APPLE STUMBLES, CONSUMERS STRANDED

The release of Apple's mobile me Iphone software is a disaster for one customer - me! And I don't even have an Iphone.

During the past week, it's occurred to me that I'm doing business with a great many companies where the relationship is way out of balance. I need them many many times more than they need me.

After four days without email, thanks to a prolonged outage of the Apple email system, and with little by way of apology or direction from Apple, it is pretty plain that my email is a much bigger matter of concern to me than it is to Apple.

Today, the company announced a record quarterly profit of $1.07 billion US.

While Apple enjoys a zealotry from its fans and the media that might provide inspiration for a Presidential candidate or a religious cult, their haste to keep their new products and the profits flowing appears to have bowled over their impressive technical team.

Waiting for the Iphone, Apple Store Sydney

The release last week of the software companion to the Iphone, known as MobileMe, is a disaster for at least one customer. Demobilised me.

I've been a subscriber to a service called .mac for the past few years. It's like a hotmail, yahoo mail or gmail account. It has some extra features, but it also has a catch. It costs $139 per year. For that, I have assumed that I would have an email platform of unrivalled stability - and perhaps some customer service as well.

On Saturday morning, I woke to discover that my .mac email was down. I wasn't too alarmed. I recall experiencing outages of a few minutes before.

It's now been four days since I've received any email. And I'm worried.

Apple have confirmed that the problem is at their end. They haven't provided any other information or service that might indicate they appreciate the seriousness of an email system disabled for four days.

My Apple mail account is where my personal life resides. Having lived abroad for many years, a lot of my personal relationships are maintained by email. For the past four days, anyone who sends an email to me assumes that it has gone through - but it hasn't. Who knows what I might be missing out on?

And then there's the banking, credit card, newsletter and magazine subscriptions. They are essential aspects of modern life. And I'm being deprived of all of them by an overly ambitious Apple keen to sign up as many Iphone customers as possible to its inadequately tested MobileMe service.

It's certainly made me very conscious of how dependent I am on email.

But that's just the start of the story.

Just as disturbing as four days without email, is the faceless beast that one encounters when service is required.

Apple is ubiquitous. I can't open a newspaper or walk down the street without being clobbered by an image of the Iphone or an Apple icon. Yet Apple's service is less ubiquitous. In fact there is nobody in Australia to discuss this problem with.

Despite paying a significant annual fee, there is no phone support for my .mac email account. Furthermore, after extensively scouring the Apple website, the only mention I can find of this problem is a simple line "1% of MobileMe members cannot access MobileMe Mail. We apologize for any inconvenience."

It's a lottery I didn't care to win. But given the seriousness of email continuity and certainty that I am one of thousands of Apple customers experiencing this prolonged outage, I am appalled by Apple's communications with its aggrieved customers.

A company with any regard for its customers and proper recognition of the seriousness of a protracted email outage would make a more comprehensive statement on the problem available on its website.

Such action would of course draw wider attention to the problem.

Apple has clearly reasoned once again that PR should trump all other concerns - especially a claimed 1% of MobileMail users.... and especially when there are record sales and profit figures to release.

THE CARDINAL AND HIS MESSAGES

World Youth Day provides an incomparable opportunity to see the energy and dynamism of the Catholic Church's young flock and contrast this with its institutional rottenness

The youthful exuberance on the streets of Sydney for World Youth Day captures the celebration of humanity that is at the heart of great spiritual movements.

It could even warm the heart of a long lapsed Catholic. That is, until the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Pell, takes to the stage.

It's hard to imagine how he could be more adept at diminishing the church's best Australian moment in decades - and how perfectly he embodies an outmoded institution of cold, bloated, self importance and inhumanity.

Over the past few days, Pell has expressed views across three issues that put the church at odds with a great many of its adherents and the wider community. Such is the extremism of these views, they must also be theologically contentious. And they most certainly provide rich fodder to those dismissive of the church as an institution whose negatives far outweigh its positives.

First and most damningly, Pell's intervention to minimise the sexual abuse case of Anthony Jones revealed at best, an incompetence so dire as to render him unfit for the position he holds and at worst, a mischievous callousness. Cardinal Pell's apology to Jones, in the face of a media catastrophe, lacked compassion. His posturing rings hollow and he has failed to publicly express any empathy for the victim.


After last week, you might have expected that the Archbishop would keep his head down and just smile for the cameras during the Papal visit.

But no. Perhaps fearing the imminent end of his run of World Youth Day induced superstardom, Cardinal Pell yesterday shared some further personal positions - on global warming and population growth.

Remarkably, the Archbishop used his World Youth Day press conference to burnish his credentials as a climate change sceptic - washing down the Pope's global warming message of a day earlier.

Finally, the Cardinal expressed concern that birth rates in Western countries are insufficient to maintain current population levels.

Curiously, he neglected to mention that the world population continues to grow, and for the first time in history, food supplies are stretched and fuel supplies are drying up. In the past year, food shortages and inflation have forced millions around the world into starvation. There are real concerns about the earth's capacity to support the demands its present population are imposing.

In the face of these facts, the Archbishop's call to action was for Catholics to go forth, procreate and save the West with a population explosion. Implicit in this message is a cultural and racial bigotry that values a child born in the developed West over those born in the developing world or those born into non Christian cultures.

The world does not have a population growth problem. The world has a population problem. Population control is viewed as one of the best instruments for decreasing global poverty.

Many of the participants in World Youth Day come from developing countries where the populations are implored to have small families. To them, the global food and resources crisis is a daily reality.

I wonder how Cardinal Pell's message was received by these pilgrims? I wonder whether they realised that by virtue of their country of birth, they were excluded from the Cardinal's populate or perish call?

BANKS, TELCOS AND CUSTOMERS

Loyal customers seem to have become disposable items for our banks and telcos.

Imagine you've been a loyal customer at your local pub for years. One day, you grab your schooner and pass over your $3.50. The barman thanks you politely for your years of patronage and moves to serve the next customer. You overhear the next customer referencing the new drinker's special- for new customers only. Right before your eyes, the barman offers the new customer a fifty percent discount on all beer for the next three months.

For being a new customer, he pays half the price that you, a longstanding and loyal customer pays.

After years of loyal patronage, would you feel a little neglected? I know I would.

I've never studied business, but in my years of working in business, I have always operated on the principle that the cultivation and retention of long term customers is the most important of all commercial objectives. What better measure is there of a company's success in its customer relationships than a portfolio of long term customers?

It seems many large corporations have moved on from this simple and seemingly obvious commercial principle.

Over the past year, I've watched phone companies and banks release product after product to woo new customers that effectively punish long standing customers. Optus, the Commonwealth Bank, HSBC Bank - are some that I've noticed.

I have been an Optus home phone, mobile, TV and internet customer for most of the past 10 years. When my home phone contract recently lapsed, I took a look at my Optus options and selected a new plan. I then became aware that Optus provided a very significant additional discount new customers on a new plan that an old customer (me) with a raft of current Optus contracts (my homephone was out of contract) was not entitled to.

I pointed out my disappointment and the seeming lack of commercial sense in this approach to Optus personnel to no avail. It made me ponder my relationship with Optus and the company's non existent recognition of my years of loyalty.

I moved my mobile phone contract to Three (I've had my issues there too - I'll cover these at another time) and took up a house phone contract with Skype (more issues....). I stayed on Optus for broadband and TV.

I've seen both the Commonwealth Bank (I've been a customer for nearly 40 years) and HSBC (I've been a customer around 10 years) do the same thing with high interest offers for new deposits in recent months.

In these cases, new customers have been offered a generous additional 0.5 per cent on their savings above the interest rate paid to existing customers.

The commercial principle in all these cases is that the loyal customer can be neglected while the new customer (likely a swinging customer) is to be courted.

You really have to wonder what they're teaching in business schools. It's a reversal of the commercial rationale behind the loyalty schemes that are run by airlines, hotel groups and other businesses.

I'm guessing there must be some special MBA marketing courses covering industry sectors like banking and telephony. These industries are defined by two features - they lock customers into long term accounts or plans, and they can reasonably assume that customers will require their services, or those of their competitors for life.

It seems that the two lessons being taught in these classes are -
* Expend all marketing and customer service resources on new client conversion.
* Once signed up, allocate minimal resources to the ongoing management or functioning of the customer relationship.

Presumably there is some study out there in the land of corporate academe that posits that clinching the initial deal with a new customer is more commercially valuable than a relationship of long term loyalty. Promiscuity pays!

And it seems to me that the students of this MBA course unit are heading up marketing strategy in major banks and telephone companies across Australia. I suppose the best way to counter this is for customers to offer no loyalty to any company and constantly switch mobile phone service providors and banks - but who has the time for that? - or is that the whole point?

I HAD A DREAM....

I barely had time to recover from the excitement of Barak Obama's successful Democrat nomination before he revealed that the expectations created by his soaring rhetoric will not be borne out by an Obama Presidency.

It didn't take long. Barely days after his successful bid to for the Democratic Presidential candidacy, Barack Obama has revealed the full theatrics of his claims to taking the US into new political territory.

For reasons I still do not fully understand, the test of any politicians mettle in the US and in Australia, is their readiness to speak truths about the issue of Palestine. There are few who are ready to do this. Apart from Jimmy Carter, I can't name a Western leader who is ready to acknowledge the full suffering of the Palestinians and the problematic antecedents of that suffering.

Kevin Rudd was able to speak truths about China in Tibet. He has been unable to do so in relation to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.

And so Barack Obama has shown he is not so very new at all. His colour is different. His rhetoric is soaring. But if he can't stand up to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), who in Washington can he stand up to? Or is AIPAC really that powerful?

I have referenced previously my amazement that Israel's internal debate about its future and the Palestinians is far more textured than that of the governments of the US or Australia.

Barack Obama's decision to take such a strident position on Jerusalem is a great disappointment. I've not even heard such a view expressed even by George Bush. Outbushing George?

Saeb Erakat put it simply, "What this does is undermine the moderates like us and give so much ammunition to extremists in this region."

And whether you believe the Palestinian problem contributes one per cent or ninety nine per cent of the fuel of Islamic extremism, it contributes something.

We all lose from Barack Obama's position - including Israel.

KEV BLINKS

Kevin Rudd's capitulation in the face on a cheap 5 cent argument to a non opposition has not been a good look

Not a pretty picture. Kevin Rudd must have received some very nasty advice that the petrol price issue was hurting his working families - and more importantly their view of him and his government. Presumably Brendan Nelson's five cent discount offer must be getting a reception in the electorate. Of course it would.

Labor's announcement that it would review the GST on fuel excise as part of its broad tax review sounded lame and it was.

With almost three years before an election, an opposition in disarray and stratospheric approval ratings - not to mention the fact that any goose can see that petrol price rises are a global issue - Kevin blinked. It's worse that it happened after the case had been reasonably put that the government's hands were tied. But then Kev said "we have done as much as we physically can to provide additional help to the family budget".

It seems more than likely that this political blunder and the opposition's response backed Kev into a corner and produced the policy turnaround we've seen over the past couple of days. It seems Kev panicked.

During the election campaign, most progressives and those with their eyes on the country's best long term interests squirmed when Kev matched the then Howard government's proposed tax cuts. The argument was that it was a necessary compromise to get Labor over the line. We listened. Labor got over the line.

And since then there have been plenty of decisions to be proud of. The new government has had a great opening six months. Australia is a better place. But we've only focused on the symbolic and the political low risk agenda to date. And there hasn't been an opposition.

Kev needs to hold his nerve. He will face far bigger challenges than this in the years ahead. And the opposition will certainly become a more formidable foe.

Australians are going to need him to rise to the issue rather than stoop in the face of Nelson's faux outrage - or a Turnbull charge. The debate about fuel prices has been shocking. The ugly confluence of fuel, food and interest rate inflation must be causing real pain to many. A week of argument and now a Labor capitulation over five cents a litre has been a distraction, diminished the government and helped nobody.

We're going to need Kev to show some nerve.

OLMERT THE APPEASER?

George Bush was presumably unaware that he was likening his Israeli hosts to the appeasers of the Nazis when he spoke in the Knesset last week.

While President Bush's address in the Israeli Knesset last week may not compare to his "Mission Accomplished" speech for bad judgment and timing, it may be just as revealing of the "Second Life" world that the President inhabits. It was idiotic to invoke Nazism on that occasion - and now, his Israeli hosts have made him look even more absurd.

Marking Israel's 60th anniversary, he said, “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Mr. Bush said. “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”


Bush may have intended to deride the foreign policy plans of Barack Obama, who has repeatedly stated that he would talk to America's enemies - including Syria and Iran. One can assume he was not aware that his Israeli ally whose sixtieth anniversary he was honoring, was busily preparing behind his back to defy his prescriptions and commence peace negotiations Syria.

Bush shows no sign of wavering from his "with us or against us" strategy despite the carnage it has wrought and its abject failure from a strategic and anti terror perspective.

One hopes that Israel might, in its own best long term interest, be serious in its claims that it is contemplating "painful" concessions to both the Syrians and the Palestinians in the name of peace. There are no easy choices for Israel - only certainty that the brutal orthodoxy of the past decade is bankrupt.

As the Bush era draws to a close, the policy symbiosis between his administration and Israeli hardliners looks likely to fade. The long term interests of Israelis and the Palestinians - not to mention the "war on terror" urgently require a new willingness to negotiate and a more sophisticated historical paradigm than the appeasement of the Nazis.

ISRAEL'S CELEBRATION

Australia's political leaders once again find an uncommon and inexplicable unanimity on Israel's sixtieth anniversary

Morris Iemma is the latest Australian politician to join the predictable queue to heap unreserved praise on Israel on the 60th anniversary of its founding. Kevin Rudd beat him to it a couple of weeks ago.

It is indeed an extraordinary achievement that this small and complex nation, whose very birth is one of the most contentious events of the twentieth century, enjoys unequivocal support from both sides of Australia's political establishment and has done for decades. At least Israel's democracy is more vibrant. A broad array of views are expressed by politicians and citizens alike on Israel's troubled existence.

It is a great shame that Kevin Rudd's moral compass prompts him to take a stand in a Beijing University and express a complex and candid position on Tibet, but does not produce a similar nuanced view of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

The Chinese must look with envy at the achievements of Israel's propaganda allies. Already a big customer for Israel's high tech weaponry, perhaps they should seek a public relations consultancy as well.

And the Arabs - including the hundreds of thousands living here in Australia?

GROG BLOG - SYDNEY'S ALCOHOL VIOLENCE II

More on grog...

Since my previous grog blog post, the debate about "alcohol driven violence" has continued in Sydney. More blood has been spilt in and around pubs.

A few days after that post, I was walking down King St Newtown with a friend. From afar, we could see two men kicking and breaking open boxes. As we got closer, we could see the two young men had all the accoutrements of well to do college boys. We also were able to see what they were doing.

The boxes they had been kicking had been left outside the Newtown St Vincent De Paul office. They were kicking the boxes and their contents across King St. They were were kicking clothes that had been donated to St Vincent De Paul.

I guess this appalling behaviour would also be classified as "alchohol driven violence".

I hope as the debate evolves, we'll be able to decouple "alcohol" and "violence". I am not suggesting there is no connection between alcohol abuse and violence. Alcohol certainly makes the violent more inclined to violence.

Even more than a war on alcohol however, our culture needs to declare war on violence.

After all, getting violence out of pubs will likely simply shift it elsewhere.

We may have an increasing number of female CEOs, a female Deputy Prime Minister and successful women everywhere we turn, but the dysfunctional manhood that sees violence as an instrument of first resort for negotiating the world is proving remarkably resistant in the face of wider social change. It is quite possible that the achievements of women in recent decades as well as developments in technology and the economy have left a whole swathe of men even more alienated and more inclined to violence.

A discussion about alcohol abuse is very worthwhile. An open discussion about mindless male violence, its origins and the models it has in our culture is even more urgent.

GROG BLOG - SYDNEY'S ALCOHOL VIOLENCE

Sydney's discussion of "alcohol" driven violence lacks depth - and research!

Sure Sydney has a problem with violence in pubs and clubs. But I think alcohol's getting a bad wrap and our culture of violence is getting off way too lightly.

The logic of the discussion seems to be that alcohol causes violence. Take away the alcohol and close down the bars and violence will go, or so the argument seems to run.

I've spent a shameful amount of the past twenty five years in pubs and bars around the world and many of Sydney's bars and pubs really do have an undertone of violence that is markedly worse than many other parts of the world.

So does alcohol affect Sydneysiders differently to drinkers in other parts of the world?

In the interests of research for this piece, I took myself up to nearby Newtown last Friday night - Anzac Day - for a look. I reasoned that Anzac Day would be an especially good day to conduct my research since even greater than normal amounts of alcohol are consumed on this important national day.

The first violence I noted occurred as soon as I walked in the door. Ok, it was implied violence but it was nasty. The bouncers did their welcoming work with all the grace of Stalinist gulag wardens. Good start I thought. I already feel like a victim of violence before my first drink - and that was from the staff.

Happily, things got better from there. Despite very high lubrication levels, the atmosphere in the bar was festive - helped along by a good band that had the room in its hands.

Around midnight, an incident. Young exuberant girlfriend of young wasted but harmless boyfriend climbs on his shoulders to watch the band. Not an unusual event in a packed bar of dancing revellers on Anzac Day.

Gulag warden immediately frothed. Fangs appeared.

He rushed at the couple with great enthusiasm and then strangely grabbed the boyfriend and ejected him without warning or discussion. Girlfriend was free to stay. Perhaps disappointingly for Mr Gulag, she was disinclined.

Within 20 minutes in another show of Anzac Day fervour, an older woman hurled herself at her boyfriend. She landed safely in his arms. No harm.

With the same ferocity as first time, same warden rushed to the scene and at once applied his large heavy hand to the removal of the man without warning or discussion. In deference to judicial consistency, this man's girlfriend was also permitted to stay - even though she was sole offender.

The women did well that night but the atmosphere of the evening was damaged by the mindless intervention of the security guard. A warning might have been appropriate and given the fun, festive vibe, would certainly have sufficed. Zero tolerance gone mad. And two blameless men are thrust out onto the street angry at the treatment meted out to them.

I doubt that either of these men would have carried their anger for long. It was likely from their manner through the night and from their reaction to the nasty bouncer intervention that they had never been thrown out of a pub before. Appalled as they were, they retained their good nature despite the absurdity of their ejection.

The situation could easily have had a different outcome.

A patron more inclined to violence might have vented anger at the bouncer's lack of judgment - perhaps resulting in a brawl in the bar. Or, perhaps worse, the ejected patrons might carry their anger elsewhere, ready to explode at the slightest provocation in another venue.

These were the only moments of violence I encountered that night - and they were bouncer driven.

The Sydney bouncer culture is largely one of aggression and violence and it gets many patrons off on a bad footing. The more easily provoked will carry this through their night.

It's time bouncers were taught judgment and to, as the saying goes "go quietly and carry a big stick". At the moment, they're the worst of any city I know.

Of course there is much more to the problem than bouncers..... there are the venues themselves.

Sydney's bar and club scene has become a wasteland of mostly uninteresting venues and unimaginative entertainment. The proliferation of poker machines has taken any creativity out of the industry that might once have existed.

I just returned from London - another city with plenty of pub violence. What was nice about London however was that while there has been a surge in industrial scale drinking venues like those found here in Sydney, it is still possible to find old style pubs packed to the rafters with young patrons simply sitting around drinking and talking. Even here in Newtown, these are becoming harder to come by as the template style slick bar replaces the old pub.

The overdue decision to license smaller venues should give Sydneysiders better options for nights out and decrease the ubiquitous alcohol factories that are so often at the centre of the violence.

Even more than bouncers running amok and unimaginative industrial scale drinking outlets, the violence in our pubs and clubs should prompt a good think about dysfunctional manhood in our culture. That would mean asking hard questions about all violence - not just that "driven" by alcohol.

It's hard to know whether these problems really are worse than ever before - but in any case, the perpetrators and victims are invariably men - although women are constant victims of harassment in pubs and bars as well. It would be interesting to see whether there is a correlation between harassment of women and violence across venues.

I didn't expect I'd ever find myself in agreement with an Australian Hotels Association President but here I am. Newly elected Scott Leach argued in yesterday's Herald, "Much of the problem lay with generation Y, and there should be more focus on personal responsibility.

"I think there's a feeling out there amongst a lot of people that community values have dropped, and there's absolutely no fear of police or respect for police, and I think police would support that," he said.

Not sure whether I buy the detail of his argument but I certainly agree that there is a need to look at the culture of violence and not get too simplistically focused on alcohol in isolation.

And I still want to be able to have a late night drink in peace - hopefully in more interesting venues than are currently on offer.

Let's take a good look at violence and binge drinking. But let's not confuse them.

I want my beer and drink it too!

IF YOU CAN’T SPEAK ENGLISH, DON’T SPEAK AT ALL!!!!!

OK. The Foreign Minister Lord Downer didn’t say that. But during last week’s debate with Labor’s Foreign Affairs spokesman, he again expressed his disgust that the leader of the opposition might address the Chinese President in – Chinese!

Downer accused Rudd of being a show off – implying that Australians who acquire foreign language skills should keep these to themselves -= presumably so that our mono lingual nation can go on feeling relaxed and comfortable about this monumental national failure.

Downer then made a very unconvincing effort to showcase his French. I am no French speaker but his effort sounded like a text book self introduction – hardly an exhibition of fluency. It was an exhibition of a schoolboy jealousy and hatred that must have amused the Diplomatic fraternity gathered for insights into the big foreign policy issues of the day.

What a joy it will be to despatch this goose – our longest serving Foreign Minister – from the world stage next week – please!

BANKS CRY POOR

Bank claims on interest rates ring hollow

The long suffering banks are sounding serious. They cry they will be forced to pass interest rate rises to borrowers in excess of the official rise of .25%. Most are talking imminent rises of .5%.

The reason being provided is that instability in international credit sources means banks are themselves paying a premium for cash required above what they are holding in deposits.

So why are we not seeing more incentive in the deposit markets?

The two banks I use, HSBC and Commonwealth have not raised their savings deposit rates following either recent rate rises. It would seem to be a logical way of boosting deposits and reducing exposure to international sources of funds.

Looks more like a profit lunge than a cash shortage driving interest rate rises in excess of Reserve Bank movements.

HOWARD AND MUSHARRAF

John Howard is an unconvincing flag bearer for democracy and the rule of law

So John Howard called President Pervez Musharraf on Sunday to condemn his declaration of emergency rule?

Presumably Howard believes that amidst the chaos, Pakistan’s best hope for turning the tide on its growing Islamic insurgency is through democracy and the rule of law.

Musharraf must be amused.

Here in Australia, a country facing none of the security threats faced in Pakistan, Howard has presided over an unprecedented attack on the pillars of democracy. He has supported the suspension of habeas corpus, he has attacked the independence of the judiciary and the public service, and he has presided over greater concentration of media ownership as well as restrictions on media - all in the name of national security. His tacit support for the US prison at Guantanamo Bay and the unlawful detention of David Hicks all belie any claim he could put to President Musharraf that democracy and the rule of law triumphs over all challenges.

Further, the war in Iraq that he still aggressively advocates has created a rallying point for Islamist radicals around the world that has directly contributed to destabilisation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

How might Howard respond if Australia faced the threats Musharraf faces in Pakistan? If there was an algorithm that measured actual threat against freedoms suspended in Australia and Pakistan, we might find that the two countries are closer than we think.

Howard will be a more convincing champion of democracy on the world stage when he champions liberal democracy in Australia.

SAIGON'S CHANGING LANDSCAPE

Vietnam's impressive economic development dominates headlines. Alongside the staggering growth rates, the country's economic powerhouse, Ho Chi Minh City, is at the beginning of a construction binge that looks disturbing at best.

This blog post has been relocated to this link - please read it and other blog pieces about Vietnam and architecture here at Rusty Compass.

I'm not sure how many Asian cities I've heard described "once the Pearl of the Orient". Shanghai, Canton (Guangzhou) Saigon, Hanoi, Phnom Penh Penang come to mind. There are others. The Orient clearly once had many many pearls. Now though, it seems no city makes the claim.
Most Asian cities gave up on being beautiful decades ago. Asia's achievements in development and poverty reduction are impressive. And it isn't surprising that development has taken precedence over aesthetics in cities of rampant poverty and
deprivation.
Rapid development has taken its toll however and as a new phase of development in Asia begins, many city governments are rediscovering the ultimate economic and lifestyle importance of attractive, functional, liveable cities. Unfortunately, for the moment at least, it seems that Ho Chi Minh City is not one of them.

In this city, formerly known as Saigon, any resident old enough will wax poetically about Pham Ngoc Thach St, Le Quy Don St or the Rue Catinat of the fifties and sixties. Despite being embroiled in a horrible war, by all accounts, the Saigon was a handsome city of tree lined boulevards, gardens, villas and parks. After the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the city's architectural development froze. Building was largely confined to shacks and small extensions built to cope with an increasing population. They were tough years in a country shattered by decades of war and frozen by hardline Communist economic policies.

The city I discovered on my first visit in June 1990 was a very rundown version of the city the Americans left in April 1975. It wasn't pretty but it had an appealing scale to it. Many French era architectural marvels lurked behind the makeshift shacks that normally faced the streets. And you could get around - the traffic consisted mainly of bicycles and motorcycles. Cars were a rarity.

Plenty changed in Ho Chi Minh City after the city began opening up to the outside world in the 1990s. But it wasn't until the last few years that the city's physical character started to change at a dramatic pace. The pace of change has now moved into top gear.

Most Vietnamese naturally applaud the development and the improved living conditions they now enjoy. There is also plenty of support for the "modernisation" currently under way. There is however increasing unease about where the city is headed and what kind of place it might be for the next generation of Vietnamese. A more prosperous future seems assured. But what of the city?

Despite being surrounded by vivid examples of appalling city planning throughout Asia, Ho Chi Minh City seems to be on a blind fast track to join the world's great lost opportunities of city planning and development. In some ways it's more distressing since there are so many cities from which Saigon could learn. Drive down any major street of the city and you'll find a bizarre mix of structures emerging on tiny pieces of land with little or no architectural merit and frequently at the expense of far more attractive structures.

What is most tragic about Ho Chi Minh City is the the increasingly evident gap between what the city could be and what it looks likely to become. Some enlightened planning could make Saigon a very attractive city still. It's not yet too late, but the clock is ticking and the bulldozers are moving. So what should be done?

The French era layout around which Saigon evolved was never built to handle the population it currently serves. It is hopelessly inadequate for the city's future. That leaves 2 options - put much of the new city into new areas (the long argued "official" plan), or clear the old city and start again (a scary thought).

In practice though, neither is happening. Instead there is a seemingly under regulated construction boom in the centre with mainly unattractive commercial buildings going up everywhere - with little or no improvement to roads and transport infrastructure.

Simultaneously, the new cities of Districts 2 , 7 and beyond gather momentum also.

During the many years I have lived in this city, the talk on the street has always been that the "new" city would be created in new areas across the Saigon River - Thu Duc and Saigon South. It seemed very sensible. There is plenty of development going on in these areas too. But District 1 and the other picturesque historic parts of the city look likely to lose their charm.

Near my house in Tan Binh district, a 10 story office building is going up in the middle of residential area where the street width is less than 5 metres. Gridlock at the end of the street is normal already. When the new building comes on line, things will be far worse as cars and motorbikes jam this tiny lane. There are no car spaces in the new building and no real space for cars on the streets. And that story is indicative of what is going on across the city - construction everywhere gorging the narrow streets with large commercial buildings at the expense of the old and without any accompanying infrastructure.

There seems to be little consideration of how the already jammed roads and barely existent public transport will carry the tens of thousands of new commuters to these buildings. Saigon has almost ground to a halt. I recently bet a taxi driver that I could walk the further 2 kilometres to my house faster than he could drive. Sure enough, I won. The 5 kilometre journey from my home to city centre takes 10 - 15 minutes in the late evening and between 40 and 70 minutes in the day time. I can walk to the centre faster than I can drive 50% of the time.

But walk you wouldn't. If Saigon's roads are dangerously dysfunctional, the city's footpaths are virtually unusable. Parked motorcycles clog the pavements and where there is an open patch, the overflow of motorcycles from the busy streets will frequently fill the gap at high speeds. The pavements are also favoured by motorcyclists travelling at speed the wrong way up one way streets. A relaxing city walk is not an option in this city.

There are no easy answers of course. A city with an economy growing at 10+% will face any number of bottle necks as well as a daily temptation to adopt easy short term fixes. The challenges the city faces are not confined to managing rapid development though. Corruption and kickbacks are also feeding the city's despoilment as its officers and those state companies sitting on prime land seek to carve off a slice of the economic boom for themselves.

Still the great aesthetic and atmospheric opportunity for the city continues to be in and around District 1 - the city centre. Even now, this area has few high rise buildings. Most of district 1 consists of lowrise shophouses that have a wonderful scale to them. If they were preserved and renovated and developed by the region's best planning minds, these shophouses could underpin an attractive district of boutiques, small business spaces, apartments, restaurants and other public facilities. There is still plenty to work with - although increasingly, the rows of shophouses are interrupted by unsightly mini high rises of up to ten stories with frontages of around 4 metres.

Of course Saigon needs its big commercial buildings. Putting them in District 1 makes no sense from an infrastructure and planning perspective however. And an opportunity to create a great city for its residents and visitors will be lost also.
What seems to be lacking is an integrated view of the city. Each piece of land seems to be viewed purely as an isolated opportunity to bring a huge cash windfall without any consideration of the creation of attractive functional integrated spaces. Just as disturbing is the lack of public space and the seeming disregard for this in current planning. Ho Chi Minh City's district 1 has no significant public parks by any regional or global standard. Nor does it have significant recreational spaces for restaurants, bars, shopping and walking. Yet it could.

Saigon's growth obsession has produced lots of wealth and opportunity for its people - who are of course still poor by any measure. It will take a visionary, clean and assertive city government to reign in the current binge to ensure an attractive, functional city survives for the next more affluent, educated and demanding generation.

HICKS AND MOTI

The Hicks and Moti cases reveal a very different level of enthusiasm in Alexander Downer for seeing legal cases promptly brought to justice.

David Hicks must watch with envy, the Australian government’s pursuit of Solomon Islands’ Attorney General Julian Moti. If only Alexander Downer was as committed to bringing him to justice, irrespective of the diplomatic implications, he must think.

Australia is pursuing Moti on charges of child sexual abuse that have been heard and dropped in Vanuatu. The case looks fragile (See David Marr and Marian Wilkinson’s piece here) but Australia’s pursuit of Moti has created major tension across the Pacific.

The pursuit of Moti is in stark contrast to the government’s limp efforts to bring Hicks to trial. And the Foreign Minister is at his imperious best when criticising the Pacific nations that have helped Moti elude Australian courts. A very different tone indeed to that used in relation to the US government and the Hicks case.

It seems that the Foreign Minister’s righteousness and moral outrage are a function of his measurement of the relative world power of the nation in question and his own prejudices rather than the substance of the legal or moral offense in question.

ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN

“Every complex problem has a simple solution – which is wrong.”

I don’t know who wrote that line but I love it. It captures so much of the political debate under Howard.

Want to stop porn being peddled to children online? Build a firewall.

Want to stop child abuse in indigenous communities? Send in the police and the army, prohibit alcohol and don’t complicate important initiatives by consulting affected communities.

Want to stop terrorism? Repeal those old and flaky pillars of the legal system like habeas corpus – they didn’t have Islamic terror in the 14th century right?

Want to remove a cruel Iraqi dictator? Forget the details and ignore those wimps arguing for caution. Get in there and do it.

Want to safeguard Australia’s security? Spend billions on new high tech weapons. The bigger and more expensive, the safer we’ll be.

Want to win an election? Buy off, one by one marginal electorates across the country.

Get the picture?

John Howard has been a man for his times. Australians have had their ten years of wilful ignorance and over-simplification. We’ve had our ten years of indulgence. We’re richer we’re told. But nobody feels as relaxed and comfortable as the Prime Minister assures us we should.

Reality is catching up with John Howard’s ever simplistic and easily digested prescriptions.

A firewall is no more an adequate measure for dealing with the proliferation of pornography in schools than the army and police are the best people to deal with the complex issue of child abuse in indigenous communities. These measures might at best be a small part of a complex solution.

John Howard doesn’t like complex solutions. But it seems Australians are starting to realise that many of our biggest problems won’t be fixed by simplistic and politically packaged prescriptions. Climate change has probably played a part in this process. The hollow ring to Howard’s line “ Working families have never been better off” is probably also biting.

Reality is catching up with Australia and Howard is looking the worse for it.

THE END OF EXPERTS

John Howard is on a desperate pre-election scramble that shows his real contempt for accountable government and the expertise in government departments and the professions. This week's hospital debacle in Tasmania adds to a long list of policy disasters built on a contempt for specialist expertise and an obsession with tactical politics. The prospects for the massive indigenous intervention can't be good.

On Monday, John Howard told reporters that while he fully acknowledged the crisis outlined in the recent report on child abuse in indigenous communities (read political opportunity), his government felt no obligation to respond to the recommendations of its authors (read, insufficient hysteria, too many complex long term strategies and not enough guns and jeeps).

Howard has used the report as the basis for a massive intervention in indigenous affairs the likes of which we have not seen in his eleven years as Prime Minister. Yet this massive intervention is taking place with minimal consultation and widespread condemnation from the report’s authors, indigenous leaders and communities and experts who have long been dealing with issues of aboriginal health, welfare and development.

Most Australians, including indigenous leaders, would agree that the situation in indigenous Australia is chronic and requires a massive reevaluation. In the past few days, the costs of this intervention have leapt from the originally planned tens of millions to half a billion dollars in its first year. But what form should the intervention take? And what are its prospects of success when it shuns broad consultation with Aboriginal community leaders and many of those with expertise in Aboriginal communities not to mention the Opposition? After decades of failure, what prospect is there that a Government can engineer a policy revolution in indigenous affairs that has any prospect of success in six weeks?

The emergency response to the findings seemed appropriate. Who could argue with a huge, immediate effort to curb child sexual abuse? Minister for Indigenous Affairs Brough said that if you don’t agree with this intervention “you either don’t have a child or you don’t have a soul” (read - you're with us or you're a child abuser). So we now know how to view the broad opposition to the initiative.

It’s a disturbing way for a government to develop policy but it has plenty of precedent. From global warming, the Murray rescue plan, the Iraq War, the war on terror and military deployments in the Pacific and Timor, there is a common trend – condemn the expert.

Expert opinion has been ignored or condemned across most of the Howard government’s major policy blunders. In the long term, Australia will pay.

Experts should be analysed, scrutinised and critiqued. They should be heard. The Prime Minister is right in saying that good leaders will on occasions act against prevailing expert advice. Good leaders however can be entrusted to do so in the best interests of the community. Mr Howard's record on defying expert opinion speaks for itself - a series policy disasters for Australia from Tampa to Iraq and an occasional quick political thrill for the PM.

Many of the country’s most senior public servants know how it feels to be on the wrong side of an argument with the Howard government. When Treasury Secretary Ken Henry was reported to have criticised the government’s Murray Darling Plan, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull responded dismissively,

"The Treasury does not know how much it costs to pipe a channel, how much it costs to replace a Dethridge wheel with a computerised flume gate, and how much it costs to line 10 kilometres of leaky pipe along the Murrumbidgee River," he said.

Treasurer Costello added, "Treasury's no water expert; Treasury's good at treasury; Treasury has not been engaged in water,"

The fact of course is that Treasury and Finance are normally involved in every costly policy initiative just as Finance departments would be involved in any major initiative in a corporation. It’s called responsible governance. Treasury knowing about Treasury is enough.

Police Commissioner Mick Kealty is a changed man since his 2004 brush with Howard orthodoxy that Australia’s presence in Iraq in no way impacts our position as a target for terrorists (see my previous post).

The Howard government’s oft recited contempt for elites includes the “elite” minds of its own military, science, economics, foreign policy, intelligence, police and other areas of the public service establishment. The Iraq War and climate change may be the most glaring cases of wilful disregard of widely expressed expert views. There are many others. And the quality of our most important analysts must have suffered terribly under this culture.

With the same pig headed “shock and awe” mindset being applied to the indigenous intervention, it will take a miracle for it to succeed.

CRISIS OF COMPETENCE

The Howard government's habit of putting its political ends before reality has taken a toll on competence in Australia that will take years and a commitment to open and accountable government to address.

The Haneef debacle reveals again the real crisis at the heart of the Australian Government and many branches of the public service over which it presides - competence.

Mick Keelty has always struck me as a bright, measured and straight talking Police Commissioner - until Friday. It seems he has learned how to survive as a servant of the Howard machine. In 2004, he famously took an ear bashing from Howard minders for stating the obvious, that Australia's presence in Iraq would make the country a bigger terrorist target. But there he was on Friday as the Haneef case collapsed in disarray, a man transformed from his earlier candour, after years of answering to his political masters, sounding like a a Howard Minister after yet another bungle.

Keelty insisted he had nothing to be sorry for and that he was happy with the work of the Federal Police. This is the despite the fact that an innocent man (remember the presumption of innocence?) had been incarcerated for weeks, his prosecution been bungled with incorrect evidence and his reputation trashed in the media. Instead of once again stating the obvious, that there was cause for great public and official concern at the conduct of this case, the Commissioner followed the line we've seen so often before from Howard's Ministers and Howard himself - never admit error - irrespective of how little analysis is required to see the error or how disastrous the consequences of the error might be = Iraq.

And so we've seen from Tampa and "kids overboard" to the Iraq War, AWB and Immigration debacles, a refusal to acknowledge fundamental error when it occurs.

But any organisation, be it government, business or even a sports team, that refuses to acknowledge and address fundamental error, sets in train a corrosive process that rewards incompetence and punishes those determined to achieve high standards. And so after a litany of failures that have gone largely unacknowledged and unaccounted for, we should assume that competency levels in government and bureaucracy are at an all time low. Consider the proud, committed and effective members of the Federal Police who watched their boss trot out the "we did a great job" line and think how deflated they must feel - knowing the boss is setting the benchmarks for their work. And then think of their equivalents in the Department of Foreign Affairs, the military and the Intelligence Services over Iraq and AWB. It's a culture that by definition rewards mediocrity and political manoeuvring at the expense of the higher goals of public service. Welcome to Howard's Australia.

Nothing threatens Australia's security, not to mention its economic well being and general prosperity more than a culture where a base political end always trumps a thorough analysis of an issue or a proper discussion of a failure. That is John Howard's Australia. You need only look at the debates raging in the UK and the US to see how politically lame our discussion has become.

DOWNER AND LAME AUSTRALIA ON IRAQ

Australia continues to conduct its Iraq discussion with surreal detachment and in step with the White House

Last week, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki declared that Iraqi security forces could secure the country whenever their American supporters opted to leave.

“We say with confidence that we are capable, God willing, of taking full responsibility for the security file if the international forces withdraw in any time they wish,” Mr. Maliki said in a press conference.

In the same week, Nicholas Kristof referenced polls taken earlier in the year that reported 69% of Iraqis believe that the presence of foreign troops makes the security situation worse.

These two facts alone should provide a compelling enough argument for an exit from Iraq as soon as possible. After all, isn’t the Iraqi government supposed to be in charge with the Iraqi people? How come we know General Petraeus better than we know the Iraqi PM, President, Foreign Affairs and Defence Ministers put together?

And what does Australia’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer have to say?

On Sunday, the ABC (Australia) Insiders programme interviewed Downer who had recently returned from Iraq. In what is supposed to be an opportunity for sound bite free discussion of issues, he once again showed how appallingly infantile Australia’s public discussion of the Iraq War is.

The Foreign Minister was able to dismiss the intense bi partisan rebellion in the US Congress over Iraq by saying “I mean there's of course a lot of politics in Washington over all of this and here in Australia we can probably disregard some of the politics of politics, but on the ground the situation at the moment is a little better than its been.”

Made it sound like we were talking about a trivial spat in a local council.

The Foreign Minister has managed to remove himself from the ugly detail of a war that’s claimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, more than 3600 US soldiers, undermined international anti terrorism efforts and reduced the standing of the US and Australia around the world. But in Australia he can get away with describing contemptuously Republican and Democrat efforts in Congress to end the war as “the politics of politics” – reminiscent of the Prime Minister’s extraordinary comments about Barack Obama earlier in the year.

Since the Coalition government is such a monolithic Howard driven beast, the FM has forgotten that debate is supposed to be part of the democratic process.

So what is Australia’s position on the big questions of the future of the Iraq conflict? Does Australia endorse the grand diplomacy strategy advocated by many to engage Iraq’s neighbours in the stabilising the country? What of the Iraq Study Group recommendations, which may now be again under consideration by the President and have the endorsement of Kevin Rudd. Does the Downer Ministry of Foreign Affairs simply shift with W in his own good time? What are the Foreign Minister’s views apart from vague recitals of White House propaganda? What is Australia’s position on the complex issues?

You hear the big issues of the Iraq War being debated daily in the US. Not so in Australia. It seems that Downer gets his Iraq analysis from the same guy that gives Dennis Shanahan his opinion poll analysis – “it’s all good despite the evidence”.

http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2007/s1978832.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/world/middleeast/15iraq.html
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/opinion/12kristof.html
http://icasualties.org/oif/
http://www.iraqanalysis.org/

THE DARK AGES WE LIVE IN AND THE VATICAN

The loopy outbursts and threats of violence from sections of the Islamic community that accompanied the recent decision to confer a knighthood on author Salman Rushdie demonstrated again the serious dysfunction eating away at Islam. Whatever Rushdie’s crimes against Islam, the bloodshed advocated by his detractors disgraces them.

More distressing is the Islamic world’s apparent capacity to unite in violence against proposed affronts to their religion in the West, while the horrors being perpetrated by Muslim against Muslim most graphically in Iraq, Afghanistan and now increasingly in Pakistan goes on without any serious united outcry from Muslims. Where is the mass movement for Islamic moderation?

There are Islamic leaders fighting the hard fight for moderation. I only wish they were more capable of transforming theirs into a powerful and visible global movement.

Of course the prosecution of the war on terror and the wider actions of the US, Australian and other Western governments have made the job of moderates the world over harder.

And just in case you thought that the Catholic Church had moved on from the dark ages, Pope Benedict has recently started to express views that – minus the calls for mindless slaughter – are as useful to global and religious peace and unity as the utterances of extremists of any religious complexion.

Last year, he managed to incite Islamic violence by quoting a 14th-century Christian Byzantine emperor who was harshly critical of the prophet Muhammad .

Two recent pronouncements have in my view been even more provocative.

In Brazil in May, the Pope said that pre colonial indigenous South Americans were “silently longing” for the faith graciously bestowed by the marauding colonisers. Then last week, he restated an earlier view that other non-Catholic and non Orthodox Christian faiths did not in fact constitute “churches” due to “defects”. These defects were in part bound up with the fact that “other” Christian churches could not trace a continuous line to the apostles. You don’t need to be a religious historian to know that the “direct line” in question here is one drenched in bloodshed and horrors that would provide great inspiration to fanatics of any faith.

It’s Talibanesque in its blithe self-certainty. And it’s remarkable that in the same week this same church with its direct and superior line to divinity announced a $660 millionUS settlement for more than 500 cases of child abuse in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Is there any relationship between this self proclaimed sense of supremacy and these abuses? What price do we pay in the wider world for similar concepts of religious supremacy?

CHINA, FLICKR, FRANKNESS AND FOOD

China's fixation with control exceeds its interest in health and safety

I’ve just uploaded a selection of photos of China to the photo sharing website Flickr. The pictures are pretty standard tourist fare from across the country. It’s a positive colourful portrait. Take a look here.

But just as I have been loading these images, the Chinese government has been banning Chinese users from accessing Flickr. Why?

Well because although there are many millions of photos displayed on Flickr by hundreds of thousands of users, a few hundred are images of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the protest movement. And China is not happy about these few images.

China is ready to block the world’s favourite photo sharing site with millions of positive images of China and life the world over, because of a few images that ruffle the feathers.

Meanwhile, 100 representatives in Japan’s ruling party have also riled the Chinese this week by revising the severity of the 1937 Nanjing massacre from the Chinese estimate of 300,000 to 20,000.

That's a lot of denial! And a lot of historical debate for a world ever less interested in teaching history.

China’s justified outrage at Japanese revisionism loses a lot of steam while China is unable to run a critical eye over its own past – Tiananmen Square and the cultural revolution especially.

And the China Flickr story happens to coincide with other still unfolding China scandals in which Chinese companies have been found exporting poisonous chemicals for use in foods and pharmaceuticals. In addition, all of the toys withdrawn from US shelves recently because of health and safety risks were all manufactured in China. The food and pharmaceuticals scandal has claimed several lives internationally and many more in China.

When it comes to controlling the internet and the media, not to mention spreading its economic and military power, China seems to have limitless resources and skill. Its resources for policing the quality of food, pharmaceuticals and toys sold domestically and for export seem to be far more limited.

Resources -
Japan and Nanjing
Flickr and China