This is due in part to the difficulties associated with defining homelessness. The ABS uses the “cultural” definition, where homelessness is divided into three categories: primary, secondary and tertiary.

• Primary homelessness covers the traditional stereotype of rough sleepers and those in makeshift accommodation. They account for about 16% of homelessness in Australia.
• Secondary homelessness includes people who frequently move from one temporary form of accommodation to another, and those in transitional/emergency accommodation provided under the Government’s Supported Accommodation Assistance Program. This is the biggest cohort, and accounts for 64% of homelessness.
• Tertiary homelessness includes people who live in boarding houses on a medium/long-term basis but do not have the security of tenure considered necessary to meet the community standard of a self-contained flat. This includes “couch surfers” and accounts for about 20% of homelessness in Australia.

The Government’s 2008 Homelessness White Paper, The Road Home, set an ambitious target of halving homelessness by 2020, with an interim target of a 20% reduction by 2013. Between the 2001 and 2006 Censuses, the number of people experiencing homelessness increased from about 100,000 to 105,000. However, the overall steadiness of this figure masks the big changes that occurred among age groups. Although there was a 16% decrease in the number of 12–18 year olds experiencing homelessness, there were large increases in the number of under 12s and over 55s. This kind of data – disaggregated and rigorous – is essential in any kind of homelessness policy development, and assessing the effectiveness of that policy.

Although the most recent Census was held on 9 August this year, most of its results will not become available until late 2012. This lag in data collection will be problematic when it comes time to track the progress of interim goals in the Homelessness White Paper.

Long-term, it might be useful to provide basic statistics training for NGOs and community groups. If the standard of their data collection rises to a level acceptable to the ABS, the job could be effectively outsourced, providing widespread geographical coverage and a rolling stock of raw data so we don’t get surprises every 5 years.

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In a world that trivialises military conflict and terror, human rights are more important and relevant than ever. So it is with great relief that Australia is set to join the league of Western democracies, with the Rudd government set to open consultation to the public over the idea of a charter of rights. There will of course be those opposed, but their vigourous argument and opposition is to be welcomed, for it will ultimately make the eventual charter a far stronger document.

Australians would probably be surprised to learn that comparatively few rights are expressly protected in Australia. We do not have the right to vote, nor have freedom of speech. Freedom of religion is protected to the extent that the government is not allowed to establish any religion. I am told that the popularity of American police dramas has to led to a not infrequent “pleading the Fifth” in Australian court rooms. The Howard government’s anti-terror laws took away our right to silence, and removed habeas corpus. We need and deserve this charter more than ever.

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In some ways the NYT

is analogous to the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH). It ostensibly covers the news relevant to its eponymous city, but has over time expanded to become a national newspaper-of-record. But the NYT is distinctly superior in both its breadth and depth of coverage, and its web team is without peer.

The density of media ownership in Australia is rapidly eroding its quality and independence, and the SMH with its over-the-top treatment of issues such as horse flu (eeekwine infloooenzah) is becoming very tabloid-ish. Thankfully, for the globally connected at least, there is plenty of choice to consume the superior overseas alternatives.

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takes a look at a “politically incorrect” paper:

Average income of whites and other races: $53,292.
Average income of blacks: $34,485.

Expenditures on footwear by whites and other races: $274
Expenditures on footwear by blacks: $440.

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[There is] more than enough time for Krudd and his inexperienced team to slip up a dozen times. Wayne Swan will make a joke of himself at budget time he is the biggest dunce the Labor Party has ever seen and he thinks he can run a trillion dollar economy!!

I think this pretty much sums up a broad view of the Liberal/National coalition and their supporters. It also indicative of major weaknesses on that side of politics: inconsistency and intellectual cowardice. Howard, Costello and co. are not the masterful economic managers they they’ve fooled themselves and their electorate into believing.

Firstly, the fact that they’d even refer to it as “running an economy” and “managing an economy” (as Joe Hockey did on Lateline) shows just how illiberal they truly are. Demand management is a mainstay of Keynesian economics. The great dries of the party would rather take it up the bum from crazy-haired hippies than have anything to do with Keynes. It is simply not kosher. The truth is, even in an economy as padded as Australia’s, it has a tendency to run itself. That is as it should be. The government is on auto-pilot, and makes a few changes at the margin every now and then.

Instead, they’ve painted an image of Howard/Costello uniformed up, guiding it, directing it, in a way only the the all-knowing fathers of the nation would. Presumably, Labor, if given the treasury benches would deliberately fuck up the economy out of spite.

Beyond their fallacious grasp of the role of the federal government, Howard/Costello have committed some grave sins in the name of liberalism, most notably, their commitment to taxing and spending (something much to the chagrin of Costello, as revealed in July). The current government is the highest taxing, highest spending government in history. The size of the federal government, as a proportion of GDP has been higher under this administration than any that preceded it. Yes even Whitlam’s! How have they done it? Not through the socialisation of the means of production. Mr Chifley tried that, but our constitution doesn’t allow it. Nope. What Howard/Costello have done is become the great re-distributors

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of income. They, tax, levy, charge, fee, big businesses, small businesses, single-income earners, the poor, the elderly, the self-reliant, and plentiful supply it to the one group that be bought more easily than a crackwhore: Suburban families with children (and their doppelgangers, the couple thinkingabout-notreally-maybe wanting to have kids).

Howard is undoubtedly aware of all these weaknesses. And he knows the attacks on Labor’s economic ability are groundless inasmuch as he acknowledged Hawke/Keating’s role in opening up Australia’s economy in The Longest Decade

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He again acknowledged structural changes to the economy made by the Hawke and Keating governments, saying the present strength of the economy owed much to the reforms made in the past 25 years.

The level of economic debate and education in Australia over the past decade has taken a battering — a deliberate ploy by the government to enable the trivialisation of economics as nothing more than the price of petrol and the level of interest rates.The Big Lebowski ipod