Category Archives: australia

Empire Games

Many readers have been expecting me to post a follow-up to my Olympic analysis of four years ago. I was in fact expecting it myself and even started collecting data, but somehow it has not happened. Fortunately, regular contributor (and some time beer coaster calculator), James Glover has stepped into the void.

It’s at about this time every four years that the same old boring analysis of Olympic Medals [not for everyone! Ed.] is brought out showing Olympic medals per capita, per GDP, per dollar spent etc. While this is all very useful, this particular Olympics it has failed to show Australia “punching above its weight” and is thus, in reality, the dominant sporting nation not just on the planet, but in the whole of history as well. The Fairfax press has tried to prove this thesis, but there is a spoiler. However you cut it we came out of the top half dozen nations. Personally I don’t think coming 10th in the gold medal count is really that bad. At least we beat the Kiwis right? Hmmm, that gets me thinking…

Actually it also occurs to me that were we just to reach out across the Ditch and extend a filial hand to our beloved New Zealand cousins, combined our trans-Tasman teams and competed under an ANZAC flag we would have finished an even more respectable 5th just behind Russia.

So this got me thinking. How would other groups of nations, alliances or indeed, past empires, have fared in the Games of the XXXth Olympiad? I can’t guarantee my geography is precise (and it is not up for discussion) but here is my best take on it. For these purposes I have not included the US in the British Empire because frankly it was their choice to leave without seeking permission.

In the interests of fairness I have allocated only part of the tally in some cases to take into account that (i) the Romans did not conquer Scotland or Ireland (so 50% of Team GB), and (ii) Quebec is not part of the Anglosphere (so they only get 75% of Canada’s tally – this on advice of a non-Quebecois Canadian). Feel free to continue this game – Axis vs Allies, the French Empire of Bonaparte vs British Empire at the same time. Endless fun now our cold winter days are no longer warmed by the Olympic flame. Interesting to see that in terms of Empires the British come behind the Mongolian Empire and the Roman Empire wins on weighted medals (3,2,1) if not on gold medals alone.

In any event the result proves the strongest alliance of all time is NATO – both the strongest military alliance and, if they wished, the strongest sporting one. Maybe money doesn’t buy you medals but it would seem that missiles do!

Empire/Alliance Gold Silver Bronze Total Weighted % Total
NATO 138 129 139 406 811 45%
EU 95 96 103  294 580  32%
Anglosphere 98 73.75 79 249.5 520 29%
Roman Empire 68 79  72.5 219.5 435 24%
Mongolian Empire 75 54 64 193 397 22%
British Empire 58 58 71 186 361  20%
Soviet Union 45 41 67 153 284 16%
ANZAC 14 18 17 48 95 5.3%

More on the Hottest 100

Following on from the last post on the Hottest 100, I received a few tweets from @mjdart demanding a deeper dive into the data. One of his questions was

Of artists charting in at least 5 yrs, are Oz artists higher represented?

I decided to broaden the questions to look at artists with at least five tracks in Hottest 100s (so artists with two tracks in one year and one track in three other years would be in). On this criterion, Australia still comes out on top.

Number of artists with at least 5 “Hot” tracks

In the last post, I complained that 2010 data is currently missing from Wikipedia. It seems that this is because Wikipedia is yet to get permission from the ABC. I have decided to risk the wrath of Auntie and have posted the full chart in the table at the bottom of the post. Having pieced it together, I have updated my original chart to include 2010.

As you can see, 2010 was a good year for Australian artists. It also turns out that the artist with the most Hottest 100 tracks is also Australian: Powderfinger. Here are all the artists with at least 10 Hottest 100 tracks.

Artist Count Country
Powderfinger 22 Australia
Foo Fighters 20 United States
Grinspoon 17 Australia
Silverchair 17 Australia
Muse 16 United Kingdom
The Living End 16 Australia
Regurgitator 15 Australia
Pearl Jam 14 United States
Placebo 14 United Kingdom
You Am I 14 Australia
Green Day 13 United States
Something for Kate 13 Australia
Eskimo Joe 12 Australia
Garbage 12 United States
Red Hot Chili Peppers 12 United States
Hilltop Hoods 11 Australia
Radiohead 11 United Kingdom
Spiderbait 11 Australia
The White Stripes 11 United States
The Whitlams 11 Australia
Wolfmother 11 Australia
Beck 10 United States
Ben Harper 10 United States
Jebediah 10 Australia
Metallica 10 United States
Rage Against the Machine 10 United States
The Strokes 10 United States

UPDATE:

@mjdart asked another question which I thought I should also answer:

@stubbornmule If you assign 100 pts for #1 thru 1 pt for #100 each year, is Oz proportion higher/lower? eg Oz filling out top or bottom 50?

To answer this, I assigned 100 points for the top spot, 99 points for the second and so on down to one point for last place. I summed the score for each country and then scaled it by dividing by 50.5. This odd choice arises because 100 + 99 + 98 + … + 2 + 1 = 5050 and so dividing by 50.5 would give a score of 100 for a country that managed to win every spot in the top 100. This makes the score directly comparable to a simple count of places in the top 100. So, how does this weighted score compare to a simple count? The answer, evident in the chart below is not much! So, each country’s artists must be fairly evenly spread through the top 100 over time.

Finally, here is the complete listing of the 2010 Hottest 100, including country of origin. If you are feeling brave, you may wish to update Wikipedia. Just keep in mind, the list may be deleted again if the ABC does not provide permission for the list to be published!

RankTitleArtistCountry
1Big Jet planeAngus & Julia StoneAustralia
2Rock ItLittle RedAustralia
3Dance The Way I FeelOu Est Le Swimming PoolEngland
4PlansBirds Of TokyoAustralia
5Fall At Your FeetBoy & BearAustralia
6Teenage CrimeAdrian LuxSweden
7Fuck You!Cee Lo GreenUnited States
8Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)The WombatsEngland
9Magic FountainArt Vs. ScienceAustralia
10Somebody To Love Me {Ft. Boy George & Andrew Wyatt}Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.England
11ABC News Theme {Remix}PendulumAustralia
12RapunzelDraphtAustralia
13Clap Your HandsSiaAustralia
14Runaway {Ft. Pusha T}Kanye WestUnited States
15Barbara StreisandDuck SauceUnited States
16Mace SprayThe JezabelsAustralia
17Bang Bang Bang {Ft. MNDR & Q-Tip}Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.England
18There’s Nothing In The Water We Can’t FightCloud ControlAustralia
19Crave You {Ft. Giselle}Flight FacilitiesAustralia
20Sunday BestWashingtonAustralia
21Undercover MartynUTwo Door Cinema ClubNorthern Ireland
22JellylegsChildren CollideAustralia
23AddictedBliss N EsoAustralia
24Talking Like I’m Falling Down StairsSparkadiaAustralia
25Eyes Wide OpenGotyeAustralia
26Not In Love {Ft. Robert Smith}Crystal CastlesCanada
27You’ve Got The Dirtee Love {Live}Florence & The Machine/Dizzee RascalEngland
28Radar DetectorDarwin DeezUnited States
29It Can Wait {Ft. Owl Eyes}IllyAustralia
30O.N.EYeasayerUnited States
31Bloodbuzz OhioThe NationalUnited States
32Pumped Up KicksFoster The PeopleUnited States
33Solitude Is BlissTame ImpalaAustralia
34Punching In A DreamThe Naked And FamousNew Zealand
35The Bike Song {Ft. Kyle Falconer & Spank Rock}Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.England
36Opposite Of AdultsChiddy BangUnited States
37Doncamatic {Ft. Daley}GorillazEngland
38Young BloodThe Naked And FamousNew Zealand
39RevolutionJohn Butler TrioAustralia
40Baby, I’m Getting BetterGyroscopeAustralia
41Down By The RiverBliss N EsoAustralia
42On Melancholy HillGorillazEngland
43We No Speak AmericanoYolanda Be CoolAustralia
44BaptismCrystal CastlesCanada
45Rabbit SongBoy & BearAustralia
46Way Back HomeBag RaidersAustralia
47Wild At HeartBirds Of TokyoAustralia
48WitchcraftPendulumAustralia
49Easy To LoveThe JezabelsAustralia
50One Life StandHot ChipEngland
51AmblingYeasayerUnited States
52OverpassThe John Steel SingersAustralia
53ReflectionsBliss N EsoAustralia
54Holidays {Ft. Alan Palomo}Miami HorrorAustralia
55Giving Up The GunVampire WeekendUnited States
56Bring NightSiaAustralia
57KickstartsExampleEngland
58The SuburbsArcade FireCanada
59Rich KidsWashingtonAustralia
60My EagleChildren CollideAustralia
61Jackson’s Last StandOu Est Le Swimming PoolEngland
62Hold OnAngus and Julia StoneAustralia
63Ready To StartArcade FireCanada
64Jona VarkGypsy & The CatAustralia
65One StepDead Letter CircusAustralia
66Audience =Cold War KidsUnited States
67HolidayVampire WeekendUnited States
68Dog {Ft. Lisa Mitchell}Andy BullAustralia
69WatercolourPendulumAustralia
70Paper RomanceGroove ArmadaEngland
71Piper’s SongGypsy & The CatAustralia
72I Can TalkTwo Door Cinema ClubNorthern Ireland
73Time To WanderGypsy & The CatAustralia
74LucidityTame ImpalaAustralia
75Coming Around Hungry Kids Of HungaryAustralia
76RadioactivedKings Of LeonUnited States
77Shutterbugg {Ft. Cutty}Big BoiUnited States
78Stylo {Ft. Bobby Womack and Mos Def}GorillazEngland
79Slow Motion Slow MotionLittle RedAustralia
80Howlin’ For You Howlin’ For YouThe Black KeysUnited States
81Echoes EchoesKlaxonsEngland
82Tighten Up Tighten UpThe Black KeysUnited States
83Modern Man Modern ManArcade FireCanada
84The Hardest Part The Hardest PartWashingtonAustralia
85I Feel Better I Feel BetterHot ChipEngland
86Queensland QueenslandEvil EddieAustralia
87The Saddest Thing I Know The Saddest Thing I KnowBirds Of TokyoAustralia
88Monster {Ft. JAY-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj & Bon Iver}Kanye WestUnited States
89Barricade BarricadeInterpolUnited States
90Finally See Our Way Finally See Our WayArt Vs. ScienceAustralia
91Northcote (So Hungover)The Bedroom PhilosopherAustralia
92I Can ChangeI Can ChangeLCD SoundsystemUnited States
93Anyone’s Ghost Anyone’s GhostThe NationalUnited States
94Time To Smile Time To SmileXavier RuddAustralia
95The High Road The High RoadBroken BellsUnited States
96Go Do Go DoJonsiIceland
97SleepwalkerParkway DriveAustralia
98Spanish SaharaFoalsEngland
99BigBigDead Letter CircusAustralia
100Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever)MuseEngland

Hottest 100 for 2011

Another year, another Australia Day. Another Australia Day, another Triple J Hottest 100. And that, of course, means an excellent excuse to  set R to work on the chart data.

For those outside Australia, the Hottest 100 is a chart of the most popular songs of the previous year, as voted by the listeners of the radio station Triple J. The tradition began in 1991, but initially people voted for their favourite song of all time. From 1993 onwards, the poll took its current form* and was restricted to tracks released in the year in question.

Since the Hottest 100 Wikipedia pages include country of origin**, I thought I would see whether there is any pattern in whose music Australians like best. Since it is Australia Day, it is only appropriate that we are partial to Australian artists and they typically make up close to half of the 100 entries. Interestingly, in the early 90s, Australian artists did not do so well. The United Kingdom has put in a good showing over the last two years, pulling ahead of the United States. Beyond the big three, Australia, UK and US, the pickings get slim very quickly, so I have only included Canada and New Zealand in the chart below.

Number of Hottest 100 tracks by Country

If you have excellent eyesight, you may notice that 2010 is missing from the chart. For some reason, this is the only year which does not include the full chart listing on the Wikipedia page. There is a link to a list on the ABC website, but unfortunately it does not include the country of origin. Maybe a keen Wikipedian reading this post will help by updating the page.

I make no great claims for the sophistication or the insight of this analysis: it was really an excuse to learn about using the XML package for R to pull data from tables in web pages.

require(XML)
require(ggplot2)
require(reshape2)

results <- data.frame()
col.names <- c("year", "rank", "title", "artist", "country")

# Skip 2010: full list is missing from Wikipedia page
years <- c(1993:2009, 2011)

for (year in years) {
    base.url <- "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_J_Hottest_100,"
    year.url <- paste(base.url, year, sep="_")
    tables <- readHTMLTable(year.url, stringsAsFactor=FALSE)
    table.len <- sapply(tables, length)
    hot <- cbind(year=year, tables[[which(table.len==4)]])
    names(hot) <- col.names
    results <- rbind(results, hot)
}

# Remap a few countries
results$country[results$country=="Australia [1]"] <- "Australia"
results$country[results$country=="England"] <- "United Kingdom"
results$country[results$country=="Scotland"] <- "United Kingdom"
results$country[results$country=="Wales"] <- "United Kingdom"
results$country[results$country=="England, Wales"] <-"United Kingdom"

# Countries to plot
top5 <- c("Australia", "United States", "United Kingdom",
  "Canada", "New Zealand")

# Create a colourful ggplot chart
plt <- ggplot(subset(results, country %in% top5),
    aes(factor(year), fill=factor(country)))
plt <- plt + geom_bar() + facet_grid(country ~ .)
plt <- plt + labs(x="", y="") + opts(legend.position = "none")

Created by Pretty R at inside-R.org

UPDATE: there is a little bit more analysis in this follow-up post.

* Since the shift to single year charts, there have been two all-time Hottest 100s: 1998 and 2009.

** There are some country combinations, such as “Australia/England”, but the numbers are so small I have simply excluded them from the analysis.

Where is the cheapest petrol?

For some time now, I have been meaning to have a look at Beautiful Soup, a python library designed to make it easy to scrape data from web-sites. Now that I have finally tried it out, I wish I had got to it sooner. It really is very handy and easy to use.

As my first Soup project, I turned to an old Mule favourite: petrol data. The Australian Institute of Petroleum (AIP) publishes retail petrol price data, which it sources in turn from MotorMouth. The price data is spread across individual pages for each state, like this one for Victoria and there are separate pages for unleaded and diesel. It would be nice to pull together all of the data and, since the pages are all laid out in exactly the same way and there is a straightforward naming convention for the urls of each page, this is very easy to do using Beautiful Soup. You can see the results showing average weekly petrol prices for the week ending 18 December in the table below.

With all the data in hand, the obvious questions to ask are: where is the cheapest petrol and where is the most expensive petrol? As you can see in the chart below, Adelaide came in as the cheapest place to fill your tank in late December at 134.9 cent/L, while Broome was the most expensive at 165.9, an impressive 23% mark up over Adelaide.

Australian Petrol PricesTop 10 and bottom 10 unleaded petrol prices
(average for the week ending 18 December 2011)

Of course this only gives a snapshot at a point in time: Adelaide may not always offer such good value for money and Broome residents may not always pay such a premium. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any historical data by town on the AIP website. So I have set my data-scraping routine up to collect the data each week. Some time late this year I will revisit this data to see if any patterns emerge over time.

StateTownWeekly Average
NSWAlbury135.5
NSWArmidale143.6
NSWBallina146.9
NSWBatemans Bay144.3
NSWBathurst145.9
NSWBega150.1
NSWBroken Hill145.9
NSWBulahdelah138.1
NSWBuronga146
NSWCanberra146.4
NSWCasino144.8
NSWCentral Coast143.2
NSWCoffs Harbour147
NSWCooma150.3
NSWCootamundra149.2
NSWDeniliquin148.9
NSWDubbo143.1
NSWForbes147.5
NSWForster146.9
NSWGlen Innes141.9
NSWGoulburn141.9
NSWGrafton146.3
NSWGriffith144.4
NSWGundagai141.7
NSWGunnedah144
NSWHay145.8
NSWInverell146.9
NSWKempsey146.2
NSWLeeton145.5
NSWLismore144.5
NSWLithgow139.9
NSWMittagong149.9
NSWMoama145.9
NSWMoree148.8
NSWMoruya147.6
NSWMoss Vale142.1
NSWMudgee150.4
NSWMurwillumbah143.1
NSWMuswellbrook146.6
NSWNewcastle144.3
NSWNowra144.8
NSWOrange147.4
NSWParkes146.7
NSWPort Macquarie146.5
NSWQueanbeyan146.6
NSWSingleton143.8
NSWSydney138.2
NSWTamworth145.7
NSWTaree144.9
NSWTemora148
NSWTumut145.9
NSWTweed Heads South141
NSWUlladulla143.9
NSWWagga Wagga144.9
NSWWauchope143.6
NSWWest Wyalong149.9
NSWWollongong143
NSWWoolgoolga145.7
NSWYass148.4
NTAlice Springs163.4
NTDarwin151.8
NTKatherine146.3
NTTennant Creek164
QLDAtherton145.3
QLDAyr145.6
QLDBiloela148.6
QLDBlackall157.8
QLDBlackwater148.2
QLDBowen146.2
QLDBrisbane141.3
QLDBundaberg144
QLDCairns146
QLDCharters Towers149.4
QLDChilders142.9
QLDDalby142.4
QLDEmerald146.9
QLDGladstone143.5
QLDGold Coast141.3
QLDGoondiwindi148
QLDGympie143.3
QLDHervey Bay143.9
QLDIngham142.9
QLDInnisfail145.3
QLDKingaroy143.7
QLDLongreach153.9
QLDMackay141.2
QLDMareeba145.9
QLDMaryborough143.2
QLDMiles151.3
QLDMoranbah146.5
QLDMt Isa150.4
QLDRockhampton148.8
QLDRoma148.9
QLDSunshine Coast141
QLDToowoomba139.6
QLDTownsville141.9
QLDTully148.9
QLDWarwick143.7
QLDWhitsunday138.5
QLDYeppoon148.6
SAAdelaide134.9
SABordertown147.9
SACeduna150.6
SAClare138.2
SACoober Pedy160.4
SAKadina139.4
SAKeith145.9
SALoxton147.8
SAMt Gambier146.2
SAMurray Bridge140.6
SANaracoorte143.9
SAPort Augusta138.4
SAPort Lincoln145.2
SAPort Pirie139.1
SARenmark142
SATailem Bend146.4
SAVictor Harbour142.9
SAWhyalla143.5
TASBurnie150.3
TASDevonport149.8
TASHobart150.2
TASHuonville149.9
TASLaunceston149.9
TASNew Norfolk149.9
TASSmithton149.5
TASSorell144.9
TASUlverstone149.9
TASWynard152.5
VICArarat143.1
VICBairnsdale139.6
VICBallarat144.4
VICBenalla145.9
VICBendigo142.4
VICCobram142.5
VICColac145.9
VICCorryong148.2
VICEchuca145.9
VICEuroa140.2
VICGeelong136.3
VICHamilton146
VICHorsham145
VICKoo Wee Rup139.5
VICKyabram143.9
VICLeongatha142.9
VICMelbourne137.9
VICMildura147.5
VICMoe139.9
VICMorwell142.9
VICPortland146.9
VICSale140.9
VICSeymour137.9
VICShepparton143.6
VICSwan Hill146.7
VICTraralgon142.2
VICWallan138.1
VICWangaratta142.3
VICWarrnambool143.8
VICWodonga139.1
VICYarrawonga149.9
WAAlbany146.8
WABoulder151.7
WABridgetown144.9
WABroome165.9
WABunbury137.1
WABusselton141.3
WACarnarvon154.3
WADongara153.9
WAEsperance145.9
WAGeraldton149
WAKalgoorlie149.6
WAKarratha159.9
WAMajimup143.9
WAMount Barker149.2
WAPerth138.3
WAPort Hedland160.2
WAWaroona144.4

Roadkill Arithmetic

Returning for another guest post, James Glover is once again drawn to a beer coaster for some quick, if somewhat morbid, calculations. For those taking to the road over the Christmas period, this post should also serve as a reminder to drive carefully!

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to The Other Side. This twist on the ending to the iconic joke was based on the observation of a single dead chicken on the road while I was returning by car from Sydney to Melbourne at the end of my recent touring holiday. The holiday in fact started two weeks earlier when I was driving around Tasmania. While there were no chickens, there was a dead sperm whale on the road.

In Tasmania I noted that in addition to its abundance of quality food, beer and wines, it has a remarkable supply of one other thing compared to the mainland: native fauna road kill. If you think that the occasional dead kangaroo (or more likely fox) you see driving in the country is plenty, then you haven’t been to Tassie. We are talking a dead possum or wallaby every kilometre or so, which means if you are driving at 100km/hr means you see one every 36 seconds. While it is unfortunate, particularly for the animals involved, to see so many native animals dead (but no foxes because they have been eradicated from the island), it is actually cause for joy because it indicates a very healthy population of native wildlife.

This got me thinking. Could you actually use the number of road kill to estimate the density of animals living in the bush? The answer is yes, and without any derivation or proof I present it here:

density = road kill ratio/kill zone area

where

road kill ratio = av. distance between cars/
                   av. distance between road kill
kill zone area = 2 x car velocity x time x car width

It’s a surprisingly simple formula, and can also be handy for keeping children occupied on long car trips (at least in Tasmania). The model it is derived from is admittedly fairly simplistic – let’s just call it the “Frogger model of vehicle/animal interaction”. Here the time is important because clearly if we had an infinite amount of time and no method of disposal of road kill then the number would build up without limit. In practice the attendant carrion birds on each road kill and its, shall we say, “freshness” (blood, guts, brains you get the picture) suggests that they were all products of the previous nocturnal period’s collisions. In fact there are road signs indicating to drivers to be particularly careful between dusk and dawn to avoid animals so I take “time” to be 10 hours and assumed all carrion are fresh. Taking the average distance between road kill to be 1km and cars to be 10km gives a road kill ratio of 10. The average car speed was 100 km/hr and my car is about 2.5m wide so putting this all together gives an estimated bush density of 20 animals per square km. That’s about one per 5 hectares. That seems a little on the low side for a densely populated area but as “beer coaster” estimates go, it’s probably not a bad start.

This reasoning got me thinking that there probably true that there are no Tasmanian tigers left, because one would have shown up as road kill by now. Tasmanian rangers patrol the roads every morning looking for Tassie devils to monitor the spread of that awful face tumour disease they get. In fact, I saw two Tassie devils on the road and they were both alive and moving. I also saw three live echidnas: three more than I have seen in my life up to now. As mentioned I also saw a dead sperm whale on the road. Not some replica or whale skeleton either: it had died the day before. It was on the beach near Strahan which I was driving on at the time. So, yes, it was on my road and hence I feel justified classifying it as road kill. And no, I don’t know why the whale crossed the road. Perhaps it mis-heard someone say that in Tasmania there was an abundance of “road krill”.

Sculptures by the Sea

It has been quite a long time since art was the subject of a post here on the Mule, but today we took the kids to see Sculptures by the Sea. Held each year, this exhibition consists of a series of large sculptures arranged along the coast from Bondi beach to beach. As usual, parking was challenging, but as usual, the effort was worthwhile. We did not make it along the full length of the exhibition (small legs got a bit too tired), but there were some excellent pieces. The family favourite was, without a doubt, the magnificent stag. Here are a few photos.

Melbourne Cup

I have been resting on my laurels for too long. Two years ago I had Shocking success tipping a winner for the Melbourne Cup. Needless to say the analysis was entirely bogus, but it was fun. Since then I have been reluctant to tarnish my spotless prediction record, but fortune favours the brave, so I really should try again.

Inspired by my last analysis, The Hoopla is tipping Lost in the Moment, which is a 5 year-old bay horse starting at barrier three and is carrying 53 kg. Unfortunately, my statistics tell me that over the last 150 races going back to 1861, there have been five Cups in which a horse with three words in its name has won, but never one with four words. That does not bode well for Lost in the Moment.

I will not give up entirely on a good formula, so based on the analysis from two years ago, I would still like to tip a bay horse with a handicap in the 50-55 kg range starting in the barrier range 1 to 5. This time, however, I will take into account the fact that over half of previous Cup winners only had a one-word name.

Three of the horses in barriers 1 through 5 have a one-word name, and they are all carrying around 53 kg:

  • Illo
  • Precedence
  • Modun

According to this form guide (which is the only one not blocked at my place of work, which limits access to “gambling sites” and yet is doubtless hosting many Melbourne Cup festivities), Precedence and Modun are geldings, which rules them out (they come second to horses in the chart below).

Horses

So: the Stubborn Mule tip for the 2011 Melbourne Cup is Illo.

For anyone foolish enough to take heed of this tip, I appreciate it, but you are foolish.

UPDATE: after a good run for much of the race (always a bad sign) Illo failed to win or even place. So it seems that the Mule has lost his crown.

Train in vain

James Glover is a regular contributor to the Stubborn Mule who tries, whenever possible, to incorporate back of the beer coaster calculations in his posts. Here his beer coaster helps him skewer the prospects of high speed rail in Australia.

Don’t get me wrong–I love trains. I have caught trains around Europe and even the train from Sydney to Melbourne just for the pleasure of it. My favourite train journey, from London to Edinburgh up the east coast, was made particularly memorable one trip because I was (a) sitting in First Class (as usual), and (b) sharing a booth with two particularly rotund members of the House of Lords including Lord Lawrence “Mad-Eye” Mooney. So, whatever you do please don’t accuse me of trainist tendencies.

With that in mind, you would think I’d be excited by the release of a government report into building a high-speed train line from Melbourne to Sydney and from Sydney to Brisbane, via Newcastle and the Gold Coast. Sadly however the report recommending construction of this train line contains figures which crush any chance of this actually happening. The estimated cost of the build is $100 billion and there would be an estimated 54 million passengers per year. So how does that work out on a beer coaster? To convert $100 billion to an equivalent annual funding cost we just work out how much the government would pay, perpetually, to borrow this amount. At current government long-term yields of 6.00% this represents an annual interest cost of $6 billion. If the government wanted to pay back the capital in 25 years, a typical benchmark for infrastructure projects, the annual payments would increase to about $8 billion. So, calling it 50 million passengers a year, represents a cost per passenger of $160 per trip. That doesn’t seem so bad given that the cost of a one-way plane ticket between Sydney and Melbourne is about $200-400.

Is this just a coincidence? Sadly, no. It appears the planners have flipped the beer coaster over to its dark rum-soaked side to work out how many passengers they would require to make the project commercially feasible and competitive against air travel. It’s a time honoured trick but one that doesn’t stand up to closer scrutiny. In the interest of beercoasternomics and because a Google search failed to find the answer, I estimate the daily number of air passengers between Sydney and Melbourne. Turning to webjet.com, I counted 75 flights from Melbourne to Sydney on a Wednesday. From memory a typical plane on that route has about 40 rows and 6 passengers per row or about 250 passengers. That represents a total of fewer than 20,000 passengers per day. Double that for the return journey and add 25% for the numbers travelling to and from Brisbane. Let’s call it 50,000 passengers per day. Over a whole year our generous estimate of airline passenger numbers Sydney-Melbourne-Brisbane is 20 million. I’m guessing it is really no more than 5 million a year but lets call it 20 million anyway. Even at that figure it falls far short of the 50 million required to make the high-speed rail line economically viable. So why have the planners been so brazen in their estimate? That becomes clear if we used a still optimistic but realistic figure, in my opinion, of say 2 million potential rail passengers a year (which is still over 5000 per day), then the average cost of each passenger, one-way, would be $4,000! I rarely approve the use of “dead dog’s dicks” exclamation marks [strikethrough courtesy of a prudish editor], but really!!! Should this line ever get built I will be a frequent and enthusiastic user of it. $150 for $4,000 value is the sort of bargain that would make a late-night shopping channel host blush.

I suspect by including a few commuter stops at the beginning and end of their trips such as Brisbane to Gold Coast and Sydney to Newcastle and maybe even a new commuter line or two, e.g. Sydney to Epping, they have boosted the overall passenger numbers. But then those people are hardly going to pay over $150 for a short trip. The majority of the cost will still be borne by the (maximum) 2 million intercity travellers. Though even including short trip passengers 50 million seems excessively high until you realise it is really just the figure they need to make the numbers work.

So, sadly, the numbers don’t add up. I won’t comment on the politics except to say the feasibility study is one of promises the Labor Party made to get Greens’ support to form a government. Nor will I comment on the claims that there are hidden environmental and economic benefits. High speed rail in Australia is the classic white elephant which, according to Wikipedia, was a gift made by Thai Kings to obnoxious courtiers to bankrupt them due to the high cost of maintenance of these sacred pachyderms. Some will bring up the precedents of Europe or Asia, but there you have either cheap labour and government requisitioned land or a high density of large cities. Australia has none of these.

As The Clash so prophetically sang: it’s a train in vain.

The Chinese growth engine

As Australia’s economic fortunes continue to surpass the likes of the US, UK and Europe, it is hard to escape a lingering nervousness about what could happen if the mining boom were to collapse. What if the Chinese juggernaut were to falter? Would we be doomed?

Having a conversation exactly like this earlier in the week, I was reminded of a post I wrote more than a year ago which showed surprisingly (to me at least) that exports to China were contributing only 3% to Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP). In yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, economist Ross Gittins tried to bring some perspective to the nervous by pointing out that 80% of Australia’s economic activity is domestic and concluded that:

Take away mining and we wouldn’t be quite as rich as we are, but most of the economy would look much the same as it does. Most of us would still have good, secure, well-paid jobs.

Of course, not everyone is taking such an encouraging line. Over on the Mule Stable, one econo-pessimist drew my attention to this interview with hedge fund manager John Chanos, who has been predicting a bursting of the Chinese economic bubble for some time now. As well as showing a very detailed knowledge of China’s construction industry, Chanos notes that were China’s economy to stall, the US would be much better positioned to cope with it than countries like, say, Australia. That was supposed to be good news for American viewers…not so cheering for those of us on this side of the globe!

All of this suggested that an update of the trade statistics was overdue. The results are as one might expect: the contribution that exports to China make to Australia’s GDP has risen from the 3% I noted in August 2009 to almost 4% as at September 2010.

Exports to ChinaGDP from Exports to China (Dec-1988 to Sep-2010)

So, while 4% may still be small compared to the 80% of activity that is generated internally in Australia, the real story here is growth, as the steepness of the chart dramatically illustrates. That increase in exports has contributed almost 1% to Australia’s GDP growth for the year! Here is the rolling annual change in the contribution that exports to China make to Australia’s GDP.

Exports to China - changesAnnual Change in GDP from Exports to China (Dec-1988 to Sep-2010)

Not wishing to forget Gittins’ point that we should consider total contributions to the economy, not just exports, it is hard to resist wondering how many of our exports now go to China. The answer is: a lot and growing.

China export shareChina’s Share of Exports (Dec-1988 to Sep-2010)

So, where does that leave us? Gittins is not wrong, and a collapse in the Chinese economy would not suddenly put everyone in Australia out of work. Nevertheless, it would certainly take a lot of the wind out of our economic sails. Furthermore, given the amount of attention China and the mining industry have in our national consciousness at the moment, it is worth recalling the words of that sage John Maynard Keynes:

Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits – a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.

There is little doubt that if Chanos is right about China, our animal spirits would not take it too well.

Data source: based on Australian Bureau of Statistics (copyright Creative Commons Attribution). Note that all export figures here represent exports of merchandise, so exclude services.