC, and what the world's governments are doing to try and reduce the severity, longevity and impact of Recession. Last night, World News Australia(SBS) ran a story on how the American Senate are complaining that Barack Obama is trying to "make a grab for power". They included a short clip of a senator addressing the House, using a strange analogy to question why Obama either needed the power to pass those reforms, without actually mentioning what those reforms are, why they are needed nor why Obama needs executive power to get those reformns passed.
Do they think the Australian public don't care? Or are we simply not smart enough to understand the complicated world of politics, finance and economics?
Isn't it the media's duty to make the complex understandable? To inform the population as to what is being done by governments to make the world a better place?

If the media can't do their job, how are the people of the nation going to inform themselves of the issues that matter. Especially in a year that may end up being an election year, after Rudd and Co's inability to bow to the overwhelming tide of logical arguement presented by the Coalition and the greens in against their "packaged" Emmisions trading scheme, the media should be presenting all sides of these highly politized stories. Portraying either side of politics in a negative light is wrong, and clouds the judgment of the population, who must be kept aware of the dealings of the Government, immaterial of the nature of the story. Developments should be analysed by correspondents, giving the viewer the neccesary background information to contextualize the incidents, and in time form their own opinions.

The current media coverage of politics in Australia is playing into the LAbor government's hands, the media is potraying the Turnbull and his Liberals in a bad light, and although they are demanding what is right for the country, the propaganda machine that is Kevin Ruddis spinning a great yarn to the media to cast himself as the victim. Watching the news, it seems like he's getting away with daylight robbery, and the population are none the wiser.

Addressing the nations Energy Needs

It's amazing how easily Mr Rudd and his 07 revolution have duped the public. With their large, headline gathering announcements and their future plans and investigation committees, but when it comes to actually doing anything productive, they debate, hold think tanks and summits, then stall for a period and then formulate plans and policy that don't address core problems. If your having a heart attack, its no help giving the patient a towel to wipe off the sweat. In a country where we are facing massive energy and water shortages, the feds are doing nothing but commisioning expensive reports and cuting back on vital funding to promote modern technological development to move into a greener energy producing future.

What we need: Jobs? Cash? Growth?

With the economic growth slowing, with a recession looming and consumer and wholesale spending decreasing, governments have been hard-pressed to find a solution to the financial madness that has spread from the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Having over-leveraged investment loans, governments and financial entities have found themselves in a unprecedented situation where they cannot liquidate their assets (as no one wants them at the price they would like to sell for), nor can they borrow from each other as the inter bank trust and credit ratings for most companies have fell as they revealed mismanaged debts and exposure to foreign markets that have failed them. Consequentially, major governments have sought long term solutions by "creating jobs" for trade-related workers, investing in infrastructure and manufacturing is all well and good, as they make up a large proportion of the money-spending population, but true economic stimulation requires that the whole economy gains from changes in monetary policy and government plans. Most, if not all changes in Australian monetary policy has resulted in the population tightening their back-pockets, putting the extra dollars that they save( via interest rate cuts and tax savings) in their bank accounts instead of doing what the government wants them to do, go out and spend it. Creating jobs for some sectors, e.g. their funding the production of Eco-friendly cars here in Australia, planning water infrastructure(desalination plant, piping to aid farmers/crop growers) and roads, isn't taking care of the whole picture. "Opening the coffers" for such extravagant, long term projects is good for nation-building, one of Kevin Rudd's election promises, but in the current financial climate, where the Government's future fund is loosing money, and the budget surplus of $22bn. is in threat of becoming a deficit, one must ponder whether the amount short term loss can be regained in the future.

Even before the "global credit crunch" and the "sub-prime mortgage write-offs" many sectors of the Australian workforce were being cutback and displaced as jobs were flying overseas to lesser economies as companies outsourced non-essential service jobs and the nations balance-of-trade swung to the side imports. Although we have seen a massive increase in the exported volume and price of Australian ores and minerals, the product life cycle brings back the raw material as processed and packaged goods and consumables. The meteoric rise of China, and the comparatively steady growth of India saw the spot rate of steel explode and Rio Tinto and BHP, amongst others, made bumper profits while companies in other sectors also benefited from the rise of the Asian powerhouses, not because those countries were buying in massive amounts from them, rather, the rise of China let manufacturing companies cut costs by importing goods, and let textile companies cut costs by hiring cheaper labour and using cheaper materials, which they then had imported for a lower total cost.

The government did nothing about those drastic developments in the employment of Australians, yet it feels that pumping money into the Motor vehicle Manufacturing Industry is part of a solution to "kill not two, but three birds with one stone". Their initiative aims to employ more people, by rewarding companies who definitively plan to produce vehicles that will emit less carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which will in turn stimulate the economy by providing more people with disposable income(spending money). The glaring flaw in this supposedly sound plan are twofold.

Firstly, promoting the production of fuel efficient, Eco-friendly cars right here is only profitable for Australian companies if the trade agreements we have with our export countries allow reasonable profits to be made. Already, there is talk of decreasing the import tariff from 10 to 5 %, making it easier for foreign companies to import cars to our market, and sell them at "Australian market" rates, effectively letting them make an extraordinary profit margin, while not demanding that those trading "partners" agree to the same deal. What chance do companies like Holden and Ford have exporting to the world when they have to pay tax between 10 to 20 % just to export cars, when Hyundai and Mazda pay 5% to import to Australia.

Secondly, the economic benefits of such a plan will not be felt for at least two years at best, and even when it is, there is no guarantee that the Australian economy will be in such a state that the people with disposable income will go out into the markets and spend it. If nothing is done to stave off recession and stimulate true growth across the country in the short term,( latest figures show that NSW is a dead weight to Australia's economy) even the best laid plans have no chance of succeeding in the medium to long term.

K Rudd and Co. need plans that will promote growth across the board, whether it be by cutting taxes to citizens, reducing the tax burden on companies that start new IT and other commercial projects, subsidize the employment of Australians in call-centre jobs, or the promotion of infrastructure growth in the Health sector, the government must ensure that all sections of the population stand to gain by the measures they introduce, or else whatever growth is seen by those favoured sectors will soon dissipate in the overwhelming tide of recession.