There should be movement at the terror legislation station this week, with the House of Representatives sitting and Senators in town for Estimates Committee hearings, the Senate’s biannual review of department spending. To set the scene, here’s the piece I wrote for the Herald last week.
Then Victorian lawyer Damien Lawson, who’s been lobbying on the issue since the package was released, wonders if John Howard is backing down. Glen Wright says people like me are just sore losers, `Lionel Mudsticks’ reckons we’re already under ASIO email surveillance and Tim Dymond reviews the Weird Right’s latest diatribe on the left and terrorism.
To end, more debate on the Third Way: Tim Dunlop critiqued it in The Third Way: Window dressing for Capitulation, the debate began in For those who give two hoots and continued in Third Way revisited. Today,David Davis, George Ooi and Michel Dignand join in, Dr Aaron Oakley replies to criticisms of his contribution by Glenn Condell and Tim Dunlop responds to his harshest critic, David Eastwood.
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Never mind the wedge, feel the splinters
By Margo Kingston
May 21 2002
A funny thing happened on the road to sticking another wedge into the Labor Party courtesy of the terrorism legislation. John Howard stuck a great big wedge into his party instead.
It seemed so easy to rely on the precedent of the first border protection legislation just before the federal election, where he rode public emotion to produce intolerable legislation, forced Labor to oppose its excesses, then accused it of liking boat people. With terrorism, he rode public fear post-September 11 to release a voluminous package of new legislation one night and get it through the House of Representatives the next. Labor organised a quickie Senate committee inquiry to salve its conscience.
Labor, rigid with fear after the border protection experience – which some blame for the loss of the election – then kept its head down. The media were in no mood to tell the public the facts, either. They protested loudly about an element which affected them – a crushing clampdown on whistleblowers – and the Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, backed down.
Most media then did nothing to bring Australian’s attention to the trashing of civil liberties – including the right to protest and to picket – of the ordinary citizen.
Despite this, the Senate committee was inundated with 431 submissions – from the former NSW Liberal attorney-general John Dowd, the Law Council of Australia, a bevy of legal and security academics, Amnesty International, the Uniting and Catholic churches and individual Australians.
The result: overwhelming evidence of a wholesale assault on freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, even freedom of thought. The Liberal committee members – moderate NSW senator Marise Payne, conservative Queensland senator Brett Mason and Country Liberal Party senator Nigel Scullion – joined Labor members to condemn the legislation. All wanted the power for Williams to unilaterally ban political organisations dumped, a significant tightening of the definition of “terrorist act” and the addition of intention as an element of new criminal offences.
That was just the beginning of the collapse of Howard’s wedge strategy. The Senate report emboldened Labor to put up stronger amendments, and when Williams put a few amendments to the Liberal backbench committee overseeing his activities early last week, they said no. South Australian moderate Christopher Pyne, centre-right Queensland senator George Brandis – Howard’s personal choice as defence counsel at the children overboard inquiry – and West Australian moderate Julie Bishop stared him down.
At last Tuesday’s joint party room meeting, Howard told Williams to negotiate a solution but, despite more backtracking, he still got nowhere. Howard faced a full-on assault on the bill by a growing number of Liberals across the factions – a de facto debate on the core values of the Liberal Party.
On Thursday, he called an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the crisis. At a 6.30pm special joint party meeting, at which MPs were sworn to secrecy, the backbench remained split on one key point – the banning of political organisations, now to be done only by Parliament – and almost united in opposition to the plan to reverse the onus of proof for new offences carrying the penalty of life in prison. Howard promised to take on board the dissidents’ comments and come back to them with another compromise.
Howard’s wedge play has backfired. Labor now wonders just how few of its amendments will be needed. The Liberal Party has told Howard point-blank that his border protection tactic was a one-off (many Liberals kept their mouths shut to win the election), not a precedent to do whatever he wants to split Labor.
Federal politicians have already received thousands of emails from the public protesting against the proposed legislation. The far Right – the Citizens Electoral Council and One Nation – is fighting against it as hard as are the Left, small “l” liberals, and right-wing libertarians including Bronwyn Bishop.
The Liberal impasse wrecked Williams’s plan to get the package through the Senate last week. He must now wait until June 17 when the Senate resumes sitting, leaving a month for more Australians to understand what the Government is trying to do to their democracy and their liberties. Watch this space.
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Damien Lawson
Did you see this? Is this the PM’s coded message to his back bench: “Don’t worry, I am not for banning either.” Or was it just a slip of the tongue.
Either way it is a remarkable statement. John Howard on the Menzies communist party referendum : “Well I think the Australian people made the right decision in rejecting the proposal.”
John Howard press conference, St Regis Hotel, Beijing, 22 May 2002
Journalist: At the school for the cadres today you seemed to indicate that perhaps Sir Robert Menzies was wrong to have held a referendum to try and ban the Communist Party in Australia. Do you think he was wrong at the time to have done that?
Howard: Well I think the Australian people made the right decision in rejecting the proposal.
J: Do you think the Prime Minister of time was right to put the referendum ?
Howard: Well I find it sort of difficult to separate that out from the response that I’ve given. The view I hold now is that that was, you know, the right decision was taken. And I suppose you can extrapolate from that an argument that maybe it shouldn’t have been put but it doesn’t mean to say that. That doesn’t automatically follow. I just believe that the right decision was taken by the Australian people. That’s a view that I’ve held for quite a lot of years too. It hasn’t just sort of come upon me, if you want the complete history.
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Glen Wright in Wollongong
Regarding Never mind the wedge, feel the splinters, it sounds like you are still pissed at Howard winning his third term. No matter what else he does, he succeeded in getting rid of the refugees after you left leaning journalists said nothing could stop them. After he deports them all, he will win the next election again, no matter how much you dream of Costello taking over.
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`Lionel Mudsticks’
I’m using a pseudonym for obvious reasons.
Like Phill Parsons in Momentum Against Terror Australis, I have experienced some strange email `interceptions’. Phill asks if he is being paranoid. I don’t think so, but from my experience many people will probably cast aspersions on his mental capacities just because he is open to the possibility that something weird is going on with our intelligence services.
Can any readers tell me what legal powers Australian intelligence agencies have to hack into emails? Under current law can they do this without a warrant? What redress does an Australian citizen have if they feel they are the subject of `unwarranted’ surveillance?
Quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if ASIO hacks into journos’ emails. How do we know if ASIO is behaving appropriately, and not politically, in their choice of surveillance targets and methods of surveillance? How do we, average Australian citizens, know if the parliament is ensuring ASIO is fully accountable for its intelligence operations and activities? Where is the transparency in the accountability process?
Margo: Easing ASIO access to emails is part of the terror package. Labor amendments would require ASIO to jump the same bar to get an interception authority as it has to for telephone taps. The government wants the bar lower for emails.
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Tim Dymond in Perth
If Webdiarians would care to turn to the Appendix of the latest essay collection from the right wing commentariat, `Blaming Ourselves: Sept 11 and the Agony of the Left’ they will see themselves featured prominently among the examples of Leftist victimizing of `the West’.
This collection purports to dissect the apparently widespread `Anti Americanism’ and raising of Bin Laden to hero status by Left media commentators and contributors since Sept 11. Here is a clear case, according to the publicity, of the Left `blaming the victim’ instead of the perpetrators by implying that the USA had it coming.
Naturally I looked to the Appendix expecting juicy and trenchant abuse of the USA and praise for the virtues of fundamentalist Islamic resistance to the Great Satan. Imagine my disappointment when I found scarcely any such sentiments. There was an incoherent letter to the editor that seemed to blame the WTC attacks on `economic rationalism’, an ill informed ramble by Bob Ellis, and Guy Rundle made a silly comparison between the effects of globalization and the death toll in Nazi and Communist Concentration Camps. But generally speaking there was very little in the Appendix with which I disagreed.
Which is rather confusing, because I actually support the War on Terrorism. I thought it was right that the US attacked Afghanistan, and I agreed with the US conservative editor William Kristol that the US was right to switch strategies away from a combination of bombing and searching for `moderate elements’ within the Taliban, to outright support of the Northern Alliance. I even agree that this was a justifiable case of American `unilateralism’ – the Administration was right not to waste time getting corrupt Arab autocracies on side and appeasing the Pakistani military’s strong links to the Taliban.
Pushing out the Taliban doesn’t by itself solve Afghanistan’s problems – at the moment it has arguably made them worse. But clearly nothing else could improve in Afghanistan unless the Taliban were overthrown.
Yet according to the editors of `Blaming Ourselves’ I’m still guilty of the thought crime of believing that an unacceptable amount of anti- Islamic sentiment has been whipped up in the West. I also believe you can’t separate the Sept 11 attacks from the long term effects of US foreign policy towards the Islamic world. Certainly the `Jihadi’ strand of Islam would still be hostile to the West even if the USA suddenly completely changed it’s policy and started doing all the things I think it should do to make the world a better place. Violent theocratic intolerance should always be resisted, but I don’t feel schizophrenic for holding that view and criticizing US policies at the same time.
Nevertheless, it seems that Sept 11 2001 has become another rhetorical club in the `culture wars’. Commentators of both the Right and the Left seem to have latched onto it as an excuse for pushing their own ideological barrows. I suspect, however, that in the future what `commentators’ thought of the WTC attacks will be least important part of the story.
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THIRD WAY DEBATE
David Davis in New York
Tony Blair was recently subjected to an in-depth interview on the BBC’s Newsnight. Parts of it are quite interesting in the context of the the Third Way discussion. I quite liked this part:
Jeremy Paxman: Prime Minister, do you accept that many people think you have no core political beliefs?
Blair: I accept that people say that, yes, for a very obvious reason, which is that they can’t often handle the concept of new Labour as opposed to traditional Labour Party views, or old-style socialism.
The full interview can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/audiovideo/programmes/newsnight/newsid-1985000/1985222.stm. It’s very interesting for those who like to see this old Third Way pro at work.
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George Ooi in Melbourne
I agree with Tim Dunlop in his critique of Mark Latham and The Third Way. In Victoria there is a growing opposition to the `new’ ALP by traditional ALP members and supporters. My local Yarra City Council used to be completely dominated by ALP: now the Greens hold 4, independent 1 and ALP 4. In their futile attempt to woo the middle class from the Coalition with their `me too’ policies they have lost their neglected traditional supporters.
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Michel Dignand in Wagga Wagga, NSW
Unlike most of your published Webdiarists on this subject, I only have a couple of hours each day to spare. Reading the arguments presented from both sides of this debate so far, I have to answer `bullshit’.
Concisely, here is the problem: Labor is the party of the Left. The Left means Socialist. Without pause to consider the intricacies of the matter, roughly fifty percent of our population want a party that leans more or less to the Left. Many Labor politicians, stupid, ignorant or just plain power-crazy, think they can move the Labor party to the Right.
Concisely, here is the answer: Those politicians who think the Third Way is a winner should be in the Liberal (hah!) Party. Or maybe the National Party.
The Labor party will happily find new socialist leaders, once freed of the scourge they’ve been lumbered with for so long.
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Dr Aaron Oakley in Dalkeith, Western Australia
Responding to my comments in For those who give two hoots, Glenn Condell in Third Way revisited engages in argument through false analogy. He tries to argue that although brain surgeons would agree about technique, economists wouldn’t. Sure, a marxist economist would disagree with a free-market economist. But similarly, a new-age quack healer would disagree with a brain surgeon.
Clearly, Mr Condell and most other Webdiarists don’t like what they sneeringly refer to as `rational economics’. The funny thing is that most real economists don’t talk about `rational economics’ in the same way that most scientists don’t talk about voodoo. They tend to talk about Austrian Economics, Keynesian economics etc. An economically literate friend of mine said that people don’t like so-called rational economics because it tells them harsh truths that they don’t want to hear.
Mr Condell sets up a straw man by attacking me as an economist for commenting on economics. I am not, and I never claimed to be. Nor do I occupy a “mountaintop eyrie”, as Mr Condell sneeringly puts it. If he read my contribution properly, he would have seen that I deferred to a certain Mr Gerry Jackson, who knows a great deal more economics than most people, and provided links to his articles that debunked the nostrumsTim Dunlop preached. So why doesn’t Mr Condell address what Mr Jackson said? Is it too much work?
Mr Condell refers to books by Joseph Stiglitz as some sort of proof that Dunlop et al have a point. But how can he judge the economics of those books? Could he tell whether the arguments stood up to scrutiny? Wouldn’t it help to have some sort of economic training to do so? Could he read a detailed technical work on quantum physics and identify its errors as well? While Joseph Stiglitz may have something valuable to add to the debate, how can economic illiterates like Tim Dunlop, Glen Condell, and, indeed, myself Judge?
OK Mr Dunlop, Mr Condell and friends, tell us where Mr Jackson, who actually knows something about economics, is wrong on what he considers to be the interventionist failures of South East Asia. Once again, here are the relevant links: (http://www.newaus.com.au/econ39c.html) and (http://www.newaus.com.au/econ41a.html).
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Tim Dunlop in Washington
This is my response to David Eastwood’s piece `Longing for the past’ in Third Way Revisited.
He writes: Tim Dunlop argues long, intricately and passionately against the Third Way from a traditional leftist position, but his case against the Third Way has to be judged `Not Proven’. It is argued politically, not objectively. It seeks to attack, and not offer alternatives.
I can never understand this sort of `criticism’. Of course I argue politically: on matters of social issues, how do you do anything else? I have an opinion; I make a case. My article is therefore political. Big deal. To quote that great journo Martha Gellhorn: “Write what you see. I never believed in this objectivity shit.” This is not to say (lest David jump at the bait) that there is no such thing as objectivity, only that the sorts of issues that the Third Way raises are inherently political. And no, I didn’t in the 13,000 word critique of the 3W offer an alternative to it, though one is implied. Again, so what? David should stick to criticising what I did write, not what I didn’t write.
Tim’s argument is internally incoherent. He presents a damning indictment of his Second Way (Economic Rationalism). He also (quite rightly) mentions that the Third Way seeks to humanise capitalism through an envelope of policy and regulation that constrains the free market. But he ignores this distinction in concluding that failings in naked, free-market economics systematically undermine the Third Way.
I don’t ignore it at all. I argue that a reliance on `free markets’ undermines the 3W’s humanising project. David’s point here completely sidesteps the issue. I’d further ask: Given the 3W wishes to `outsource’ most economic control from individual states to non-democratic quasi-private institutions like the World Bank, what institutional framework does the 3W offer to replace the institutions of the state that have been the only source of mitigation to the excesses of the market? Without such alternative institutions it is difficult to see how they are going to `humanise’ anything.
In describing the Third Way as a synthesis of two principles often considered contradictory, Tim relies on a traditional, bi-polar political spectrum. He discards the Third Way simply because it combines elements traditionally considered left and right. I’m reminded of a brilliant web diary piece from Christopher Selth last year ( Left, right … how politics will march forwards, 27/9/01, reproduced below). It demonstrates ably the possibility that the political spectrum can now be defined in more than one dimension. Many of our elites, often economically right and socially left would agree that the underlying philosophy politics is changing.
I understand perfectly that a new synthesis can arise from a reconsideration of former opposites. My point is that the third way doesn’t do this: I don’t miss the possibility, I argue they fail to deliver. Partly this is because what little of `the left’ is in the third way is purely rhetoric – it is not really leftist at all, and therefore David’s multi-dimensional synthesis is non-existent because the elements necessary for it to occur aren’t there in the first place. In short, David needs to show what is `left’ about the 3W, which might be difficult for him in the short-term as he also says `I’ll confess to being poorly read on the topic and only intuitively familiar with its principles’. `Intuitively familiar? How does this sit with your avowed need for objectivity?
Tim discounts the purported distinction between the Third Way and Economic Rationalism to zero, without presenting any evidence to support this. He presents no analysis of how effective Third Way principles might or might not be in mitigating the pain caused by free market economics.
The point is, they don’t offer any such principles, making it a bit hard for me to present them.
Tim’s piece presents and analyses examples poorly and (by admission) incompletely to support his position. For example, an attestation that dairy deregulation has failed is what I would term an IBA (Intellectually Blank Assertion) when presented without any evidence as to the impacts on all stakeholders. Has the price gone up? Dunno, haven’t seen the evidence. Have displaced dairy farmers been successfully re-integrated to society? Dunno, no evidence for or against presented in this piece.
Far from being an intellectually blank assertion, the evidence about the price of milk is overwhelming, not least by that old fashioned empirical method of going and buying some. Try and find anyone anymore who argues that the price of milk has gone down thanks to deregulation. (Even Paul Kelly and Imre Salsinszky have given up this line.)
In the deregulated market, Coles and Woolies put their milk business out to tender and half a billion dollars was wiped off the farmgate price of milk (see Mark Westfield’s article in The Australian business section, 13 Feb 2002). Some of this was passed onto consumers, most wasn’t: It went into Coles’ and Woolies’ bottom lines (registering Woolies CEO as a corporate genius and pumping Woolies share price and even their operating profitability).
However, by October 2001, even Woolies realised the trouble this was causing producers (farmers) and offered to renegotiate the contracts. CEO Roger Corbett said he hoped the processors would pass on part of the wholesale price increase to dairy farmers “in distress”. The price went up by 15cents a litre (having dropped by perhaps 10cents a litre immediately after dereg, according to the ACCC) and has since risen again.
As to whether those hundreds of farmers forced out have `reintegrated into society’, the answer is mixed. The ones who committed suicide haven’t (according to various farmers I’ve spoken to there are at least 5 cases). Some have found other work, I’m sure – perhaps Neil Baker, a former dairy farmer who has contributed to Webdiary in the past would be a better person to talk with.
Anyway, my basic point was that dairy deregulation was a farce no matter what your economic preferences are, and that it seriously called into question the almost religious faith 3Wers have in competition policy. Even Woolies CEO Roger Corbett agrees with me, a remarkable thing given that Woolies were undoubtedly the biggest beneficiary of deregulation. Speaking of the deregulation of the market he has said: “I think it’s quickly becoming a disgrace for Australia,” and that “My strong view is the time has come for Australia to produce a green paper that canvasses these major issues, followed by a government white paper… It’s my view that the debate should be bipartisan….My argument is that it’s a community-wide problem for all of us in Australia….I think the time has come in terms of a fair go that we as a country at least have a fair dinkum attempt at government level of having a strategy and a policy that everyone understands.”
The bottom line is that just because someone doesn’t include every bit of supporting evidence for every point they make, is not a reason to presume they don’t have the evidence, and it is therefore a bit risky to dismiss their comments as `intellectually blank assertions’.
Tim’s analysis of the Boston Bakery draws parallels between the former, artisan (my term) workforce and their output and the much smaller factory baker workforce, their technological solution and the impact on their lifestyles, while ignoring the impact of that change on the displaced bakers. If 20 factory workers replaced 80 artisans, what happened to the other 60? Unemployment in Boston (using this as a parallel for western economies as a whole) hasn’t exploded through economic development. While a handful is no doubt unemployed (around 6% on average here), how many displaced artisans joined or started boutique bakeries? How many bought Bakers Delight franchises? How many are now happily real estate agents, dog washers or the like?
David is again chastising me for what I haven’t written. I would counsel him, however, not to rely on unemployment statistics, when one hour worked in a week is considered to make you `employed’. With such rubbery figures, any interpretation is possible. As to how many people have ended up in other work, well about 27. I suggest also that he reads the book I took the example from: Richard Sennett’s The Corrosion of Character.
Tim’s economic analysis is coloured by his guilty until proven innocent view. His attestation that free trade policy had little to with the express economic development of nations like Singapore and Japan, Korea et al ignores the facts. Free trade policy in their customer jurisdictions made these countries success. By granting them access to large and hungry markets for their inexpensive and rapidly improving products the West helped them grow. Surely, this only strengthens arguments made by the proponents of globalisation that the best way to obliterate world poverty is through free trade. Tim’s revisionist analysis is incomplete.
Actually, it strengthens my argument – why do touts for economic rationalism always to fail to follow what is being said when people question their certainties? As Dr Aaron Oakley so ably pointed out on these pages, these countries are not examples of free trading miracle economies but of ones where strong central governments had serious control over resource allocation. It’s you, David, who have the facts wrong.
Tim’s analysis ignores the temporal dimension of economic change. If change and globalisation create short-term losers today, (and certainly they do) the theory says this is for the longer term good. More efficient distribution of economic resources will improve future welfare. Fewer unnecessary dairy farms means less pollution. Fewer dairy farmers means less subsidies in future. As I understand it, the Third Way seeks to lubricate this transition by creating substantive support mechanisms and change programs for people displaced by economic development as, ironically, was attempted in the case of dairy deregulation.
It’s becoming a cliche to quote Keynes on this, but it remains the best response. When chided by free marketeers that even if `free markets’ weren’t working now they would work `in the long run’, Keynes replied: “In the long run we are all dead.” As a side point, dairy deregulation has caused more pollution, not less – see Dr Jim Scott (University of new England) for the most thorough analysis.
Tim’s analysis seems predicated on a dated view of sovereignty. Today’s sovereign states are largely geopolitical constructs, as were their predecessors dating back to Stone Age times.
Largely? Try entirely. There are no naturally occurring states that I know of. What’s your point?
From the tribe, through the fiefdom, the city-state, the empire, the colony, the nation and the supranational federations now emerging, sovereignty has evolved. Globalisation is this process fuelled, as arguably it always has been, by improved information flows and technology.
And who fuels the information and technology? And to what end? Part of the point I was making is that the new technologies commodify information and therefore tend to lock it up rather than disperse it. If you disagree with that, it would at least make for a more interesting discussion if you wanted to argue the point.
If the Third Way tolerates a managed short term dislocation in a developed market (say, for example killing Australia’s uncompetitive textile industry) in return for creating many more jobs elsewhere (productivity is much lower in poor countries), and if in turn that sustains and delivers self-esteem to many more humans in less developed worlds, isn’t that a good thing? Does the fact that `they’ are not `we’ prevent us from acting in their interests?
Now who’s making assertions? Where your evidence for even half of this? The creation of jobs is one thing economic rationalism in Australia is particularly poor at, though advocates are more likely to blame `outdated’ employment laws etc. It’s worth reading John Quiggin and John Langmore on this topic or you could try the recent J. Borland, B. Gregory and P. Sheehan book Work Rich, Work Poor, Inequality and economic change in Australia (Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, 2001) which paints a less than rosy picture than you seem to be asserting here.
Viewed collectively, nations and their societies are at very different levels in Maslows hierarchy. Tim’s view of economics and communities is based squarely on a parochial frame of reference within a society seeking self-actualisation. What about those societies for whom the basic needs have not yet been met. Could we be morally obliged to further their fundamental needs over our luxuries? Our broadly Judaeo-Christian faiths speak of the common man, not of arbitrarily defined nationalities.
This is waffle. How do you get this out of my article? Again, pots and kettles should watch who they accuse of `assertion’. But to take up the point briefly, why does David think that some societies are without necessities while others bathe in luxury (and more insanely, why does he seem to imply that I approve of it?) You might want to look at your basics of market allocation (the worth of which, remember, I am sceptical of) and consider why we have millions affected by diseases like TB and AIDS while the market is busy withholding drugs from poor countries thusly affected, while at the same time allocating such marvels as Viagara and fat-burning pills in more affluent markets. In market terms this might be legitimate `allocation’, but if David doesn’t think it is, then he should be agreeing with my analysis, not arguing with it. Don’t ask me rhetorical question about morality – ask `free markets’.
Despite his avowed contempt of sentimentality for the past, the community dislocation Tim laments late in the piece suggests a profound longing for earlier times and telegraphs our natural fear of change. My interpretation of the Third Way recognises this and seeks to mitigate it. Tim seems to discount the value of this out of hand. Tim’s view seems to be more that change is inherently bad.
Is this what your arguments against me are reduced to – mind reading? I can disavow certain beliefs as carefully as I like, but on David’s reading, I’m actually hankering after `earlier times’. I am at one with PJ O’Rourke: “If you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: “Dentistry”.