Peter Martin

Why not extend the the GST to food?

2012-05-23T11:28:00.002+10:00

Me on ABC Adelaide 891, Wednesday May 23

14 minutes, play or CLICK THEN CLICK AGAIN to download mp3

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Lift the GST. The arguments are mounting

2012-05-16T13:41:00.003+10:00

Me on Adelaide ABC 891, Wednesday May 16

16 minutes, play or CLICK THEN CLICK AGAIN to download mp3

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The morning after. My budget wrap up

2012-05-09T19:55:00.000+10:00

Me on ABC Adelaide 891, Wednesday May 9

14 minutes, play or CLICK THEN CLICK AGAIN to download mp3

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A battlers budget?

2012-05-08T10:04:00.011+10:00

Me on ABC Life Matters this morning, May 8

18 minutes, play or CLICK THEN CLICK AGAIN to download mp3

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Why won't the banks pass it all on?

2012-05-02T13:13:00.007+10:00

Me on ABC Adelaide 891, May 2

11 minutes, play or CLICK THEN CLICK AGAIN to download mp3

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Two Australias. One isn't spending

2012-04-04T12:26:00.027+10:00

Me on ABC Adelaide 891, April 4

14 minutes, play or CLICK THEN CLICK AGAIN to download mp3

A NATION DIVIDED

Six months of retail spending

NEXT TO NO GROWTH

Tasmania - 0.02%
NSW +0.06%
Victoria 0.30%
South Australia 0.50%

WAY STRONG GROWTH

Northern Territory 1.2%
Queensland 1.6%
Australian Capital Territory 2.0%
Western Australia 4.1%

Trend growth, August to February

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Is superannuation dangerous?

2012-03-28T20:21:00.027+11:00

Me on ABC891, April 4

9 minutes, play or CLICK THEN CLICK AGAIN to download mp3

TONY DELROY: Where's it best to keep your money?

You'd be forgiven for answering "under your bed".

In the year to the end of February the typical super fund made 0.1 per cent.

That's right - next to nothing.

February was a good month. Over the year to January the typical super fund lost 1.45 per cent.

It's happening in part because the funds are following conventional wisdom in investing heavily in shares. Over time they are said to perform better than anything else.

But do they? And are our super funds dangerous?

Our Wednesday economics correspondent Peter Martin joins us to discuss new thinking and an alarm sounded by the former head of the Treasury Ken Henry.

Peter is economics correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald and joins us from parliament House in Canberra...

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How aging will change things

2012-03-14T23:27:00.015+11:00

Me on ABC891, March 14, 2012

11 minutes, play or CLICK THEN CLICK AGAIN to download mp3

I'm on Adelaide's ABC 891 every Wednesday at 10.00 am AEDT, 9.30 am central time.

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The New Brisbane Line

2012-03-10T12:15:00.018+11:00

Me on ABC Radio National Saturday Extra, March 10, 2012

15 minutes, play or CLICK THEN CLICK AGAIN to download mp3

GERALDINE DOOGUE: The figures show that our economy is in good shape but nearly all the growth is being generated and experienced in two states—WA and Queensland—while the rest of Australia stagnates; or, in the case of Tasmania and South Australia, actually go backwards.

So what is the current social mood about the distribution of wealth in Australia?

How do current perceptions of money and class and opportunity feed in to our sense of identity?

What do we value and want for ourselves and for our communities? How do we balance initiative, reward, and responsibility?"

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Weekend listening - Laurie Oakes magnificent lecture

2011-10-29T08:41:00.004+11:00

It's here:

(right click on the link below to download)

If you would like more, there's now Rob Chalmers book: Inside the Canberra Press Gallery
Life in the Wedding Cake of Old Parliament House.

It's a free download from the ANU. I am several chapters in.

Rob has seen more than Laurie. A year or so back he told me (only half joking) that Laurie and Michelle were "young pups".

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Weekend listening - Stephen Fry's top five songs, chosen for the ABC

2011-10-22T02:41:00.001+11:00

It's here. Just hit play.

Oh, and Her's Fry with Lady Ga Ga.

Enjoy.

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The potato chip - the best podcast I have heard in months

2011-10-15T08:32:00.001+11:00

"Now there's a gap in the conveyor belt. As the chip goes over that gap, it will literally jump the gap. Because it's moving 60 mph. It has enough speed and the wind resistance on the chip. As they see that coming, they think: Are we going to make it? But actually not all of them do. So, on the other side there is a grid of air pressure pumps--not on the other side, but in the gap--that will squirt air. So as they jump the gap you'll hear little noises going pssst, pssst. And what that jet is doing is pushing as they jump through the air the non-quality chip to fall into a collection bin so they can be put in the bio-mass boiler later. The ones that make it over the gap will proceed to a station where they are collected and actually go into the bags."

Talk about quality control.

I knew none of this.

They cut the salt crystals with lasers to boost the surface area to NaCl ratio.

Russ Roberts of EconTalk talks to Brendan O'Donohoe of Frito-Lay in the United States.

Frito-Lay makes Smiths crisps, Doritos and Twisties in Australia.

Here's the page. Here's The MP3. Right click and save. You won't be sorry.

Russ Roberts is a pretty cool guy.

He also gave humanity The Keynes versus Hayek rap:

And Round Two:

Enjoy these too.

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Eight dollars per bottle. Coles does something good.

2011-06-24T07:40:00.008+10:00

Alice Springs Pastor Basil Schild by 1petermartin

"I have attended around 100 funerals. Two were for white people."

Eight dollars will become the new cheap in Alice Springs from next month. After July 1 it will be impossible to buy wine for less than $8 a bottle in Coles supermarkets and absolutely impossible to buy 2 litre casks.

The new regime, designed to ensure alcohol always costs at least $1.14 a standard drink is an Australian first and beats to the punch health minister Nicola Roxon who has asked her Preventive Health Agency to “develop the concept” as part of a nationwide move to combat alcohol abuse.

Coles managing director Ian McLeod announced the move at a Sydney retail function yesterday saying he began thinking about the company's practices when contacted by a Lutheran pastor in Alice Springs six months ago.

Woolworths followed suit within hours and announced that it too would phase out 2 litre casks in Alice Springs, abandoning a popular product that sold for $12.99 or 62 cents per standard drink. Coles casks sold for 10.99 or less than 50 cents per standard drink.

Dr John Boffa of the Central Australian Aboriginal Health Congress said the break though with Coles only began 10 days ago when a grop of liquor division executives came to Alice Springs to see conditions for themselves.

“You could see their views changing. They didn’t say much, but but they left with an appreciation of the damage cheap alcohol is doing. They’ve gone from being the worst of the retailers in the Territory to the best.”

IGA had already trialed a minimum price of $1.15 per standard drink in its Northside Alice Springs supermarket and was looking to extend the minimum price town wide...

In a letter to prime minister Gillard and Northern Territory chief minister Paul Henderson seen by the Herald Mr McLeod says Coles will “review the relevance of these new policy positions on a needs basis for other stores across Australia”. In most cases it believes there will be no need to make a change.

Coles at present sells branded wine for as little as $4.99 a bottle in cities, well below the new $8 Alice Springs floor price.

Dr Boffa said the immediate effect would be to sharply boost beer sales, with resultant health benefits.

“Dependent drinkers will still get drink but they will drink less and drink more slowly. By itself this won’t solve the Territory’s problems, but it is a necessary part of the solution,” he the Herald.

Published in today's SMH and Age

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"You rigged 'da what?" Why electricity charges are climbing

2011-06-21T01:00:00.003+10:00

Rigged rules

The Australian energy regulator has taken aim at what it says is the real reason for rising power prices, saying it has nothing to do with the carbon tax and everything to do with “gold plating” by firms that know they’ll be able to pass on higher costs.

Pleading for change and speaking out for the first time since becoming AER chairman Andrew Reeves told a conference in Melbourne his hands were often tied when it came to approving the electricity price increases.

He was only allowed to knock back those that did not “reasonably reflect” the cost of planned investment.

“There is a clear incentive for the business to submit proposals that are either at or beyond the upper end of the range of reasonable estimates,” he said.

“Businesses routinely submit proposals that contain substantial engineering detail in support of the ‘reasonable’ estimate. We are then required to undertake a granular assessment of the proposal within a tightly-defined time frame. The inevitable consequence is an outcome that is not a central estimate of efficient costs, but one which is biased in favour of the service provider"...

Asked by the Herald how much higher power prices were now than if the AER had been able to make decisions using its own cost and pricing formulas Mr Reeves did not give an estimate but pointed to forecasts showing electricity distribution revenues in NSW and Queensland would roughly double over the next 4 years because of approvals the AER already given, sometimes reluctantly.

In Victoria where there not been overinvestment, revenues would be little changed.

Transmission and distribution charges made up about half of each electricity bill.

“If we decide against proposed increases the firms appeal to the Australian Competition Tribunal and usually win,” Mr Reeves told the Herald.

“We have had something like 22 issues before the Tribunal in the last three years and in 14 of those the the Tribunal has ruled in favour of the firms - and those were for big increases.”

Transmission and distribution firms were also able to spend more on capital equipment than had been approved, knowing that under tits rules the AER would be forced to approve price increases that would give them a reasonable rate of return on that capital at the next review.

“Ross Garnaut has called it gold plating,” Mr Reeves said. “NSW and Queensland are getting more infrastructure than we think they need and we are required to approve price increases to pay for it.”

The AER was also required to calculate the cost of capital for electricity firms using a formula that often overstated actual costs. Where it understated actual costs the firms could apply for a reassessment, but not the other way around.

“We are speaking out about this now because electricity prices are a concern to the community,” said Mr Reeves. “For years there wasn’t much interest. A lot of public servants working for the AER have been dedicated and frustrated.”

The AER has asked the Australian Energy Market Commission to review its rules to make them more like other regulators. The incoming head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Rod Sims is understood to strongly support a change.

“We want to use best practice as our benchmark, not existing practice. The best-run power companies are the privately-owned ones in Victoria, we want to use them to benchmark the costs and spending in NSW and Queensland," Mr Reeves said.

Published in today's SMH and Age

Why Power prices are really rising:

Peter Martin Energy Prices NightLife March 9 by 1petermartin

NSW's AusGrid hits back

NSW electricity distributor AusGrid - formerly known as Energy Australia - has accused the prices regulator of putting power supplies at risk by attempting to take control of its investment program.

Angrily rejecting claims AusGrid was helping force up NSW power prices by “gold plating” its network with unnecessary spending, managing director George Maltabarow said the state had to spend more than other states in order to replace substations and poles and wires erected in the 1960s and 1970s.

“We have 700,000 more electricity customers than Victoria, one million more poles and 120,000 km of wires. Our network is older than Victoria’s and the replacement costs are coming earlier,” he said.

Australian Energy Regulator chairman Andrew Reeves claimed Monday NSW distributors were submitting grander than needed investment proposals in order to pass on the costs in higher prices. NSW distribution charges were set to double in the next four years while those in Victoria remained little changed.

Mr Maltabarow told the Herald the Mr Reeves appeared to want “take more power to control electricity networks without any of the accountability”.

“The AER is not accountable when a major substation fails and customers lose power. It is not accountable if our workers are put at risk of serious injury,” he said.

“Suggestions that we call the tune and the regulator’s hands are tied are from from true. It cut $460 million in capital funding from our most recent proposal and $170 million in operating costs. Its decisions were upheld by the Australian Competition Tribunal.”

“About half of our large electricity substations were built in the 1950s and 1960s. Electrical equipment generally has a life of 40 to 50 years and so we have reached the stage now where much has to be replaced.”

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Carbon tax. "We'll be rooned" What crap.

2011-04-18T10:36:00.009+10:00

Richard Denniss has done the figures

Richard Denniss ABC 666 April 18 by 1petermartin

Food manufacturers have joined mining and energy companies in demanding a guarantee the proposed carbon tax will leave them no worse off against international competitors.

The guarantee is demanded in a letter delivered to prime minister Gillard signed by 45 executives including the heads of Nestle, Yakult, Goodman Fielder and Bundaberg Sugar.

It seeks assurances the carbon tax will “not impose costs on Australia’s export and import competing industries ahead of their international competitors”.

Several executives who signed the letter including the heads of OneSteel, BlueScope and Xtrata Coal meet with the prime minister tomorrow at the industry assistance working group.

The plea comes as the Australia Institute prepares to release an analysis ridiculing claims export exposed industries will be made worse off describing the impact on their income as “likely to be trivially small” after compensation.

Prepared using data from the department of climate change the figures show the steel industry would lose 2 per cent of its income before compensation and 0.1 per cent after the kind of compensation proposed as part of the 2009 carbon pollution reduction scheme. Alumina producers stood to lose 4.6 per cent of their income (0.3 per cent after compensation) and aluminum manufactures 11.4 per cent (0.6 per cent and after compensation)...

“Firms such as BlueScope claimed in 2009 the carbon price would shut them down, but since then the Aussie dollar has appreciated 50 per cent. That has had far more impact,” said Australia Institute executive director Richard Denniss.

“A $20 per tonne carbon tax would cost BlueScope at most 0.4 per cent of its revenue, assuming it doesn’t cut its emissions. Tha’s around $34.5 million per annum. By way of comparison it says in its annual report this year’s wage increases will cost it $57.2 million.”

Food and Grocery Council chief executive Kate Carnell said her members had decided to join the push for compensation because they were already under pressure from rising costs “such as energy, wages and water, higher transport costs, record high global commodity prices and supermarkets forcing down retail prices.”

“If a carbon tax puts Australian manufacturing at a disadvantage, it will ultimately result in exporting Australian manufacturing jobs and exporting emissions,” she said.

Dr Dennis said even by the standards of the days manufacturers demanded massive protection just to stay in business the new claims were “unprecedented both in the extent of the exaggeration and the relative lack of scrutiny”.

“These firms have survived and often prospered as the dollar has soared since 2009 when they told us they were on the edge.”

The Australian Council of Social Service will today demand a flat fortnightly payment to low income earners as compensation for the carbon tax, a change from its position in 2009 when it accepted a percentage increase in benefits.

“If the carbon tax pushes up average prices $10 per week, we want a $10 per week increase in benefits for everyone in the bottom two fifths of the income distribution,” said senior policy officer Tony Westmore.

“Low income earners who are not on benefits should get a large one-off cash payment.”

Published in today's SMH and Age

HOW BADLY HURT?

Revenue cost of a $20 per tonne carbon tax (with compensation)

Carbon steel 2.0% (0.1%)
Flat glass 4.2% (0.2%)
Cartonboard 4.4% (0.2%)
Alumina 4.6% (0.3%)
Integrated iron & steel 6.4% (0.4%)
Newsprint 7.4% (0.4%)
Aluminum 11.4% (0.6%)
Glass containers 2.4% (0.8%)

Australia Institute, assuming CRPS level of compensation

The industries that cried wolf

ACOSS Carbon Price and Low Income Households

ACOSS president Cassandra Goldie on compensation by 1petermartin

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Easy listening. Why power prices are really climbing

2011-03-09T23:30:00.021+11:00

Peter Martin Energy Prices NightLife March 9 by 1petermartin

10 minutes NightLife ABC Radio, March 9

. Memo to Julia: You don't have a carbon consensus

. Why we need a carbon tax, by the Coalition's environment spokesman

. Get set for higher power prices, with or without a carbon price

Listen in: "The US dollar took another pounding...

2011-02-18T14:13:00.010+11:00

Those words sounded current this week as through a time warp on my favourite radio program I heard a replay of an extraordinarily unlikely 1974 hit single:

"The Americans" by Canadian commentator Gordon Sinclair (then 73 years old) must be about the only radio editorial ever to have to become a hit single, I thought...

...until I remembered this one, from my own home city of Adelaide:

Enjoy. Wallow. The group was "The Young Australians", the background was conscription for the Vietnam war, the year 1967, the voice TV executive Rex Heading (who is also famous for creating Humphrey B Bear).

It too became a hit single even though some DJs refused to play it, and was later included on Bob Hudson and Glenn A Baker's LP "Detestable Disks"

Have a good weekend.

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The CPI does not measure changes in the cost of living

2011-02-15T11:24:00.005+11:00

False advertising from Centrelink

Cost of living:

Working families +4.5%
Age pensioners +3.1%
Welfare beneficiaries +4.5%
Self-funded retirees +2.6%

Consumer price index: +2.7%

If you think your cost of living is rising faster than the consumer price index, you're probably right.

Living cost indexes released yesterday by the Bureau of Statistics show the increases facing working families, age pension households and welfare beneficiaries have all outpaced the CPI.

Working households faced extra costs of 4.5 per cent in the year to December, aged pensioners 3.1 per cent and welfare recipients 4.5 per cent. The CPI itself grew 2.7 per cent.

The Bureau says there are different reasons for each group. Aged pensioners spend a relatively high proportion of their income on utility bills and fruit and vegetables, both of which shot up in price in the year to December.

As a group, welfare beneficiaries spend a higher proportion than most on alcohol and tobacco, which increased sharply in price largely as a result of the 25 per cent increase in cigarette tax.

Working families are highly likely to face mortgage payments... which jumped in price an extraordinary 30 per cent over the year as a result of four Reserve Bank rate hikes and one imposed by the banks themselves. Mortgage increases feed directly into the living cost indexes calculated by the Bureau but not into the consumer price index itself.

Self funded retirees did alright though. The Bureau says their living costs climbed just 2.6 per cent, a point lower than the CPI. They are unlikely to face too much pain from rising interest rates.

Does this mean the consumer price index is a poor guide to living costs? The Bureau says it does. It is meant to be a measure of inflation rather than living costs, a subtly different concept which is why the Bureau produces separate living cost indicies.

The good news for pensioners is they get a choice. Their payments are adjusted twice a year in line with either the CPI, the pensioner living cost index or male total average earnings, whichever has increased the fastest.

The unemployed get no such luck. Their Newstart allowance gets adjusted only in line with what is usually the lowest of those, the CPI, which the Centrelink website wrongly describes as a measure of changes in the cost of living.

So fast is Newstart shrinking relative to other benefits as a result of the difference it is now worth just two-thirds of the pension and is projected by Treasury to shrink to one-third by 2050.

"Right now, someone on Newstart is living on $33 a day," said Australian Council of Social Service President chief executive Cassandra Goldie. In its budget submission ACOSS asks for NewStart to be boosted $50 per week as recommended by both the Henry Tax Review and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Tighter family budgets and greater caution were evident in credit card figures released yesterday which showed the average balance up just 1.9 per cent on the previous December, a result in line with retail spending figures which went backwards in real terms.

Housing finance figures were brighter with borrowing for owner occupation up 2.3 per cent in December despite the interest rate rises in what is the sixth consecutive increase.

NSW and Victoria are leading the pack with trend increases in the number of owner occupied loans of 2.1 and 1.4 per cent per month.

"Softer prices are attracting buyers," said CommSec economist Craig James. "The average mortgage size has climbed only 0.3 per cent over the past year, the slowest growth rate in almost 10 years."

Reflecting greater caution the proportion of new home loans borrowed at fixed rates doubled from 3.4 per cent to 8.9 per cent between August and December.

Published in today's SMH and Age

Why unemployment benefits need to be increased - Peter Whitford, Inside Story

Peter talking to Fairfax Media this morning

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6463.0 6401.0 RBACC

Quiggin, the Musical

2011-01-31T08:23:00.008+11:00

Why not?

As he enjoys the success of Zombie Economics - How Dead Ideas Walk among Us, he is already considering the movie rights.

It is being translated into French and Portuguese and Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

It began its life as a series of blog posts as we were recovering from the financial crisis, several of which I reposted here.

It's a great read, the best cover of any economics book, and potentially as important in Freakonomics in popularising economic concepts.

And now it's easy listening.

Here's John Quiggin at the London School of Economics in November.

And here he is in surprisingly agreement with Hayek fan Russ Roberts on EconTalk:

(The Econtalk link has a virtual transcript, so hardworking is Roberts)

Want to check out Zombie Economics? Here's the Introduction, to get you started:

Zombie Econoics Introduction

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What an impressive Australian. Meet Ron McCallum.

2011-01-26T09:36:00.008+11:00

Senior Australian of the Year

A few years back Julia Baird and I conducted a remarkable interview with him.

Enjoy to the audio here, or read it below the fold.

Ron McCallum is a passionate and extraordinary Australian. The Dean of the Sydney University Law School, it is a position he has reached against near-overwhelming odds.

That’s the sound of him reading, Or rather the sound of Professor Ron McCallum being read to by an electronic voice.

It’s a rate of audio information input most of us can’t begin to comprehend.

And yet it’s how one of Australia’s foremost experts in industrial relations law reads everything.

Professor Ron McCallum is the first totally blind person to have been appointed to a full professorship at any Australian university.

He has been driven to succeed, but also driven by a sense of justice - one that’s been deeply offended by the new industrial conditions introduced as a result of the government’s WorkChoices legislation.

Just this week there have been reports of one employer using the legislation in order to remove its workers rights to penalty payments, bonuses and public holidays in return for a pay increase of just two cents an hour.

Ron McCallum says more like that is around the corner. And he’s worried too about the way in which WorkChoices has been introduced.

The Commonwealth government has purported to grab control of industrial relations from the states using the power to make rules governing corporations given to it in the Australian constitution.

Professor McCallum says there’s something wrong about using a power over corporations in order to control the working conditions of human beings.

Ron McCallum:

I think it’s the most significant case on federal state powers since the high court disallowed the nationalisation of the banks in the Chifley government in 1949. The High Court and the Privy government said the federal government didn’t have power to nationalise the banks, it’s of that level, because if the federal government wins in this case then it seems to me they can establish a whole lot of other laws governing all the things that corporations do and corporations do most of the things that happen in private sector economy.

Julia Baird:

What is it about the things that happen in a private sector economy that particularly disturbs you?

Ron McCallum:

I’m a fairly simply fellow Julia. Corporations power should be for corporations, the labour power, that’s the consolation power should be for settling and preventing labour disputes. By using the corporation’s power to enact our labour laws we’re corporatising labour law. We’re making it a subset of corporations law.

Julia Baird:

And therefore making workers a commodity.

Ron McCallum:

Exactly, I have put this view up by using examples which may seem frivolous but it’s to make a serious point. Supposing we had a power in the constitution called the women’s power and it allowed parliament to make laws about women. Could we use that power to make laws allowing women and men to marry each other and divorce each other and the answer is, yes. But wouldn’t we say that these laws are a bit lopsided and that we gentlemen are but mere appendages? The point I’m trying to make is that if you put labour law as an appendage to corporations law, it’s corporation law that always wins.

Julia Baird:

Look those that have followed your public speaking and commentary and your work on Industrial relations would know that you’re very passionate about it and this might be a stereotype, but we can usually expect expertise from a Dean of Law but not always passion. Can you explain what it is about these laws particularly which invoke such passion in you?

Ron McCallum:

I’ve worked all my life around the world and in Australia to find balances between the rights of employers to operate their businesses and the rights and obligations of employees. These laws are unbalanced. I find it unjust for example that if the majority of workers at an enterprise want to be dealt with collectively, they can’t insist upon that right. I find it unjust that if your employer which is incorporated and has a hundred or less people and you are terminated because arbitrary capricious or unfair behaviour, you have no remedy other than the common law. I live and breathe these laws. I have friends and acquaintances and family working, I’m a worker myself and it’s only really through our passion and commitment that we can really get things done.

Julia Baird:

Let’s talk about some of your life now. You’ve said that this has been something which has preoccupied you ever since you were young and one of the extraordinary things about you is that the area of your expertise, the law requires many long hours of reading and you’ve reached the top of your field despite the fact that you were blind. I understand that when you were born in 1948 you had perfect site but your eyes were damaged while you were being looked after at the hospital as a premature baby. What happened?

Ron McCallum:

I’m what’s called a retrolental fibroplasia child. When I was born ten weeks premature, they put me in a humidicrib and the only way they could keep me alive was by using pure oxygen. It caused blood vessels to grow, which pulled the retinas off the back of my eyes, so I guess I lost my sight a few hours after birth.

Julia Baird:

That must have been a terrible accident for your parents to come to terms with, how did they react to that?

Ron McCallum:

My mother was a very strong woman, she reacted very well, my father, it was his second marriage, it was after World War 11, he had post traumatic stress, the way we would describe it now. I don’t think he handled disability, the fact that I was disabled you know, he just found me as I perceive it now, hard to accept.

Julia Baird:

That must have been very hurtful for you as a child?

Ron McCallum:

I’m not sure that I found it hurtful. He was a strange very ill man when I look back on it now. He used to push my mother around a little and I, you know I’ve got teenaged children who are going to be listening to this, he was a sick man I think it would be fair to say. I don’t know that it was after any event, it was the coming to realization that, I decided at the age of thirteen that I was going to be my own person and that I would not be put down by anybody and that I would say what I think and always be me and maybe that had something to do with the fact that now I speak out on things and I try and be me all the time.

Julia Baird:

You said to a journalist once that your great passion in life was to read…

Ron McCallum:

Absolutely.

Julia Baird:

At what age did you become aware of this and why were you so keen?

Ron McCallum:

About two and a half or something. My Mum was reading to my older brothers and to me, they were looking at pictures on the page and I went up like to try and feel the page and my Mum explained to me I couldn’t see the pictures and that what she was doing was reading print that I couldn’t see and would never be able to read and from that time onwards I would have loved to read. I had to spend all my time when I was a high school student getting people to put things on tape. When I was at university, I could always get students to read criminal law but as to reading conveyancing, no way.

Julia Baird:

Did any of your readers ever kind of fall asleep or nod off while they were going through it?

Ron McCallum:

No, but I did.

Julia Baird:

Did all these huge number of hours, you talked about kind of living on your own, did this affect your social life, the number of hours you would have had to put in to all your study and listening to these tapes?

Ron McCallum:

I think so; I just had much less social life because I was busy working.

Julia Baird:

Were you expecting to marry or have children, did you want to have kids?

Ron McCallum:

Yes, when I was a young teacher at Monash I would spend every Friday morning every couple of weeks at the creche where they asked me to help run the four-year-old program. That was a great outlet to me, I didn’t expect to have children and when I met Mary and we were getting engaged I said, “Well look, this is great getting married but you’d better get the thumbs up from my creche class because…”

Julia Baird:

I gather she got it!

Ron McCallum:

She got it and one of the students came up to me after Mary visited, Jennifer I think it was, who would now be 25 or 26 and she said, “Mr McCallum we’ve been talking and we think you ought to marry her.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

Julia Baird:

And how did, were there things that she had to come to terms with about the fact that you were blind?

Ron McCallum:

Her father is a world famous ophthalmologist, he was first professor of Ophthalmology in Australia, Gerard Crock. You know he has given sight back around the world to thousands of people and he has a blind son-in-law and a blind father of his grandchildren so it’s quite extraordinary. Which you know I think, there are frustrations. I think most ladies would say there are frustrations living with any man and perhaps vice versa but you know, I can’t drive a car, when I get very tired, I get very confused. I don’t always look this organised. She’s never complained in the sense of my disability which I think is extraordinary, I think if the boot were on the other foot, I’d say, “Oh for God’s sake”, so I think that’s truly amazing.

Julia Baird:

What did falling in love and getting married change for you?

Ron McCallum:

People didn’t perceive me, when I became a husband and a Dad, people seemed to perceive me more in the mainstream. Now I could be misconstruing that but that’s my perceptions, suddenly people looked at me and thought, “Yes, he’s doing all the things we do.”

Julia Baird:

And had you expected to do all the things that everyone else does?

Ron McCallum:

No, at that time technology came along and technology altered my life because they were now inventing synthetic speech which could be used with computers and also scanners where you could scan books and by 1989 I could scan a book, I didn’t have to get someone to read it. I could put a book on a scanner and it would be read out synthetically. It’s liberated me, I can be not only hopefully a good husband and Dad but I can be a government advisor and Dean of a law school.

Julia Baird:

I think you said once, “It was like saying to a paraplegic, ‘you can walk now’.”

Ron McCallum:

Yes. You know people say to me and you can cut this out of the interview if you like, people say to me, “Wouldn’t you like to see your wife and see your children?” And I think in an abstract way, I suppose if you could see it would be good, but I’ve never seen and I know that Mary and I bathed the children when they were born, I know them, I don’t need to see them, doesn’t mean anything to me, but if you’d said to me at the age of ten, “Would you like a machine that would read to you automatically?” I would have said, “Yes.” Look it got so complicated that I had a little bit of counseling, I married Mary in 1986 and we had a child a year later and then technology, the first talking computer, I had sexuality and being a Dad and technology and they all hit at once and suddenly I was liberated and I could read whatever I wanted to read. I could actually put on the scanner pornography in theory!

Julia Baird:

And did you?

Ron McCallum:

No but I wrote my first book from memory on a typewriter and if you’d come into my office I would have said, “Look would you read me the last sentence I wrote, because I can’t remember and I’d keep on typing.”

Julia Baird:

Right.

Ron McCallum:

Someone recently wrote that Ron McCallum’s writing had become crisper and I thought, “Yes, I can now read it back.” But yes, if you’re an academic and you want to read and you want, information is power and now I can do it, it’s extraordinary; I never imagined it could happen. You know I didn’t imagine marrying or having children but I knew people did marry and have children but at that stage I never knew that we would invent this technology. Sometimes in the middle of the night, Mary will reach over and feel my ears, this is nothing to do with amorousness, we’ve been married twenty years, this is, “Are you still plugged in and would you try and get a balanced life!”

Julia Baird:

You described it as when you first made this discovery and I think it was in December 1989, it was orgasmic…

Ron McCallum:

Yes.

Julia Baird:

Can you tell us about that actual moment when you were able to scan material into your computer?

Ron McCallum:

Yes, the scanner had arrived and each week on my desk comes a loose part of the law reports from around the world and you can read cases and the first part that came to me as soon as I got the computer was from England, it was the House of Laws decision on Occupational Health and Safety. Now I teach that law. Normally I would have had to go and find someone to read it, I said, “No, no, no. I’m going to read this myself now.” I walked into the room, I put it on the thing and I read it and I came out and I thought I can do this. The days of asking someone to read me something are over. It’s a bit like you know if I hadn’t learnt to do up my shoes or my buttons, would I have to say to someone everyday, could you please do up my buttons? I can read what I want to read, when I want to read, I can read whatever I like to read whether it’s permissible or impermissible.

Julia Baird:

I think you’ve got your, we might call it a talking machine but its actually called something else.

Ron McCallum:

This is a computer with a synthetic voice.

Julia Baird:

It reads to you from things which are scanned into it right?

Ron McCallum:

Yes will this one, some things are scanned in and other things are taken off the net. What I took off the net was the work choices bill scanned it into that and I can now read it by pressing these buttons here.

Julia Baird:

Can you play it for us?

Ron McCallum:

I will, I’ve put it on the very slow speed.

Julia Baird:

Okay....

It’s like Star Trek.

Ron McCallum:

I can slow it down more…Now if I were going to read it myself, I would read it like this…

Julia Baird:

Oh my goodness.

Ron McCallum:

But I’m trained to do that.

Julia Baird:

But it’s like another language.

Ron McCallum:

Yes but it’s like when you are using your eyes reading, you read far quicker than you could speak, that’s only about 500 words a minute.

Julia Baird:

So you can understand that easily?

Ron McCallum:

Yes. I do get some headaches but my friends get headaches after reading for a long time and I think when I became blind shortly after birth the brain hadn’t developed, in fact quite a lot of my cohort had brain damage, you know I went to school with brain damaged kids at first because they put us all together but often I think there are big spaces in my head, there are big blanks, but I think some of those blanks are used to help me use my hearing and touch and smell senses better. I’m quite amazed about how clever people with vision are, grown ups. When the children were smaller my wife could drive the car, talk to me and where necessary yell at children in their car seats in the back. I just can’ t do all that at once and my nearly 19 year old who can drive me somewhere I think this child whom I held in two hands and he can do those things that I can never even conceive of doing, it’s quite extraordinary.

Julia Baird:

You’re listening to Sunday Profile, my guest is Professor Ron McCallum, the Dean of Law at Sydney University.
Well with all those sounds and that kind of noise going into your earphones and all these words swimming around your mind, what do you do to relax or to still your mind?

Ron McCallum:

I meditate morning and evening. I’ve done that ever since I got stressed in the early 1990’s. I am a Christian meditator, but you can be whatever meditator you like and I say my mantra morning and evening.

Julia Baird:

What’s your mantra?

Ron McCallum:

MA-RA-NA-THA. It means come lord. It’s in the old Aramaic which was the language Jesus spoke. So I mediate morning and evening, get up at quarter to five to meditate. I find relaxing very hard but I find meditation is cheaper than the shrink, you know, it’s not chasing other ladies, it’s not drinking too heavily but seriously I find I need times of absolute quiet and meditation to centre myself. I find my job difficult. Not only am I Chief Executive but I still teach and research, I’m responsible for significant educational institution, a significant part of Sydney University. I need that meditation and calm time to still all the stuff going around.

Julia Baird:

Do you think that meditation means something different to you than it would for a sighted person?

Ron McCallum:

I don’t know, I don’t see things in my dreams, I don’t dream that much. I know that my mind is different and that it has these gaps but I’m still trying to do what you’re doing.

Julia Baird:

You’ve said it was a form of Christian meditation, what does it mean to you in your work to be a Christian?

Ron McCallum:

I’m a believer in Jesus Christ and I believe in the Ten Commandments and his good neighbour philosophy. I try and live that life as best I can. I know I don’t always live up to the Christian ideals and to me there’s a lot of elements of Christianity in labour law. We were a Christian country particularly in 1900. When we developed our system of conciliation and arbitration it was backed by the Catholic church, to a lesser extent by the Protestant churches, it was backed by people concerned with fairness, there are a whole lot of stories in the Bible of Jesus speaking about how masters should treat servants and vice versa. Our law is based upon Judaic Christian principles.

Julia Baird:

So you feel probably that part of your work in IR would be about protecting the vulnerable or seeking a fair deal for workers.

Ron McCallum:

Absolutely.

Julia Baird:

I mean there must be some different views out there on that as well, I mean given that Ian Harper who’s the head of the new fair pay commission is an Anglican as well?

Ron McCallum:

Absolutely, I mean there’s another view that we should reward merit, that we should employ people at all costs, even if that means lowering wages, that there is an ordained order of things, that we will get better productivity for all if we pay the higher skilled workers more. They look at labour law I think in a collective or overall national sense. I came from the other side of the tracks, from the poor side of the tracks. I look at it from the plight of the individual. I think once you move law away from the individual you lose its humanity. We might want to say, “Okay, it’s nice for businesses who have a hundred or less employees not to worry about their unfair behaviour if they dismiss someone unfairly,” what about the individual who’s felt injustice? You know, we can all remember from childhood something that went wrong in our lives when we were unjustly dealt with. We may have been unjustly punished at school or our parents may have misconstrued something. Dickens wrote that every child has an innate sense of justice and I think we have it and we can all remember injustice. If the law means anything, if it’s not going to clang like an empty symbol it has to have justice at the core and justice and must be centred in the individual worth of individual human beings.

Julia Baird:

So there’s also a battle of ideas amongst people of faith in the industrial relations tradition perhaps?

Ron McCallum:

Oh absolutely, you know one person said in the early days of the church, “You could tell Christians from the way they looked at you with their eyes.” I’m not sure that we Christians stand out like that anymore.

Julia Baird:

Recently we have seen the High Court decided in a case about wrongful life. In a situation where parents claimed they would have aborted rather than give birth to severely disabled children had they been told about the rubella which the woman had contracted during her pregnancy. This case is ultimately involved comparing a disabled life with no life, and as you would know, the High Court threw it out, saying, “It would be odious and repugnant to suggest a disabled person would be better off not being born.” As a Christian, a lawyer and a blind person, what were your thoughts on this case?

Ron McCallum:

I would never question someone who wanted to abort because there was evidence of disability, if that was their choice I wouldn’t jump up and down about it. I think we disabled people do have a valuable life. Now it might be easier to say it of me, even those with brain damage have right to live unless someone’s in extreme pain, people have a right to live. On the other hand, I can see why people who are bringing up a disabled child should be allowed to get damages; it’s a bit emotive to call it ‘wrong for life’. The real issue is over damages to help bring up a disabled child which costs a lot of money. So I’m torn, I’d probably in the end side with Justice Michael Kirby that I would have probably allowed the case to go to trial and assess for damages but that would mean my view is that disabled people have a worthless life. I think all of us have a place in the procession, young and old and disabled.

Julia Baird:

Well in this instance the parents were angry with the doctor who was involved, what would you say to parents who are angry with God when their children are born disabled?

Ron McCallum:

I had a father who was angry; I don’t know what God’s plan is. When people say, ‘It’s God’s will’, I don’t know that I want to subscribe to that theory. I think you’re very lucky if you have a child with ten fingers and ten toes. We’re not in a world of designer babies, I wasn’t a designer baby, who would have thought of me in a humidicrib with a post traumatic stressed father that I would have ended up being Dean of a Law school and leading what I hope is a useful life? We don’t know where we’re all going to end up so you know we all have value.

Julia Baird:

Professor Ron McCallum, thanks for joining us on Sunday Profile.

Ron McCallum:

Thank you very much Julia.

Julia Baird:

And that’s Ron McCallum – by any standard an extraordinary and a committed human being.

I’m Julia Baird – thanks for listening.

"Put down your weapons" -- what Ken Henry actually said

2010-06-23T16:59:00.000+10:00

Here's the audio (about 9 minutes):

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