A VERY CONSERVATIVE LEFTIST LEADER

In American terms, he would be the bluest of the "Blue Dogs"



KEVIN Rudd has risked a brawl with Labor's Left by placing economic growth and free trade at the core of a new policy platform. The Opposition Leader's proposals, obtained by The Australian, would denounce passive welfare, embrace the casualisation of the workforce, boost business grants and formally bury Mark Latham's disastrous Tasmanian forests policy with support for logging.

The draft platform, which also embraces public-private partnerships to fund roads andother infrastructure, ensures a showdown between Mr Rudd and powerful Left unions at next month's ALP national conference. Seeking to win over swinging voters, Labor dumps previous positions on welfare and indigenous affairs in the new policy platform as Mr Rudd shifts to the middle ground.

While Labor remains firmly opposed to the Government's workplace reforms, the new platform recognises the growing march of independent contractors. The policy jettisons previous discomfort with the casualisation of the workforce in a move that will alienate left-wing unions, which favour government encouragement of full-time work.

The Australian last month revealed a plan by five powerful left-wing unions to push their alternative economic plan at the national conference. The unions want Mr Rudd to muscle up to big business and abandon free trade deals. But the new ALP platform places a much stronger focus on wealth creation and free trade, under plans to lock in the high levels of public support for Labor seen in opinion polls. "Labor is committed to building a modern economy that competes successfully in global markets for agriculture, resources, manufactures and services," the draft platform says. "With the economic fundamentals in place, Labor's key priority is to raise the incomes and living standards of the Australian people by building an economic climate of enterprise and innovation."

The policy blueprint - which will be voted on by 400 delegates at the showcase ALP event - rejects the heavy hand of government intervention, or a withdrawal from free trade deals. Instead, the Labor leadership argues that long-term prosperity ensures Australia is "able to sustain high-quality public services and a generous safety net for those in need". It locks Labor in to keeping "taxes as low as possible, consistent with maintaining a sound revenue base to fund quality public services". Fearful of another interest rates campaign at the election, Labor will pledge to preserve low inflation as the "key to maintaining low interest rates".

Amid a concerted government attack over Labor's plans to raid the Future Fund, the ALP platform backs new measures to build superannuation savings. Labor wants to build national savings by introducing "new programs and incentives to encourage families to save for their children's future". The reform push comes as Mr Rudd has ditched Labor's "hit list" of public schools and won caucus approval to overturn the ALP's historic opposition to selling off Telstra. In a move that will be endorsed by the powerful Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, Labor will also formally dump Mr Latham's 2004 policy to lock up hundreds of hectares of old-growth forests in Tasmania. Announced just days before polling day, the forestry policy was blamed for Labor's loss of twoTasmanian seats: Bass and Braddon.

In the new policy, Labor says it now supports "sustainable economic, environmental and community outcomes for Tasmania's forests". While Mr Latham blindsided the CFMEU - and the Tasmanian Labor Government - Mr Rudd has committed to consulting with unions, industry and the state Government on a "sustainable" forestry plan. This will involve no loss of jobs in the forestry industry and support for the existing Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement, announced in May 2005 by John Howard.

Labor is committed to overhauling the policy platform by placing economic policy at the heart of a new blueprint. Labor will go to the election with a commitment to boosting levels of business research to "above" the OECD average - and consider a tariff freeze for the textile and clothing sector - as part of a new industry plan. It will establish an independent authority, Infrastructure Australia, to oversee a national plan to build roads, rail and ports infrastructure. But it will also challenge the big Left unions by recognising the "legitimate role" of public-private partnerships in financing roads and other infrastructure. In a historic shift, the draft platform recognises the "legitimate role" of PPPs, which have been controversially used to build road tunnels and other costly infrastructure.

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Literacy suffers as teachers take on propaganda roles

PRIMARY schools are swamped by a cluttered curriculum that places equal importance on issues traditionally taught by parents, such as awareness of dog attacks and nutrition, rather than the core skills of literacy and numeracy. The Australian Primary Principals Association, representing more than 7000 government and non-government primary schools, will today release a position paper calling for a charter to redefine the role of primary schools and cull the curriculum to focus on education rather than social welfare.

APPA president Leonie Trimper called on the nation's education ministers to discuss the issue at their meeting next month and form an independent group of primary educators to draft a charter. Ms Trimper said it was time to reassess the curriculum and the importance placed on different aspects of traditional subjects like literacy. "Are there things in literacy that should be of lesser importance: for example, is viewing as important as listening, speaking, reading and writing?" Ms Trimper said. "We would rather do less and do it well and make sure it's well resourced."

Ms Trimper said rather than schools supplementing parental responsibilities, the pendulum had swung too far. Schools were now forced to offer breakfast programs, values education, nutrition, personal finance, road safety, and even awareness of dog-biting and parenting programs. A joint report by the APPA and the federal education department in 2004 found that primary schools were also under-funded; for every $100 spent on a high school student, only $73 was spent on a primary school student. Ms Trimper said the needs of primary schools rarely featured in public debate or government policy.

The policy paper prepared by Greg Robson, from Edith Cowan University, says the pressures placed on primary schools "may well be undermining their capacity to deliver continuing success". "The pressures are significant, the expectations unrealistic, the appreciation of what is needed underdeveloped and the phase has lost its pre-eminence as a point of focus in education," the paper says. Professor Robson, who oversaw the introduction of highly criticised year 11 and 12 courses as head of the Curriculum Council in Western Australia, said a charter should reposition primary schools as the key phase of schooling.

The national umbrella group of parents and citizens organisations, the Australian Council of State School Organisations, yesterday supported a charter that refocused primary schools on the traditional core tasks of literacy, numeracy and socialisation. ACSSO executive officer Terry Aulich said primary schools were overloaded with excessively detailed curriculum and were forced to deal with social problems without adequate resources.

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Clean coal is all hot air



Comment by Australian economist Alex Robson

LAST month Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd announced Labor's National Clean Coal Initiative. Roughly speaking, the term clean coal refers to various technologies for removing carbon dioxide from coal when it is used to generate electricity, both before and after combustion occurs. The term encompasses carbon capture and storage technologies. Rudd's policy commits $500 million of taxpayer funds on the development of these technologies, with the proviso that each taxpayer dollar must be matched by two private sector dollars. Rudd also proclaimed that Labor would establish an emissions trading scheme, set renewable energy targets, develop plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, convene a summit on climate change and ratify the Kyoto protocol.

Apart from ratifying an obsolete international treaty and organising yet another Canberra talkfest, Labor's policy of subsidising corporations, making grandiose plans and setting impressive-sounding targets is eerily similar to existing Government policy.

The Howard Government happily boasts about Australia meeting its Kyoto targets and has already set up a taskforce to examine emissions trading schemes. Its Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund has committed taxpayer funds of $500 million for research, with the proviso that each taxpayer dollar must be matched by - you guessed it - two private sector dollars. Additional funding is planned for future years. This subsidy is simply a form of taxpayer-funded corporate welfare, with no discernible benefit to Australia in terms of the effect on climate change.

Neither Rudd, Howard nor any other Canberra politician seem to be willing to admit that none of these policies will have any impact on global temperatures. Indeed, even if Tasmanian Senator Bob Brown got his wish and shut down Australia's coal industry overnight, it would not make a whit of difference to climate change.

So much for Rudd providing sensible policy alternatives. The only real difference between the two spending initiatives is that Labor will revert to its unhealthy old ways and explicitly try to pick winners by directly focusing the subsidy on clean coal technology. In contrast, the current government subsidy is neutral with respect to the technology used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

These minor differences are simply political manoeuvring. Labor is attempting to appeal to green voters, appease the coal mining unions, and shore up votes in marginal coal-producing electorates. But in the rush to get on board the clean coal bandwagon, both parties seem to have ignored the Howard battlers - ordinary taxpayers with mortgages and electricity bills.

When it comes to clean coal, there is a gigantic elephant in the room. Although $500 million is a significant amount of money to spend on corporate welfare, it is a drop in the ocean compared with the higher costs of electricity generation that are involved in the use of clean coal technology, and the effects that these higher costs will have on consumer prices. The vast majority (77 per cent) of Australia's electricity is produced using black and brown coal. As Labor's policy announcement acknowledges, CSIRO scientists have estimated that carbon capture and storage technologies are not commercially viable (and will not be for many years), and would effectively double the cost of producing electricity. It is also estimated that electricity prices could rise by 40 per cent.

There is no way that individual electricity producers will voluntarily double their generating costs unless they plan on going out of business. Thus clean coal technology will not be adopted unless governments force producers to use it, taxpayers directly subsidise it or if an artificial price (effectively a tax) is placed on carbon emissions. Forcing electricity generators to adopt this cost-doubling technology is equivalent to imposing a 100 per cent tax on the consumption of coal, without the government collecting any revenue. Both parties seem to believe that such a policy will somehow put the coal industry on a sustainable footing and protect coal jobs. This is pure economic fantasy. Doubling the effective cost of coal will likely lead to a significant reduction in coal demand and significant job cuts in the coal industry.

Similarly, the idea that such large increases in consumer electricity prices will not lead to higher inflation and higher mortgage interest rates is completely divorced from economic reality. The only alternative is to shift the costs to the taxpayer by directly subsidising clean coal electricity generation. Inevitably Howard's battlers will end up footing the bill for a bipartisan clean coal policy that will have absolutely no effect on climate change. No wonder neither side wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

Dr Alex Robson teaches economics at the Australian National University

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Rotated map puts a twist in the foundation tale

DID a Portuguese seafarer called Christopher de Mendonca lead a fleet of four ships into Botany Bay in 1522 - almost 250 years before Captain James Cook? The startling claim is made in a book - published today - by the retired Canberra-based science journalist Peter Trickett. Trickett believes Mendonca left irrefutable evidence of his historic voyage: a detailed and uncannily accurate map of Australia's entire east coast.

Trickett's quest began eight years ago in a Canberra bookshop where he bought a beautiful portfolio of rarely seen maps - exquisite reproductions from the Vallard Atlas, a 16th-century document so precious and delicate it never leaves its air-conditioned vault in the Huntington Library in Los Angeles. The original Vallard Atlas contains 15 hand-drawn maps, completed no later than 1545 in Dieppe, France, and represents the entire world as it was then known to Europeans. Scholars had long asked why part of one of the Vallard maps - featuring 120 place names in Portuguese, not French - closely resembled the coast of Queensland. But they had dismissed it as a coincidence, because the map suddenly jutted out at right angles for 1500 kilometres, bearing no relation to any known coastline.

However, Trickett came up with an intriguing theory: what if the atlas compilers in Dieppe had wrongly aligned two Portuguese charts they were copying from? He called in a computer expert who was able to cut the map in two and rotate the bottom half 90 degrees.

"Up to that point it was just a theory," Trickett says. "But once it was rotated . the entire east coast of Australia, and part of the south coast as far as Kangaroo Island, was revealed in incredible detail."

Trickett believes the charts were made by Mendonca, who set off from the Portuguese base at Malacca with a fleet of four ships on a secret mission ordered by King Manuel I. If Trickett is right, Mendonca sailed past Fraser Island, into Botany Bay, around Wilsons Promontory and as far as Kangaroo Island before returning to Malacca via the North Island of New Zealand. But because the Portuguese wanted to prevent other European powers learning about their discovery, Mendonca's charts were kept secret. Instead, says Trickett, Mendonca was rewarded by being made commander of the lucrative fortress at Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, where he eventually died. "His voyage ranks with that of Columbus or Magellan," says Trickett. "But it was secret, unfortunately."

On the southern coast, Trickett says, Mendonca clearly marked many of the outstanding features: Cap Frimosa (Wilsons Promontory), Illa Grossa (Kangaroo Island), Rio Real (Spencer Gulf) and Golfo Grande (the Great Australian Bight). But the most significant feature on the Vallard map is Baia Neve. Trickett insists this is what Cook later called Botany Bay, the birthplace of modern Australia.

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