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By Les Scammell, December 18, 2009 10:24 am

Australians have proven over the years that we are quite inventive. We are world leaders in some technologies and often take a leadership role in political matters, particularly those in our neighbourhood. When it comes to the world climate talks in Copenhagen, we could have arrived being world leaders in taking action – instead, we are no different to most other nations, we are looking for someone else to take the lead so we can follow.

I don’t know if the Rudd Governments plans are right or wrong. What I do know is that some form of action was being planned. Going to Copenhagen and waiting to see what everyone else does as the Abbott wants, really makes us look quite weak. What is worse, every other nation is doing just that – waiting to see what everyone else does. Going in with legislation in place could have been a starting point for more action – instead – we, and our children, are left with nothing.

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By Les Scammell, November 29, 2009 5:37 pm

The Australian Liberal Party are rapidly going into melt down – a fairly typical scenario in Australian politics after the party in power loses at a general election. The role of leader really is a poisonous chalice especially when the defeat was as heavy as it was. In most cases, the losing party goes through a number of leaders, and often a number of losing elections, before finally finding some stability and really making a difference.

I am not sure what drives politicians to take on the leadership role in this situations. Perhaps it’s an over-inflated opinion of their own leadership skills, sometimes they are the last man standing when no one else wants the role.

The problem with the Liberal party at present is that they don’t want to be led. The only person strong enough to really bring some order to the party has left. Malcolm Turnbull has the strength of character but not the interpersonal skills. He seems to tend to rile people rather than unite them. Tony Abbot has no credibility and Kevin Andrews even less. That leaves Joe Hockey.

It would be interesting to see Hockey as Liberal leader. Australian’s may remember Joe Hockey and Kevin Rudd playing off against one another several years ago with regular appearances on a popular morning TV show. They also took part in one of our most arduous and meaningful walks – the Kokoda Trail. I am sure they build a little mate-ship in that exercise.

Becoming leader of the Liberals in this current environment is a recipe for political suicide. If the party doesn’t stand 100% behind whomever they appoint leader – the party will continue to slide. There is a real risk that, come the next election, the Liberal party are no longer the number two party in Australia – they could be at best number three – perhaps even worse.

The problem for the Liberal party is very simple – if Joe Hockey doesn’t want the top job – and I don’t blame him one bit if he refused it right now, then who is going to lead them?

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By Les Scammell, November 28, 2009 12:41 pm

It’s a sad day in politics when politicians start using Twitter and Facebook to help them make decisions. That is the case in Australia at present as one major political party goes into total melt down. Australia only has two major political parties, the ALP and the Liberal party. The ALP currently holds power and it seems will continue to do so for quite some time – at least until the Liberal party can get their act together.

Joe Hockey, a probable candidate to take over as leader of the party at some time in the near future, is now using Twitter and Facebook get feedback on climate change issues – specifically a bill before parliament that will bring in a carbon credit system together with a carbon emission reduction goal. This legislation has torn the Liberal party apart – hence Joe Hockey’s use of social media.

He has been a staunch supporter of current leader Malcolm Turnbull and the his efforts to broker a deal related to the new legislation. He is now trying to find an out for this support and is using Twitter and Facebook to help him. At the end of the day he will say that public support is not behind Malcolm Turnbull or the government so he is going to reverse his stance.

That’s pretty weak. First, Twitter and Facebook are not representative of the Australian population. Second, unless someone actually counts every response, we only have his word for the end results, and finally, people use situations like this to gain an advantage. I would love to know how many new followers he received over the last few days and how many of them offered the advice he wants to hear.

This is politics and we all know how two faced they can all be. Tony Abbott was one of the biggest supporters of this legislation a couple of months ago. In fact he was quite up front in promoting it and urging the Liberal party leadership to support it. Guess what, when things got tough he was the first to jump ship and swap sides – and then throw his hat into the ring for the job of party leader.

Am I cynical – you bet. This hasn’t nothing to do with the environment the new legislation – this has just been the issue used to create a disturbance in the party room to force the removal of Malcolm Turnbull. He is his own worst enemy. He is too aloof, too much of a control freak, and just not likable enough to get away with it like Kevin Rudd does (he is also a control freak).

As for Joe Hockey – surely he is not a political suicide freak. Anyone who takes on the leadership job now is on a hiding to nothing. The Liberals will get badly mauled at the next election – only a year away now. If I was Joe, I would step away and let Abbott take the job. Let him take the bruises, and, like every other losing party leader, lose his job after the next election. Then he can step in and rebuild the broken party. Turnbull needs to do a Howard. Howard lost the job of opposition leader and sat back and let everyone else do the hard work. When the time was right he stepped back into the limelight and the rest is history.

Where to know for the Liberals. I guess they will all be heading to Twitter and Facebook to find out who the public wants to see as leader. They may as well – they can’t make a decent decision themselves!

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By Les Scammell, November 17, 2009 12:17 am

As an Australian I am always proud of our achievements. We are a nation that has done well when you consider our size and our population. We have a very proud cricket, rugby league and union and now soccer history. We excel at swimming, surfing, sailing and many other water based sports. Our athletic ability has not been as prolific as our swimmers, but then given the temperature extremes, swimming is always going to take preference over running.

We have a great history when it comes to authors, actors, singers, and yes, even scientist. There are many inventions used around the world that started their life here in Australia.

So yes – we have a very proud history.

And yet, as we talk proudly of our history – we also have a past that is less proud. Certainly a history that we try to ignore, try to forget and try to suppress. I am not talking about our convict heritage either – for some reason we are even proud of that.

No – we have a sad history of first, suppressing the indigenous peoples of this land. Not only suppress, we took their children from their families, took their land, and too a degree, took their dignity. Our Prime Minister took steps to rectify this with a public apology to the indigenous peoples – an act that previous Governments had refused to do.

Today – another chapter in our sad past was addressed. This again dealt with children – children who have been labeled the ‘forgotten Australians’. Who are they? They are many. Many people in Australia did not know that, following World War II, up to 8,000 children where removed from England and brought to Australia – many were told they were orphans when it was not the case. These children where placed in the hands of various church organizations that were supposed to care for them.

At the same time there were as many as 500,000 Australian children placed into care, often due to poverty. These children were abused in many ways – sexually, emotionally and physically. Our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said it all in these words today:

the nation was sorry for their physical suffering, emotional starvation and the cold absence of love and tenderness during their forced care.

My personal hope is that, as we put this past behind us, that, in the future, no child should ever be subject to lies, abuse or a lack of basic care, love and affection like the ‘forgotten Australians’ were.

I add my total support to the Australian Government and the apology given – I hope my fellow Australians do as well.

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By Les Scammell, November 11, 2009 7:33 pm

The Mary Valley – in the region I call home, today welcomed the news that every feared would go against them – the blocking of the Traveston Dam. If you know this region, and the people in it, the Mary Valley is one of the most fertile and scenic regions in South East Queensland. The creation of a dam and the flooding of this area would have been a travesty – and a sad waste of land.

That Peter Garrett, former frontman for Midnight Oil and now Federal Minister for the Environment, had the foresight to stand up to the Queensland Government and knock the proposal on the head speaks volumes – especially since they are from the same political party.

I cannot help but think that privately, Anna Bligh, the Queensland Premier, is somewhat relieved to see this decision. The original decision was made by her predecessor although he was acting on her strong advice but as time has gone on, the whole proposal has started to look too ambitious. The Government’s own Auditor found over 1000 issues that needed addressing.

What now for Queensland and their future water needs? That of course is the next question. What now for Gympie and the Mary Valley? That too will be interesting to see. So many lives have been devastated by the original decision. Homes have been forcibly bought by the government with some already demolished.

For myself, I had mixed feelings about the dam. I didn’t like the idea of flooding what is fertile land, nor did I like the idea of forcing people from their homes. If we had to have a dam, I also saw the benefits particularly for construction workers now and, down the track, for tourism.

Now it’s time to rebuild. For those families affected by the threat of a dam, I hope they can now start to rebuild their lives.

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By Les Scammell, October 26, 2009 10:42 am

I have to wonder how green the Greens are when it comes to politics. And I don’t mean green as in novice – I mean green as in environmental. We have a situation now in Australia where the Government wants to go down a particular path in an effort to reduce green house gases with the big focus world wide on carbon reduction.

Rightly or wrongly, the Federal government wants to introduce a system of carbon credits and carbon trading. The long term aim is reduce the amount of carbon produced.

The opposition groups in the Australian upper house have rejected the legislation and are now proposing changes – basically rewriting the legislation before it comes back into parliament.

The Greens are the political group that have me befuddled the most. We have had ten years of climate denial in Australia. The former Howard government basically denies there was a climate problem. Even I have doubts so I can understand their position somewhat.

We have gone from a position of denial to a position of nothing is better than making a start. At least, that seems to be the view of the Greens. Now my thinking would oppose that. Making a start would get people thinking, talking and acting to make some changes in their lives.

I can understand the Greens want more controls put in place. However, as I stated, a start is a start. Instead, the people of Australia along with businesses both small and large are all being left in limbo not knowing when change will happen, what that change will be, and how much that change will cost us in terms of jobs and our weekly expenses.

What is the biggest fear faced by humans – the fear of change. I don’t agree fully with the legislation either but I do know one thing – once we make a start we can then think about any fine tuning that needs to be done. The Greens? They seem to be more about political grandstanding than actually doing anything constructive about the environment.

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By Les Scammell, October 15, 2009 2:19 pm

The world economy is a strange animal sometimes. We have just experienced one of the worst – yet on of the quickest – recessions in many decades. I wonder if former treasurer Paul Keating would label this the recession we had to have. He would probably be right too.

Just over 12 months ago the Aussie dollar was trading in the 75-80 US cents range. Nine months ago it was trading in the 65-70 cents range. In fact, it managed to get down to 63 cents at one stage.

During that period, US$630-US$700 would equate to A$1000. Today the exchange rate is over 90 US cents. This means I now have to earn over US$900 to receive that A$1000. So, to all intents and purposes, I am losing money as the economy recovers.

What makes it a little harder to swallow is that as I work a little harder and increase my earnings, my actual take home in Australian dollars is going down. It is an interesting phenomenon and you have to take the good with the bad – ride the hard times and enjoy the good – and work harder and harder.

Has anyone else found that their income is actually dropping because of the economic recovery – even though they are earning more?

photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

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By Les Scammell, October 6, 2009 10:46 am

The FTC has finally published its guidelines for disclosures for blog posts and articles that endorse products in exchange for a reward. Compared to what was being discussed several months ago, this appears to be a very watered down document to the point of being almost useless. At the time I did write that most bloggers would not be affected by the FTC.

One of the first things to clarify for all bloggers around the world is that these guidelines only cover those in United States – if you are outside the US then read on with interest – but feel free to continue writing as you do now. At least bloggers outside the US won’t be classified as criminals.

What about those in the States? Who does it cover?

endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities

I think everyone knows that when a celebrity stands up to promote something the chances are they have been paid. That aside, what is covered?

advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case

Okay, so bloggers that write posts or articles promoting a product and making claims must comply with the FTC Act. Principally:

the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement.

What do you need to do:

bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service

So lets weed through the crap and see what has actually been said. The first thing that strikes me is that only posts that make claims which are not based on personal experience are covered. If you can honestly claim to be writing from experience – it appears the act does not cover your posts – even if you are paid to write them.

The second point of interest for those who do “paid for post” type articles – as long as you don’t make any false claims then you do not have to comply with the Act. If you write a general article that links back to a site – that’s fine.

It all boils down to truth in advertising. If you are making claims that you cannot justify from experience then you need to make a disclosure of some description – interestingly, the guidelines make no mention of what type of disclosure is required.

If you receive a product to review, do what I do. Only review it on the understanding that it will be an honest review and not a review created to make the product look good. Most businesses that supply products for review agree. I have had only one refusal – but then, I have only had five or six requests to date.

Compared to what was being talked about earlier this year – the FTC was full of bluff and bluster and the final document is pretty weak. Mind you, if you do run foul of their guidelines – there is a hefty $16,000 fine lined up for both publishers and advertisers.

This was not a review paid for by the FTC – unfortunately – I would have made it sound better if it was

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By Les Scammell, September 6, 2009 3:43 pm

That may be a strange statement given the banner that will fly on this page throughout September. In all honesty – I don’t particularly care about the politics of Iran, or any other country really, even though I am a political person.

I have a serious distrust of all politicians as I feel they are not in office because they care about us, the general population. They are there to push their own agendas and often, we, the general public, suffer for that agenda.

Reports from Iran suggest the election was rigged. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t but in a way, tell me any election that isn’t rigged. Here in Australia we have compulsory voting. I didn’t like any of the candidates standing at the last election, yet I had to vote for one of them. Is that not some form of electoral rigging?

One of the arguments used to prove the Iranian election was rigged was that government opponents even lost in their home towns. Referring again to Australian politics, former Prime Minister John Howard became Australia’s only Prime Minister to lose his seat in office at an election. It does happen.

So why this post and why the banner? It matters not the politics nor the country. Where I will stand up and have a say is when free speech is denied. China and Burma have been classic cases of restrictions in free speech particularly when it comes to the blogosphere. Free speech is the life blood of blogging and I will always stand up for our freedom. I was struck by two paragraphs of a post by Andrew Sullivan on the Daily Dish:

“The forces of democracy have marshalled in Iran for accountability, transparency and fairness. Wherever they marshall, we should stand with them, especially in the blogosphere, where our Iranian brothers and sisters built the foundation for this moment.”

Putting aside the philosophy of democracy. The point that stands out for me is the use of the blogosphere to form a movement because this leads into a second paragraph later in the post:

“Ever since I penned The Medium Is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against Media, I’ve been waiting for this moment, which I predicted, twelve years ago, would come: a great day when the corporate media got pushed out of the way by authentic media from below. What is occurring worldwide, with the Iranian crisis as catalyst, is the emergence of the very kind of media from below that the human race – particularly the working class and the poor – so desperately needs.”

The media that everyone has access to is blogging. Whether you’re a multi-millionaire or the poorest person around, if you can access a computer and the internet, even in a public library, you can voice your views. In fact you can do it almost completely anonymously. Of course I don’t support blogging that is anyway destructive on a person level or designed to malign innocent individuals, it can be an important weapon against injustice.

Add to the blogosphere the power of Twitter and other social media and you have the potential for a new political force around the world – at least – a huge voice.

I don’t care about the politics in Iran, or China, or anywhere else. I do care about the rights of individuals to have the freedom to voice their opinions – DO YOU?

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By Les Scammell, August 12, 2009 12:42 am

Giving birth! What could be more natural. Women have been doing it for ten’s of thousands of years – without doctors. The only help they had was from other women who had been through it all before – the original midwives.

The Australian government has for some reason taken a dislike to home births and midwives. For a midwife to participate in a home birth, the need to be registered. The governments proposal is that midwives can only be registered if they have indemnity insurance.

Problem – no insurance company is prepared to offer indemnity insurance to midwives participating in home deliveries. No insurance, no registration, no more home births.

What a ridiculous situation. Home births have proven to be very successful in Britain. Rather than making life difficult for midwives, we should be supporting them and encouraging the practice. Furthermore, with only 200 midwives participating in home births, we should be working to increase that number five or six times.

Just think of how much money can be saved by not having to take up hospital beds. Wake up Kevin – think forward not backward – but then, he is a male, perhaps he just doesn’t understand childbirth. But then, I am a male too, but I certainly support home births for those who want it.

I have written a fuller post on home birthing on my parenting site – feel free to visit and comment.

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By Les Scammell, June 26, 2009 2:31 pm

A recent announcement from the FTC that implied that bloggers that wrote pay for post articles could be in trouble may just turn out to be a storm in a tea cup. For the majority of bloggers, including those that do write pay for post articles, the crack down will miss them by the proverbial country mile.

It’s all in the wording really. The FTC has bee in its bonnet over anyone who endorses a product for exchange without disclosing that an exchange has taken place. You don’t have to disclose what the arrangement is, but, according to the FTC, you do need to include a disclosure for each and every endorsement – a site wide disclosure may not be sufficient.

Now I said the issue lay in the wording – and it does and the word that is of utmost importance here ‘endorsement’. For many pay for post writers, they are not actually endorsing any product, service or website. For many, they are writing in general terms about the genre, for example, kitchen sinks, and including a link to the appropriate web site. Often the web sites products are not mentioned. Is this an endorsement? I think not – it is a paid link, but it is not a direct or even indirect endorsement.

If you do receive something in exchange for writing a positive review about a product or service, in other words a recommendation or endorsement, then be sure to disclose the fact. If you disclose, you have nothing to worry about. For most bloggers, if you don’t actually endorse the product, you are free to continue your pay for post careers.

Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim has a more in depth look at the issue in his article titled – Should You Fear the FTC’s Sponsored Blogging Crackdown? – in simple terms – no unless your a big name in the blogging world since they are the group most likely to receive product endorsement requests.

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By Les Scammell, May 19, 2009 11:03 am

The Australian government has recently announced the budget for the 2009-2010 financial year – as a budget, it wasn’t too bad. Raising the old age pension has been on the cards for ten years now – I am surprised it has taken this long to implement it.

Infrastructure spending was always going to be the center piece and I guess you can thank the Howard/Costello era – they ran infrastructure spending into the ground so there are plenty of areas to spend big dollars.

Australia has been called the lucky country and to an extent we are. We have ridden on the back of a resources boom for the last decade and it will be resources again that take us out of the recession. China is one country that will be hit hard but it will bounce back faster than most countries – and they are one of our biggest customers when it comes to resources.

So the budget was a ho-hum affair really. The biggest issue to come out of it has been the mean testing of the private health insurance subsidy. I don’t quite follow the argument. I cannot for the life of me see why someone on $75,000 a year or more, would drop their health insurance because they lose a couple of dollars a week in a subsidy. In fact, I don’t know why we are subsidizing families on $150,000 plus with a seven dollar a week subsidy (and that is all it is really). It seems to be a storm in tea cup used to try and knock the budget.

No-No Mal, leader of the Liberal Party and supposedly our alternative Prime Minister, has been on a negative track since taking on the role. In Australian political history, no opposition leader has ever won office with a negative campaign. In fact, they have often lost ground.

His latest suggestion actually has me wondering what economic credentials he has – but of course, he was a banker before entering politics – and who got the world economy into its present state? Bankers!

The Liberal Party has suggested a return to the old days where beer and cigarette taxes are used to fund government spending. There is are number of problems with this approach – first, beer and cigarette taxes tend to hit those on lower incomes the hardest. Their suggestion to increase the tax on cigarettes by three cents per stick sounds harmless. However, the effect is an increase of around $1 per packet. With about 1.5 million smokers, that is effectively 1.5 million dollars taken out of the economy – each day.

Can our economy afford that at present? I think not. The 1.5 million would be better off going through the cash registers of local businesses, keeping people in jobs and keeping the economy moving.

Once we start to come out of the recession, and once we need to start cutting the federal governments budget deficits, that will be the time to increase these taxes.

My question is – when will we get a federal opposition that really is thinking of Australia’s future rather than their own? Right now, Turnbull and his team of negative pollies are doing neither!

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By Les Scammell, April 14, 2009 10:28 pm

Most bloggers would be aware of google’s dislike of paid posts – more importantly, paid links in paid posts. If the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) gets its way, paid posts as such will be illegal.

The FTC is looking at plans to update its policies and their sights are set fairly and squarely on bloggers, paid posts and viral marketing. For bloggers who earn their small dollars each month writing paid posts – the time may have come to look else where.

Why the attack on paid posts? I said Google doesn’t like the paid links. For the FTC, they see paid posts as dishonest reviews – in other words, rather than writing a truthful review of a product or site, you are being paid to write a positive review.

Now I know there are a couple of pay for post sites that pay for the link. You don’t have to actually review the site or the product. If the link is to a kitchen sink site, just write any old post about kitchen sinks and include a link, it doesn’t have to be a review. Now, I wonder if the FTC will include them in their ban?

The next question is what will the FTC do to those bloggers that do write paid reviews? Will they prosecute and turn them into criminals? That is fine if you are based in the US. What if your based in Britain, Europe or Australia – will the law cross borders?

This is the biggest hurdle to any government agency trying to control the internet. You may be able to control what is happening within your own border, you cannot control the events from outside your borders. Still, I guess they will try. In the meantime, the poor old blogger is the one that will cop it on the chin – again!

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By Les Scammell, February 4, 2009 11:22 pm

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a very broad and very expensive economic stimulus package yesterday, one which seems to be hailed as ideal in some quarters and yet in others labeled as economic vandalism. For the ordinary Australian, it is hard to know who is right and who is wrong. It seems though the politicians are playing  politics while the economy stinks sinks.

If the truth be told, even the experts don’t know. That is probably the biggest problem with the world’s economic problems at present. No one really has any idea how to get things moving again – of course with that comes the guess work as to how long the world’s economic woes will continue for.

I am no expert and I take a rather simplistic view on the whole situation. It starts from the basic premise that we did elect Kevin Rudd and his Labor colleagues to run this country – part of that job is trying to run the economy. A closer look at the package makes it very attractive.

We are trying to avoid falling into a recession which is defined as being two consecutive quarters of negative growth. The stimulus package is divided into  a now and later. The now involves cash hand outs in the hope people will spend. That will prevent these next two quarters from going into the negative.

The second component involves infrastructure spending. This is where it gets interesting because every dollar allocated is going into areas where the funds really are needed.

Our schools have been desperate for this type of funding for a long time.  Public housing has needed a boost in funds for about ten years – it has a real boost now. Even the rebate for insulation is welcome addition.

The opposition proposes simply bringing forward tax cuts. For a ‘liberal’ party, they are very conservative. From my perspective, tax cuts mean nothing. Petrol price rises along with the increase in price of basic foods, particularly fresh food and meat, means the tax cuts are already spent.

Malcolm Turnbull, the opposition leader says 72 hours is not longer enough to consider the package – yet 12 hours is long enough to consider it and so no, we will vote against it!

The minor parties of course are looking at how they can capitalize on the package for their special interest groups. The Labor party was elected to run this country. It should be left to do the job. In our current economic environment, we cannot afford political grandstanding.  Economic experts have all come out in support of the package. That is good enough for me.

Turnball says the pre Christmas hand out did little for the economy. At the same time statistics reveal that pre Christmas spending had the biggest growth in over 20 years.

My fear is that this country’s economic future will be held to ransom by a politician who was once a banker – and who started this whole mess – bankers!

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By Les Scammell, February 2, 2009 11:08 pm

In my last post I highlighted some of the flaws in the latest push by Governments to produce small fuel efficient hybrid vehicles. Let me recap some of the problems:

• Increased congestion in our major cities
• Decreased use of public transport
• Increase in waste, eg, tires
• Increase in petrochemicals to produce components

Of course this is all based on an assumption that people will buy more vehicles more often due to their reduced costs. Some households will go from a single car household to a two or perhaps three car household – our young will be able to afford cars a lot sooner.

So what are the solutions? Public transport is one solution, however here in Australia no government appears willing to bite the bullet and push for a decent public transport system. They all pay lip service whilst running the services down.

Public transport needs to be viable and cost effective. You can only reduce prices so far so the answer has to be to make the alternatives so much more expensive. If city parking cost $40-$50 per day together with congestion taxes for our busiest cities, $10-$15 per day becomes the cheaper option.

Couple this with free, “safe” and well lit parking facilities in the outer suburbs and commuters would have the best of both worlds – using their car and public transport.

When it comes to cars themselves, rather than producing small fuel efficient vehicles, it is time that smaller 6, 7 and 8 seater vehicles were produced. I am sure that one full 8  seater is far cheaper to run than four 2 seater concept cars.

Of course there is one aspect to this whole argument that most people seem to forget – cars only produce 15% of all carbon emission. Power generation is by far the biggest producer of carbon – it’s ironic, one solution is to produce electric cars. What do they need? A power supply at every parking meter. Using the biggest source of carbon emissions to resolve the smallest source of carbon emissions!

That’s life I guess.