Month: September 2007

No Need For Local Films On Public Purse

Some phrases deserve scare quotes more than others. And it’s hard to find a better candidate for the sarcastic use of punctuation marks than the phrase “cultural imperialism”.

After all, the popularity of Hollywood films in Australia hardly resembles the violent military occupation of a foreign nation. If cultural imperialism wasn’t invoked so often, it would be self-evidently absurd.

Nevertheless, many people believe that, somehow, cultural products made by Australians are superior to those made by foreigners. Australians should be watching Australian films, listening to Australian music and reading Australian books.

Cultural nationalists — who come from both the left and right of politics — assume that only after burying ourselves in cultural products produced within our geopolitical borders will we be able to develop a genuine national identity.

This is silly on a number of levels. For instance, what about the poor old states — do we suffer from a lack of films set in Victoria and featuring Victorian voices? Similarly, suburbs could also be considered distinct cultural units. If so, we have an oversupply of television programs set in St Kilda and Brunswick, and an undersupply of those set in Frankston and Dandenong.

At the same time, cultural nationalists argue that if Australia’s culture is not protected by government through regulation, subsidies and broadcast quotas, then that culture is at risk. The market cannot provide what Australians need, and the government has to step in.

But the case for cultural protectionism is weak. Often calls for subsidy are just naked special pleading. These are easy to dismiss — probably the worst thing for both taxpayers and artists would be a special category of welfare for creative industries.

Decades of government subsidies have already fostered dependency in the cultural sector. And relying on government rather than consumers for finance provides little incentive for cultural producers to tailor their work to the demands of the public.

As a result, the steady stream of below-par and ideologically heavy-handed productions funded by the Government has given Australian films a poor reputation. Recent films Candy, Little Fish and 2:37 have depicted urban and middle-class life as awash with drug use, depression and death.

For audiences, the “made in Australia” brand now often has negative connotations. And when critics deliberately go easy on local films, they compound the problem.

Taxpayer support is seen as a right by artists who believe they are serving a higher purpose — rather than satisfying the demands of their audience.

But a culture dependent on government handouts is a weak culture. Throughout history, the most vibrant intellectual and artistic cultures have been those that were decentralised, entrepreneurial and commercial.

The market economy has been the driving force behind most of what we consider to be “great” art. Markets in which consumer choice dominates provide cultural producers with far greater freedom to supply niche products to consumers with diverse tastes. And markets discipline artists to produce accessible work.

French history provides an illustration of both the negative consequences of cultural subsidies and the virtues of marketplace-driven art.

French cinema dominated the first few decades of the 20th century. Indeed, it was so popular that American filmmakers argued that the US required protection.

But as the French government set up lavish film bureaucracies after World War II, its industry atrophied and its films grew less popular. US films now make up 60 per cent of the market in France — in the 1930s, that figure was just 15 per cent.

The reaction against cultural imperialism has the unintended consequence of making cultural industries uncompetitive.

Robert Manne hoped in the latest Monthly that if a Kevin Rudd government was elected that the gulf between the government and the nation’s creative artists would be bridged.

It is hard to imagine how turning more artists into tax-eaters would be good for Australian culture.

A Capital Idea: Move Them Out To Move Us On

 

Last week, when Canberra was named by the Institute of Public Affairs as one of Australia’s 13 biggest mistakes, the chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory complained that this was another predictable exercise in Canberra-bashing. Presumably, because we also listed the introduction of cane toads into this country as a mistake, we can expect letters from Friends of Cane Toads. But it is legitimate to examine the mistakes Australia has made in the past to avoid making similar ones in the future.

Australians are a remarkably creative, diverse and entrepreneurial people. Politics is slow, backwards-looking and uniform.

Inspired by misguided ideologies and without full understanding of the unintended consequences, it is very easy for governments to make mistakes. Unfortunately, since Federation, this has happened too often.

Australia entered the 20th century with the highest living standards in the world. By the 1970s, we couldn’t even crack the top dozen.

The media provide a good example of government failure. We now live in a world of iPods, YouTube and MySpace. Never has there been so much information and entertainment readily available. But if a service such as YouTube required government-managed airwaves to operate, rather than the free-for-all internet, there is no chance it would have been given a license in Australia.

Since taking over control of the radio-waves with the 1905 Wireless Telegraphy Act, successive Australian governments have needlessly held back the development of wireless telegraphy, AM radio, television, FM radio, subscription and now digital television. Most governments have been open about the reason – to protect the financial viability of existing media companies. Never mind the consumers.

Patrick White’s 1972 Nobel Prize for Literature could not be considered anything but a success, and the government’s response was to inaugurate the Australia Council. But when expatriates such as Germaine Greer criticise Australian culture from afar, they fail to recognise that this too may be a result of government action. How much different would Charles Dickens’ novels have been if he had been living off a government grant?

The US, which has a famously low level of state support for the arts, has a strong, vibrant culture. American artists are forced to respond to the demands of their audience. The result has been a century of innovation and experimentation.

But our large arts bureaucracy, funded by government and beholden to committees rather than consumers, could easily be the cause of our “cultural cringe”. If the government left our creative artists to their own devices, without offering them protection from their fickle audience, perhaps we could finally relax our cringe.

Similarly, when parents decry their children’s reluctance to move out of home, it would be worth considering that they can’t afford to. The imposition of regressive urban planning restrictions by governments has artificially inflated the prices of homes, beginning with the Western Australian Town Planning and Development Act in 1928. These laws have shifted the decision-making powers about how to use land from the land’s owners into the new urban planning establishment. By restricting the supply of housing, prices naturally go up.

Conceivably, fewer of these mistakes would have been made if our politicians, bureaucrats and regulators had been closer to the people they were governing, rather than sequestered away in Canberra. The decision in 1908 to shift the engines of government to a rural area isolated decision-makers from the consequences of their decisions.

If we had left the capital in one of our major cities, some of the folly of Australian history could perhaps have been avoided.

Thankfully, steady reform since the 1970s has partly reversed some of the worst mistakes. But if Australia is currently under the grip of some sort of “neo-liberal orthodoxy”, as is so commonly argued, then the question is not how have advocates of the free market and small government suddenly gained power, but where were they during the first 90 years of our federal system?

If we’d had a strong, liberal free-trade party in Australia that embraced individualism and economic and social freedom, perhaps this would have not been the case. Instead we were stuck with two protectionist conservative parties unwilling to challenge the prevailing dogma.

The bi-partisan reform movement to reverse some of the mistakes of past governments is giving back Australians some measure of control over their own lives. Australians can be justly proud of our successes. Most of our failures have been the fault of governments.

Australia’s 13 biggest mistakes
1. The end of the Reid government (1905)
2. The Harvester Judgement (1907)
3. Wireless Telegraphy Act (1905)
4. The Montreal Olympics (1976)
5. The Uniform Tax cases (1942 and 1957)
6. WA Town Planning and Development Act (1928)
7. Immigration Restriction Act (1901)
8. The Labor Party split (1955)
9. Publication of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859)
10. The release of cane toads (1935)
11. Federal money for science blocks at non-government schools (1963)
12. Patrick White wins the Nobel Prize (1972)
13. Invention of Canberra (1908)
Source: Institute of Public Affairs

The Slippery Slope Towards Internet Censorship Continues

The Australian Government continued down the slippery slope towards internet censorship yesterday by introducing a bill to give the Australian Federal Police the power to nominate terrorism or crime related websites for filtering.

In The Australian Greens Senator Kerry Nettle expressed concerns that the Police Commissioner might use these new powers to call for Greenpeace’s website to be filtered – which really should raise more questions about the activities of Greenpeace than the value of the legislation.

Nevertheless, there is slightly less to this bill than it seems at first glance. The internet industry code currently governing online content already provides for filtering of pornographic and offensive content. But this filtering is voluntary, not mandatory.

At the moment, internet service providers who want to be designated “family friendly” by the Internet Industry Association have to offer their customers one of a range of approved PC or server side commercial filters. And these filters are periodically updated according to an Australian Communications and Media Authority black list. Yesterday’s bill would merely allow the AFP to add terrorism or crime related sites to that black list. But why would aspiring terrorists and criminals willingly install a family friendly filter onto their PC?

A lot rides on how the Internet Industry Association rewrites its codes of practise in the light of the government’s NetAlert scheme. Under NetAlert, all internet service providers will be compelled to offer consumers the choice between an unfiltered internet connection or a server-side filtered one.

Again, terrorists are unlikely to choose a filtered internet connection. The government’s new legislation only really makes sense if the unfiltered product is not going to be truly ‘unfiltered’. That the internet content bill was introduced quietly yesterday morning does not inspire confidence that the government plans to leave our internet connections alone. And it’s worth remembering that the Labor Party has for a long time promised mandatory server side filters if they win government.

Quite aside from the internet censorship issue, this bill highlights a disturbing regulatory trend – governments delegating the policing of the internet to the communications industry. Many of the measures canvassed by the inquiry into social networking sites would do just that. Even outside the high-technology sector, counterterrorism and anti money laundering regulation in the financial sector compels firms to police their own customers.

Particularly in the communications sector, these sorts of regulatory burdens can only add to costs for consumers.

Better To Be Alert Than NetAlarmed

The internet will kill your children, or something.

At least, that is the message of the Federal Government ads plastered on the side of every second tram trundling down Swanston Street.

The Government’s approach to internet safety has all the hyperbole and sensationalism of tabloid current affairs programs. This is not surprising. Scare campaigns about the dangers of chatting or stumbling upon nudity usually have little to do with children, and all to do with raising fear in parents. Parents vote.

NetAlert, the initiative that provides those free internet filters that were broken within 30 minutes by a year 10 student, will do little to stop children finding pornography online if they want to. And the mandatory internet filtering that the Government has announced will be expensive and mostly unworkable.

In a further step, last Thursday the Government announced an investigation into sex offenders and pedophiles on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. But the policy options raised by the Government — such as segregating adults and children online, mandatory age verification, or requiring parental approval before signing up to sites — will be as ineffective as NetAlert. Bureaucratic obstacles are no defence against individuals determined to cause harm.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Government’s internet policies are not much more than cynical vote-gathering. In the absence of any other ideas for the upcoming election, the Federal Government is asking voters to think of the children.

But what do the children themselves think about internet safety? The Department of Communications kicked an own goal last week when it released a study of the attitudes of parents and kids. Parents were concerned that the internet exposed children to pornography and was full of strangers and chat rooms. Children were more worried about pop-up ads, viruses and substandard internet speeds. Not surprisingly, few were concerned about pornography. Some expressed concerns about interacting with dangerous strangers.

The study did not provide any support for one of the bulwarks of the Government’s policy — the mandatory internet filter. It revealed instead that internet literacy was a more effective protection against any potential danger online.

Regulating MySpace and filtering the internet provide no substitute for education. Governments can have a role to play in educating about online safety; they set the school curriculum and most children attend public schools. The second way governments can approach child safety is through police work. After all, parents should be outraged not that pedophiles could be on MySpace, but that there are pedophiles at large.

Like any matters to do with children, parents have to take the bulk of the responsibility. The most effective approach to internet safety and obscenity is monitoring online activity. The best protection for children is the setting of boundaries.

Too much of the Federal Government’s internet policy is a distraction from these far more effective approaches.

A few months ago, many commentators assumed that the Federal Government had a rabbit to pull out of the hat before this election. Free internet filters and giving Kieran Perkins the title of “Parent Ambassador” are unfortunately more likely to make the Government look like bunnies.

Dealing With That $30,000 Phone Bill… Without Regulation

There is a “mounting dossier” of complaints to communications regulators concerning unexpectedly high mobile phone bills, reports the Australian Financial Review today.

It’s hard to be too sympathetic with somebody who couldn’t figure out they had spent nearly $30,000 in a single month – they must now have an extraordinary library of downloaded ring tones.

But this surge in complaints is partly due to technological convergence. As mobile phones increasingly provide the same sort of internet connection that consumers are used to at home, those consumers expect it to be just as accessibly priced.

Unexpectedly high bills were the subject of a high-profile Australian Communications Authority investigation in 2004. The services the ACA fingered as culprits less than three years ago, MMS and subscription services, are strikingly different from those now. In 2007, it is mobile data and download services on 3G handsets that are at fault.

The industry ombudsman says that complaints over high bills have increased thirty percent over the last year.

Mobile providers need to develop processes to deal with the high account activity that leads to these extraordinarily high bills. Neither the consumer nor the firm is helped by the sudden appearance of a multi-thousand dollar debt.

Firms offering home broadband services have dealt with the unexpectedly high bill problem before. Early plans punished consumers with high ‘excess’ data prices, but now most firms have structured their prices to ‘shape’ data to a lower speed once consumers reach a certain limit.

This is a model that the mobile industry may be able to adopt. Indeed, some major mobile carriers apply hard caps to a range of premium services.

Furthermore, in the United States, the iPhone / AT&T deal offers unlimited data plans, which may indicate that the price of mobile data is trending towards zero. Certainly, in Australia mobile data is now much cheaper than it was when the only technology available was GPRS on a standard GSM phone. And some Blackberry plans offer unlimited email data already.

Horror stories like those in the AFR today tend to encourage regulatory responses. In this case, legislators should be wary of knee-jerk reactions – mandating specific pricing models for high data usage could raise prices for consumers across the board.

Instead, the phenomenon of unexpectedly high mobile bills simply illustrates how the communications industry needs to adjust their business models to changes in technology and consumer demand.

Society Rhetoric Just A Pulp Fiction

In politics, words are designed to obscure. For instance, Kevin Rudd has been telling business groups all week that it is Labor’s job to govern for “society”, not “vested interests”. John Howard, too, argues that his government represents Australian society, not the sectional interests of union thugs portrayed so stereotypically in anti-Labor ads.

Each party claims to represent society against overpaid and overdressed CEOs or overpaid and underdressed union apparatchiks. Whatever “society” is, it must be delighted — no matter who wins the election, it has a friend.

So it’s not surprising that Margaret Thatcher’s declaration in a 1987 interview with the British weekly Women’s Own that “there is no such thing as society” is considered the very epitome of ideological heartlessness.

Of course, her remark is more often than not taken out of context — the Iron Lady was targeting people who routinely place the blame for their misfortunes on others — but at the same time the statement can stand by itself.

Society is so large and so vague a concept that it is meaningless. There are individual men and women, Thatcher went on to argue, and there are families. She could have added friends, and she probably should have added communities — but Thatcher was essentially right. Society is a rhetorical fiction.

No political leader could ever hope to understand, let alone represent, the enormous range of wants and needs of everybody in a country of 21 million people. Individuals are just too diverse to be pressed into a great big lumpen ball of “society”. Furthermore, the boundaries of society are unclear. Does society stop at the water’s edge? Does society stop when we go to work? Is it society, or is it the government that compels us to pay tax? (It sure feels like government.)

The fiction of society also supports some remarkably poor public policy. For example, federal Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews has argued that the new citizenship test is designed to ensure Australia has a cohesive society by formally codifying some Australian values.

The word “value” is just as fraught as the word “society” — 100 philosophers locked in a room wouldn’t be able to decide what it means. Nevertheless, the Federal Government is convinced that as long as potential citizens can identify Sir Edmund Barton in a multiple choice list, Australia’s values will be maintained.

When we try to figure out what might be the shared values of our society, we usually end up repeating bad jokes from Crocodile Dundee. Instead, we should recognise that individuals can have values, and communities can have values, but insisting that everybody in the country recognises our Judaeo-Christian heritage won’t do much for anybody.

It would be better to drop the illusion of society and instead view Australia as a collection of varied and overlapping communities, which are voluntarily entered into and held together by genuinely common interests. These communities can pivot around schools, workplaces and football clubs, and economic, social or cultural interests.

And governments don’t have the burden of encouraging community. Indeed, a community imposed from the top down is not a community at all.

Governments do have a role in removing the impediments to community activity, but dressing up public policy with vacuous rhetoric does nothing more than obscure the importance of genuine community.