Thoughts on Freedom

Kevin Rudd set the tone for the 2020 summit with this, ‘the job of government is to set a strategic vision for the nation.’  The PM then urged delegates to ‘ignore’ critics of the summit. Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson, agrees with Kev saying he quite likes the summit, as there is ‘some method to the madness’.

So that’s it folks - there is simply no opposition to 2020. What they said is going to happen. So what did they come up with? What are the ideas that our brightest and best 1,000 (gender balanced of course) have produced? 

I’ve tried to pick up the actual ideas as opposed to the vapid, nauseating, white picket-fence, white middle class, patronising apple-pie dirge (for example in the ‘productivity’ room, the participants proposed encouraging ‘children to try new things without fear of failure’). Fuck me, why hadn’t i thought of that before? 

So take a deep breath, pour yourself a stiff brandy (whilst you still can) and come with me for a walk about as far as you can travel away from Liberty Street…

Social Policy

“We’ve got our fair share of welfare workers who came with a clear focus on 5% of the population” remarked Chair, Tim Costello. Do you really want to hear what they came up with?  ok - big deep breath needed …

A national paid maternity scheme.

A new health equality commission.

To legalise all drugs to reduce prison overcrowding. (yes!)

Barry Jones wants everyone to be forced to live in densely populated urban hubs. (jeez -who the hell invited the Brownshirts?)

The introduction of a rent-to-buy scheme by 2020 whereby the government guarantees the mortgages of those who can’t afford them. (err…anyone here heard of sub-prime?)

Federal recognition of gay marriage.  (yes!)

Maxine McCew wants a 50% quota on female MPs (a teensy bit sexist perhaps?  why not a quota on all Christians, Muslims and ginger-haired people too?) 

Read more »

Wasn’t it better during the Howard government, when we weren’t able to quantify how dim Australia’s best and brightest actually were? Or how few ideas they had?

Putting aside completely the merits of the individual proposals, some of the ‘new ideas’ that have been aired include: a republic, an aboriginal treaty, bill of rights, subsidies for energy saving devices, taxes on junk food, etc etc etc.

About the only idea in the list on the SMH website that does not appear every single day in the national media and on talk back radio is the idea that the tax code should be made even more progressive - when most media commentators criticise Australia’s tax system, their criticism isn’t that it is too flat.

When the ideas are not entirely banal they are entirely predictable. The cultural stream wants a national cultural policy, and a culture minister to manage it. Anybody who has ever been to one of the dozens of similar conferences that are held each year around the country will be familiar with the inevitable proposal to have a federal ‘minister for the future’ or something equally as daft.

And yet, the ideas aren’t the point - even the ones that haven’t been rehearsed over and over already in the public sphere.

2020 is a grand spectacle, an elaborate theatrical show complete with movie stars and comedians and passion and energy and geniuses and journalists, all of which is supposed to symbolise the federal government’s break with the dark Howard past. All levels of government and all sectors of the economy are present under the guiding hand of Canberra to work together for a progressive Australian future.

2020 is like a successful version of Brendan Nelson’s listening tour - a publicity stunt designed specifically to fill the Rudd government up with enough political capital to pursue a second and third term. After all, is it really too cynical to believe that this major government conference has a political agenda? (That is, apparently, too much for even the federal opposition to believe)

This weekend just goes to show how utterly credulous Australia’s public intellectuals actually are.

(I wrote about the summit when it was first announced: “Rudd summit puts con into consensus“. I think it holds up.)

Crossposted at chrisberg.org

The SMH carries an article on Saturdays front page lamenting the power the state of NSW is giving itself in regards to bipassing property rights.

THE State Government plans to give its agencies and councils power to compulsorily acquire private land to re-sell to developers at a profit - or, if they choose, at a reduced price so the developers make even more money.

Legal authorities describe as “quite remarkable” a section of new planning laws flagged by the Minister for Planning, Frank Sartor, to acquire land by force to onsell to private developers.

I agree with the concerns raised in the article. However I do find odd the notion that governments stealing your land and selling it is somehow worse than stealing your land and keeping it. And is there really any distinction between stealing your land so a private for profit road can be built for the public good or stealing your land so a private for profit shopping mall can be built for the public good? In one sense I think there is a distinction in so far as new road corridors are not easily or readily created through private market means, whilst shopping centres are. However the key legal constraint on governments (at all tiers) really ought to be a proper and transparent assessment process of the public benefit of such a forced acquisition which is open to legal challenge, and a system of just compensation.

OK, I know I will never get many of you on the John McCain bandwagon, (I have been quietly supporting him for a while without telling you), and you all seem to think Ron Paul is the answer to the prayers of all of Libertaria.

 Here is a guy for you who will do far more for the libertarian movement than any of the other LP candidates and Paul combined, with the exception of Wayne Root, who although he is the best of them will probably now find the going tough.

 The LP now finds itself in the unusual position of having two candidates with actual federal government experience, Bob Barr as a former congressman, and former Democrat Senator Mike Gravel.

Read more »