Speech to the International Chief Executive Officers Forum in Canberra, August 19

Tonight I want to talk about the big difference in Australian economic policy, the big difference between Labor and Liberal. Labor believes in competition and productivity. Our political opponents believe in business deals and preferment. They believe in business. We believe in markets.

I want an economy governed by private sector competition and corporate social responsibility. The Liberals lean towards crony capitalism, a corporatist state in which some firms receive subsidies and special deals from government.

This has always been the Coalition way. It was the basis of McEwenism in the 1960s. It was the way in which Malcolm Fraser and John Howard ran the Australian economy in the 1970s and early 80s. As the development of ethanol policy has shown in recent times, the Prime Minister has reverted to type. As he and his government have grown older, they have slipped further and further into cronyism.

History tells us that crony capitalism emerges and evolves over time, with five stages of development:

1. The creation of political appointments or jobs-for-the-boys, of which the Howard Government has made over 100 since its election in 1996.

2. The loss of fiscal discipline and widespread funding of special interests.

3. The misleading of parliament and the people – a pattern that has now emerged in the Howard Government, from Kids Overboard to Iraq’s uranium out of Africa to the current Manildra-gate controversy.

4. The allocation of special privileges and power to associates of the government – something that featured, for instance, in the recent Cash-for-Visas scandal.

5. And finally, the abandonment of competition policy by awarding government funds, protection and preferment to selected firms in selected industries.

For those of us who believe in fair trading and an open market economy, this last problem is the most serious. In its final form, crony capitalism involves the allocation of publicly funded privileges to the few at the expense of the many (working class taxpayers and consumers).

This is why it is so repugnant to the Labor movement. It perverts the rule of law and increases inequality. It transfers power and privilege from working people into the hands of corporate elites.

Mr Dick Honan

The Manildra-gate controversy is a good example of this process. It has not only involved the misleading of the parliament, it has also debased the integrity of economic policy in this country.

What we have seen is the formation of a public-private cartel: the Howard Government working hand-in-glove with one company, Manildra, to disadvantage every other company in the ethanol market. This is more than just picking industry winners. It is picking one company in a particular industry – in this case, the dominant ethanol producer in Australia – to protect and preserve that company’s near-monopoly status.

This is a stunning example of crony capitalism at work. Let me explain the sequence of events and the perversion of public policy.

On 24 July last year representatives of Trafigura met with Manildra in an attempt to secure domestic ethanol product. Manildra stalled and then refused to supply Trafigura and another competitor company, a small Australian-owned firm called Neumann Petroleum.

On 1 August the head of Manildra, Mr Dick Honan, met with Prime Minister Howard. At this point, Manildra had an important piece of market information: if it did not supply Neumann and Trafigura, the only way in which they could obtain their product was from overseas. The official record of the meeting shows that Mr Howard and Mr Honan discussed: “The payment of a producer credit to ethanol producers to enable Australian ethanol producers to compete with the cheaper Brazilian product.”

On 10 September Cabinet decided to act on Honan’s request by imposing excise on ethanol and paying an equal production credit for domestic producers. By this time, Neumann and Trafigura had arranged an ethanol shipment from Brazil. In an amazing act of favouritism, the Government used the resources of the Australian Embassy in Brazil to monitor the shipment and ensure that it could never dock profitably in Australia.

The fix was in. While Honan had received a public subsidy of more than $200 million, his two competitors were stranded on the high seas with ethanol losses of $1 million. And the Howard Government did not even have the decency to tell Neumann and Trafigura of the new policy arrangements. It sat and watched the shipment cross the Pacific Ocean, knowing that this would financially damage Honan’s competitors.

Not surprisingly, Paul Morton, the head of Neumann and its 59 staff, described the decision as: “Pernicious and treacherous. The way that they did it was absolutely meant to punish Trafigura and Neumann. They weren’t just changing the law to protect Manildra but were setting out to cause us a financial loss.”

If these things had happened solely in the private sector, the members of the cartel would have been prosecuted under the Trade Practices Act. It is one of the worst pieces of public policy in memory, a signpost in the deterioration of the Howard Government.

We all have an interest in this case study, especially in the business community. The market economy relies heavily on the rule of law: fair trading and competition rules for all companies, not just the mates of the state. Fair-minded businesspeople and investors should be outraged by the Manildra decision.

When markets are distorted, investment flows into inefficient uses, thereby damaging economic growth and employment. We all suffer because of rorted public policy and government favouritism. Indeed, the growing damage to the ethanol industry in Australia has confirmed the folly of corporate capitalism.

When they work properly, the good thing about markets is that they aggregate all our interests. You don’t have to someone’s mate to market a product or sell a service. Of course, inequality – inequality of income and especially of wealth – determines the level of participation in the market. The rich can buy and sell more than the poor.

But when I look at the economy and compare it to society, the inequality of income and wealth is dwarfed by the inequality of power and political influence. Many can get access to the market, but very few people can get access to a Liberal Prime Minister.

This is why the public sector needs to be above preferment and dealism. If governments, elected by the will of the people, do not treat people fairly in the market then nobody else will. This is the real tragedy of crony capitalism: it takes the inequality of the market system and magnifies it many times over through the corruption of the state.

Mr Peter Costello

To their credit, the Departments of Treasury and Finance strongly opposed the Government’s ethanol rort. Unfortunately, the Treasurer Mr Costello did not support them. In Parliament last week he called it a good decision and said that: “There are [many] Australians who lobby the Government on particular issues that affect them. In fact, it is very hard to say ‘No’.”

A Treasurer who can’t say ‘No’ is a Treasurer who can’t control the budget. A Treasurer who can’t say ‘No’ is a Treasurer who can’t stop spending on interest groups. This is why the Howard Government is the highest taxing, highest spending government in Australia’s history. It lacks fiscal rigour.

This is one of the characteristics of crony capitalism: the funding of sectional interests ahead of the national interest. The Special Interest Express is back in town. It hasn’t been seen since the days of the Fraser Government but under Mr Costello, it has pulled back into Canberra station.

Since 1997 the Government has been on a $90 billion spending spree. It has been living off the fat of bracket creep and running down fiscal policy. The surplus is now running on empty, with a fiscal balance of 0.1 percent GDP. The following table details the damage:

Deterioration in Budget Bottom Line: Net Impact of Policy Decisions: Year $Million

1997 296

1998 20649

1999 11691

2000 7384

2001 25630

2002 5313

2003 18570

Total 89533

I’ve been Shadow Treasurer for just six weeks, and it seems that every second day there is another story about government waste and mismanagement. The list reads as follows:

* A $30 million bailout package for the Job Network.

* A $26 million bailout for the Government’s flawed higher education policy.

* GST fraud of $3 billion through the falsification of TFNs and ABNs.

* Another $50 million in public money for Manildra.

* A $7 billion increase in the black economy to 15 percent GDP.

* Handouts to business lobby groups totalling $60 million.

* A $2 billion blow-out in the Defence Budget.

* And the mother of all waste and mismanagement, a new Commonwealth logo and the reprinting of Commonwealth letterheads.

This is the problem with the Treasurer: he has never seen a tax he didn’t like and an example of waste that he could ever stop. He has abandoned the integrity of fiscal policy and placed all the weight of macro policy on the Reserve Bank. This is placing upward pressure on interest rates and destabilising the Australian economy. As ever, we all pay a price for bad public policy.

Mr Graeme Samuel

Costello’s cronyism extends beyond Manildra and his fiscal extravagance. He has fought a long battle with the States to install his Melbourne mate, Graeme Samuel, as the head of the ACCC. Labor is opposed to this appointment on the grounds of independence and objectivity.

We do not believe that someone who lists his occupation as a “company director and corporate strategic consultant” should be in charge of corporate competition policy. We do not believe that someone who has publicly supported insider trading should be in charge of the trading rules of the private sector.

In response, Mr Samuel has said that: “It is universally acknowledged that poachers make the best gamekeepers.”

By this logic, Robbie Waterhouse would be in charge of the AJC and Fine Cotton would be running in the third at Randwick. A poacher is a poacher, and he should never have been appointed as the competition regulator.

Allan Fels was always asking for more power and resources for the ACCC. In his first policy announcement last week, Mr Samuel asked for voluntary industry codes. This is the wrong emphasis and the wrong approach.

In government, Labor will strengthen the Trade Practices Act and increase the powers of the ACCC. This is not a question of being pro or anti-business. It is a matter of being pro-competition and pro-productivity.

I believe in competition policy. It is the key to economic growth and consumer satisfaction. Companies will not upgrade their technology, expand their markets and lower their prices without the pressure of market competition.

Under the Howard Government, private sector competition is in decline, with the economy trending towards duopoly and monopoly. This can be seen in the retail, banking, airline, media and telecommunication industries and, of course, ethanol.

Labor will reverse this trend by beefing up the Trade Practices Act. We have already announced our commitment to introducing criminal sanctions, attacking predatory pricing and overhauling Section 46 (abuse of market power). I am now looking at other ways in which the Act can be enhanced. Labor is a true believer in competitive capitalism.

The National Interest

The problem with crony capitalism is that it undermines the national interest in economic policy. This is a point well understood in the Treasury but not by the Treasurer. Recently the head of the Department, Ken Henry, warned against complacency in economic policy. He called for a lift in productivity, saying that: I consider it very unlikely that Australians would find their aspirations satisfied by maintenance of the present relative productivity position. There is a strong case, on economic and social grounds, for striving to bridge the productivity gap [between Australia and the United States].

This has always been Labor’s goal. Our economic tradition and values are for competition and productivity. In 1996 we left Australia with a strong legacy of reform. These were the national interest policies that the Liberals were too timid to implement: a floating exchange rate, financial deregulation, tariff liberalisation, competition policy and national superannuation.

One of the limits to microeconomic reform, of course, is that it can only be done once. Having opened the Australian economy to market competition in the 1980s, it cannot be opened a second time. Ultimately, the gains from micro reform start to diminish. New policies are needed to lift the long-term growth rate of the Australian economy.

This is where the findings of new growth theory are so significant. Traditionally, economists have identified material objects as the main drivers of economic growth. Neoclassical theory emphasised the importance of capital investment, while Keynesians emphasised the need for increased consumption. In both cases, the growth rate is limited by the finite nature of these material goods.

By contrast, the new growth theorists argue that research and technological enhancement are the main drivers of growth. Instead of focussing on the accumulation of objects, economists need to focus on the accumulation of ideas. In particular, education and research are the ‘twin-carburettors’ of economic expansion.

This is a persuasive body of research. Across the Western world, economic activity is becoming less resource-intensive and more knowledge-intensive. Jobs based on repetition and muscle power are disappearing, replaced by work in the information and service sectors.

In the long run, open and creative economies that apply new ideas to the production process will achieve the highest rates of growth. This is where Australia is most vulnerable. The Howard Government is bogged down in dealism and corporate welfare. It has given a low priority to education and innovation. As Australia’s leading new growth economist, Steve Dowrick, has argued:

“Compared with the OECD economies, Australia invests less of its resources into R and D, and a lesser proportion of that investment is carried out within the business sector … Even though an open economy can benefit substantially from research conducted overseas, the magnitude of the returns to domestic R and D are such that a major increase in research effort is called for, especially in the case of a relatively poor R and D performer like Australia.”

Dowrick’s research points to the unique nature of knowledge as an economic resource. Unlike capital and consumption spending, access to information is relatively unlimited. It has the characteristics of a public good, such that one person’s use of an idea does not necessarily harm the access rights of other people. This is why companies tend to under-invest in R and D – they cannot realise all of the economic benefits that flow from their investment.

The dispersed nature of knowledge also produces another important effect. Education and research outlays generate huge spillover benefits for society. For R and D expenditures, Dowrick estimates a social return of between 50 and 60 percent, an extremely high rate of public benefit.

So what does this mean for economic policy? Two conclusions stand out. The case for increased government investment in education and research is compelling. But so too, increased private sector investment is in the public interest, especially when it lifts inventiveness and product innovation.

This is not a zero-sum exercise. The unique nature of knowledge investments can produce win-win outcomes in public policy. The best way of increasing Australia’s economic growth rate is to increase the level of education, training and research. This is the basis of Labor’s productivity policy.

Conclusion

In this new role as Shadow Treasurer, the media have been speculating about my relationship with business. Certainly I want to do things differently to Mr Costello. I don’t believe in crony capitalism and the concentration of privilege. I don’t believe in pandering to special interest groups and blowing the budget surplus.

I’m not part of Melbourne’s high-society. I live in the last street in the last suburb on the fringe of South-West Sydney. I like being an outsider and want to keep it that way. None of my family or friends have ever owned big businesses or been corporate consultants. We grew up thinking that Toorak was the name of a horse race.

My only interest is in good economic policy and the integrity of economic markets. The people that I represent don’t have access to the Cabinet table or the ear of the Prime Minister. We have a fairly simple set of values and beliefs. We ask for nothing more than the rule of law, fair decision-making and the provision of community services.

When governments take these things away and look after the insiders, we lose out badly. Life becomes even tougher in the outer suburbs. This is why I believe in the discipline of market competition and corporate responsibility. This is why I believe in the active role of government and service provision.

They are a poor boy’s arsenal against inequality. This is why I got into politics in the first place. I believe in the benefits of competitive capitalism and the solidarity of a strong and fair society. Always have and I always will.

 

Actor Richard Healy

G’Day. I met actor Richard Healy a few weeks ago and got the lowdown on the actor’s industrial dispute – whether I liked it or not. Richard agreed to do a piece for Webdiary explaining the insider dynamics of this most insecure craft. Actors Equity is part of the Media Alliance, of which I’m a member. For the facts on the actors’ other big campaign – to stop the burial of Australian culture under an avalanche of United States product if the Americans get their way in the free trade agreement negotiations – go to free2baustralian.

The actors dispute

by Richard Healy

The current actors dispute is not about money. The details are money based, but the core of the issue lies in respect, respect for the right of actors to basic conditions of employment expected by most workers to prepare and perform our jobs adequately.

In the case of actors, wages have been essentially frozen for 10 years, and in some cases (major advertising jobs) reduced. There are new players on the scene, such as cable television, which pays lip service to their obligation to produce Australian shows – where 10% of the budget for each station should involve locally created product. (Only one or two of the Fox channels comes close – yes, Mr Alston, it’s self-regulated.)

The hidden reality is that as advertising dollars on commercial TV (7,9,10) dry up, the networks are squeezing the producers. The producers, not wishing to offend messrs Packer and Murdoch and Stokes, take what they are given. They then budget for their allocation. And this is where it gets irritating. The producers budget for their programs according to the current costs. So, if it cost $1,000 to hire a house for a days shooting five years ago, but it will now set them back $1,500, then that is what is budgeted. A 50s straight-eight chevy may be twice the price of 1988, but, what the heck, we can’t do the show without it. But when it comes to actors, where there is an over-supply and limited demand, the price paid stays at 1988 levels. From a rationalist perspective, this all sits well – save on the talent, put out for the hardware.

Example 1 – Last year the TV show Mcleods Daughters celebrated its fiftieth episode with winning ratings. The next day Channel 9 informed the producers that their shooting budget was being cut by one day. It is shot on film (lighting takes time.) It is all outside broadcast (no studio on a farm 80 minutes from Adelaide). All the 1st Assistant Director could do was compress time allocated to scenes.

Example 2 – I performed in an enjoyable yet forgettable soap called Breakers for two years. All the cast was on “equity minimum”, the lowest possible pay rate. I got paid the same rate as a 19-year old on the show, even though I had 20 years experience in the trade and spent a lot of time coaching the younger actors. We spent two years asking for an awning in the carpark (you had to leave the building for a smoke) and air-conditioning in our dressing-rooms (more than twenty minutes with the door shut and you asphyxiated.) Nup. Budgets. After one year I was over it, but decided to ask for a 10% increase in my wage (I had a one year contract.) My agent told me the producers were “thinking about it.” A week later I was on set, about to do a scene, when the head producer walked onto he floor and took my hand. He said, “Sorry to let you go.” It wasn’t what he said, it was the act. I quit, then, in an act I shame myself for, returned. It’s that hard to get work.

Example 3 – In the early 90s a mate got a US TV ad. The producers were keen to avoid the payout in the states, where one ad can hasten retirement (you get paid every time it goes on air, it can be millions.) So, they paid him $25,000. He did a number of them and paid off his house. After a few years, he relinquished his position as the face of YYY so someone else could have a go. Six months later he met a friend who had always been on struggle street and the friend was over the moon about an ad he’d been cast in. My mate asked ” Are you going to buy a house” And the happy new face of YYY said, “Nuh, new gearbox.” His fee was $5,000. The US producers had worked out what they could get, with the collusion of local producers.

Example 4 – Scene: Casting Agent (reputable). Five different things are being cast. All running an hour late. One asking beautiful mature women to dress up in their finery. And they have. Because of space restrictions they’re all sitting on the floor being ogled by the part-time actors going for a jocks ad. Numerous mums keeping loose control over rampant tots in for a cutie ad. Three actors trying to focus on the script they got yesterday and are trying to learn (and understand) and a receptionist whose smile is a monument to the perseverance of humanity. The director (American, think Colonel Sanders) arrives 2 hours late and points to two people, says “Yep. Now.” Mr beef Australia and Ms skinny tampons meet Mr 2-minute noodles in a sea of confusion. Amazingly, one of them gets cast.

Example 5 – I went for an ad (you try to avoid them until poverty bites,) at a new agency and was told it involved fairies. An old inner-city converted warehouse. The waiting-room was next to the “studio” and we could hear shouting. People arrived at regular intervals, including an amazing array of elderly women dressed as fairies. They said they were told “Best dressed gets the prize.” An esteemed veteran actor with a penchant for the unpredictable arrived and sat under a painting of fairies in a field. Then a doyen of the field (think “You’re soaking in it,”) turned up with a costume, wand and scent. The other male sneezed and she said “Bless you” and we were off. Hysterical. As people left the studio in (not happy) tears, a woman fronted us and shouted, “We’re trying to do a 100 percenter!” “Shut up!” I was led in. Told “Stand there, hold up the sign with your name on it, say your name, age, agency and height.” I told the casting person I thought we didn’t have to do that these days. She screamed – “Do you want this fucking job or not !” I told her I didn’t and left. Someone else got the job.

Example 6 – A recent example. A lead actress in a new TV show didn’t have a car. She was asked to walk a kilometre and wait outside a bikie pub to be picked up, and dropped at the end of shooting. Maybe 11pm.

Example 7 – I worked on a new comedy show made for TV. The producers were Fox TV and it was being made for Channel 9. Clout. Five weeks into the shoot my bank account was empty. I was told money was coming. A young cast member asked if he could stay at my house because he hadn’t been paid. I investigated, and found out that due to a dispute between the union and the producers our agents had been told not to sign contracts, and the producers, knowing full well the ramifications of their actions, instructed their accountants not to pay the actors. The bizarre upshot was that we were working on a show that, to our minds, was a winner, yet most of the cast didn’t have the petrol to drive home. It was only when the cast threatened to walk that we were paid and the issue was temporarily resolved.

Not a long way from where we are today. The producers did not provide the basic respect accorded to any employee, that they know where they stand. Their schedules were, and still are, arbitrary. The fact that in our industry our wages can be held to ransom is a sad indictment of the way that the people who control the money view actors as little more than elements of an economic puzzle (locations, sets, lights, publicity, grunt, talent). Famous actors are being wheeled out as examples that the industry is thriving. There may be 25 actors in that zone. The rest (the workforce) suffer constant harassment by authorities (try getting a home loan when you say you’re an actor), have no expectation of promotion (you do your next job for the same money as ten years ago) and struggle to maintain a semblance of legitimate existence in an expansive material world. That actors continue to do their job is not because, as the press often puts it, that we are all after the “big break”.

The reason I, and many actors continue to ply our trade is because it is a trade, like any other. As a carpenter hones bevelled joints, actors hone subtleties of pitch, nuance, rhythm, space, emotion and energy. The more you do it, the better you get. Our central argument with the producers is that their “new” work practices are undermining our ability to do our trade.

A guest actor in a TV show might have their whole performance shot in a day …. for one day’s pay. Often there is no rehearsal. Preparation usually involves tow or three days learning the lines and developing the character (without any consultation with those connected to the programme). Imagine this in any other industry. We’re not shrinking violets. An actors life is hard; full of self-doubt, anger and economic insecurity.

The way I put it to the average lay person (because they’ve seen you and want to find out where) is to imagine applying for a new job every week of your working life. It’s a reality we accept. What we don’t accept is a working environment in which there is no respect for our creative role and no understanding of the time and energy needed to fulfil that role.

 

Illustration by Cathy Wilcox.

Capital punishment hit the news this month when Howard and Crean backed the execution of Amrozi and Howard gave the OK for State governments to bring back the death penalty. (See The danger for Australians of approving death for Amrozi and Howard to the states: capital punishment your call. I got some great responses, and today, F2 trainee Antony Loewenstein guest edits the debate.

Giving life or taking it away

by Antony Loewenstein

The debate took off with John Howard’s August 8 statement on Melbourne’s 3AW radio after Amrozi was given the death penalty in Indonesia:

I am not supporting the reintroduction, I mean my position, let me repeat, is for reasons of pragmatic concern that the law from time to time will make mistakes, I am against the death penalty. That is the basis, always has been the basis of my objection. But I respect the fact that a lot of people are in favour of the death penalty, a lot of people who are close to me are in favour of the death penalty. It’s just that different people have different views.

The letters pages have since been filled with vitriol, bile, paranoia and outright indignation. The general tone has been one of disbelief that this issue, long thought buried after the hanging of Ronald Ryan in 1967, has again reared its ugly head.

Webdiary has received any number of responses – not many topics get the blood boiling like capital punishment. And John Howard sure knows how to play it both ways, or so says Chris Saliba:

As usual, John Howard excels at having it both ways. He’s against the death penalty, but approves of it at the same time. I can’t stand the way he talks about “normal Australian” response to grief, as if there is such a thing. I think the talk of Australian values and un-Australian behaviour the most moronic expressions flung about. Next there’ll be an Australian way for buttering your toast!

Howard knows that a Federal Election can be called very shortly, and as he said recently, national security will be one of the primary planks of his re-election campaign. Who you going to trust? asks Howard, and he knows what most people are answering.

One reader in Germany, Rodney Sewell, thought he must have misheard the PM:

“Mr Howard said that even if he were in favour of reintroducing the death penalty, he could not pass such a law. I’ve lived in Europe since 1985 so either I missed news of the referendum which allows Australian Prime Ministers to personally pass laws, or the PM was misquoted. Or does John Howard really talk like that?

Yours, settled in quite well in a democratic, free and very hot Germany, where NOBODY! wants to bring back the death penalty

David Shanahan suggests that Labor, by the undignified display of both Crean and Latham, still hasn’t learnt how to beat Howard on their own terms.

Margo, you’re dead right about Crean falling into Howard’s trap of moving the goal posts again. Crean has to go, he never learns. I just wish there was someone on the Labor horizon who could replace him and be less of a sucker where Howard is concerned.

The question remains: did Crean and Latham respond as they did because they believed it was electorally wise to do so, or because they actually supported the Amrozi death sentence? Are they too afraid of going against Howard on these vitally important issues? The public is left confused. Again.

Tim Dunlop, a former Webdiarist now based in the US, posted a warning against knee-jerk opposition to the death penalty on his blog roadtosurfdom:

Clearly Prime Minister Howard is willing to use it as wedge, but I’m sure he’d use his mother to chock up the car if he thought it would get him a few votes. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a debate about the issue.

Death penalty opponents sometimes seem to fear such debate because they presume they will lose it [Ed note: quite possibly what Crean was thinking last week, a lack of ticker as a well known PM once said!]. This fear is generated not because they doubt their own debating skills or the righteousness of their arguments – both of which they have a very high opinion of – but because they think “the public” will be too stupid and bloodthirsty to follow the “no” case. They just presume that “the majority” will vote yes.

Maybe that will be the outcome, but I don’t think it’s down to people being bloodthirsty or stupid at all.

Contrary to some received wisdom, I don’t think the arguments against the death penalty are open-and-shut, though I can’t really conceive of circumstances under which I would support its introduction. Even if my own child was the victim, I would hope I could be as clearheaded as father of Bali bombing victim, Brian Deegan, who said recently that he doesn’t want the death penalty enacted in the name of his child.

Nonetheless, I can see that other parents might come to a different conclusion, and if guilt was clearly established, and as long as it was enacted strictly within the confines of the legal system, I don’t think there is anything particularly awful about people wanting this ultimate form of sanction. In fact, it is almost the most understandable thing in the world. That doesn’t mean it’s right, and like I say, I don’t think I’d want it, but maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, stuff like this is precisely why I’d like to hear the arguments a long time in advance of any final decision being taken. Still, having said all that, I don’t think there is any particular urgency in such a debate. I mean, how high a priority is it really?

One final thing that always strikes me as weird is that it often seems to be the very people who purport to hate “government” the most, and wouldn’t trust it to do anything competently or honestly who are most willing to hand this power of life and death to the very organisation that is the usual object of their ire and contempt.

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a moving piece last week by Gregory David Roberts (It’s our humanity that dies in an execution) against the death penalty. Not an academic, lawyer or journalist, and not easily dismissed as a liberal, Roberts has spent a lot of time in prison. I like this in relation to Amrozi, a level-headed response to a heinous crime:

The term capital punishment is an oxymoron when applied to fanatics. You can’t capitally punish a man or woman who embraces death. I know this to be true because I spent time in a German prison with dozens of men who were accused or convicted of terrorist crimes. While I was busily trying, Colditz-style, to escape from the concrete fortress, the political prisoners remained placid and inert, because they saw their imprisonment as a triumph for their causes.

And before we start thinking that our religious beliefs could help us out of this mess, Webdiarist Peter Woodforde writes that our Christian heritage may just have been sold to the Devil:

The Australian flag carries four symbols of the instrument of capital punishment used by the government to kill Christ – the three amalgamated crosses of the British flag and the Southern Cross. Is it not fitting that our national political leader should wanly advocate the killing of a convicted terrorist in contravention of Christ’s teachings (and in accordance with the bomber’s wishes)? We have not, after all, ever pretended to be a Christian nation. What’s the bet that the nonces at the free-to-air and cable shopping-channels are already seeking broadcast rights for the “live” execution?

Following in the religious spirit, the recent visit to Australia by Sister Helen Prejean, granted fame due to the Tim Robbins directed Dead Man Walking movie, asserts that:

Killing them (the accused) is an act of despair that says the only thing we can do with you, since you did this, is to imitate you. It shows that we as a society have sunk to your level. (Capital punishment an act of despair, says adviser)

These views are from a woman who has seen countless men on death row in the US suffering, waiting sometimes years for execution. The church, certainly in the US at least, allows a wide variety of views under its steeple.

As an aside, the generally high support in the US for the death penalty could be explained by its God-fearing sensibility. Commentator Nicholas Kristoff, writing in the New York Times on August 15, senses a country descending into mysticism, myth, old wives tales and Bible stories as truth. It certainly makes the (archaic and traditional) nature of capital punishment more palatable. Since much of the world, developed and otherwise, gets some its moral direction and compass from the US, the death penalty will continue to be a troubling blot on America’s soul. Guantanemo Bay causes more constenation outside the US than within. The rise of DNA has made many Americans against capital punishment, but only because the wrong person might be executed, not because of an ethical opposition. Kristoff wrote:

Religion remains central to American life, and is getting more so, in a way that is true of no other industrialized country, with the possible exception of South Korea. America is so pious that not only do 91 percent of Christians say they believe in the Virgin Birth, but so do an astonishing 47 percent of U.S. non-Christians The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America.

In his public statements, the PM says it is up to the States to bring back capital punishment, suggesting Victorian opposition leader Robert Doyle might consider doing so in Victoria. Perhaps Howard was thinking that Doyle’s electoral chances, after a serious bollocking last year, would be helped by debating the issue. Michael Walton, from the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, points out that if Howard was serious about stopping this debate dead in its tracks, he could do so. But of course, who says Howard wants to do that?

By floating the idea that State Liberal opposition parties use the death penalty as a re-election policy, Prime Minister Howard has signalled a dangerous attack on our civil liberties and the most fundamental of our human rights: the right to life.

Mr Howard is correct to say that he does not have the power to impose the death penalty in a State such as Victoria. But what he fails to mention is that he does have the power to stop any State or Territory from re-introducing the death penalty.

In 1991, Australia acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (OP2). OP2 commits Australia to abolishing the death penalty. So the re-introduction of the death penalty in any State or Territory would violate international law and further tarnish our international reputation.

Since 1983, the High Court of Australia has consistently held that the Federal Parliament can override States to uphold our international obligations. In 1983 that power was used to protect the Franklin River in Tasmania. In the 1990s Paul Keating used this power to override anti-gay laws in Tasmania. If Mr Howard is willing, this same power can be used again to protect all Australians from the re-introduction of the death penalty by the States or Territories.

In fact, Mr Howard does not even have to wait for the States or Territories to make the first move. The Federal Parliament already possesses all the necessary constitutional powers to pass legislation incorporating into Australian law the protections offered by OP2.

The Prime Minister is correct to say that the law can get it wrong – just ask Lindy Chamberlain or WA’s John Button. And the NSW Premier is correct to say that, when it comes to the death penalty, a mistake is irreversible. The PM has the power to protect all Australians from the irreversible errors of law that will, on his own admission, inevitably result from a re-introduction of the death penalty in Australia.

If Mr Howard really believes that the death penalty is wrong, then he should act now to prevent its re-introduction and to protect the civil liberties of all Australians.

The Age ran a very powerful editorial last week condemning the PM for flirting with the issue:

To authorise the taking of one life for another – even for many others – does not uphold or protect the inherent value and dignity of all human life, but panders to the desire for revenge. That was the lesson of the dispute over Ronald Ryan’s hanging, and Australia’s politicians should continue to heed it.

And in this stinging response to the arguments of Howard, Bush and Blair in The Australian last week, Neil Clark, a tutor in history and politics at Oxford Tutorial College in England who supports the death penalty for Amrozi, believes that opponents of the death penalty in their own countries are engaging in blatant hypocrisy, especially Tony Blair, “with [his] impeccable Left-liberal credentials”:

With their contradictory stances on capital punishment, both the British and Australian prime ministers have much explaining to do. Could Blair kindly tell us why he endorsed the dropping of four 1000kg bombs on a Baghdad restaurant where Saddam Hussein was thought to be dining, but why he would not support the execution of the ex-Iraqi leader if he were found guilty of capital crimes in a court of law?

Webdiarist Tim Goodwin from Brisbane argued, in perhaps the most convincing piece of the whole debate, that if we believe as a democratic society that we are progressing ethically, morally and indeed spiritually, how can the death penalty be used in any circumstances?

Of course John Howard would effectively support the death penalty for Amrozi and appear to equivocate on the broader implications of that very support. After all, Our Leader has wavered or given implicit support for executions on a number of occasions over the past few years. It is usually on the basis of ‘well, that’s their law and I respect that’, or similar words. That would be an interesting view if applied to stoning to death women convicted of adultery under Sharia laws in Nigeria. Or Australians sentenced to the firing squad under Vietnamese law after being caught with a bag of heroin stuffed in their luggage.

Is this John Howard the man of strong personal principles, a man of conviction, or John Howard the opportunist who is beginning to sound like he has been studying cultural relativism in his Postmodernism course at Uni?

Now we’ve long known that Howard is the master of the “slippery phrase”, the line that doesn’t actually commit to much when you look closely at it but which nonetheless sends that nod and wink of support out over the talkback airwaves. So in the past when he has been pressed about the death penalty for Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and the alleged Bali bombers, John Howard has usually made some general statement about the law that applies.

When asked on American Fox News whether he’d welcome the possible execution of bin Laden, he replied: “I think everybody would.” When the follow-up questions have concerned those responsible for Bali, and in the last few days Amrozi himself, Howard has said there would be no protest from the Australian Government if the sentence were carried out. However he has played it, each time the death penalty has been raised in the last few years, John Howard has given the green light to whoever is aspiring to pull the trigger or the lever.

It is interesting then to contrast what Australia’s opposition to the death penalty means when Australians are on trial for their lives overseas. On these occasions it is left to Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to articulate in the strongest possible terms Australia’s “universal” opposition to the use of the death penalty. For example, when 43-year old Sydney woman Le My Linh was sentenced to death in Vietnam in 2002 after being convicted on drug trafficking charges, the Foreign Minister issued a statement saying: “Australia is universally and consistently opposed to capital punishment. The Government has made its opposition to the death penalty clear to the Vietnamese authorities in the lead-up to Ms Le’s trial and appeal, and will continue to do so.”

Earlier in the year, the Minister told Federal Parliament that “we do want to leave a clear message for the Vietnamese government that this government – and, I should say, almost all members of this parliament too – oppose the death penalty.” That is, the Government universally and consistently opposes capital punishment – but only when it relates to the execution of Australian citizens overseas.

David Hicks may be grateful for one half of that inconsistency, although it remains to be seen whether the US Government honours its concessions in Hicks’ case.

But there are others who are troubled by the selective and inconsistent opposition to the death penalty that is stalking the Government, and Federal politics in general over these past few months. These are the people who fear that when human rights are optional principles – to be defended when it suits and discarded when the emotions are running too high — then human rights become just one more pawn in a bigger and much more cynical game.

There are those who believe that the death penalty is an affront to the values we are supposed to be defending in the alleged “war on terror”. That it contradicts the argument that we are fighting these wars to defend the sanctity of life, to prove to the world’s darker elements that individual human lives should not be traded in as part of some broader political struggle.

I think I’m not alone when I feel that every effort to undermine the protection of universal human rights, every effort to neutralise them with specious reasoning or inconsistency, leaves us just that bit more vulnerable to people who believe that, “This is my law, and I’ll make them respect it.

Webdiarist Jacob Stam sent in this intriguing piece written around the time of the Port Arthur Massacre. It gives what is perhaps the best explanation of the extremely disconcerting behaviour of Amrozi during his trial, his constant outbursts, his laughter and nonchalance at being sentenced to death. It is important to try and understand these people as not just evil or deranged, but rather human beings with an apparent death-wish:

Amok is the Malay word meaning to rush around in a state of frenzy committing indiscriminate murder. In popular speech, Martin Bryant [the Port Arthur mass-murderer] ran amok, although frenzy doesn’t quite fit a man who, in the words of a witness, would ‘pick someone else out and line them up and shoot them’.

In 19th-century Malaya young men ran amok butchering strangers with a sword, usually after suffering a massive blow to their self-esteem or prestige. At the turn of the century the British colonial government passed legislation ordering that the men (called pengamoks) not be killed but put in insane asylums.

That decision caused a dramatic decrease in the number of pengamoks, says Paul Mullen, a forensic psychiatrist at Monash University. Instead of finding glory in death, the man was humiliated by incarceration, and the practice is said to have dwindled.

Despite great cultural differences, what the pengamoks and modern mass killers have in common is a desire to discharge some colossal grievance, and belief in heroic death. What distinguishes Martin Bryant from both groups is that he is still alive.

Everybody’s favourite Liberal MP, Chris Pyne, got a spray from Webdiarist Fergus Hancock after reading his letter in last week’s SMH stating that the death penalty “reduces recidivism.” Fergus sees and feels a slippery moral decline on the cards:

So, Chris Pyne thinks capital punishment is a good idea as it reduces recidivism. Based on overseas experience (surely a good reason for a taxpayer subsidised trip) it also is a nifty way to deal with political opponents or to conduct ethnic cleansing. Does Pyne intend to differentiate between criminals and his political opponents? If so, then which would receive higher priority? The pro-death penalty constituents have probably been waiting for this debate since 1967.

Webdiarist David Spring in Brussels delivered a stinging rebuke of recent Australian ‘experimentation’, and clearly wants a return to the days of yore. Here’s one voice of the disaffected expat:

Amrozi aside, I think it’s brilliant that Howard has resurrected this cracking idea that’s been simmering beneath the surface for years. When we lived in Australia it seemed that everyone I spoke to at functions, BBQs, over the fence, wine tastings whatever wanted the death penalty – oooohh secretly could we all be barbaric animals who bray for blood? No.

It was only because the self-righteous morons on the left told us it was barbaric, cruel et al that we ever got rid of it in the first place – it just didn’t fit in with our 70s new age Australia. Well, now that we’ve had that little social experiment and its well and truly failed we might be able to come back and revisit some of the good things. Law and order went to the dogs after the Whitlam social experiments of excessive welfare, booming populations of single mothers, poor discipline in schools. Where do you want me to stop?

Good stuff Johnny, the economy is bubbling along, the social reforms are flowing – regulated and controlled immigration policies, the smashing of the welfare state – and now capital punishment is back on the agenda. He’s gone a long way to repairing the damage the clown Keating caused with his so called “vision and foresight” that you ignorant fools on the left shovelled down our throats so long. Jeez, if this keeps up we, the educated people, might start returning to the place.

A more nuanced approach came from Scott Wickstein, who argued here that Australians should be treated as well or badly as another country’s citizens. Respect the country’s legal system, Scott says:

Margo, you write: “Would we make representations if an Australian citizen had been found guilty of the charges against Amrozi? If not, then we have decided that in certain matters, Australian citizens will be left without the support of their nation when convicted of a capital offence overseas.” I can live with that. Are we to assume that Australians abroad deserve the support of the nation, regardless of how disgraceful their conduct? I think not. This is why I’m indifferent to the fate of David Hicks – this guy thought it was OK to join up with the Taliban, which as far as I’m concerned is like signing up with the Waffen SS or Stalin’s NKVD. I don’t hold with this view that “my country right or wrong” or, in this case, fellow citizen right or wrong.

For the record, I’m quite opposed to capital punishment, on the grounds that, as a proponent of small government, the government has no right to kill people, whatever the well meaning grounds given.

Finally, Dudley Sharp, from Justice for All in the US, a pro-death penalty, “criminal justice reform organization”, sent a response to Webdiary which argues that the generally accepted notion that capital punishment does not deter violent crime is in fact incorrect. He claims that a person found guilty of a heinous crime forfeits his or her right to life and therefore should be put to death. Dudley does not mention, however, the extremely unequal nature of the US justice system, the disproportionately high number of black men on death row and the number of innocent people sentenced on faulty or tampered evidence:

Some wrongly state that executions are a human rights violation. The human rights violation argument often comes from European leadership and human rights organizations.

The argument is as follows: Life is a fundamental human right. Therefore, taking it away is a fundamental violation of human rights.

Those who say that the death penalty is a human rights violation have no solid moral or philosophical foundation for making such a statement. What opponents of capital punishment really are saying is that they just don’t approve of executions.

Certainly, both freedom and life are fundamental human rights. On this, there is virtually no disagreement. However, again, virtually all agree, that freedom may be taken away when there is a violation of the social contract. Freedom, a fundamental human right, may be taken away from those who violate society’s laws. So to is the fundamental human right of life forfeit when the violation of the social contract is most grave.

No one disputes that taking freedom away is different result than taking life away. However, the issue is the incorrect claim that taking away fundamental human rights – be that freedom or life – is a human rights violation. It is not. It depends specifically on the circumstances.

How do we know? Because those very same governments and human rights stalwarts, rightly, tell us so. Universally, both governments and human rights organizations approve and encourage taking away the fundamental human right of freedom, as a proper response to some criminal activity.

Why do governments and human rights organizations not condemn just incarceration of criminals as a fundamental human rights violation? Because they think incarceration is just fine.

Do some of those same groups condemn execution as a human rights violation? Only because they don’t like it. They have no moral or philosophical foundation for calling execution a human rights violation.

In the context of criminals violating the social contract, those criminals have voluntarily subjected themselves to the laws of the state. And they have knowingly placed themselves in a position where their fundamental human rights of freedom and life are subject to being forfeit by their actions.

Opinion is only worth the value of its foundation. Those who call execution a human rights violation have no credible foundation for that claim. What they are really saying is “We just don’t like it.

G’Day. There’s been a lot said in Webdiary lately about democracy and what the hell it is, or could be, from conservative, Green, Liberal and Labor left perspectives. Today, long suffering ALP member Guido Tresoldidiscusses what Carmen’s run for the ALP presidency might mean for democracy and the derision of the commentariat at Labor’s experiment in direct elections and Philip Gomes and Matthew Barnes respond toDaniel Moye’s piece on conservatism Why conservatives fear John Howard.

To begin, Webdiarist John Boase and many others sent me a great piece by journalist Greg Palast on the United States blackouts. Greg co-wrote Democracy and Regulation, a guide to electricity deregulation. Here’s an extract from POWER OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE – THE TALE OF THE BRITS WHO SWIPED 800 JOBS FROM NEW YORK, CARTED OFF $90 MILLION, THEN TONIGHT, TURNED OFF OUR LIGHTS:

In 1990, one devious little bunch of operators out of Texas, Houston Natural Gas, operating under the alias “Enron,” talked an over-the-edge free-market fanatic, Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, into licensing the first completely deregulated power plant in the hemisphere.

And so began an economic disease called “regulatory reform” that spread faster than SARS. Notably, Enron rewarded Thatcher’s Energy Minister, one Lord Wakeham, with a bushel of dollar bills for ‘consulting’ services and a seat on Enron’s board of directors. The English experiment proved the viability of Enron’s new industrial formula: that the enthusiasm of politicians for deregulation was in direct proportion to the payola provided by power companies.

The power elite first moved on England because they knew Americans wouldn’t swallow the deregulation snake oil easily. The USA had gotten used to cheap power available at the flick of switch. This was the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt who, in 1933, caged the man he thought to be the last of the power pirates, Samuel Insull… To frustrate Insull and his ilk, FDR gave us the Federal Power Commission and the Public Utilities Holding Company Act which told electricity companies where to stand and salute. Detailed regulations limited charges to real expenditures plus a government-set profit. The laws banned “power markets” and required companies to keep the lights on under threat of arrest – no blackout blackmail to hike rates.

Of particular significance as I write here in the dark, regulators told utilities exactly how much they had to spend to insure the system stayed in repair and the lights stayed on. Bureaucrats crawled along the wire and, like me, crawled through the account books, to make sure the power execs spent customers’ money on parts and labor. If they didn’t, we’d whack’m over the head with our thick rule books. Did we get in the way of these businessmen’s entrepreneurial spirit? Damn right we did.

Most important, FDR banned political contributions from utility companies – no ‘soft’ money, no ‘hard’ money, no money PERIOD.

But then came George the First. In 1992, just prior to his departure from the White House, President Bush Senior gave the power industry one long deep-through-the-teeth kiss good-bye: federal deregulation of electricity. It was a legacy he wanted to leave for his son, the gratitude of power companies which ponied up $16 million for the Republican campaign of 2000, seven times the sum they gave Democrats.

But Poppy Bush’s gift of deregulating of wholesale prices set by the feds only got the power pirates halfway to the plunder of Joe Ratepayer. For the big payday they needed deregulation at the state level. There were only two states, California and Texas, big enough and Republican enough to put the electricity market con into operation.

California fell first. The power companies spent $39 million to defeat a 1998 referendum pushed by Ralph Nadar which would have blocked the de-reg scam. Another $37 million was spent on lobbying and lubricating the campaign coffers of legislators to write a lie into law: in the deregulation act’s preamble, the Legislature promised that deregulation would reduce electricity bills by 20%. In fact, when San Diegans in the first California city to go “lawless” looked at their bills, the 20% savings became a 300% jump in surcharges.

Enron circled California and licked its lips. As the number one life-time contributor to the George W. Bush campaign, it was confident about the future. With just a half dozen other companies it controlled at times 100% of the available power capacity needed to keep the Golden State lit. Their motto, “your money or your lights.” Enron and its comrades played the system like a broken ATM machine, yanking out the bills. For example, in the shamelessly fixed “auctions” for electricity held by the state, Enron bid, in one instance, to supply 500 megawatts of electricity over a 15 megawatt line. That’s like pouring a gallon of gasoline into a thimble – the lines would burn up if they attempted it. Faced with blackout because of Enron’s destructive bid, the state was willing to pay anything to keep the lights on.

And the state did. According to Dr. Anjali Sheffrin, economist with the California state Independent System Operator which directed power movements, between May and November 2000, three power giants physically or “economically” withheld power from the state and concocted enough false bids to cost the California customers over $6.2 billion in excess charges.

It took until December 20, 2000, with the lights going out on the Golden Gate, for President Bill Clinton, once a deregulation booster, to find his lost Democratic soul and impose price caps in California and ban Enron from the market.

But the light-bulb buccaneers didn’t have to wait long to put their hooks back into the treasure chest. Within seventy-two hours of moving into the White House, while he was still sweeping out the inaugural champagne bottles, George Bush the Second reversed Clinton’s executive order and put the power pirates back in business in California. Enron, Reliant (aka Houston Industries), TXU (aka Texas Utilities) and the others who had economically snipped California’s wires knew they could count on Dubya, who as governor of the Lone Star state cut them the richest deregulation deal in America.

Meanwhile, the deregulation bug made it to New York where Republican Governor George Pataki and his industry-picked utility commissioners ripped the lid off electric bills and relieved my old friends at Niagara Mohawk of the expensive obligation to properly fund the maintenance of the grid system.

And the Pataki-Bush Axis of Weasels permitted something that must have former New York governor Roosevelt spinning in his wheelchair in Heaven: They allowed a foreign company, the notoriously incompetent National Grid of England, to buy up NiMo, get rid of 800 workers and pocket most of their wages – producing a bonus for NiMo stockholders approaching $90 million.

Is tonight’s black-out a surprise? Heck, no, not to us in the field who’ve watched Bush’s buddies flick the switches across the globe. In Brazil, Houston Industries seized ownership of Rio de Janeiro’s electric company. The Texans (aided by their French partners) fired workers, raised prices, cut maintenance expenditures and, CLICK! the juice went out so often the locals now call it, “Rio Dark.”

So too the free-market cowboys of Niagara Mohawk raised prices, slashed staff, cut maintenance and CLICK! – New York joins Brazil in the Dark Ages.

Californians have found the solution to the deregulation disaster: re-call the only governor in the nation with the cojones to stand up to the electricity price fixers. And unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gov. Gray Davis stood alone against the bad guys without using a body double. Davis called Reliant Corp of Houston a pack of “pirates” – and now he’ll walk the plank for daring to stand up to the Texas marauders.

So where’s the President? Just before he landed on the deck of the Abe Lincoln, the White House was so concerned about our brave troops facing the foe that they used the cover of war for a new push in Congress for yet more electricity deregulation. This has a certain logic: there’s no sense defeating Iraq if a hostile regime remains in California.

Sitting in the dark, as my laptop battery runs low, I don’t know if the truth about deregulation will ever see the light – until we change the dim bulb in the White House.

***

Anne Magarey

I was interested to read Rekindling Liberalism: a beginning. Have you come across what is known as neo-republicanism? It has nothing to do with the US party, or any party for that matter, but as proposed by Philip Pettit of the ANU is a very interesting, modern rethink of previous republics. Liberalism has a focus on freedom as non-interference; republicanism focuses on freedom as non-domination, which takes freedom one step further. It stresses a strong involvement of the people in politics, and the public good (something which liberalism says is not possible due to its focus on individualism). Pettit’s book is called Republicanism: a theory of freedom and government and is well worth reading.

***

Guido Tresoldi in Melbourne

I would like to discuss how Carmen Lawrence’s decision to run for ALP president can provide a good starting point in discussing a question you asked some time ago: “What is at the heart of democracy that makes it so sustainable, valuable and worth fighting for?”

That’s a pretty big question. One of the most important aspects of democracy is participation; the ability to participate into a process that has direct impacts on the type of society that we live in. On my part, joining a major political party was part of that process. I believe that joining the ALP and providing input into its policies is an integral part of my rights in a democracy. (See Carmen’s ldeas to save our withering democracy)

Of course anyone with the slightest knowledge of Australian politics would know that the ALP (or the Liberal Party for that matter) is not exactly the best model for democracy. As Chris Schacht wrote recently about the ALP, detailed policy adopted at party conferences bears little relationship to what is presented at election time. This had led to increasing cynicism, alienation of members, and declining active membership.

This has prompted calls for more democracy in the party, and one measure to try an increase the participation of members was the introduction of the direct election of the president of the ALP. Being president of the ALP is not a position of great power in the scheme of things, so it is somewhat disconcerting to hear the commentary around the possibility of Lawrence being elected. The Australian had this in one of its editorials:“Electing Carmen Lawrence as president, for example, might please party members who opposed Australia’s involvement in the war against Iraq and dislike the American alliance. But it would risk a split between the moderate politicians and the party machine – with catastrophic electoral consequences.”

The Age, which usually publishes articles supporting more democracy in politics, wrote in an editorial that Carmen Lawrence would create problems, not solutions, as the ALP national president: “Dr Lawrence has cast herself as a heroine of the hand-wringing left, a walking, talking embodiment of the Labor Party’s ‘conscience’. Such a person as national president is the last thing needed by Mr Crean, Labor’s broader electoral base or the political system at large.”

On the ABC’s Insiders program even the the idea of giving the rank and file the chance of electing the president was derided as a ‘bit of madness’ that ‘must had been seen to be a good idea at the time’.

What all this has to do with a broader issue of democracy? Quite a lot. I wish Carmen well, but in the end my argument does not focus on her, but rather how her candidacy has exposed an extraordinary disdain for party membership amongst political commentators. After each defeat by the ALP we read and hear in these same media outlets the fact that the ALP needs rejuvenation and new blood. But when we get a small token of direct democracy that does not fit in with the dominant paradigms we get this reactionary backlash.

Have we arrived at such a stage in Australia that the election of a party president is seen as ‘stupid idea’? Instead of seeing this as a positive step (albeit a small one) towards allowing those who have bothered join a party to elect their president, this is seen as an unnecessary risk. It really demeans the idea of participation and demeans the intelligence of party membership.

This lack of participation, which translates to apathy, is what feeds and keeps the Howard’s government alive. The ethanol lies, the attack on the ABC, not to mention keeping children in detention are things that do not register amongst a disengaged electorate which expects politicians to mislead parliament.

You asked me what I think is crucial for democracy? Many things are, but one is a greater degree of participation and debate in the parties that are supposed to reflect the opinions and sentiment of the people. And a degree of respect for that process

***

Philip Gomes in Redfern, Sydney

Perhaps Daniel Moye would like to try political compass for a different understanding of the left right nexus. He might surprise himself.

Like all suburban conservatives Daniel espouses an essentially passive view of his conservatism relaxed and comfortable. Or should I say; fortified and assured. His words: “Having read this outline, I was fortified in my belief that a ‘conservative’ I am. Having found out this answer and the reassurance I sought, a larger question begged itself. How do we own the ideas, ideals and institutions we label ourselves with?” (Owning your beliefs)

Unfortunately he has asked the wrong question. The question Daniel should have asked himself is, ‘How do I unshackle myself from the bonds of a hide bound ideology?’ In the face of a changing world many from the so-called left have done just that.

They have freed themselves from the apologist view of support of regimes of tyranny on the left for example and look to condemn all regimes that practise tyranny and oppression, a humanist position. They are embracing new ideas of co-operation across a wide rainbow of viewpoints, as evidenced by the slow rise of the Greens and similar movements (see When black is white, it’s easy being Green) State ownership is not necessarily embraced, and an emphasis of the powerful ideas of triple bottom line economics and fair trade is another example of this. The left can no longer be viewed as irrationally exuberant. They are fighting new battles with an enlightened responsibility.

I do not own these ideas, nor do I own our institutions – they are a public commons to be debated in and argued over. Ideas and institutions are not copyrighted but are open source. Free to be downloaded into the public consciousness. And as such we should have the chance to write a few new lines of code.

Many conservatives have objected to attempts to elicit a ‘philosophy’ of conservatism on the ground that conservatism is not a creed but a disposition, and that the conservative differs from radicals and intellectuals precisely because he is willing to change his mind and abandon any particular doctrine or any particular goal for the sake of conserving the vital interests of his society.

In Daniel’s Conservative definition, I would not hesitate to use the word cynical, and would say the opposite is true. The problem for old style conservatives like Daniel is that the current group of so-called conservatives (neo-cons) exhibit many of the attributes in his dictionary definition in spades, indeed they are reactionary and dogmatic in the extreme and lack a moral and ethical compass.

The hallmark of modern conservatism is its sociopathic nature – devoid of compassion, drilling all aspects of society and culture down to that of a commodity – including the ownership of ideas and institutions.

They have shown a singular disrespect for many of our institutions and have on more than one occasion shown an ability to abandon a particular doctrine to conserving the vital interests of the Party. Human rights, for example. Cute.

The ethical and moral compass of old-style conservatism has been challenged by this new variant. I suggest this explains the confusion felt by many of its adherents, because they are essentially unthinking in their practice of conservatism and the new boys on the block have forced them to choose i.e. you are either with us or against us. This is the cart to which he is hitched.

Daniel ultimately represents the silent majority of middle class Australian thought whose cosy little world has gone unchallenged until now. Their passivity and disposition has given rise to the neo-con view that is now being met by those who see another world possible.

I would suggest that the left is brimming with ideas and ideals filled with humanity and universality; something conservatives have shown little regard for of late. The left have embraced intellectual flexibility and uncertainty – the watchwords of our future. It’s new ideas and institutions are there to be accessed by all, not just those with the deepest pockets, the sharpest spin-doctors or the biggest media whores.

PS: Perhaps Daniel could also look to this little item in order to reassess his belief and relief at being a conservative, it’s quite amusing: Study of Bush’s psyche touches a nerve

Matthew Barnes in London

Disclosure: In every federal election up till now I’ve voted Liberal. In the next one I’ll probably vote informal because I can no longer keep on giving the Howard government my support when they are not committed to income tax relief or small government. Or I might vote Labor though and use my vote as a stick, because if both sides of politics are going to deliver big government I might as well have one more committed to subsidising university education. I live in the UK and am in the investment banking industry. I was born and raised in Penrith and commuted daily from Penrith during my five years at the University of NSW, where I did a combined degree in Commerce and Law. I consider myself one of these aspirational voters that Mr Howard pretends to champion.

Daniel Moye wrote in Why Conservatives fear John Howard:

For many conservative Australians, including myself, it is difficult to encapsulate our objections to the Howard Government. I supported the downsizing of government and the further deregulation of the Australian economy and I acknowledge excellent management of that economy, so it is not as if the Howard Government has overwhelmingly got it wrong.

I’ve got to take great exception to your passage above as far as it relates to the contention that (1) government has shrunk under John Howard’s stewardship (2) excellent management of the economy.

Government has shrunk under John Howard’s stewardship: Federal government revenues as a percentage of GDP have actually increased and are increasing. The reason for this is pretty simple: the Howard government is not interested in income tax relief and has taken the revenue benefit of wages bracket creep. In 1995/96 federal govt revenues amounted to $121.7 billion, or 25% of GDP. In 2001/02 federal government revenues (once the GST revenues are included, as of course they must be given that the GST is a federal tax ) amounted to $189 billion or 26.4% of GDP

The share of income tax as a percentage of GDP is now higher than in 1995/96 notwithstanding that the GST was supposed to lower the tax burden.

Internationally, Australians face a prohibitive income tax regime. The top marginal rate of 48.5% cuts in at just $62,000 a year, at just 1.35 times male average weekly earnings. In the USA the top rate of 35% cuts in at over $US 300,000. In the UK the top tax rate of 41% cuts in at about 1.7 times AWE.

The last 7 plus years have witnessed strong economic growth of the magnitude of 3.5% per annum. This is high by industrialised standards. Nevertheless, there has been little tax relief and the Australian people have been delivered a pathetic return from a so-called economically conservative government.

Examples of the rapacious tax appetite of the Howard govt can be seen in their obsession with stealth taxes such as the Ansett tax, sugar tax etc. The sugar tax represented basic industry assistance. Similarly, given the resources of government, the assistance provided to former Ansett employees should have been paid from existing revenues.

Part of the problem is that far too many conservative Australians just accept that we have an economically conservative government committed to smaller government when in fact we do not.

There is something seriously wrong with the way the average PAYE tax payer is treated in Australia. It is no wonder that we now have an investment housing boom in which people pay price multiples for homes which bear no relationship whatsoever to gross or net wages. Those who are dictating the prices are the baby boomers with little or no remaining mortgage who use their existing collateral to buy new houses, usually for speculative purposes. The price takers are the first home buyers who make up just 13% of new home purchases and who can look forward to a punitive mortgage eating up 50% to 60% of take home pay, or they can rent. The baby boomers also get a lovely tax benefit funded by the average Howard “battler”. Interest expense is fully tax deductible whilst the future capital gain is taxed at just 24.25%.

There is absolutely no reason why Howard couldn’t immediately limit the interest deduction to the revenue earned from the property, as is the rule in the UK. It is also unfair that an economically useless speculative activity gets taxed at a concessional 24% while the tax on labour is 48.5%. What a tragic misallocation or resources!

The Howard government was supposed to be about incentivising people and enabling people to make a decent go of things. That’s what I believed in 1996 as a then 22 year old. However, when you look at their record its a record of lost opportunity and laziness. I can go on and on about this. Margo, I really hope you use your column to reconsider your assumption about Howard’s record on small government and incentivisation.

Mr Howard is a brilliant politician. He polarises people and he knows that his policies have been a big winner for those fortunate enough to be at the stage of life to be in property. He’s made a lot of people very wealthy. However, his economic policies have been a disaster for those starting out in their adult life.

If that wasn’t bad enough the young also now have the joy of enjoying relatively little state subsidy for their university education, with the cost about 3 times what I paid. You may think higher university charges are OK on user pays grounds – and I guess it would be if the income tax burden was more reasonable. However, it would seem to be only fair that people receive a heavily subsidised university education when the tax burden remains so punitive.

Excellent management of the economy

Leaving aside the necessary budget fiscal tightening of 1996/97 which really helped us in the Asian economic crisis of 1997, the economic management of the economy has been average, not “excellent”.

There were many very favourable global factors that made it relatively benign for most western economies in the second half of the 1990s. The oil price was very low and the cost of capital in the form of interest rates declined all over the world. Howard, like Blair in the UK, inherited an internationally competitive economy in which all the necessary structural and trade reforms had been largely completed. In the Australian context the very weak dollar also boosted exports.

I contend that all the Howard government had to do was just to avoid exploding the economy.

If Howard had vision he would have used the opportunity to give people real income tax relief and incentivise families. Automatic indexation of income tax scales, as happens in the UK, would have been easy to implement and would have put a natural strain on the appetite of government spending as revenue growth would have been less.

Howard’s ill-conceived CGT changes of 2000 have made the housing boom worse, and now cause a situation where interest rates are unnecessarily high by global standards.

The federal government has also lost an important degree of revenue control through the decision to pass on all GST revenues to the states.

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Jonathan Pagan in Sydney

I’d put a fairly large stake on Howard brazening it out destroying our democracy piece by piece, day by day. The scariest thing is that most of my generation (I’m 22) don’t care. They’ve never known anything else, so they expect politicians to lie and deceive on a daily basis.

I guess I was lucky. My grandfather was involved in the Liberal Party in the 50s, 60s and 70s, and Liberal and Labor leaders were and are regular guests and great friends. They are in our family photos, and still come over for lunch. These were and are all men and women of high integrity (whatever other personal faults they may have), who were diametrically opposed on ideas concerning how the country should be run; but once away from Parliament, were good friends who respected each other and each others views greatly.

My grandmother thinks the common bar in the Old Parliament House contributed to the civility and decency of that era of politics. No doubt the sacking of Gough contributed to the bitter schism that now exists. Now they do not know each others husband’s, wives and children. The sheer size of new Parliament House lets the current crop of self-serving toadies think they are the only important thing in the place, and cripple the sort of cross-party friendships, honour and decency that once pervaded Australian parliaments. There’s probably something in that. God know’s she’s right most of the time.

Peter Costello’s outline of the functioning of liberal democracies and civil society is a very sound conservative analysis. The Treasurer has quite rightly pointed out the tensions between government and civil society in providing necessary services in our community. The breathing room for civil society to create connections and allow individuals to establish comforting notions of ‘place’, ‘community’ and ‘tolerant diversity’ is crucial to the prosperity and freedom of a modern democracy.

Many of your readers would have one significant qualification to his analysis of the role of government. What should government do where civil societies fail? What is the role for governments where communities cannot provide for a functioning civil society eg subsistence communities where gaining food is more important than sport, scouts or bbqing for fires.

Clearly missing within Costello’s speech was a notion of equity in the extent to which government will participate in liberal democracies. Equity, whilst not my point of view, is obviously a missing element in the Treasurer’s speech for many Australians.

Having largely accepted what Peter Costello argues it is surprising to me that the government is pursuing some of its policies. Tolerance and diversity unencumbered by government interference is directly threatened by amendments to Cross Media Laws. Costello pointed out that some Australians find ‘proxy’ communities in the Cheers and Neighbours shows . It could also be said that alternative political and social commentary provided by the Fairfax press and the ABC act as a proxy to some Australian viewpoints. How does amending our media laws to provide Australians with fewer voices that influence the debates in our civil society help promote tolerance?

I can already hear your readers suggest that my surprise should extend to his

lack of tolerance in refugees, reconciliation etc. Perhaps they are right and perhaps not. But I emphasise cross media Laws in this context because without a diverse media environment your concerns for a more tolerant society will be increasingly harder to hear.

PS: Isn’t Transparency and Accountability of process key to engendering trust in Iraq? Perhaps Australians should examine the role and accountability of political minders as firewalls protecting our Federal and State government ministers from taking responsibility for their decisions.

 

The democracy conundrum. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

G’Day. I did a rave at a recent politics in the pub do organised by the Redfern Peace Group, after which a bloke called Cameron Andrews told me about a new political discussion group with the daunting aim of reviving Liberalism.

Cameron used to work for former NSW Democrats Senator Vicki Bourne and was incoming NSW president of the Democrats when the party fell apart last year. He wrote a piece for Webdiary about where the Democrats needed to position themselves to survive which I published in Across the Democratic divide in July last year. I’ve republished it at the end of this entry.

Anyway, he left the Dems and now works for David Barr, the independent state member for the North Shore seat of Manly. He and others – including Syd Hickman, a former ALP adviser – have formed The Reid Group, to be launched next Tuesday in NSW Parliament House. Here’s a piece on the Reid Group Cameron wrote for Webdiary, followed by an invitation to the launch. The group’s website is reidgroup.

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The Reid Group: a forum for national renovation

by Cameron Andrews

The term ‘liberal’ has taken a battering in Australia. After a century of misappropriation by conservative politicians, the mere utterance of the word liberal is now met by scorn and derision from anyone who believes in a progressive vision for Australia. But it hasn’t always been so.

Australia has a fine tradition of genuine liberalism. In the late 1800’s it was the dominant paradigm in Australian political life. Our country led the way in introducing liberal reforms like extending suffrage, creating public education and health systems, improving working conditions, and encouraging religious (though, sadly, not racial) tolerance. We were seen as a laboratory for democracy to which other liberal-minded nations should aspire.

As NSW Premier (1894-1899), and fourth Prime Minister (1904-1905), George Reid’s moderate and pragmatic approach to politics epitomised a true liberal leader. As Minister for Public Instruction in the Stuart Government in 1883, George Reid did the hard work in setting up New South Wales world-leading public secular education system. When he later succeeded Parkes to become Premier, Reid reformed land laws, introduced a public health act, modernised the public service, and championed a strong and open economy through his passionate belief in free trade. He believed that Government was about creating equality of opportunity, was cautious with finances, and strongly opposed conservatism.

Yes-No Reid, as he was known, was also a key player in the Federation debate. His refusal to publicly endorse an early version of the Constitution led to the first Federation referendum being defeated in NSW. Reid later reconvened a meeting of the Premiers and successfully negotiated a substantially improved version of the Constitution, which was then voted on and accepted by the Australian people.

George Reid was destined to become Australia’s first Prime Minister, but was denied this honour by the prevarications of the newly emergent Labor Party. Reid’s rejection of the populist position on Federation left him open to attack from opponents and weakened his standing in the electorate. He finally gained the Prime Ministership in 1904, but only held office for eleven months.

The rapid growth of the Labor Party proved to be Reid’s downfall. While he had worked hard to improve the lives of working people, such as through better mining regulation and the introduction of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, Reid was vehemently anti-socialist. In 1908, he sacrificed a lifetime commitment to free trade in order to oppose socialist Labor by allowing his Free Trade Party to be fused with the Protectionists. This new Liberal Party moved away from its liberal roots and aligned itself with conservative rural interests in order to counterbalance the fast-growing ALP.

George Reid’s liberal legacy is little known. He kept little in the way of diaries or correspondence, and much of the material on Reid has been written by his opponents. The illiberalism of the modern so-called Liberal Party means they have shown no interest in maintaining his memory.

The Liberal Party of Australia, its modern incarnation having been reformed by Menzies in the 1940s, has now left any pretence to true liberalism far behind. As a party of social conservatism and market fundamentalism it is more closely aligned with the conservative English Tories and American Republicans, than any true liberal party. Indeed, Prime Minister Howard is the Chairman of the International Democrat Union a conservative and Christian alliance of which arch-conservatives Ronald Reagan and George Bush snr were founders.

A century on, there is no party, or group, in Australia occupying the true liberal position.

Today, Australia’s true liberals have become a weak and fragmented force dispersed among many political camps. Our once great liberal public institutions are under attack, support for tolerance and diversity is in decline, and the demands of special interest groups are being allowed to burden the economy. The aspects of liberalism which have from time-to-time been pursued by both sides of politics are now being subsumed by the mean-spirited individualism that much of the current thinking is geared towards.

The Reid Group, to be launched next week, seeks to provide a forum for the revival of Australian liberalism through the promotion of policy and ideas that will lead to a revitalisation of our public institutions, an open and environmentally sustainable economy, the growth of the community sector, empowered local communities, and efficient government.

The Reid Group does not merely seek to be yet another addition to the ranks of the old left. The failure of the old left to recognise the death of socialism means that it is now completely irrelevant to the majority of Australians. Riven with contradictions, bereft of ideas, and obsessed with the negative, the old-left’s inability to reorganise itself is now allowing the thinking of the so-called new-Right to run rampant. A better approach is needed.

Any proposal for a new vision for Australia must take into account the new factors driving social change in Australia: increased individual responsibility, over-stretched and under-resourced public institutions, a more pluralist and complex society, and a new role for corporate responsibility.

The Reid Group seeks to promote a positive vision for an open economy, progressive society, and sustainable future. Nothing less than a national renovation of Australian political life is required to renew Australia’s place as the open, liberal society to which all should aspire.

***

INVITATION TO THE LAUNCH OF THE REID GROUP

Tuesday 19th August at 1.30pm. Jubilee Room, NSW Parliament House. All welcome

George Reid – Australia’s only true liberal leader

As Premier of New South Wales (1894-1899) and Prime Minister of Australia (1904-1905), George Reid lay the foundation for Australia’s secular public education system, eliminated patronage and corruption from the public service, introduced a public health act, reformed land laws, and championed a strong and prosperous economy through his passionate belief in free trade. His moderate and pragmatic approach to politics helped create a tolerant and prosperous Australia. The merging of George Reid’s Free Trade Party with the Protectionists in 1908 saw Australian liberalism pushed into the background. A century later and there is no party or group in Australia occupying the true liberal position.

The Reid Group – A forum for the revival of Australian liberalism

The Reid Group seeks to promote a national renovation of Australian political life and renew Australia’s place as an open society based on liberal values.

The Reid Group supports:

* Revitalising our public institutions

* Strengthening support for an open and environmentally sustainable economy

* Encouraging the growth of the community sector

* Devolving government authority and empowering local communities

* Maximising the efficiency of government

Launch speakers: Cameron Andrews – Chair of the Reid Group and former Australian Democrats State President, Syd Hickman – Deputy Chair of the Reid Group, speechwriter and former ALP senior adviser.

Launch hosted by: David Barr MP Independent Member for Manly. RSVP/Information: info@reidgroup.org, 0414 366 383

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Division in the Democrats is not new

by Cameron Andrews, July 2002

Some say it goes back to the party’s beginnings. As a party born from the marriage of the Australia Party and New Liberal Movement there has always been an internal tension between traditional left and small l liberal thinking.

That the Democrats have been so successful – despite these internal contradictions – reflects the strength, skill and resolve of a succession of strong and potent leaders over the party’s 25 year history. The clarity of vision shown by Chipp, Haines and Kernot galvanised the party and give it political direction. They were rewarded with the balance of power in the Senate and the opportunity to play a role in shaping the future of the nation.

Now, at a time of weakness, the welding that held the political fault line together has opened up, with very public and potentially disastrous consequences.

The Democrats are not alone in experiencing an internal clash of ideology. A rapidly changing political landscape is calling into question the relevance of all our traditional party structures.

In the Hawke/Keating years Labor forged a highly successful alliance between its working class roots and a new class of urban, tertiary educated social progressives. The Accord with the unions allowed Labor to embrace the economic reforms that attracted the Chardonnay socialists into the fold.

Labor’s recent defeat is conclusive proof that this alliance is unravelling. Labor’s traditional working class support base is rapidly evolving into what Labor frontbencher Mark Latham describes as the aspirational voter – a new breed that more readily identifies with Howard’s portrayal of mainstream Australia than Labor’s brand of a fair go for all.

The Liberal Party, while seemingly unassailable under the politically ruthless stewardship of Howard, also faces an uncertain future. Backbench revolt over issues like changes to media ownership regulation, anti-terrorism legislation and the International Criminal Court point to an internal rupture between the conservatives and the genuine liberals.

The party’s move to the right may have won back the disaffected Hansonites and given Howard a third term, but has left many liberals questioning why they should continue to belong. The party’s failure to hold government in any state in Australia also points to a decay in its party structure.

Even the Greens, currently enjoying a wave of popular support as the protest party of choice, is showing early signs of a conflict between its environmentalist founders and the recent influx of the socialist left. Bob Brown’s recent outburst on Telstra and his subsequent silencing by his party may be a sign of tensions to come now that NSW red Senator Kerry Nettle has joined Senator Brown in the Senate.

If there is to be a future for the Democrats it doesn’t lie in petty bickering over who should be leader. The current turmoil presents the party with the opportunity to finally resolve the crisis of identity that has loomed over the party since its foundation. Going back to Meg or rallying behind Natasha will both lead to political destruction if the underlying root cause of the division is left undiscussed and untreated.

The Democrats have to make a definitive statement as to which stream they will follow. The political landscape is changing in a way which forces the party, even if unwillingly, to reevaluate its identity. As the Greens now firmly occupy the fundamentalist left and both Liberal and Labor have abandoned any pretence of liberalism, the small l liberal course presents an enormous opportunity to take advantage of an emerging political landscape that is leaving the small l liberal voter with no representation. This has been the option pursued by the Liberal Democrats in England which, coupled with excellent campaigning, has led to their recent spectacular rise.

If the Democrats cannot take that decisive step, the only alternative will be to entertain a formal split. The Senators who most closely align with the small l liberal approach have the opportunity to stand as independents. The media attention that such a move would attract would give this group the opportunity to create a new identity and party structure. They would then be free to focus their efforts on developing the policies and vision needed to contest the next election.

The remaining Senators under Stott Despoja, as discussed by political commentators including you, would then face open competition with the Greens.

Times of crisis present opportunity for rebirth and change. With courage and vision the Democrats can embrace the opportunity that the current crisis brings and, with it, the chance to genuinely change politics in Australia.

G’Day. More reader reaction to ethanol and Brendan Nelson’s nastiness to end the week, including more from Mitchell Beston, who explains why this traditional Labor voter is sticking by Howard. To begin, more bad ABC news.

The Australian’s Amanda Meade has a sad story today on major cuts worth $5.4 million to ABC current affairs. (ABC cuts corners on current affairs). She writes:

A cut of $5.4 million to the ABC’s news and current affairs budget has delivered a savage blow to its flagship, Four Corners, which will be forced to shorten its season, curtail its international coverage and rely more on buy-ins from foreign broadcasters.

All other programs in the news and current affairs stable will be forced to cut back on staff or come off air for several weeks each year under the ABC’s cost-cutting drive.

The Four Corners team was given the bad news yesterday. The program will lose three episodes a year and journalists will be encouraged to seek co-productions with other broadcasters to share costs and to minimise travel.

One journalist said it was the worst cut in a decade and the program’s coverage of international affairs would be severely compromised by a lack of overseas travel.

Other programs in the news stable have not had their cuts detailed yet, but The 7.30 Report is likely to lose staff and the award-winning Australian Story is expected to be trimmed from 40 weeks a year to 37.

When asked who would scrutinise the activities of Packer and Murdoch after the government lets the big two buy just about everything under his new media ownership laws, Richard Alston claims the ABC will do the job. Fat chance! The government is trying to destroy Fairfax and the ABC at the same time, leaving the big two and Howard to avoid scrutiny and divide the spoils.

As you know, I’m on a committee organising a campaign to try to stop the Senate passing the cross media legislation when the government presents it again in October. Our website is still a work in progress, but have a look at Xmedia and let me know what you think.

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BRENDAN NELSON’S CENSORSHIP SPIN (See Nelson hides behind Sir Humphrey and Nelson’s purge escalates as the education department burns)

Jonathan Pagan

Disclosure: I am an Arts/Law student at Sydney Uni completing an Honours year in Philosophy, mostly focussed on Ethics, Responsibility and Philosophy of Law. I am also a volunteer refugee caseworker for Amnesty International.

I just wanted to draw your attention to a wonderfully appropriate typo in ‘Nelson’s purge escalates as the education department burns’. Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet head Peter Shergold says:

I think the ministerial adviser and the public servant have complimentary roles.

Too funny! They most certainly do, and that’s the problem isn’t it ? It would be nice if they had complementary and disinterested roles instead, but there you go.

I notice Shergold also says that ministerial advisers are responsible to the Parliament through their Ministers. Well, that’s risible. Just look at Jane Halton (PM’s helper on the PM’s People Smuggling Taskforce). The buck stops with the Minister. If their advisers screw up, they take the responsibility. It’s not very complicated really. Shergold says as much.

So I have a question. Out of curiosity, when was the last time a Minister (from either side of the ideological fence) actually resigned? I don’t mean one that was stabbed in the back and then had it dressed up as a resignation – when did a Minister accept responsibility for a screw-up and resign? I certainly can’t remember one.

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Peter Funnell in Canberra

I thought Children Overboard ate everything for audacious, cynical manipulation of the public service, but this one indicates that it is in effect “policy”! Defended by the Head of PM&C – again. This is very dangerous stuff for our democracy, mate. When does the bloody bell ring for people? I hope it’s soon, but…

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Peter Woodforde in Canberra

It appears that the high research standards insisted on by those who doctor official documents for the lacklustre federal Minister for Education do not apply to official records of meetings of the Prime Minister or other matters of cooked-up “context” – the demise of bulkbilling, the cock-up in defence spending, the grubby Pacific refugee bribery program, Manildra, Tampa, SIEV-X and kids overboard.

Oh, and weapons of mass destruction. Those flames you see are the pants of the entire Howard frontbench going up in smoke. This government does not tell the truth.

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Robert Lawton

An interesting issue is stuck away at the end of the August 8 Herald editorial 5.8.03 editorial:

“The debate… has been about what is a fair balance between public subsidy and private contribution. The Department of Education’s finding that fee increases are now discouraging poorer and older students – especially away from expensive, high-status courses such as law and medicine – is a crucial part of this debate. Broad access to higher education protects social and economic mobility based on merit and effort – a concept deeply embedded in the Australian psyche. Within the existing user-pays model, barriers to entry to universities could be addressed through means-tested scholarships or fee relief, for example. No solution, however, can be formulated unless all the facts are on the table.”

I have little sympathy for these people [the discouraged ex-aspirant solicitor or doctor]… potentially very wealthy professionals once their courses are finished and they are a few years out of university.

Frankly the trend away from law and medicine is due to something else even more “deeply embedded in the Australian psyche” (and by the way, who let that ancient cliche go by the delete button??)

I’m talking about making money fast with minimum effort. Rum Corps ring a bell?? People with IT and business degrees are replacing the old professional graduates. You might not like that, but that’s not the heart of the story as written.

I think Shergold has noted the varying levels of embeddedness of these “concepts” and gone with the one that makes sense in these times.

The political manipulation of the issue is another matter. As I said, it is what governments do now.

Is this really such a scandal? Where’s the significant policy issue? The real issue in this story is making sure that graduates pay for AND care for the institutions which fuel their success.

ETHANOL

Peter Woodforde in Canberra: As a fun-loving Kirribilli party-hound, the Prime Minister should know that if you line up for a full Brazilian under the influence of alcohol, within a short time you’ll be facing all kinds of prickly questions.

Pierre du Parte in Worrigee, NSW: Just read Mitchell Beston’s email in Guilty, your worship, but who cares? wherein he says, “The Australian people … are more concerned with the destination than they are with the journey, and rightly so.” I am NOT enjoying the journey – and fear the destination even more.

Jonathan Pagan in Sydney: Destination rather than journey, Mitchell Beston? So the ends justify the means, do they? Why do you think he makes those ambiguous and heavily qualified statements, Mitchell? May I suggest it is because he has no intention of being held responsible for any nastiness that should result, while if it all turns out well he will be there hugging service women and men, shaking battlers hands and generally providing the ringing endorsements and I-told-you-sos? That may be good politics, but it is also immoral, irresponsible and down-right despicable. Some leader.

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Simon Disney

I used to be an adviser/researcher to six Democrat Senators and MLC’s, including John Coulter, who pushed for years for an ethanol bounty which was eventually introduced by the Keating Government for three years. (I was most recently employed by the Dems as industry, environment and transport adviser to Meg Lees.)

I am probably one of the few people now in this debate who have actually met all the key players at some stage and have actually been to the Manildra plant near Nowra – and who have absolutely no vested interest either political or financial.

Politics and porkies aside, I can’t help feeling sorry for Dick Honan. He’s a smart self made bloke, but probably not the most sophisticated political player on the block. I get the feeling that all he wants to do is run a business that he believes is of some benefit to the country and the environment and that he holds politicians generally at all levels – like the rest of the community – with a fair degree of contempt.

I first visited the Manildra ethanol plant in Nowra in around 1993. Honan had not yet put it into full commercial production, but I was amazed at the ingenuity of the plant and the brilliance of Dr Russell Reeves, the quiet Dungog-based research scientist who developed the enzymes that broke down the waste product gluten to convert it into ethanol.

Honan had bought the majority of the plant lock stock and barrel (from Italy I think) from a company that had gone broke and shipped it over. There were bloody great stainless steel vats lying around in a paddock. Previously, the Manildra company had been under fire for polluting the local creek and had a problem getting rid of the gluten from their flour milling operation.

Manildra, by using their noggins, turned a hard to dispose of polluting waste product into an environmentally friendly, biofuel.

All this crap about car engine damage is precisely why we need a limit on how much you can put in petrol. A blend of 10% in four stroke petrol engines is fine as is a limit of 15% in diesel. Ethanol in diesel can also reduce black sooty particulate emissions by up to 50%. It can damage some plastic parts in some 1980’s car’s fuel systems and cause the fuel gauge of one particular model of 80’s Falcon to misread a bit- but that’s about it as far as I know.

Dr Russell Reeves has also developed enzymes that break down lignocellulosics (the stringy stuff that holds plants and trees together), which means that all those kazillions of green waste bins people drag up their driveways once a week could potentially be used to make biofuel- as could a range of crop wastes and other wastes.

I suppose my point is that the potential is there for dozens of regional ethanol plants in the rust-belt towns and states of Australia to be built. These would use farm wastes and city waste to produce biofuel that keep down fuel prices for farmers. In these days of non-tariff barriers to trade, etc, keeping down farm fuel costs (perhaps the biggest bill in the average farmer’s shoebox) is one of the only ways we can keep a legitimate price edge over some of our overseas competitors.)

The current bun-fight will do nothing to provide a bit of hope and employment to people in RARA-land. People wondered how and why the Hanson phenomena took off like a mid-January bushfire. It was because nobody was offering them any hope.

It looks as though yet again, ‘Canberra’ is going to snuff out another bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

Come the next election, let’s hope that the light at the end of the tunnel is not another steam train full of angry Hanson-type voters heading for the major parties.

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Mitchell Beston in Woy Woy, NSW

I just find it fascinating that people expect our Prime Minister to be morally perfect. He is no different to any other Government that has run my country while I have been alive. I have been a Labor voter traditionally, however I feel that the Labour Party is too focused on minority groups whereas the Liberal Party is focusing on middle Australia.

I hate the way that American culture is invading the Australian way of life, but I am also realistic enough to realise that as an unimportant country in the great scheme of things, our best opportunity to move forward while other countries flounder is to get in bed with the USA. I am hoping that in 40 years time, our country is much the same as it is today.

I grew up in PNG. When you have lived in another country, it enables you to understand how great our country is. I am continually dismayed at how Australia’s people denigrate this country and its Prime Minister when comparatively we are well above the average as a country and John is trying to keep it that way.

PS: To Andrew Byrne – the police were out and about on the Thursday too. Looks like it’s back to the drawing board. Oh, and the threat actually occurred at around lunchtime, not in the late afternoon.

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David Shanahan

With all the discussion of politicians lying and covering it up afterwards I’d like to suggest we voters adopt a new policy towards them – zero tolerance of politicians lying to us. As soon as a pollie (ANY pollie, party is irrelevant) is caught fibbing in parliament or during an election campaign we all agree to vote against them (or their party) at the next election – no excuses, no forgiveness, completely zero tolerance for liars and the party they belong to.

It is useless to keep complaining about them or expect their laughable “codes of conduct” to improve things. Only tough love will cure them of this cancer that grows worse every year. WE are the only ones who can stop it.

Just saying (as so many of Johnny’s supporters are currently, and Paul’s did years ago) “Oh they all lie, what can you do about it?” achieves nothing and in fact encourages them to keep doing it.

It will require discipline and planning on the part of us voters – every time a politician lies and gets caught we need to write it down in an “election diary” that we can consult before we next cast our votes. They know we have short memories, and people like Peter Reith and Max Moore-Wilton will soon be forgotten, so write it down so you remember how they lied to you at the next election!

Get angry, get very angry. Go to the polls in a white hot rage and let them have it where it hurts. Do it with hatred in your heart – irrespective of what party they belong to, whether you have a job or not, whether the value of your house has gone up or down since the last election and whether you like the opposing candidates or not.

It’s for their own good, they’ll thank us later… We’ll only have to do it a couple of times before their behaviour changes, I promise.

Of course once they start telling us the truth we’ll have to face up to some unpleasant truths. We’ll be faced with difficult choices, and we’ll have to stop hiding behind politicians skirts on many issues. Hmm, maybe that’s why we’re where we are today?

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Matt Walker

Jack Robertson writes of the ethanol scandal in No clothes, John, but what a spinner!:

“(It) captures beautifully the cowardly, corrosive, buck-passing, arse-covering sickness of this now out-of-control and civically-bankrupted gaggle of conmen and women we call Federal Government. Howard’s personal tactical armoury, and thus that of the entire crowd, is now nothing but a grab-bag of all our most base Human instincts. Division, populist stirring, bureaucratic delay and ‘security’ suppression, policy hypocrisy and piecemeal opportunism, waffling obfuscation, faked conviction, endless condescending exploitation of the battler, the Anzac, the non-existent Ordinary Australian….”

Thank you Jack, you have sadly summed up my deep loathing for everything John Howard is, everything John Howard says, and everything John Howard stands for.

I keep having this horrible feeling every time that I see the newspaper, seeing the endorsement of his spins, his lies, the continual deceiving of us and the compete apathy of a nation. A nation that is just VERY happy not to know, not make a fuss, and just go on about your business.

Australia is now Howard’s own Matrix – Which pill do you choose, the Blue or Red pill, Oh the dilemma !!! Plug me back in for f…ks sake.

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John Crockett

As Alston says of the ABC, “You can’t have Caesar judging Caesar”. Perhaps the same panel that investigates allegations of bias should determine whether Howard lied to parliament.

This is really 3rd world stuff – crony capitalism and a corrupt public service.

I still can’t work out Howard – is he delusional? Surely he cannot pretend that his debasement of democratic traditions and conventions is in the interests of the Australian people. Are any back-benchers worried by his performance? What are they saying in the board rooms?

This little creep should be laughed out of office. This is a government beyond shame, satire, scruple, or restraint.

***

Meg Ryan (nom de plume)

Running inexorably through Guilty, your worship, but who cares?are two inextricably linked themes – the state of the Howard mentality and the state of the nation’s mentality. Are these two related?

Increasingly, John Howard seems to employ a language to describe his actions which, whether by accident or design, follow a circuitous route into some murky nether region never to be seen again. Whatever did happen to those WMDs, children overboard and the legal, not to mention the human rights of detainees?

Nearer perhaps to the nation’s heart, whatever happened to the huge wine bill racked up by our noble leader? Did he ever manage to put his hand in his pocket and pay for that one? Who knows? Does anybody care? Are our memories in danger of becoming as short as the PMs?

These are worrying questions. The Ethanol debacle, so fleetingly and ineptly debated and so easily dismissed by Mitchell Beston as something all Governments apparently do almost as an expectation, is just another example of our ability to gloss over anything which does not directly affect us.

I seriously question Howard’s wits, have been pondering the increasingly muddled state of his language, his complete inability to answer a straightforward question, his falling back time and again on a sentence structure which reminds me of Edward Lear at his most fantastic.

Stuart Tomlinson mentions the word Alzheimers, and I must admit to having wondered about this on more than one occasion recently. As far as the state of the nation’s wits, or at least as far as what interests us, what gets our pulses racing, I have found the answer in the bottom right hand corner of today’s SMH online:-

Most Viewed Articles

1. Stripper joins queue of women with a tale about Warne

2. North America hit by mysterious power shortages

3. Struggling mags lose to web

4. Pass the sheep’s embryo wrinkle cream

5. Johns played on with serious neck injury

All power to the people, say I.

The purge escalates. The education department burns. Brendan Nelson, education minister, turns his back and pretends it’s nothing to do with him or his desk, where the buck’s supposed to stop.

I detailed the censorship scandal over Australia’s higher education policy and the refusal of the minister to be told that his government’s policy has seen fewer disadvantaged and mature age students able to access our universities in Brendan Nelson hides behind Sir Humphrey.

In summary, the allegation is that the then department head Peter Shergold – now head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet – ordered that sections of the department’s national report on higher education be cut to delete unpalatable facts. Shergold allegedly did this to assist the ‘presentation’ of Nelson’s new policy – to bump up HECS fees even more, thus locking out even more disadvantaged students, and allowing the rich to jump even more queues by paying more up front.

It appears that Nelson and/or his office was involved, but that’s very murky because Nelson won’t talk about it, choosing to hide behind a letter by new department head Jeff Harmer which begs more questions than it answers. Harmer won’t say what Shergold did. Nelson won’t say either, and Shergold says he can’t recall.

Since Tuesday, when I published all the key documents in the scandal:

* Labor revealed that the author of the report, Dr Tom Karmel, was sacked as head of the department’s research team and research team member Phil Aungles was transferred out of the section. Labor also revealed that since the censorship, the research capacity of the department had been gutted – department now focuses on opinion polling via the Liberal Party’s political pollster Mark Textor. (Expert out after adverse report)

* A department witchhunt has begun into who dared tell the Australian people the truth and all public servants in the know have been instructed by Harmer to shut up or else. The department refuses to say whether it has called in the Australian Federal Police and Nelson continues to avoid responsibility by saying it’s a departmental matter. (Education officials face leak inquiry)

In view of all this, I thought you might be interested in the full text of a recent interview Peter ‘can’t recall’ Shergold – who ran the industrial relations department under Peter Reith during the waterfront dispute – gave on how he saw his job as public service chief. You’ll be relieved to read that according to Shergold the public service is still frank and fearless and not reduced to a mere instrument of government spin and deception. You’ll be particularly reassured by this little Shergold gem:

There is a disease running round Australia at the moment and it’s not SARS, it is conspiratorialism. This view that somehow public servants have become politicised and are brow beaten in not providing advice to ministers or that ministerial advisers are putting up walls to ensure that Prime Ministers and ministers don’t hear that advice. I’ve got to say that its absolute balderdash and poppycock.

***

Interview with the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) and leader of the Australian Public Service Peter Shergold on Canberra ABC Radio, July 30, 2003

Chris Uhlman: You’re someone who’s got an academic background and has spent a lot time thinking about the public service, and of course in your role as head of public service commission you’re largely responsible for changing the public service in many ways. How do you see the job of the head of PM and C? What is the role?

Peter Shergold: Well Chris, I think that probably there are two parts to the role. The first is to ensure that the PM is provided with robust policy advice, preferably policy advice that reflect an approach that runs right across government. In other words my department should be there to ensure that you have the coordination of the robust policy advice going through to the PM. So that’s key role. But it also has this second role, I suppose, of giving some leadership to the public service, and it is one that I take very seriously because frankly, certainly outside Canberra, I don’t think there is great enough recognition of the role public servants play within our democracy.

Chris: You say robust advice – of course that’s one of the criticisms that comes now we’ve seen a lot of changes, a generational change to the public service over the last fifteen or twenty years or so… One of the key criticisms, and it came up I know under the Labor government, has come up under the Coalition government – that there is no longer robust advice. It started I guess with the move to contracts, people started saying, ‘Oh well you’ll never get people giving you frank and fearless advice’.

Shergold: Yes, I just don’t believe it. I mean I tend not to use the term frank and fearless advice, and the reason I don’t is that the words slip off the tongue too easily. And they’ve become a cliche, and because they’ve become a cliche they’ve lost power. This is why I tend to use the words ‘robust policy advice’.

Now I have to say to you I can see no evidence whatever that the advice that goes to ministers, the advice that goes to the Prime Minister, is mitigated or softened in any way for political reasons. I have to say I’ve always been surprised that people think it’s somehow courageous to give strong policy advice when you’re usually doing it within the confines of the minister’s or Prime Minister’s room.

I’ve worked for ministers of very different political persuasions. I’ve yet to work for a Minister who didn’t enjoy the fact that they got strong policy advice from their departments. They may not take it, they may want to argue with it, but they saw that there was a real benefit in getting that advice in terms of thinking through the approach they wish to take.

Chris: So have you found yourself in a position where you’ve said ‘No Minister’ or ‘No Prime Minister, that’s not a good idea’?

Shergold: In fact that’s a daft idea. I probably wouldn’t express it in that way because I’m well trained as a public servant. But look there are many many instances when the advice that I’ve provided to ministers is not necessarily the advice they would have been expecting or the advice that they initially wanted to take. In some instances the advice that I propose is taken, in other instances not. I suppose in most instances it is a matter of discussion about the nature of that policy advice. I have never ever dealt with a minister, and I’m certainly not dealing with a Prime Minister, who says for goodness sake don’t give me that policy advice because I don’t want to hear it. Now of course the policy advice has got to be sensible, I mean the way the Westminster system works is you have a professional apolitical, nonpartisan public service, but that is responsive to the elected government of the day, so the policy advice you provide is couched in that way. But the danger is of course you mustn’t make that advice party political advice.

Chris: Do you think then sometimes (that when) people say they’re not giving frank and fearless policy advice anymore (they) mean that people aren’t seeing policies that they want to see emerging perhaps, that they’re not getting their way?

Shergold: Oh yes, I think that there’s an element of that – if you don’t see the policies coming out of government that you’d hoped for that somehow it’s that the public servants are not doing their jobs in providing that policy advice. I can only tell you from everything I see that the policy advice that goes forward to government is robust, is strong, is well argued, hopefully is timely and accurate and that does continue to have a significant influence on the decisions the government of the day takes.

The environment has changed. I mean the person who held my job a generation ago probably had a greater monopoly of the advice that went to the Prime Minister than I do. The fact is that the policy advice I provide is now contestable. We’ve got the people that work in the Minister’s offices, we’ve had the huge expansion in universities, you’ve got a large number of academic think tanks and research institutions, you’ve got strong advocacy organisations. All of those now vie with me for the ear of the Prime Minster and that’s what makes a thriving democracy.

Chris: You bring up ministerial officers, and of course this has come up a lot quite recently and it came up quite controversially during the children overboard affair. We know that the public servants have to appear before committees, that they are responsive to their ministers, they are in a sense open to public scrutiny. We know that politicians have to go up before elections, but we saw with children overboard (that) it doesn’t seem ministerial officers are accountable. Now are they in a certain sense acting in a way that needs to be reformed in your view?

Shergold: I have to go a little bit careful here, simply because an inquiry is about to take place on the accountability of ministerial officers. I am of course accountable through the minister, or in this case through the Prime Minister, to parliament and that’s the reason I sit before the parliamentary committees. Those who work for ministers or Prime Ministers – the advisers – are responsible to parliament through their minister. It is usually their minister who appears and takes responsibility for the actions of advisers. There is an inquiry to see if those lines of inquiry should be made clearer in some way.

But I think there’s a broader issue, which is a concern somehow that the ministerial advisers who have played an increasing role over the last ten or fifteen years are undermining the Westminster tradition. That somehow it’s politicising the public service. Now I have to say I do not share that view.

I think the ministerial adviser and the public servant have complimentary roles. I find it a great relief that when policy advice goes forward from my department to the Prime Minister – of course it is responsive to political direction, as it should be – but it does not have to think about how is this is going to go down in the party room, how is this going to be dealt with (in) the media. Because I know that complementing my work are people sitting in the Prime Minister’s office who have that job. Now I’m a professional public servant, they are ministerial advisers. The key is is that it is a complementary role, and as long as you understand your respective roles I think it is a very healthy relationship.

Chris: Would it not be made more healthy by having it exposed to a little bit more sunlight, to having ministerial advisers perhaps fronting parliamentary committees?

Shergold: Well that’s something that the inquiry in parliament is obviously going to be looking at. I think it is a relationship that is exposed to a great deal of sunlight. It seems to me that it is those outside the system who sometimes imagine and write that the ministerial advisers and the public servants are in a state of almost warfare in terms of the advice that goes to the ministers or Prime Minister. It has not been my experience. In most instances, day in day out, it is a very strong and effective working relationship between the public servant and the ministerial adviser.

Chris: It can get reasonably robust though, if the way they speak to me on occasions is the way they speak to the department.

Shergold: Well it can get robust in terms of the discussions I have with my colleagues or between departments, of course it can. Public policy is serious. These are very profound issues that we’re dealing with, whether it’s security of Australia or violence in indigenous communities. These are issues on which we should argue, we should argue across government, within government, and of course there should be arguments that take place between public servants, ministerial advisers and ministers. That is how the Westminster tradition works.

Chris: We saw recently a lot written about the rebranding exercise, with the Australian government replacing the plethora of logos that we’ve seen spring up over the last ten or fifteen years or so. What’s behind that?

Shergold: Well this is a government decision. It has been based on policy advice in part that been provided by my department in discussions with the Prime Minster’s office. You’ve got a policy decision and now of course it is one that I’m actively seeking to implement.

Because the public service has to do two things. It has to seek to influence the policy decisions, and when those policy decisions are taken it has to get out there and implement those decisions with conviction. Now the thinking behind this is (that) increasingly Australian citizens are not easily able to recognise who is delivering the services they receive or where to find the agency that is delivering the service.

The devolution of responsibility in the public service to agencies has been a very good thing. The fact that departmental secretaries and agencies head now have to take responsibility for financial management or now have to take responsibility for workplace relations or personnel is a good thing. But what has happened, both in the nomenclature of agencies and in the logos they use, is that citizens don’t understand what is being provided by the Australian government anymore. My guess is if you did a call, at least outside Canberra, about Environment Australia many people would think it was a non-government organisation rather than a department of state.

Chris: Is is deeper than that though? Does it go the other way? Do sometimes secretaries or perhaps heads of statutory authorities forget who they’re working for?

Shergold: The fact is in a way we work for two institutions. All of us work for a particular department or agency, (and) we can lose sight of the fact that we also work for the Australian government and are part of a wider entity, the Australian Public Service. The sum of our parts is greater than the individual components. And I do think it is important that we run our departments as productively and effectively as we can. We also recognise that there is a wider interest and that’s why I’m putting such an emphasis on having a whole of government approach to issues and why I am emphasising so much the importance of collegiality across the public service.

Chris: I am wondering whether we are seeing a little bit though of the pendulum swinging back. Are we entering the post corporate age of the public service that we saw so much of in the 90s? The neon signs coming down and the coat of arms going up?

Shergold: Well perhaps we are. I think the key here is to have a single identifiable brand in which is the Australian coat of arms, and for people to be able to understand what it is that the Australian government is providing. And to be able to distinguish that, for example, from state and local governments.

Chris: The opposition (suggests) we may see a loss of the intellectual property there. Is that a concern?

Shergold: I really don’t have concerns in that regard. The intellectual copyright in terms of those logos that have been designed very much rests with the departments and agencies. We’ve made it very clear that this is to be an evolutionary process. We’re not just saying that on 1 September all the old logos have got to be removed and all the stationary burnt. We’re making it clear that we want to do this in the most cost effective manner to bring about this transition. But the intellectual copyright of these designs sits with the agencies who use them. I have to say that most of the response I’ve got has been very positive, both within and outside the public service. If there’s any criticism, it is how did we get into this situation over the last decade.

Chris: Back in 1997 I spoke to Peter Reith about coming into government and I asked … whether or not there was a deep suspicion in the Coalition of the bureaucracy and whether or not they came to government feeling that the bureaucracy just wasn’t on their side. His answer to that question was, ‘Well, Canberra did vote Labor’. Do you think there has been in the past a suspicion by the Coalition of the bureaucracy, and has that changed?

Shergold: I think that there is always a healthy suspicion by politicians of public servants, and if I may say so by public servants of politicians. We do understand that we have different roles within the democratic organisation of Australia. I would hope it would be seen that my appointment to this position, for example, is that of a career public servant who brings a strong public service ethos to the job. Everything that I have seen, both in terms of working for this government and for previous governments, is that ministers and Prime Ministers have a great respect for the policy advice that is provided to them from their bureaucracies. They don’t want to absolutely accept it, they don’t want to feel that the public service has a monopoly of that advice – they are quite right to have that view. The policy advice that I provide needs to be tested in the marketplace of ideas.

Chris: Do you have a concern though that you have to be an advocate for government policy, you’re an instrument by which government policy is implemented, that even if you say ‘I’m acting as an impartial public servant’, (you’re) doing everything (you) can to serve the government of the day? …. And they’ll say ‘Well if there’s a Labor government in a years time then Dr Shergold won’t have a job’?

Shergold: I understand that is the perception, and it is a tricky issue because I want to see a public service that is as much respected for its ability to deliver public policy as to be able to contribute to the making of that public policy. The two go hand in hand.

Now if I go out to ensure that public policy is being implemented there is always the danger that I am being seen as an advocate for a particular political position. Whereas what I see myself doing is making sure that the political decisions that have been taken by the government of the day are being implemented in a committed way. Yes, you do have to walk a borderline, and it is almost inevitable that at some time you will come under criticism for doing that.

The other thing is that I tend to speak with a certain amount of passion on issues. I am engaged by them – they interest me – and the passion that I bring is often interpreted as being political. In fact what I’m speaking with passion about is the nature of public service and how important it is to our democratic institutions. If you look around the world – if you look around our region – you can see so many countries where they have elections every few years, (yet) if you visit those countries you and I would not see them as democracies. And one of the key indicators is that the public service who serve the government and serve the citizens are corrupt or nepotistic and can’t be trusted, and of course what that does is to undermine democracy. Now we don’t have that in this country, I think because of the way the public service has served Australia since federation.

Chris: Since S11 people keep saying the world has changed. One thing we can be sure of is that people keep talking about security and people keep talking about intelligence. Now in the absence of a department of homeland security – which is the track that they’ve gone down in the US – how do you ensure that all of the advice gets to government? That seems to be a bit of a problem in the last month or so… How do you coordinate that?

Shergold: Well first of all I think you’ve got to avoid, as a bureaucrat, thinking the answer lies in bureaucratic structures – it rarely does. In other words if you just slice and dice the public service into different chunks, if you set up something called the Department of Homeland security or an agency for fighting terrorism and you bring together people from transport and the intelligence agencies and Attorney-Generals and put them together in this new box and give it a new label, that is not going to solve your problem, because all you’ll find is that whatever the big issues are … it won’t neatly fit in a bureaucratic box. The answer lies in efficient workplace systems and a cooperative workplace culture.

So what we have to do to get a whole government approach, (to ensure) people are working together and make sure, for example, that the information that comes from the intelligence agencies is then analysed and becomes part of the policy advice going to government.

Let me just – one quick little thing you slipped in there was the notion that somehow the government hasn’t been getting the policy advice in recent months. I think probably you’re talking about the issue of WMD. Now I see this written about in a newspaper on a weekly basis and I can only tell you that it has no resemblance to fact.

The fact is that the Prime Minister and ministers and the National Security Committee were getting detailed information, often on a daily basis, from our intelligence agencies in a coordinated manner. With my dept and DFAT and Defence there was very strong flow of information going through to government which they were using.

There is a disease running round Australia at the moment and it’s not SARS, it is conspiratorialism. This view that somehow public servants have become politicised and are brow beaten in not providing advice to ministers or that ministerial advisers are putting up walls to ensure that Prime Ministers and ministers don’t hear that advice. I’ve got to say that it’s absolute balderdash and poppycock. It is not the reality.

The major speech that the Prime Minister gave in parliament was not something that was simply drafted in the confines of his Prime Ministerial office… There was to-ing and fro-ing, he asked for more information, more information was put in the speech, the speech was then checked by the Office of National Assessments. The process was absolutely correct. There was this very strong flow of information, and yet the media have been writing as if that is not the case. As if what you see is a cowed public service not being able to get its advice across.

Chris: How is it then that the particular issue that we’re talking about (the false claim that Iraq tried to buy Uranium from Niger, a claim known to be false by the US intelligence services and communicated by them to Australia) – do you think that that advice is still correct or was there a mistake there or what?

Shergold: I’m not going to comment on whether the advice was correct. Intelligence I’ve discovered in my time in this department, is a remarkably difficult area. It is every bit as much art as science. You have huge amounts of intelligence coming in, some of which turns out to be accurate, some which is inaccurate, some of which is qualified over time, and then of course the job with this huge amount of intelligence coming from many different sources is to analyse that in the best way possible and that’s why we have the Office of National Assessments. It has that key job in analysing the advice and then of course my department and other departments of state will comment on that advice. But let us not kid ourselves, intelligence is never ever going to get everything right.

 

The silent, stoic republic. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

Pioneer psychologist Carl Rogers defined authenticity as “the stubborn refusal to let one’s true self travel incognito”. Our conservative contributor Daniel Moye is doing lots of self examination lately in the light of John Howard’s third term rule. Here’s his latest piece. Dan is now a Webdiary columnist. His archive is at moye. He is on a promise to send me a mugshot.

Owning my beliefs

by Daniel Moye

How do we own the ideas, ideals and institutions we label ourselves with?

When contemplating the array of debates going on in the Webdiary, I have been tempted to confronted each argument and debate the merits or otherwise of every one, to engorge myself with each battle and become lost in the swirling minutiae of fors and againsts.

Having tossed around many of the problems of each argument I was left with the disheartening realisation that there would barely be enough time in the day, even if all I did was think and write, to barely touch upon the surface of one of them. When this sickening reality finally struck home, I was tempted to throw the towel in and go to sleep.

Unfortunately for all Webdiary readers, I stayed awake and came to the conclusion that I would have to go back to the philosophical foundations of my worldview and begin again.

Finding myself defending the messenger more so than the message – in political discussions on the Web and in the real world – became depressing. Having been found guilty or gullible by association in these conversations, I thought I should dig around some philosophical books to see if I really had conservative beliefs or not. Rather than bore you with multiple references, I will provide you with a brief extract from The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought:

Conservatism/Conservative

As a political doctrine, conservatism emphasizes ‘the politics of imperfection’. Philosophical conservatism emphasizes tradition, authority, law and order, and the impossibility of achieving anything resembling the utopias which radicals have longed for. Human nature, in the eyes of most conservatives, is too imperfect to allow society to dispense with the guidance of tradition and the government of firm authority. Mankind is too shortsighted and too passionate to agree on one answer to the question how best to order our social and political affairs, let alone to do everything that it would demand. It is better to emphasises known duties, to accommodate individual diversity by letting individuals use their own property in the ways they see fit, to preserve the authority of the state by limiting its role to national defence and the policing of the market place, and to strengthen institutions such as the family, schools and churches as a means of securing a sound public morality. Many conservatives have objected to attempts to elicit a ‘philosophy’ of conservatism on the ground that conservatism is not a creed but a disposition, and that the conservative differs from radicals and intellectuals precisely because he is willing to change his mind and abandon any particular doctrine or any particular goal for the sake of conserving the vital interests of his society.(pp167-168)

Having read this outline, I was fortified in my belief that a ‘conservative’ I am. Having found out this answer and the reassurance I sought, a larger question begged itself.

In an age of brands, spin (call it propaganda if you choose) and ‘shoot the messenger’ politics, how do we own the ideas, ideals and institutions we label ourselves with?

Carmen Lawrence underlined many of the problems that face the Australian democracy in Ideas to save our withering democracy, and whilst I do not agree with every characterisation that she made or agreed with the remedies she put forward, there were some valuable observations. The following is my characterisation of some of them.

Are political parties unduly sacrificing ‘the national interest’, political debate and accountable and responsible government by focussing on strategies to maintain power?

How is the medium of communication (TV, mass media, sound byte politics) shaping Australian political debate, and is this directly undermining the confidence of the Australian people in our democratic institutions?

What role are intermediaries between the people and our representatives – journalists, spin doctors, party machine men, special interest groups and corporations – having in our democracy? All may have a role and even a necessary voice – but do we have the institutional transparency to be able to monitor whether there are intersections of undue influence with our major political parties?

Without debating the issues that Ms. Lawrence raised, I would like readers to consider the problem from this point of view: How do we own the ideas, ideals and institutions we label ourselves with?

In our democracy we impart our sovereignty to elected representatives and through this social contract our ideas, ideals and institutions live and change. Does it require us, as Dr Lawrence puts forth, to actively reform our parliamentary democracy to disintermediate and make our representatives more accountable? Put another way, how do we ensure that our political parties hold the national interest first and foremost in their policy framework? Also, just as importantly, how do we restore the ownership of the people in the ideas, ideals and institutions we associate ourselves with?

The central issue I am trying to draw attention to is this – we need to reinvestigate our beliefs. Do you feel that you own the ideas, ideals and institutions you label yourself with?

You could argue each and every issue on Webdiary and be lost in the minutiae of each battle. There are lots of people attempting to own your ideas, ideals and institutions – are you winning battles but losing the war? Or alternatively switch off Carmen, Margo and myself – throw in the towel and sleep well. Goodnight.

 

The silent, stoic republic. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

How do we own the ideas, ideals and institutions we label ourselves with?

When contemplating the array of debates going on in the Webdiary, I have been tempted to confronted each argument and debate the merits or otherwise of every one, to engorge myself with each battle and become lost in the swirling minutiae of fors and againsts.

Having tossed around many of the problems of each argument I was left with the disheartening realisation that there would barely be enough time in the day, even if all I did was think and write, to barely touch upon the surface of one of them. When this sickening reality finally struck home, I was tempted to throw the towel in and go to sleep.

Unfortunately for all Webdiary readers, I stayed awake and came to the conclusion that I would have to go back to the philosophical foundations of my worldview and begin again.

Finding myself defending the messenger more so than the message – in political discussions on the Web and in the real world – became depressing. Having been found guilty or gullible by association in these conversations, I thought I should dig around some philosophical books to see if I really had conservative beliefs or not. Rather than bore you with multiple references, I will provide you with a brief extract from The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought:

Conservatism/Conservative

As a political doctrine, conservatism emphasizes ‘the politics of imperfection’. Philosophical conservatism emphasizes tradition, authority, law and order, and the impossibility of achieving anything resembling the utopias which radicals have longed for. Human nature, in the eyes of most conservatives, is too imperfect to allow society to dispense with the guidance of tradition and the government of firm authority. Mankind is too shortsighted and too passionate to agree on one answer to the question how best to order our social and political affairs, let alone to do everything that it would demand. It is better to emphasises known duties, to accommodate individual diversity by letting individuals use their own property in the ways they see fit, to preserve the authority of the state by limiting its role to national defence and the policing of the market place, and to strengthen institutions such as the family, schools and churches as a means of securing a sound public morality. Many conservatives have objected to attempts to elicit a ‘philosophy’ of conservatism on the ground that conservatism is not a creed but a disposition, and that the conservative differs from radicals and intellectuals precisely because he is willing to change his mind and abandon any particular doctrine or any particular goal for the sake of conserving the vital interests of his society.(pp167-168)

Having read this outline, I was fortified in my belief that a ‘conservative’ I am. Having found out this answer and the reassurance I sought, a larger question begged itself.

In an age of brands, spin (call it propaganda if you choose) and ‘shoot the messenger’ politics, how do we own the ideas, ideals and institutions we label ourselves with?

Carmen Lawrence underlined many of the problems that face the Australian democracy in Ideas to save our withering democracy, and whilst I do not agree with every characterisation that she made or agreed with the remedies she put forward, there were some valuable observations. The following is my characterisation of some of them.

Are political parties unduly sacrificing ‘the national interest’, political debate and accountable and responsible government by focussing on strategies to maintain power?

How is the medium of communication (TV, mass media, sound byte politics) shaping Australian political debate, and is this directly undermining the confidence of the Australian people in our democratic institutions?

What role are intermediaries between the people and our representatives – journalists, spin doctors, party machine men, special interest groups and corporations – having in our democracy? All may have a role and even a necessary voice – but do we have the institutional transparency to be able to monitor whether there are intersections of undue influence with our major political parties?

Without debating the issues that Ms. Lawrence raised, I would like readers to consider the problem from this point of view: How do we own the ideas, ideals and institutions we label ourselves with?

In our democracy we impart our sovereignty to elected representatives and through this social contract our ideas, ideals and institutions live and change. Does it require us, as Dr Lawrence puts forth, to actively reform our parliamentary democracy to disintermediate and make our representatives more accountable? Put another way, how do we ensure that our political parties hold the national interest first and foremost in their policy framework? Also, just as importantly, how do we restore the ownership of the people in the ideas, ideals and institutions we associate ourselves with?

The central issue I am trying to draw attention to is this – we need to reinvestigate our beliefs. Do you feel that you own the ideas, ideals and institutions you label yourself with?

You could argue each and every issue on Webdiary and be lost in the minutiae of each battle. There are lots of people attempting to own your ideas, ideals and institutions – are you winning battles but losing the war? Or alternatively switch off Carmen, Margo and myself – throw in the towel and sleep well. Goodnight.