Copping it sweet. My long-time friend, the late Jim Killen (he was my best man when I got married in his house — I just toss that in to bemuse those who dismiss me as just another Labor man), once cautioned me about writing off a politician who had made a serious political blunder. The politician had gone into the House of Representatives and made a complete “I was wrong” statement and Jim correctly forecast that such an abject apology would remove any political heat from the incident. As he was so often, Killen was quite right.
I was reminded of this incident last night when I watched South Australian Attorney-General Mike Atkinson do his complete and utter recantation of his insistence that those who comment on internet blogs during an election campaign give their full name and address or risk being prosecuted. There were no ifs, buts or maybes as the A-G copped it sweet. And I liked his “Reports of your non-existence are greatly exaggerated” comment as he came face to face for the Adelaide Advertiser’s photographer with that man he publicly said did not exist.
I am sure there will now be little lasting electoral damage from what was shaping as an awkward election campaign moment.
Learning to take no notice of forecasts. The evidence just keeps coming of the worthlessness of economists looking in to the future. The New York Times this week takes an insightful look at the recent history of US Budget forecasts and the actual result.
Those little light lines are what the US Government forecast years ago would happen to its Budget surplus/deficit. The heavy blue line is what actually happened and the light blue line is the latest attempt at prediction.
It should be compulsory reading for all journalist just before they enter the lock-up in May to report on Wayne Swan’s pre-election effort. Then we would see truthful stories beginning with something like: “The Labor Government wants us to believe … but who knows what will actually happen because Government forecasts are notoriously inaccurate.”
Confident about climate change? Given the record of economists in telling us what their models say will happen with the economic world, just how confident can we be about scientists using their models to predict future temperatures? Not very. I’m afraid, but unfortunately for future generations I suppose there is just as much chance that global warming is being underestimated as overestimated. How thankful the current crop of politicians should be that they will not be around to see whether they did too much or too little to curb CO2 emissions.
The bank clearly knew better. Perhaps the wisdom of having some actual business people on the board of the Reserve Bank was the reason there was no interest rate rise this week. While the economists were all sure that the economy was starting to boom along the bank was more prudent and the retail sales figures for December out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics this morning show it was right.
In current price seasonally adjusted terms, Australian turnover decreased by 0.7% in December 2009 following increases of 1.5% in November 2009 and 0.3% in October 2009. Need I say that the median forecast of 20 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 0.2% gain.
Piers gets his two pet hates into the same intro. “Mad mullahs believe bad science is gospel”, the headline in this morning’s Sydney Daily Telegraph told us. Clearly, Piers Akerman does not want anyone to doubt what he thinks of our Prime Minister as he wrote: “Global warming believer Kevin Rudd has adopted the strategies of radical ayatollahs to push his agenda for a huge new tax on Australians and a global wealth redistribution scheme”.
Climate science has an advantage over economics when it comes to forecasting. This is because climate forecasting extrapolates trends from an inanimate scource and though all forecasting is uncertain, there is a basis of past events to extrapolate with. Economic forecasting on the other hand is about an obsessively interested scource that will respond to the trends. So if everyone is convinced that an item is priced too low and its price will rise, the price almost instantly rises to the point where there are about an equal number of pessimists as optimists regarding future price movements. Therefore markets of all types tend to be poised at the point of uncertainty all the time, making economic forecasting a diabolically difficult area to work in.
Re: Mike Atkinson and his “I was wrong” speech being the end of it, I agree and that’s exactly how it should be.
He owned the mistake, apologised and corrected it, you can’t ask for more then that.
Economic forecasting is not comparable to forecasting in the physical sciences.
Atkinson only recanted on one of his more ridiculous crusades and one he can afford to “lose” because it was barely enforceable. I’m not so sure Atkinson is out of the woods on the other issues that have made his name recognisable around Australia (quite an achievement for a small minded AG in a small state). Firstly, he has only said that he will repeal that legislation. He’s not in a position to do so in an election campaign and will need to get it through both houses of the SA parliament. So until it’s actually repealed in Parliament, the clause in the Electoral Act stands as is, possibly leaving “offenders” liable for legal consequences, despite his “promises” in the heat of an election campaign.
Secondly, there is a large community of gamers in Australia with an average age of more than 30 years old who are still treated like children by his personal refusal to permit an adult level classification for games on the basis that they might fall into the hands of children somehow and he doesn’t think adults should be able to choose to play games.
Thirdly, his ridiculous and insulting requirements for R rated DVDs in DVD retail or hire shops to be hidden by closed sections or brown paper bags is right in the face of every South Australian that wants to buy or hire a DVD.
He is a fanatic wowser, technically ignorant, and determined to force his luddite and puritanical views on the general public whether they like it or not. He simply ignores opposing viewpoints because, like most zealots, he thinks he holds some sort of moral high ground.
Then there are the biker’s laws and many other similar serious infringements on civil liberties that you have failed to mention at all that the Rann government with Atkinson as AG have inflicted on South Australians. I’ve only commented on issues where Atkinson is conducting moral crusades rather than “law and order” crusades.
Labor, at state and national level, have probably lost my vote forever over the current wave of puritanical wowserism that afflicts the Labor party at all levels at the moment. For someone who was at Parliament House on the day of “The Dismissal” with her father that is a big step – gives you my demographic and I’m not Gen Y. I’ve had it with Labor everywhere marching us back to the 1950s. I thought we got rid of the Howard government and wowserism imposed by Senate deals. Labor are actually worse as they claim the high moral ground and pay lip service to “open and transparent” while trying to impose internet censorship, failing to open up Freedom of Information, failing to implement too many election promises to count.
The Liberals in SA are in disarray so I doubt they could capitalise on any of these issues because they are thoroughly wedged into a race to the bottom on all matters of morals and law and order.
Gail – I think the funniest thing about the ridiculous R-rated DVD law is that it covers “The Passion of the Christ”!