Thoughts on Freedom

From the 1951 film Home Town Story, now apparently only famous for a minor role by Marilyn Monroe. Link via Craig Newmark.

It’s fun to go to a protest where there are signs that urge people to “SAY NO TO THE NANNY STATE”. A less convincing sign that was displayed at last night’s protest against Victoria’s new 2am lockout was one that pictorially argued that Saddam Hussein = John Brumby, implying that the former Iraqi dictator was, in fact, a better than average Labor premier.

Crappy phone camera shot: crowd gathers at Treasury Gardens at about 5:30pm.

There was a degree of success yesterday before the protest: some forty-seven licencees were granted temporary exemptions to the 2am rule. However, they had to agree to some fairly onerous extra regulations, such as doubling their security, and agreeing not to advertise or promote the fact that they were open for new customers after 2am. This could provide a compromise position for the licencees and government to agree on, but the government has indicated that it wants to push on with the lockout regardless.

Brumby is playing up the effect drunken violence has on ruining lives. Sure, but there doesn’t seem to be much evidence to suggest that a lockout is the correct policy solution. Three people were stabbed in brawls in the city last night. But conspiciously, they were stabbed before midnight - a 2am lockout would have no effect on this incident. It’s hard not to agree with another placard held up last night: “POLICE NOT POLICY”

My IPA colleague, Tim Wilson in the centre of the photo whips up the crowd with his blue megaphone. When he told a reporter that he was from the Institute of Public Affairs, the reporter was pretty confused.

The media has reported about 3000 people turned up to the protest - that seems about right to me, but I’m hardly a protest veteran. Having marched to the Victorian parliament (30 minutes before the organisers actually wanted them to) the speeches when we got there were unfortunately a bit lacklustre. One speaker, a Greens candidate for (I presume) the Gippsland byelection made the strange decision to focus his five minute speech on windfarms and carbon emissions, rather than liquour licences.

Outside the Victorian Parliament.

Members of the Socialist Party were handing out flyers when we turned up that maintained that the key issue with the lockout was war, racism and capitalism. Most of my IPA colleagues were smart enough not to take one - I absentmindedly accepted the flyer because I was distracted looking to get a NO 2AM badge. No dice, unfortunately.

But for the most part, the protest did well to keep on message. I don’t think the vast majority of those who attended were otherwise politically-minded - the idea of a late-night lockout offends a lot of people who hold no strong views on baby bonuses, FuelWatch and infrastructure spending. It would be great if more of these people could become activated in a libertarian direction, but I’m sadly skeptical.

Certainly the Liberal Party missed the opportunity to push an anti-Brumby message - imposing a late-night lockout was, embarrassingly, a key Liberal policy for the last election. Still, the chance to take sides with both partiers (by opposing the lockout) and law-and-order folks (by demanding more police on the streets) against the Labor government was depressingly, and, to my mind foolishly, discarded.

The protest was worth it, but it was hardly a massive blow for liberty - the issue now rests with the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Crossposted at www.chrisberg.org.

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

John Humphreys has kindly asked me if I would join the ALS blog stable – I will be intermittently posting here and at www.chrisberg.org, when the mood strikes. Briefly, I’m a Research Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs, Editor of the IPA Review, and probably the only self-described libertarian with a column in the Melbourne Age. My research area is usually regulatory policy, but I’m also interested in history, culture and technology.

A peculiarity of critiques of modern capitalism is that it is, at least in part, an aesthetic critique. McMansions do not just create environmental and socially problems, they are also ugly. Plasma screens and home theatre systems are crass. Advertising on the scale that plasters New York or Hong Kong is obnoxious – European cities are much more refined. (The Melbourne City Council, well known for its trendy environmentalism, also has a thing against billboards.)

By contrast, libertarians tend to reject aesthetics as even a valid criteria for political criticism. If someone wants to live in a McMansions or full their house up with expensive and ugly televisions, who are we to judge? And if you don’t like advertising, go have one of those ‘sea-changes’ that the weekend papers keep telling us is the new coolest thing. Spend enough time around other liberals or libertarians and this reaction becomes instinctive – it’s none of our business; some people like some things, others like other things, etc etc etc. We just don’t like passing judgment on other people’s choices, and this rightly places us in sharp contrast with our political opponents.
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