catallaxy.

Iemma offered up his buddy Costa as sacrificial lamb, thinking that would be enough to save his neck, but the powers that be still whacked him. Just another day in NSW Labor right politics.

Pity Costa will never get a turn as NSW Premier. That would’ve been fun to watch.

Here in NSW we are gearing up for local government elections which are coming up on the 13th of September. I opened my mailbox today to find a pamphlet from the Labor ticket, headed up by Meredith Burgmann, a bit of a lefty (an understatement), most famous for her invention of the sanctimonous Ernie awards, who is to be their candidate for Lord Mayor of Sydney. I was surprised to find among their team one Sacha Blumen.

Sacha was one of two very interesting and thoughtful bloggers, perhaps not coincidentally from a science/maths background (the other being Steve Edney) whose general sympathies were with the parties of the Left but who were open to different ideas on their merits and who lamentably have been lost by the blogosphere over the years due to other priorities (though I see he has recently put up a few new posts). While the thought of voting for a ticket headed up by Meredith Burgmann would usually not even enter my mind, the presence of Dr Blumen in the ticket will certainly make me think more carefully about the possibility.

The election might be decided upon who is the preferred vice president.

In that case, its crusty old whatshisname versus young, and definitely intriguing, Sarah Palin.

I’m long republicans, so hopefully they get through and make up for the horrendous losses I sustained on Howard - the bastard, if only we had term limits here in Australia, our own crusty old fart would have been kicked two elections ago, and maybe Costello would have lost one, but we’d now be run by the excellent Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Like a great many geeks, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to download Chrome. In my view, Chrome has more potential to challenge IE’s dominance than Firefox, simply because Google has deeper pockets and more assets to use in this latest round of the browser war. But unless Google has some as yet unseen aces up it;’s sleeves, it may simply just end up replacing Firefox as the geek/savvy users browser of choice.

Anyway, my experience with Chrome after about an hour of use is so far so good.

Chrome was quick and easy to download and install. The ability to automatically import information (such as bookmarks) from IE is a good idea, but it would have been nice if it could have also imported my homepage setting.

Pages are generally very quick to load… but… I did find that the first time it went to a site it was a little bit slower than the subsequent page loads on the same site.

All the regular sites I visit (even Hotmail) worked fine, though Hotmail didn’t recognise Chrome and suggested I needed to upgrade to a newer browser

Incognito browsing mode (which auto deletes personal information and browsing history) is a nice feature, but infuriatingly there seems to be no way to set this as the default browsing mode.

I really like the way Chrome uses a kind of visual-bookmarking, whereby it presents thumbnail previews of your “Most Visited” sites instead of simply text listing the site name or URL. But the thing is, I don’t really want it to remember my most popular sites (because I tend to want to use incognito). What I would really love is to be able to drag n drop my own favourite/bookmark sites onto a similar style page. Kind of like a visual ‘favourites/bookmarks’ tab instead of the current text based lists. Now that would be even better than visually seeing your browsing history.

Overall, Chrome seems fairly sleek. But as I alluded to previously, I don’t know if the few extra features it has will be enough to persuade the masses to switch browsers, especially with IE’s incumbency and the new IE8 just around the corner.

My employer Henry Ergas has a piece in today’s Australian on why performance indicators are not sufficient as a means of improving performance in the provision of public sector services. The gist of the piece is that unless there is a provision for exposure of these services to competition i.e. allowing users the power of ‘exit’ to alternatives, performance indicators may at best not do much and at worst divert the efforts of public sector providers into meeting these indicators at the expense of the outcomes they are only supposed to proxy for. Ultimately these kinds of arguments and debates can be related back to the now ancient debate between Mises and the advocates of market socialism - simulated markets are a poor substitute for the real thing which require the mediation of price signals and the opportunity for someone who thinks he can do things better to set up an enterprise and pick off incumbents’ customers:

IF there is one law of economics, it is that if you reward people to do more of something, they will. Assuming that is what you want, so far, so good. But there is a less pleasant corollary, which is this: if they do more of what you are rewarding them for, they will do less of those activities for which they are not rewarded or are rewarded less, with results that can eliminate the benefits you were seeking.

These effects are at the centre of the debate raging about performance indicators and performance pay in many areas of public-service provision, including education and health …

The British experience with performance indicators shows how serious these problems can be …

The British experience with targets for hospitals proved even more distressing, with three features dominating the picture.

First, the headline targets came to determine the allocation of resources, regardless of how poorly those targets were related to the objectives being pursued. As a result, things were done that otherwise would have been regarded as completely unacceptable.

Second, the focus on targets induced evasion, including through manipulation of data. Just as Soviet managers routinely lied about whether they had achieved production quotas, so creative accounting became widespread, including by altering measurement rules to exclude cases that would have led to the targets not being met.

Third, as embarrassments mounted, the system was corrupted to make it less politically troublesome. Targets were made softer; the number of indicators was multiplied to the point at which it was impossible to understand what was being measured or achieved; and little effort was put into auditing glowing reports from the field.

Reviewing these outcomes, the Royal Statistical Society concluded that while performance monitoring “is broadly productive” when done well, “done badly, it can be very costly and not merely ineffective but harmful and indeed destructive” …

This is not to say that performance in public services should go unmeasured or that the measurements made should not be disclosed. As Julia Gillard has rightly emphasised, performance measurement is an essential part of accountability. However, what needs to be understood is that there are inherent limits on performance measurement as a way of improving outcomes in the public sector.

These limits arise for a simple reason: when you measure public-sector performance, you are not measuring outputs but merely surrogates for outputs, and often very crude ones at that.

As a result, performance measurement is never enough: rather, to be effective, it needs to be accompanied by policies that promote choice. The performance indicators government secures should help inform that choice, but they will never be able to replace the disciplines that choice brings. Indeed, without choice, the indicators can readily make matters worse, as consumers find themselves trapped in a world in which the indicators merely distort the decisions taken by service providers.

Readers may remember Darrin [sic] Hodges from this Austrolabe expose. Now the man has returned to the political scene, unsurprisingly wrapping up anti-immigration, anti-development, environmentalist and ‘quality of life’ issues into one Protectionist package:

Another candidate, Darrin Hodges, a former member of Australia First who is the NSW chairman of the Australian Protectionist Party, has tried to link high-rise developments with an influx of Asian immigrants.

“To ensure that the Sutherland Shire remains a safe, peaceful and harmonious community of Australian heritage, it is important to prevent overdevelopment,” Mr Hodges said in a candidate information sheet submitted to the NSW Electoral Commission.

“Building large blocks of units encourages ‘Asianisation’ (for example, see Strathfield and Burwood).”

The IT consultant, 42, from Engadine, also wrote that he would oppose permits for mosques, sex shops and “any developments that undermine Australia’s traditional and family values”.

This is despite admitting to the Herald he had once been contracted to maintain the server of a company selling adult products over the internet.

On his website, the George Costanza-on-a-diet look-alike also throws in generous dollops of Green to go with his main agenda:

My campaign will be centered around environmental and development issues principally in relation to the “unit boom” around the shire, as a life-long resident of the shire I do not want to see a “Hong Kong skyline” such as they have in Burwood, neither do I want to see the Shire become like Hurstville.

Given the tensions certain development proposal have caused in areas such as Bass Hill and Camden, I would vigorously oppose any similar developments that would threaten the peace and harmony of the Shire, we most certainly do not want a repeat of the scenes we saw in Cronulla a few years ago.

On environmental issues, I’m strongly opposed to the longwall mining happening in the Woronora catchment area. The Waratah Rivulet, which supplies one third of Woronora’s water, has been severely damaged by underground coal mining operations and no longer flows correctly due to surface cracking. Obviously this is a threat to the Shire’s water supply and needs to be taken seriously by various authorities.

Here’s an interesting twist on the follies of populist big business bashing regulation - now the smaller retailers are complaining that the ACCC GroceryChoice website is misleading:

INDEPENDENT grocery retailers, locked in battle against Woolworths and Coles, have complained to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission about its website, which they say is misleading and hindering their businesses.

The commission’s GROCERYchoice website puts all independent retailers together, grouping stores of different sizes from different chains.

The website released its second wave of monthly price comparisons yesterday, showing Coles was the cheapest retailer in 40 of 61 regions in Australia, although independents have narrowed the gap a little since early August …

Australian Retailers Association’s executive director, Richard Evans, said the website had unfairly targeted small businesses …

Southern Sydney Retailers Association’s president, Craig Kelly, said there was nowhere for independent retailers to complain, as the competition regulator was responsible for providing consumers with the allegedly misleading information.

“If [GROCERYchoice] was put out by Woolworths [or] Coles, the independents would be taking court action as it is misleading and deceptive, and have it closed down,” he said.

From the ever interesting D Brian Nelson:

With the selection of Palin as McCain’s VP candidate, I will not be voting Republican. Adding this to his other toadying to the extreme religious right, McCain has completely sold out. As much as I love - love - listening to Obama talk, and as much as I admire Biden, I disagree with almost everything they say, so I won’t be voting for them either. I guess I’ll vote Libertarian again. The LP ticket is pretty close to my own live-and-let-live position, and though they cannot actually win anything, my vote might be the one that tips things far enough to get major party attention.

I fear I have to agree with my colleague, that its a bit transparent of McCain, or in his words, a sell-out. Good to know he will vote libertarian and at least send a message, thats probably the best you can do; Obama gets in and the republicans all vote libertarian or stay home and catch some TV…

Update:

I personally actually quite like her (from what little I know), so my comments weren’t about her, but about how the choice seems a bit transparent. But potentially the choice will be a great one as she does seem to be a strong capable young woman. And she’s a cold winter away from the presidency, as they say.

This linked in the comments is encouraging also:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31088_Sarah_Palin_and_Creationism

Of course people should be able to debate creationism in school. Hopefully they come to the conclusion that its not a scientific theory, but i’m sure science can withstand a little debate.

The NSW firearms laws have been changed, with parts taking effect from August through to October. The main thrust of the reforms has been smoothing administrative matters for licensed shooters, which I applaud.

The major single reform is that unlicensed people can now attend an authorised range, fill out a single page questionaire, and if they are deemed OK, can shoot under the supervision of licensed shooters. This is a great boon to shooting sports as anyone who wishes to try out shooting can in a safe and controlled environment. Previously, in NSW, someone wishing to try out shooting had to request a temporary permit, which would take a few weeks to months to come back, to even attend a safety training session, after which they could shoot.

This reform also has the potential upside of increasing safety as people can attend a range and shoot easily, without the need to obtain a firearms license and then purchase their own firearm and store it at home. This has been the most likely scenario under the old laws, because shooting clubs were mostly geared to a core of members who had their own firearms, as it was almost never worth the hassle for new people to do the paperwork just to try it out.

So you can now take your girlfriends or boyfriends, and family and friends down to the range and show them how to shoot in a safe manner. And i’m sure some clubs will start to cater more to letting interested members of the public try out shooting in a safe manner.