Sorry folks, it's a Long Slow Crash after all

Has The Australian done a backflip? A few days ago, as noted in this blog, The Australian tried to mark the turning point for the economic and market crisis by switching the strap headline across its coverage from "The long slow crash of '08" to "The road to recovery".

Alas, share markets immediately nosedived again, United States data confirmed a recession, and signals firmed that one great hope for our economy, Chinese demand for our resources, appeared to be slowing.

So today, if you haven't noted it already, it's our solemn duty to inform you that the strap in today's Australian has reverted to the Long Slow Crash of 'o8.

Over on the Oz's high-powered Business section they just stayed with the more sober strap, "Global Financial Crisis".

Taking a positive view: Let's hope The Australian has it right

Perhaps many readers didn't notice, but today's Australian newspaper gave a significant endorsement to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's emergency economic measures in particular and those of the world's governments in general.

Over the pages it devoted to the global credit crisis and sharemarket meltdown, it had been running a strap, THE LONG SLOW CRASH OF '08. It was still using it yesterday, as the clipping above shows. But this morning the Oz had changed the strap to ROAD TO RECOVERY.

Let's hope our national newspaper has it right -- that we really have turned on to the road to recovery. The alternative is too grim, because I believe we were headed for a worldwide depression to rival the 1930s.

For most of my working life, I covered financial and business news -- going right back to the nickel boom of the late 1960s. The collapse of the "entrepreneurs" in the eighties, Paul Keating's "recession we had to have," the excesses of the dot-com boom . . . you name it.

But since World War II, the world economy has never faced a threat of collapse as great as the current crisis, such a locking up of the flows of credit vital to economic activity.

And if, as seems likely, Australia really is showing the way forward, there'll be another benefit. We won't have to put up with the Poms sending out another Sir Otto Niemeyer to tell us it's far more important to pay the English bondholders than worry about the unemployed at home.

The Australian published good news roundups, probably the best of all our newspapers Down Under, and a good range of opinions.

But one could not avoid noting that all the conservative commentariat was singing from the same songbook, downloaded from the same old right-wing websites. It was all the Democrats' fault, and Bill Clinton's in particular, for forcing America's otherwise prudent banks to make all those sub-prime loans to people who couldn't repay them.

Initially, Janet Albrechtsen went right over the top. She became particularly enraged at Kevin Rudd's criticism of greedy bankers, even suggesting it was the distressed borrowers who were greedy. One wonders why she was so upset. Is there something she wasn't telling us?

Major upgrade to OpenOffice should reward the wait

Last night, OpenOffice.org sent out the email many of us had been waiting for -- Version 3.0 had been released. Seven hours later, it followed up with another -- in the rush by thousands of users to install this major upgrade, the download site had crashed.

Nor were the OOo people able to say when it would be up and coping. They could only suggest people keep trying, for days to come if necessary.

Over recent months, I've declined offers of Version 2.XX upgrades while I waited for OOo 3.0. Now, from all I read, Version 3.0 will be a significant leap forward, fixing areas in which the previous versions were a bit clunky, and introducing many new features.

In these belt-tightening times, I'd have trouble justifying the purchase of an expensive, fully featured version of Microsoft Office. OOo offers most of the same functionality in a free package. Philosophically, I'm attracted to a community effort in which thousands of people around the world have contributed their experience, skills, talent and enthusiasm to a project for the common good.

I'm rushing off to bowls (although a look at the sky suggests I might soon be back at this desk). These links, copied off OOo's email, should give more information. They haven't been checked. I'll do that when I return.

Official Press Release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/OOo/3/prweb1459364.htm
Download: http://download.openoffice.org
Guide to new features: http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.0
Technical release notes: http://development.openoffice.org/releases/3.0.0.html
Availability of localised versions and ports: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html

Is this any time to be rational?

One has to feel some sympathy for Andrew Main, The Australian's business editor. On Friday's front page he pointed out – correctly – that many Australian stocks had fallen to levels which made them attractive buying.

When he wrote, Main was not to know that Friday would be long remembered as Black Friday, the day the Australian sharemarket slumped 8.3 per cent – its worst one-day fall since October 22, 1987.

A sharemarket which ended the day 42 per cent lower than its all-time peak last November, at a level which wiped off all the gains of the past five years.

The front-page headline from Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald sums it up. (The Weekend Australian's front-page treatment would not fit on my scanner.)




Yet if Main's advice made sense when he keyed it in last Thursday, it still makes sense. Main pointed out that share prices had dropped to about 10 times annual earnings, the lowest in 24 years. If you bought the good ones at these cheap prices, you'd receive a dividend of about 6.7 per cent if you include franking credits, and there'd be a good chance prices would rise sooner or later.

He concluded: “Once you focus on quality stocks and assess what they actually do, you start to wonder what the fuss is all about.”

The thought could have been addressed more felicitously – does he really think we're being a bit silly in worrying about a 42 per cent slump in our portfolios? – but he's right in one thing. At these depressed prices, a cashed-up investor should be able to find bargains.

As he said, no-one's going to ring a bell when the market bottoms out.

Still, as Main points out in this morning's Australian (in an article I couldn't find posted online), distressed sellers – funds having to meet high levels of redemptions, or individuals receiving margin calls on the loans with which they bought shares in more optimistic times – are the main force now driving share prices down. Reluctantly, these investors may be dumping quality shares just as hard as those of more dubious value – providing opportunities for any investor who can find the cash.

Those investors who already hold quality stocks, and have no pressing debts, may do better to sit out the crisis than try to pick emerging winners. It's a matter for the investor's temperament, as much as anything.

To take one example, it's easy to say, as Main did last Friday, that Woolworths shares have fallen from $34 to $28 at the start of the year, “even though people won't stop shopping for groceries”. Woolworths is a brilliant retailer, and as Main said, people need to shop. But families struggling to pay off credit cards may move to the new Aldi store up the road, where they'll save about 40 per cent on a basket of equivalent quality groceries.

Also, remembering that finance commentator Stephen Mayne has claimed Woolworths is also Australia's biggest poker machine operator through its stake in a Victorian hotel chain, a prudent investor might first examine the company's exposures if a prolonged recession slows people's gambling spend. Perhaps there's a risk, perhaps not.

Also, the investor is invited to count on an uninterrupted commodities boom. But anyone who remembers the end of Japan's “economic miracle” or the Asian “tiger economies” will remain wary.

Indeed, last Friday's sharp fall followed reports that China had asked an iron ore supplier to slow down shipments – a claim the Sydney Morning Herald made its front-page lead at the same time Andrew Main was telling people to “put sentiment aside and buy”.

Portrait of the old journo as a young lad

Seventy. The big Seven-O. Your blogger has made it to 70!

The celebration could not have been more enjoyable – family and friends came together in a beautiful setting for most of last weekend.

I particularly appreciated this birthday card,from young friends who said it reminded them of the caricature I sometimes use to depict Old Grumpy

Our offspring, partners, and their offspring, along with some valued friends, set up a small tent village right on the Wangi Wangi Point. Others rented cabins in the adjoining Lakeside Tourist Park. For us – Merry and I – they provided a modern on-suite cabin on the hillside looking through the trees across Lake Macquarie.

We took along two lovely small boats I've built, and they were a splendid sight as we sailed them out of the little bay and into the brisk breezes on Lake Macquarie.

We sipped beer and wine and soft drink, barbecued meat, nibbled salads, talked and laughed, and sat in camp chairs watching grandchildren bond with their cousins as they learned to mess around in small boats.

On Saturday night, we revived our traditional family recipe – Black Chicken – dating back to the days when everyone perched a grill or steel plate on bricks in a corner of the backyard and called it a barbie. Today, of course, it's de rigueur to have those huge trolley things with gas burners and dials and woks and rotisseries and hoods sitting on our patios – but they won't cook Black Chicken.

To make it authentic, our mob unearthed a family heirloom, a rectangle of woven steel mesh cut from some quarry screen we scrounged back in the mid-60s. You put it over an open fire, and lay out large chicken drumsticks and marylands (marinade them first if you want to be a bit fancy), turning them often as dripping fat makes the flames spit and flare while the skin darkens to near-charcoal. Messy, but delicious.

Sunday morning, I wake early, feeling great. Friends have given me a new book, Not The Costello Memoirs. Thank God it's not the real thing, and it's brief. Who wants to plough through the story of The Man Who Never Made It?

(Indeed, my friends appear delighted when I tell them the real memoirs are one of the publishing flops of the year. I point to this report in The Weekend Australian, headed “Costello outsold by a cookbook” and beginning, “Peter Costello's memoirs have been beaten at the bookstores by a children's fantasy novel and a book of home recipes that use four ingredients or less.”)

A most enjoyable book – the spoof, that is. Here's “Peter” talking about the early 1970s: "The immoral and discomfiting socialist agenda began – quite understandably – to destabilise me, as did an undiagnosed lack of calcium in my spinal column.”

But this is unworthy of me. How could I rejoice at Costello's travails on such a happy birthday weekend?

I put the book aside and walk down the hill to the campfire, where everyone is tucking into bacon and eggs and croissants. Overnight, the wind has changed and it's blowing strongly, so we decide against more sailing. Provided they stay well inside the sheltered bay, the grandkids may keep practising their newly learned rowing skills.

And so another happy day drifts by, talking with friends and watching children play, before we head home. Perhaps we can do it again soon – the annual Putt Putt Regatta at Davistown on October 26 might be next. Let's try for it.

Above: The sheltered bay at Wangi Point. Our family and friends camped on the headland in background, and we stayed in a cabin just out of frame to the right. [The scenic image is from the holiday park brochure, while we''ll try to pay for our use of the birthday card image by suggesting you'll enjoy others on the publisher's website, which offers a free facility to send e-cards.]

Don't get hooked when phishers set their bait

If my inbox is typical, Telstra BigPond's customers are under a sustained phishing attack – and if that's so, Australia's biggest Internet Service Provider could do more to warn its customers.
Messages like this have popped up in my email half a dozen times in the past month – including twice last night:

Dear bigpond.net.au Webmail Subscribers,
This is to formally notify you that we are presently working on thebigpond.net.au web, and this can close your webmail account with bigpond.net.au completely.
To avoid this, please send your
Surname:
Password:
to bigpond.net.au customer care email
Address: [Here follows an email address @ “googlemail.com” – as if
BigPond would use a Google address!]
Please do this, so your bigpond.net.au Webmailaccount can be protected from being close from spam emails.
Your immediate response is highly needed.
WE AWAIT YOUR URGENT RESPONDS
ONLINE DIRECTOR
JERRY WHITE

Such an amateurish scam, with its misspellings, illiteracy, improbable reply address and its failure to address the recipient by name, should not deceive anyone. But the fraudsters need to suck in only a few unsophisticated or inexperienced email users to reward their efforts.

As time goes by, these phishing efforts will become better presented and more convincing. We're already seeing that with spam which purports to come from banks seeking to verify our account details.

More than a month ago, after exploring the My BigPond website, I managed to find the Contact form to report spam, filled it out with all the details requested, and sent if off. I've heard nothing back. Not even a computer-generated acknowledgement, let alone any indication a real person had looked at it.

Perhaps BigPond cannot do much to stop spam originating from the servers of other ISPs, but I felt it could issue a more direct warning to its customers.

As it happens, the September issue of its online Ponderings newsletter – received today – does contain a general warning about phishing, although it fails to shout it specifically to BigPond's own customers. The item, Don't Get Hooked, does point to an excellent article among the Frequently Asked Questions listed under Help on BigPond's website. It's headed:
Phishing: What is it and how can I stay protected? Here's the link.

This time, Mick Keelty must do the honourable thing and resign

This isn't some convicted, proven ruffian. This photo (published on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald on July 19 last year, and reproduced a few days later in Grumpy Old Journo on July 24) shows the Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef being driven from the Brisbane watchhouse in a police vehicle. I wrote at the time that we should all find it deeply disturbing.

Just how disturbing, we learned yesterday. At 4.44pm, and no doubt hoping the strike-breakers shovelling US political copy into the SMH and the Melbourne Age would be too flat-strapped to notice, and that it would be too late for the evening TV news, the Australian Federal Police slipped out a statement which said:

The AFP has concluded its active inquiries, although some longstanding overseas inquiries are yet to be fully resolved. At the present time there is insufficient evidence to institute proceedings against Dr Haneef for any criminal offence.

Read that statement again. At the present time there is insufficient evidence. And yet, if it was just a matter of insufficient evidence, the AFP should not have concluded its active inquiries.

In other words, the AFP now concedes Dr Haneef is innocent – but still won't say it outright.

Back in March 2004, I felt a great deal of compassion for AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty – but I also believed a stronger man would have resigned at the time. I winced as I watched Prime Minister John Howard subject this decent man to the most public humiliation I have ever seen on television, worse than anything on Australian Idol or Big Brother.

Perhaps age and alcohol have damaged a few more brain synapses, but I seem to recall that our former Dear Leader read out a clarification of comments Keelty had made a few days earlier, while Keelty sat there, the TV camera focusing relentlessly on his abject misery.

You may remember what had happened. Keelty agreed to an in-studio interview by Jana Wendt on Channel Nine's Sunday program ahead of a week-long conference about terrorism with federal, state and overseas experts swapping ideas.

But four days before the interview, terrorists set off bombs on Madrid trains which killed 200 and injured 1500.

So it was a legitimate question from Jana Wendt: "Well, Commissioner, that brings me to the question that most Australians are asking themselves: could this happen here?"

Unprepared by spin doctors, Keelty gave an honest reply – a reply most Australians would have found moderate and reasonable:

Well, I think we've said all along this [battle against international terrorism] is an uphill battle. This is a marathon, not a sprint. The reality is, if this turns out to be Islamic extremists responsible for this bombing in Spain, it's more likely to be linked to the position that Spain and other allies [emphasis added] took on issues such as Iraq.

And I don't think anyone's been hiding the fact we do believe that ultimately one day - whether it be in one month's time, one year's time, or 10 years' time - something will happen. And no one can guarantee it won't. And I think there's a level of honesty that has to exist here in terms of what the problems are here, not only in Australia but in our region.

But on the threat level, the threat level here in Australia hasn't changed. It still remains at medium. It has been at medium for some time for an attack on Australians in Australia.

Yes, you and I might have found that a moderate and reasonable view. But Prime Minister John Howard saw the interview and went ballistic. He immediately rang his loyal chief of staff, Arthur Sinodinos.

Less than eight minutes after the interview ended, Sinodinos phoned Keelty in Nine's green room – the VIP lounge for interview guests – to communicate Howard's extreme displeasure.

Much of the information above comes from Alan Ramsay's column a few days later in the SMH. But if you would discount Ramsay as a Howard hater, let me quote another source, an edited extract from Anne Tiernan's book Power Without Responsibility, about the growing power of ministerial staffers to make public service heads defer to ministers' directives.

Under intense criticism from ministers and colleagues including chief of the defence force, general Peter Cosgrove, Keelty issued a statement clarifying his comments. Though the prime minister’s spokesman maintained that regular contact with the AFP was appropriate during a period of heightened security,” Sinodinos’s actions were seen as an attempt to intimidate and bully the commissioner, and an inappropriate intervention by a ministerial staffer.

There's a lot of claim and counterclaim about what happened as Howard and his staffers bullied Keelty into accepting the "clarification" which had been drawn up in Howard's office and presented to the AFP commissioner. But at that time, I felt Keelty would have won our admiration if he'd resigned and said why.

In the ensuing years, Keelty did a valuable job as he built relationships with the security forces in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. The worst blot on this record was tipping off Indonesian police to arrest a gang of drug mules who then faced the death penalty. He should have let them make the run, and grabbed them when they landed in Australia – a nation which does not support the death penalty, especially for stupid young Australians.

In May 2006, the Weekend Australian Magazine let Keelty tell of his anguish over the treatment he had received in March 2004 – and at the way defence force chief Peter Cosgrove had cut him dead from that point [Cosgrove was later to apologise].

If Keelty had resigned in March 2004 rather than accept his public humiliation, he would have left with his honour intact. Sadly, if he goes now – as he should – he will still be tainted by his complicity in deceit as bad as "children overboard" or "weapons of mass destruction".

We now know there never was a persuasive case that Haneef was involved in terrorist activities or knew of the Glasgow bomb plot.

Yet Keelty oversaw the expenditure of more than $8 million in the investigation. He let the AFP become part of a political agenda driven by John Howard, Phillip Ruddock and Kevin Andrews. He did so at a time when the British authorities had accepted Haneef's innocence, and when our security services like ASIO had already ruled out Haneef as a terrorist concern.

When he won office in 1996, one of Howard's first actions was to sack six public service department heads – a third of the departmental secretaries – in a sudden and brutal putsch.

Many of us saw it as an assault on the public service obligation to give "frank and fearless" advice to ministers, although some might argue it was to ensure the public service implemented the will of an elected government.

But a police commissioner is not just a public service head. He or she has an obligation greater than implementing government policy – an obligation to uphold the law without fear or favour.

When Howard bullied Keelty into a humiliating submission, and Keelty accepted it, they both destroyed something of value. In the wake of that destruction, perhaps it's understandable the participants saw nothing wrong with continuing to present Haneef as a terrorism threat.

At this point, let me slip in a plug for journalists. But for the doggedness of Hedley Thomas and other journalists, we may never have learned of the mendacity of Howard, Ruddock, Andrews and Keelty in the Haneef affair.

Let's thank also those newspapers which provided space and money to nail down these lies.

In particular The Australian, which noted in its Page One lead today that the AFP's confession came after it had tried for a week to get the AFP to say whether the Haneef investigation was still under way. You may also like to read the accompanying comment by the Oz's legal affairs editor, Chris Merritt.

We should also thank those lawyers who risked their professional careers to reveal the AFP's mendacity.

More than a year ago, my comments accepted the possibility that Haneef was guilty. But I still argued that he had a right to decent treatment, even though extraordinary measures might be warranted in the age of terrorism. Here's what I said:

Haneef may or may not have given support, or had some prior knowledge, of the attempted terrorist bombings in London and Glasgow.

A Brisbane magistrate found the case against him so weak she granted him bail, despite our anti-terrorism laws' removal of the presumption of innocence.

Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews immediately ordered Haneef's detention under his powers to lock up and deport undesirables.

Andrews said, and Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty backed him up, that he'd been shown secret files which justified his action.

Why weren't they put before the magistrate, even in chambers? Is it because magistrate Jacqui Payne is Aboriginal and has a reputation for requiring even the Queensland police to comply with the law? Perhaps the Feds thought they couldn't trust her – "not one of us".

As I keep saying, I may be a bit to the left, but I try to be fair. Reluctantly, I accept the need for some civil rights to be weakened as we protect ourselves against fanatics with murderous intent.

But when the authorities feel the need to detain or put on control orders those people who worry them, if they haven't been convicted let's accept a limited presumption of innocence. If we have to take them to detention, let's hire a limo to do it. Let's detain them in comfortable accommodation. A four-star hotel might be about right. And let them keep their shoes on.

Today, you can see what I was getting at.