Facebook Instagram Twitter Youtube
    Latest

    Law

    Home Law

    Resisting centralist power – Part 2

    By
    Bob Day
    -
    0

    Following the Second World War, the most dramatic shift in the balance of tax power between the States and Commonwealth occurred.

    In 1942, under the leadership of John Curtin as Prime Minister and Ben Chifley as Federal Treasurer, all income taxing authority was handed over to the Commonwealth by the States for the duration of the war under the defence power of the Constitution. This was intended to be temporary and to last for a year after the end of the war. However, while the war ended in 1945, the role of the Commonwealth as the sole income taxing authority did not.

    For those concerned at the erosion of State rights through judicial activism, even worse was to come when, following the end of the Second World War, the High Court ruled that income tax collections could exist as an exclusive Commonwealth right under the normal powers of the Constitution.

    Australia has the highest level of vertical fiscal imbalance of any federation in the world.

    During the 1950s the State of Victoria mounted two legal challenges to the uniform tax legislation without success, and in 1959 at a Special Premiers’ Conference discussion of a return of income tax power to the States was on the agenda but could not be agreed. While there remains no legal barrier to the States exercising their right to levy income tax, there are practical (and political) reasons not to do so.

    In the post war era, the centralisation of power continued to be affirmed through decisions of the High Court including the Franklin Dam case in 1988, the Queensland Rainforest case in 1989, Mabo in 1992, and the Wik Peoples case in 1996.

    In speaking of the influence of the High Court and the threat to federalism arising from its decisions, Sir Harry Gibbs, former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia said:

    “It is a basic rule in the interpretation of any written document and indeed a matter of common sense that the whole document must be looked at in order to ascertain the meaning of any particular part. It might therefore have been supposed that in deciding on the meaning of the paragraphs of the Constitution which confer power on the Commonwealth Parliament, the Courts would have resolved any ambiguity by interpreting the provisions in a way that would maintain the federal distribution of power which the Constitution so obviously appears to guarantee ….. However, since 1920 the High Court has consistently rejected an approach of that kind.”

    The struggle for power continued in the High Court in 2006 with the States challenging the Commonwealth over the validity of the federal WorkChoices legislation, which was enacted under the Corporations power. The High Court overwhelmingly came down in favour of the Commonwealth. While workplace relations laws, prior to the WorkChoices legislation, were a relic of a bygone era and desperately in need of reform, the rights of States in the area of industrial relations were now all but gone. For example, the 1999 decision of the High Court to allow SA State government public servants to be covered by a Federal Award undermined that State’s competitiveness.

    The ability of a small, low cost-of-living State to use its industrial relations system to create a competitive edge over the larger States is important. South Australia, for example, under Premier Sir Thomas Playford, used this strategy (in conjunction with tariffs) to build a manufacturing base in Adelaide in the 1950s and 60s. Likewise Tasmania may wish to trade-off high salaries for quality of life and a green and clean environment.

    The most dramatic shift in the balance of tax power between the States and Commonwealth occurred.

    Undermining the rights of States is also evident in the actions of a burgeoning and, at times, arrogant Federal bureaucracy where the controlling hand of the Commonwealth is exercised through the terms and conditions embedded in funding arrangements with State government agencies.

    Since federation the tax revenue balance has moved dramatically from the States to the Commonwealth. The imbalance that now exists, known as Vertical Fiscal Imbalance, has put the Commonwealth in an all-powerful position, able to dictate to the States how and where funds are spent.

    Australia has the highest level of vertical fiscal imbalance of any federation in the world. The Federal government raises over 70% of all general government revenues, much more than is required to fund its own operations. The States raise just over half what they require to fund theirs. The balance of the States’ financial requirements is met through Commonwealth grants. This gives the Commonwealth enormous economic power and influence, and is inefficient and inequitable. It has the effect of keeping States like South Australia and Tasmania in a position of mendicancy.

    Join Mailing List

    Ideally, the States and the Commonwealth should only collect taxes for their own purposes with taxpayers and consumers fully informed as to what is a State tax and what is a Commonwealth tax. Those who spend the money should have the responsibility of raising it. It is about accountability, and governments of all persuasions should be specifically accountable for the money they raise and spend.

    The use of Section 96 of the Australian Constitution, which empowers the Commonwealth to make grants to any State “on such terms and conditions as the Parliament thinks fit”, has been used by Federal governments to wield power over the States.

    The Commonwealth’s control over State borrowings has further served to erode the power of States and their capacity to control their own destiny.

    Got something to say?

    Liberty Itch is Australia’s leading libertarian media outlet. Its stable of writers has promoted the cause of liberty and freedom across the economic and social spectrum through the publication of more than 300 quality articles.

    Do you have something you’d like to say? If so, please send your contribution to editor@libertyitch.com

    Resisting Centralist Power – Part 1

    By
    Bob Day
    -
    0

    In 1901, when six individual British colonies came together as a federation, it was in an environment of extensive and, at times, torrid debate. While there was widespread acceptance that the colonies could achieve together what they could not achieve alone, there was also apprehension about the extent to which the power to govern would become centralised.

    The enthusiasm and sense of expectation surrounding the birth of a nation was tempered by concerns about the future autonomy of individual colonies. The smaller colonies were also apprehensive about the power and influence the larger colonies might exercise.

    As a consequence, the process leading to the formation of the Australian Constitution was both painstaking and torturous.

    One can imagine how much this would have helped the fledgling Commonwealth-State relationship.

    During the first of the convention debates in 1891, Sir Samuel Griffith, who would later become the first Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, captured the essence of concerns saying:

    “We must not lose sight of the essential condition that this is to be a federation of states and not a single government of Australia. The separate states are to continue as autonomous bodies, surrendering only so much of their power as is necessary for the establishment of a general government to do for them collectively what they cannot do individually for themselves.”

    In uniting as a nation, each colony agreed to cede a portion of its powers so that the nation might become “one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown.” It is clear, both from the Constitution and from the record of the Convention debates, that the Federal government was to have significant but well-defined powers. All powers not defined in the Constitution, known as the residual powers, were to remain the province of the States. However, the ink was barely dry on the Constitution before a growing appetite for centralised power emerged.

    Foundations of Power

    The powers of the Commonwealth were set out in Section 51 of the Constitution, and their scope described in 39 subsections known as a head of power. While the States retained the right to legislate on these matters as well, the Constitution provided that where any inconsistency existed between Federal and State legislation, the Federal legislation prevailed.

    The powers ceded to the Federal government were very wide and included interstate trade and commerce, corporations, external affairs, taxation, defence, quarantine, currency, pensions, banking and many more.

    Centralisation of Power

    As one might expect, the first issue on which the boundaries of authority between the States and Commonwealth were tested related to tax, with the High Court becoming the arena for argument. The gloves came off, the lawyers were primed, and the fight over money began.

    The first tests came in 1904 in Peterwald v Bartley where the High Court examined whether the Constitution prohibited the States from imposing excise duty. This was followed the same year with D’Emden v Pedder, in which the power of the States to impose taxes on Commonwealth activities was rejected. 

    In 1908, in response to the Constitutional requirement that any surplus tax revenues in the first decade of Federation be returned to the States, the Commonwealth enacted legislation to pay these surpluses into a trust account thereby avoiding payment to the States. One can imagine how much this would have helped the fledgling Commonwealth-State relationship.

    In 1910, the Constitutional obligation that not less than 75 per cent of the Commonwealth’s customs and excise revenue be distributed to the States came to an end. While the arrangement was mandated for only the first decade of Federation, the Commonwealth terminated the arrangement as soon as it was legally able to do so, much to the ire of the States.

    In uniting as a nation, each colony agreed to cede a portion of its powers so that the nation might become “one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown.”

    Commonwealth government activity and bureaucracy then began to grow rapidly, fed by its growing tax harvest. The years leading up to World War 1 (1910-1914) saw increases in Commonwealth control of the economy and in social services. In 1915, following the entry of Australia into the war, the Commonwealth introduced income tax which co-existed with income tax applied by the States.

    Over the next few decades, both in the High Court and through legislation, the Commonwealth and States battled for territory in a number of areas including tax, defence and welfare services. So extreme was the discontent with the way the federation was heading that some States, most notably Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania, contemplated secession. In 1933 a referendum was held in Western Australia.

    At the time there was a Great Depression and every State was struggling. Some believed the problems were a result of Federal government policies and actions, particularly in respect of tariffs imposed to protect the manufacturing and sugar industries.

    Join Mailing List

    The result of the WA referendum sent shock waves through the rest of Australia with 68% of West Australians voting in favour of secession. This was about the same number who had voted to join the Federation only 33 years earlier. The desire of West Australians to separate from the Federation was not fulfilled as the British Imperial Parliament refused to act, claiming that such an action could only be taken with the consent of the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia.

    Got something to say?

    Liberty Itch is Australia’s leading libertarian media outlet. Its stable of writers has promoted the cause of liberty and freedom across the economic and social spectrum through the publication of more than 300 quality articles.

    Do you have something you’d like to say? If so, please send your contribution to editor@libertyitch.com

    The Arguments and Rebuttals for Government Maintenance of Competition

    By
    Kenelm Tonkin
    -
    0

    This week the US Federal Court handed-down its decision in the United States of America et al v Google LLC, in which the US Government challenged Google for using exclusionary monopolistic behaviour to deny its rivals access to distribution channels provided by Apple and Samsung. Google lost but may appeal.

    Formidable, straight-shooting American libertarian, Hannah Cox, raised some interesting points in her Newsweek opinion piece Google Is No Monopoly. It’s Widely Used Because It’s The Best about competition law – what Americans call anti-trust law. 

    This is the area of law which deals with maintaining competition by determining whether companies wield monopolistic-like behaviour to inhibit competition, as well as protecting consumers.

    Knowing whether a policy is inside or outside the world of libertarianism can be a close fought thing at the best of times. As Justin Amash, a prominent American libertarian who just lost his bid for the US Senate in Michigan, said “Libertarians spend so much time arguing over who is the purest libertarian that they forget to work together to advance liberty.” 

    But define the very edges of libertarianism we must, and competition law seemed ready for a battle.

    Hannah took the corporation’s side of the debate, as the purist, to argue ‘market forces should maintain competition not government.’ Sounds libertarian, right? 

    But nagging doubt afflicted me. So, this article is me nailing my colours to the mast in countering “sometimes, rarely, market forces create monopolies which bring competition to a halt. When this happens, government must act as referee and deal with the monopoly to reinstate the free market.”

    So here are her arguments and my rebuttals.

    ARGUMENT #1 “MONOPOLY MEANS ONE”

    Hannah challenges any assertion that Google is a monopoly. She says, “In fact, there are over 30 other search engines in the world that are dedicated solely to search functionality, including Yahoo!, Bing and Duck, Duck, Go.” If there are many search engines, even just two, Google can’t be a monopoly. The ‘mono’ in monopoly means one.

    The mistake some libertarians make is to argue big government is the only potential agent for coercion in society. 

    REBUTTAL #1 “MONOPOLY IS CONTEXTUAL”

    My understanding of the US Sherman Act is that it focuses on “monopoly-like behaviour”, not whether a company is strictly speaking a monopoly. So, whether Google is a monopoly is irrelevant.

    Second, “monopoly” is defined in OxfordReference.com as “The situation where one company controls all or a substantial majority of a market.” 

    That is, substantial majority, not 100%.

    In the US search engine market, Google has 88.14% of annual searches. In the court case, they said 90%. Bing is #2 with 6.79%. Yahoo! And DuckDuckGo come in at #3 and #4 with 2.63% and 2.55% respectively. 

    All other players have less than 1% including Baidu, a Chinese search engine, and Yandex, a Russian rival. 

    88.14% is clearly a “substantial majority of the market. 

    So my rebuttal is that a monopoly doesn’t have to be present, just monopoly-like behaviour.

    If Google had 99.99999% of the market and there was one other player at 0.00001%, Cox would continue to argue Google is not a monopoly. That makes no sense. 

    ARGUMENT #2 “EXCLUSIVE ACCESS IS NOT MONOPOLISTIC”

    Hannah then argues that Google has just provided more convenience than its rivals, or better access, implying distribution channels aren’t a seismic advantage. She’s essentially saying securing exclusive access is not monopolistic.

    REBUTTAL #2 “EXCLUSIVE ACCESS IS MONOPOLISTIC”

    When you break down what she’s saying, it’s that Google is just more convenient to access. But the converse must also be true: that Google’s competitors Yahoo!, Bing and DuckDuckGo are more inconvenient to access. In commerce, convenience matters. There are thousands of markets where convenience is the deciding factor in commercial success. 

    Imagine two identical retailers, one with parking and one without. The one with parking will outcompete the other because customers have more access to it. Or think of marketing channel access like a waterpipe: if there are two pipes into town, one owned by Apple and the other Samsung, and Google pumps its water through those two pipes, Hannah would have you believe that it is no big deal for DuckDuckGo water to be accessed by walking 10 km and carrying it in a bucket on your head.

    Convenience matters. Access matters. Securing exclusive access at the expense of your rivals is monopolistic. 

    ARGUMENT #3 “DISTRIBUTION DEAL IS EVIDENCE OF SUPERIOR NEGOTIATION AND INTELLIGENCE”

    Then Cox continues with the following: “Being smart enough to negotiate such deals simply makes Google better at its job.”

    REBUTTAL #3 “DISTRIBUTION DEAL IS EVIDENCE OF MORE MONEY”

    Maybe.

    Is this Hannah inadvertently arguing that Google has a monopoly of high IQ negotiators?

    Putting that aside, what Hannah omits from her article is that Google had to pay Apple and Samsung billions for the rights to those distribution channels. So, Google spent billions to deny their competitors access. These billions are war-chests their rivals don’t have due to exclusive dealing.

    There’s a timeline of cause and effect to consider in the industry. Here’s a list of search engines and the year they were founded:

    1994 WebCrawler

    1994 Lycos

    1994 Infoseek

    1995 Yahoo! with AltaVista

    1998 Google

    2008 DuckDuckGo

    2009 Bing

    So Google joined the market after Yahoo!. 

    By 2002, it overtook Yahoo! for searches per annum and has been in the #1 position since.

    Perhaps its search algorithms were superior. No problems there; that’s competition.

    But since then Google has locked in agreements with Apple that Google be the default search engine on its devices. 

    When Samsung took up Android, Google repeated the process.

    Here are the real figures. Google pays Apple between $8 billion and $12 billion annually to remain the default search engine on Apple devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

    Google reportedly is paying Samsung $8 billion over 4 years for similar access.

    Let’s call that $20 billion in total, and recurring over various intervals.

    Can Yahoo!, Bing and DuckDuckGo afford this?

    Yahoo! is owned by Verizon which, as at Q2 FY2024, had $17.2 billion in cash or cash equivalents.

    Bing is owned by Microsoft which, as at Q3 FY2024, had $130 billion in cash or cash equivalents.

    DuckDuckGo is a private company with speculated cash of $100 million in 2021.

    Therefore, Google has effectively shut-out Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo, the #2 and #4 in the market. Exclusionary actions like this emphasise the monopolistic nature of Google’s claim in search.

    ARGUMENT #4 “NO HARM CAUSED BY DOMINANT POSITION”

    Cox further argues that “The company has in no way harmed consumers, defrauded anyone, or even acted in an unfair way toward their competition.” 

    REBUTTAL #4 “HARM CAUSED BY DOMINANT POSITION”

    I’m surprised any libertarian would argue Big Tech has harmed no-one.

    I’ve just been through how Google uses exclusionary channel agreements to shut-out Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo. This seems unfair at first instance.

    Does Google defraud or misinform? Yes. 

    Douglas Murray famously challenged John Anderson to type “white couple” into Google and see the results. Google have since changed the bias in their algorithm so it’s not so obvious, but the following results demonstrate the bias still lingers.

    As at 7 August 2024, when you query Google images for “black heterosexual couple” and review the first 20 results, here’s what you get:

    • Black heterosexual couple: 17
    • Black homosexual couple: 2
    • Mixed heterosexual couple: 1

    And when you query Google images for “white heterosexual couple” and review the first 20 results, here’s what you get:

    • White heterosexual couple: 13
    • Why Google Images searches aren’t racist: 2
    • Mixed heterosexual couple: 5

    Santa Clara University reported that typing “Asian girls” resulted in Google’s algorithm yielding pornographic and highly sexualised results.

    In 2018, NBC reported that typing “black girls” would yield similar results.

    Much has been reported about political bias as well.

    US Government challenged Google for using exclusionary monopolistic behaviour to deny its rivals access

    Is that harm, or misinformation or fraud?

    ARGUMENT #5 “BIG ONLY MEANS POPULARITY”

    Hannah then backgrounds us about the ‘consumer welfare standard’, Robert Bork and political factional differences between Republicans and Democrats. 

    She goes on to criticise those who think ‘big is bad’ and that “Becoming big merely means it is popular and offers a product or service consumers quite like.” 

    REBUTTAL #5 “BIG CAN MEAN POPULARITY WITH COERCION TO FOLLOW”

    The mistake some libertarians make is to argue big government is the only potential agent for coercion in society. I’d argue, unlike Hannah, to start with any big organisation. Big brings power and economic clout, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be from government. 

    Hannah is partially right when she asserts becoming big merely means it offers good products. That’s how their ascendency begins. But what happen thereafter? They become smug in their economic security, their innovation ossifies and they tend to monopolistic behaviour designed to protect their fortress. This is a process from birth to death, from innovation to stagnation, that applies to individuals, businesses, churches, political parties, charities and even nation states.

    Libertarians must think clearly about what they want government to provide and not provide. We are clear that we want government in defence, police and the courts. I would add it has a role to ensure monopolistically behaving companies, in the rare times that occurs, are checked. There is a role for government to ensure competition is maintained. 

    But I’ll leave the last say to a couple of libertarian greats:

    On the issue of capitalism leading to monopoly, classical liberal Milton Friedman wrote: “There is a widespread belief that free markets tend to lead to excessive concentration of economic power. This belief is not without justification. There are important cases where free markets themselves tend to produce a monopoly.”

    Join Mailing List

    And the great Thomas Sowell went straight to activity which impedes competition, saying “There is a legitimate concern about businesses using their market power to stifle competition. Antitrust laws should be enforced to ensure that competition remains vigorous.”

    Caution is required applying competition law. But if rivals are being denied valuable consumer access by the #1 player sitting on 88% of the market share, I think the government referee can blow the whistle.

    Got something to say?

    Liberty Itch is Australia’s leading libertarian media outlet.

    Its stable of writers has promoted the cause of liberty and freedom across

    the economic and social spectrum through the publication of more than 300 quality articles.

    Do you have something you’d like to say? If so, please send your contribution to editor@libertyitch.com

    More Political Competition

    By
    Dimitri Burshtein
    -
    0

    According to Treasurer Jim Chalmers, increasing competition among supermarket giants will help deliver lower grocery prices: “If it is more competitive, more transparent and people are getting a fair go, better outcomes will be seen at the supermarket checkout“.  

    The ACCC also notes that competition encourages innovation.  

    But where enhanced market competition can lead to improved consumer outcomes, enhanced political competition can lead to improved citizen outcomes: the former through lower prices and better quality, and the latter through lower taxes and better services.

    And just as those in the commercial sector prefer less competition, so too do the players in the political sector; the dominant political parties frequently colluding to modify electoral laws to defend their incumbency.  

    The Albanese government, while pursuing a business competition reform agenda, is also surreptitiously running an electoral reform agenda which will have the opposite effect, reducing political competition.

    Australian states and territories used to compete on policy and tax rates, acting as “laboratories of democracy”

    In his 1776 magnum opus The Wealth of Nations, the father of economics Adam Smith wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

    This quote is often used to describe the potential for anti-competitive behaviour within business.  However, with politics now more of a trade than a calling, Smith’s description equally applies to our elected class—a group that regularly meets, often for merriment, in a well-appointed building, to conspire against the Australian public.

    While Chalmers and Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh pursue new competition law amendments claimed to “make our economy more productive, more dynamic, and more competitive”, Special Minister of State Don Farrell is developing plans to make it more difficult for small parties and independent candidates to compete in the political marketplace.  Farrell even recently stated that “the Westminster system provides for a two-party operation.”  A duopoly that is.

    Recently also South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas proposed to ban electoral donations.  Were such a reform implemented, it would further privilege and embed the major parties by making it exceptionally difficult for new parties to emerge.  Raised barriers to entry lead to reduced competition.

    Political parties are exempted from many important laws including privacy and the proposed mis- and dis- information laws.  This makes their perpetual assault on political competition and concentration of political power even more nefarious.

    At a time of declining support for the major parties as measured by first preference voting and polling, the major parties continue to work together to maintain their political duopoly.

    Although the latest electoral proposals are being driven by a Labor Government, the Coalition also has dirty hands.  In 2021, the Coalition government passed laws, with Labor’s support, to shorten pre-polling periods and force the deregistration of some minor parties.  As part of this the major parties confiscated the words “liberal” and “labor” from the political lexicon, perpetually vesting these terms in themselves.

    Even Gough Whitlam’s grand dream of fixed four-year electoral terms has received bipartisan support with both John Howard and Peter Dutton offering endorsement. Extended terms transfer power from the people to the elected with no recourse, such as binding citizen-initiated referenda (as occur in Switzerland) or recall elections (as occur in the US).

    It was not always thus.  Over recent years, our neo-professional political class has increasingly and incrementally colluded to raise the barriers to entry for alternative parties and candidates.  This has contributed to a homogenization of personnel and policy, making the differences between the average Labor and Coalition candidate barely discernible to the average voter.

    For all the talk of diversity, this homogenization has led to much reduced experiential, cognitive and policy differentiation among politicians.  Many members of our parliaments, irrespective of party, gender, race, sexual preference or religion, follow similar educational and pre-parliamentary career paths.  While elected governments may change, there is a consistent trajectory of permanent government expansion and price rises through ever higher taxes.

    Since the turn of the millennium, it has been bipartisan policy and practice to increase spending, taxes, and the volume of regulations to ever greater levels.  The assaults on civil liberties and the crowding out of civil society similarly continue unabated.

    But where enhanced market competition can lead to improved consumer outcomes, enhanced political competition can lead to improved citizen outcomes

    It is not just a reduction of competition at the political level.  There has been a long-term de-federalisation project to aggregate power in Canberra; a manifestation of the French “disease” described by Alexis de Tocqueville as the tendency to concentrate authority in central government; something Tocqueville believed to be detrimental to political and social health.

    Australian states and territories used to compete on policy and tax rates, acting as “laboratories of democracy”, a term coined by US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.  Death duties in Australia were abolished not through some fiat from Canberra but because of competition between the states and territories.

    However, today some 81 percent of total tax revenue is collected by the Commonwealth, leading to policy centralisation and standardisation.  Matters constitutionally the provenance of the states, such as health and education, are now increasingly directed out of Canberra; fidelity to the intent of the Australian constitution and of tax and policy competition be damned.  

    Join Mailing List

    Just recently, the United States celebrated 248 years of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, it included this famous sentence: “… Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”.

    Just as politics is downstream from culture, policy is downstream from politics.  It’s time to change the way politics is done in Australia.

    Carpet Call: The Imperfect Gift of Religious Freedom

    By
    Bob Day
    -
    0

    John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) is a clever guy. 

    As Robert McCall (aka Denzel Washington) says in the movie Equalizer 2 to Miles, a troubled teenager: ‘It takes talent to make money, Miles, but it takes brains to keep it’. 

    Regardless of one’s taste in music, there’s no doubting John Lydon had talent – and brains.

    ‘Imperfection is at the heart of life’, Lydon once said. ‘Imperfection is the greatest gift of all.’

    ‘Arabic rug makers will make their work perfect except for one tiny stitch, because nothing is perfect in the eyes of God. Only God is perfect. I think that is magnificently intelligent’.

    Before the 2022 federal election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to overhaul religious protection laws in Australia. 

    Under existing law, when hiring teachers or workers, faith-based organisations are able to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity via an exemption from anti-discrimination laws.

    Forcing faith-based schools to become indistinguishable from secular schools with respect to staffing is irrational

    The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) now says that exemption should be scrapped. No legislation has yet been introduced.

    Not content to wait for the Federal Government to act, activists have shifted to the old ‘State by State’ stalking horse approach – find the most amenable State, introduce the law there and then get other States to adopt it one by one. Once a few States have adopted the new law, the Federal Government is then pressured into doing the same. It’s a tried-and-tested model of creeping change.

    Former SA Greens Senator and now Greens SA Upper House member Robert Simms is proposing to introduce legislation into the SA Parliament next month which would remove all exemptions from anti-discrimination laws.

    Robert Simms

    There are some things people will not be dictated to or lectured about. One of those is their faith or their morals – particularly what they teach their children. They will certainly not be brow-beaten or cowed into submission by being called bigots or homophobes.

    The Left talks about equality and tolerance but this religious freedom debate is not about either of those. It is about discrimination against religious people. The Left may call for tolerance but what they really want is for everyone to agree with and endorse – even celebrate – their view of the world. They are not interested in debate or argument; they simply want the legislative power of the state to force everyone to comply.

    If being free means anything, it means citizens having the right to ensure that the religious and moral education of their children conforms with their own convictions – as outlined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a signatory. 

    It means having freedom of conscience, and the freedom to believe and practice the core tenets and values of a person’s faith. It is the state’s role to protect those rights.

    There’s no doubt that the Left is out to undermine our freedoms. They’re coming for our churches, our schools, our faith-based organisations, our farms, our mines, our cars and, most of all, our children. They’re also coming for our old people with their euthanasia packs, for our about-to-be-born babies with their grotesque abortion laws, and they’re coming to indoctrinate our primary school children. They’re also coming for Christmas Day and Australia Day and Anzac Day and Remembrance Day. These people mean business.

    People and faith-based organisations – schools, hospitals, aged care providers and charities – should not have to rely on exemptions from anti-discrimination laws to function in accordance with their faith. 

    The Left talks about equality and tolerance but this religious freedom debate is not about either of those.

    They should, by right, have the freedom to select people as they see fit. 

    Political parties grant that right to themselves because they believe, quite rightly, that the political allegiance of a job applicant matters. 

    In environmental groups, views about climate change are relevant; in women’s shelters, gender is very important. 

    Saying you can only become a member of a chess club if you play chess is not discriminating against people who don’t play chess! 

    In ethnic clubs and institutions, ethnicity is sensible and practical. 

    We accept all these differences. 

    And in faith-based organisations, faith matters. 

    Forcing faith-based schools to become indistinguishable from secular schools with respect to staffing is irrational. After all, no-one is forced to work for a faith-based organisation or send their children to a faith-based school where all the staff follow that particular faith.

    Expressions of faith by a person or faith-based organisations must be declared lawful. Statutory exemptions are totally inadequate. Exemptions granted can just as easily be withdrawn – as is now being proposed.

    Join Mailing List

    The right to religious freedom must be treated as a pre-eminent right and be recognised and protected. Human Rights Commissions should have no role to play. 

    A Commonwealth law, by reference to its Objects clauses, must recognise religious freedom as pre-eminent and override all state and territory anti-discrimination laws.

    To paraphrase John Lydon, while such a law may be imperfect, it would be a magnificent gift.

    The Coming Populist Revolt

    By
    Gary Johns
    -
    0

    Populism occurs when the masses revolt against the elites’ view of the world. Elite opinion does not often deal directly with popular opinion, that is, with the people who have to pay for elite opinion. When elites get it wrong, the masses revolt through the ballot; the Voice referendum being a good example. The question is, when is the next chance?

    Currently, the elite consensus on issues like net zero, immigration and identity politics is so far removed from the reality of the masses that it is no wonder they are pushing back. The populist revolt, should it occur, will play out at three levels – international, national and personal.

    International

    Net zero is a preposterous notion. The world population is eight billion people. By 2050, it could be 10 billion people, a 25 per cent increase. These people will need energy. World energy consumption is 600 BTUs. By 2050, it could be 900 BTUs, a 50 per cent increase: more people, higher living standards, more energy. Electricity generation will rise mainly in the Asia-Pacific among developing nations. Renewables do not generally feature in developing countries’ energy mixes anywhere near developed nations’ proportions.

    Women have gained formal and substantive equality in Australia.

    Of 144 nations tracked for net zero, only 26 have placed in law their commitment to net zero by 2050 (or sooner). For example, the Maldives has pledged net zero by 2030 but it has no plan or accountability mechanism; it is pure hot air. Even Goody Two-Shoes Finland leaves out aviation and shipping and has plans but no mechanism for carbon removal. The US (2050), Russia (2060), China (2060), India (2070) and Brazil (2050) have a ‘policy document’, but nothing in law.

    Australia has a plan written in law that is sure to kill the nation’s wealth. Industrial and economic mayhem, loss of reliable energy and higher energy prices will reduce living standards. Minister Bowen’s deployment targets are logistically impossible in the time frame.

    Kenneth Schultz estimates a total cost of $1.4 trillion for the Coalition’s renewables-nuclear option. He estimates the cost for Labor’s renewables-battery option at $4.4 trillion, nine times the federal government’s total annual revenue.

    National 

    Migration in Europe and Australia is dangerous at levels that challenge national unity. Numbers count. If one million Palestinians settled in Australia in a short period, for example, the result would undermine Australian society. Palestinians would settle in a few suburbs and recreate a Palestinian society, i.e. one that recreates the hatred extant in Gaza and the West Bank.

    Values also count. Australia would do well to distinguish migrants by the nature of their observance, which is apparent in the laws on marriage, succession, or rape in marriage among our key Islamic migrant source countries: Lebanon, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia. A striking feature of those laws is that they distinguish the application of the law by religion. Religion first; the rule of law second. The question is how to distinguish this at an individual level. Classing people by source country is too crude and unfair, but not to distinguish people would be foolhardy. Why should Australia invite those unlikely to integrate or, worse, become an enemy?

    Those who appreciate the benefits of the nation-state would support Prime Minister John Howard’s view that, ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.’ Howard and the Australian electorate recognised that some people are not welcome as they are unlikely to fit in. In the long term, Australia will be much more Indian and Chinese. Of the three million permanent migrants who arrived in Australia since 2000, almost 450,000 were from India, and nearly 350,000 were from China. The assumption of integration must be reinforced.

    The easy assumptions of integration post-World War II no longer hold. Since 2022, the Netherlands has required a substantial investment from a person applying for permanent residence before that privilege is granted. The civic integration requirements are set out in the Civic Integration Act 2021. The point of the Netherlands law is that applicants must be sufficiently integrated before they become permanent.

    The populist revolt, should it occur, will play out at three levels – international, national and personal.

    Personal

    Women have gained formal and substantive equality in Australia. They are free to sing the praises of Palestine. Homosexuals are free to marry and raise children. But the trans lobby wants to abolish gender, which is dangerous to the mental health of trans people. Sex must be understood in evolutionary terms. There must be sperm and eggs for reproduction. Two women do not create a child, and two men do not create a child. They may care for them, and we wish them well. The proposition that sex is not binary, that it is socially determined, is dangerous, especially to those who find that they are not at ease with their sex and want to reassign their sex to suit their ‘gender’.

    Anyone should be free to express themselves as male or female. But when sex is detached from reproduction, there are consequences. As Zachary Elliott argues in Binary: Debunking the Sex Spectrum Myth, ‘If we abandon sex as an important category in our society, how can we conduct safe and effective medical research and treatment; fight sex-based injustices; record accurate crime statistics; maintain fair, safe, and competitive sports categories; and implement equal opportunities for both sexes?’

    There is a claim that almost two per cent of the population is intersex, neither male nor female. The numbers consist almost entirely of those who suffer developmental disorders, such as late-onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia. People with these conditions account for nearly all the males or females who do not appear to be one or the other. The disorders occur in nature and do not result in good health. They are not socially determined.

    Join Mailing List

    Populism in the service of correcting the madness of net zero, overplayed migration and undermined sexual identity are ground zero for the populist fightback. The masses await the right leader and the right policies. Populism? More please!

    Gary Johns is Chairman of Close the Gap Research 

    This article was first published in The Spectator.

    Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

    By
    James Hol
    -
    0

    For those of us who still occasionally like to check in on what the mainstream media is doing, there has been a topic that has got chins wagging and jowls flapping lately: “the tobacco wars”. 

    While the mainstream media, in typical fashion, has sensationalised the story, it is true that black and grey market tobacco is abundant in the community.

    BLACK, WHITE AND GREY

    As a (recently quit) smoker, I see it everywhere. My smoker friends brag about the newest place they discovered, with even cheaper prices, while they pull a cigarette out of their fully branded pack. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw a drab-brown (plain packaging) pack of cigarettes. And I wouldn’t be much of a libertarian if I didn’t confess that I haven’t bought a pack of cigarettes through a shop compelled to display a “retail tobacco merchant license” in well over a year.

    The obvious appeal of black and grey market tobacco is the near-two-thirds savings. I can buy a 20-pack of Marlboro Reds for under $20, while an authorised tobacco merchant is selling the same pack for over $50 (which I had to look up because it has been that long). And as more shopfronts pop up, the price is pushed down – a testament to the free market. 

    Anybody serious about removing the illicit tobacco market

    Even your poorest friends can afford to smoke chop-chop, illegally grown roll-your-own tobacco, at 50c per gram – a sixth of the price compared to roll-your-own tobacco in the authorised market.

    ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

    Despite the fact that, I would guess, most smokers are paying less for cigarettes than they have in over a decade, there are serious concerns that accompany a rising illicit market for an addictive product. Bikies and organised crime groups are starting to muscle in on the market, aggressively extorting tobacco merchants (as opposed to the more passive extortion of tobacco tax) and violently vandalising competitors.

    Stories of tobacco shops being vandalised and torched are becoming a near-weekly occurrence. And while I have little sympathy for organised criminals, it is not only criminals being affected: legitimate tobacco merchants are in their crosshairs and innocent victims are inevitably caught in the blaze. So week-in and week-out, the mainstream media trots out some new “expert” on the matter who declares another hair-brained measure will solve this problem once and for all.

    One of the more popular new measures being touted is to implement a licensing system to regulate tobacco merchants, similar to booze. The one problem with that is it already exists and has done precisely nothing to stem the flow of illicit tobacco. In South Australia, where I live, we have a had a tobacco merchant licensing system for as long as I have been a smoker (15 years) and illegal tobacco – and the organised crime that comes with it – is thriving.

    Even your poorest friends can afford to smoke chop-chop, illegally grown roll-your-own tobacco

    STATING THE OBVIOUS

    At the risk of sounding like another idiot who has the solution for this problem once and for all, there is actually an incredibly obvious solution to this problem: lower the price of cigarettes. There is only one way for those “evil”, “scary” big tobacco companies to sell their products at a loss and for merchants to make pennies on the dollar: abolish (or at least significantly reduce) tobacco tax. Well over half the price of the average pack of cigarettes or pouch of roll-your-own tobacco goes to the government in tobacco excise alone. Tobacco, like petrol, is also double-dipped on tax with an additional 10 per cent of GST.

    So while even someone with a cursory understanding of economics knows the only way to combat this problem is to compete on price – especially in a market where almost all forms of non-price competition have been outlawed – the obvious remains unspoken. To even suggest we use the only realistic solution to combat the illicit tobacco market, while also removing the most regressive tax in Australian history, is complete heresy.

    UP IN SMOKE

    Instead, we’ll pile on more regulations, evaporating the few legitimate tobacco merchants left, and “crackdown” on illicit tobacco, as governments continuously claim to do for no avail. We have known for a long time now that prohibition never works, and now we know that a surreptitious prohibition, via ever-increasing prices, achieves the same result.

    Join Mailing List

    Anybody serious about removing the illicit tobacco market, preventing organised crime from gaining a foothold in another industry and legitimately saving the lives of those caught in the collateral damage, knows the answer to this problem. Now it’s time to say it out loud.

    Does Australia Need a Bill of Rights?

    By
    Lushington D Brady
    -
    0

    Does Australia need a Bill of Rights? After all, Australia is, it surprises many to learn, the only Western democracy with neither a constitutional nor legislated Bill of Rights. Various attempts over the years to legislate one have failed.

    The closest Australia ever got to a Constitutional free speech right was in 1992, when the High Court ruled that the Constitution carried an implied right to free speech — in political matters only. As the Chief Justice observed:

    To sustain a representative democracy embodying the principles prescribed by the Constitution, freedom of public discussion of political and economic matters is essential:  it would be a parody of democracy to confer on the people a power to choose their Parliament but to deny the freedom of public discussion from which the people derive their political judgments.   

    If that sounds like a reach, later High Court rulings found that it was. When a public servant who had been sacked for criticising the government on Twitter appealed the sacking on the grounds of such an implied right to political speech, she lost. The court ruled that there is no personal right to free speech, but a restriction on legislative power, which “extends only so far as is necessary to preserve and protect the system of representative and responsible government mandated by the Constitution”.

    The Australian government is, very quietly, once again resurrecting the idea of a legislated “Human Rights Act”

    If anyone still doubted that Australians’ basic rights are not protected from government overreach, the last five years should have put a brutal end to such illusions.

    But Canada has a Bill of Rights, and so does New Zealand, and yet their governments were no less draconian in crushing basic rights, from informed consent, to free assembly, to free speech.

    So it looks like a Bill of Rights is worth precisely shit when the government boot comes down.

    Or is it?

    For all its faults, the United States’ Bill of Rights is holding up reasonably well against sustained assault by the state and its corporate attack dogs.

    The difference lies in how a Bill of Rights is framed: to whit, which view of freedom is at its heart.

    There are, in essence, two basic conceptual frameworks of freedom, with very different outcomes. These are positive liberty and negative liberty. At first blush, “positive liberty” may seem like the preferred option. It’s “positive”, after all!

    In fact, positive liberty is the stomping ground of collectivist ideologies which are almost invariably associated with the worst shackles placed on individual freedom. That’s because positive liberty is better understood as “freedom to”.

    That is, the freedom to act only within the constraints set down by law and society. Anti-discrimination laws are an example of positive freedom: citizens are free to act only within the bounds established by the laws enacted by the state. You are free to say only this and not that. You are only as free as the state decides to let you be. You can choose any colour, so long as it’s black.

    Negative liberty is very different. Negative liberty is the “freedom from”. Freedom from constraint. Negative liberty establishes what citizens can tell the state it is not allowed to do. It is the type of freedom associated with classical liberalism and libertarianism. The US First Amendment is a negative liberty: Congress shall make no law… The Second Amendment is in the same vein: the peoples’ right shall not be infringed.

    The other great difference between the USA’s, and NZ’s and Canada’s, Bills of Rights is that the United States’ is Constitutional; NZ’s and Canada’s are legislative.

    A Constitutional law is the absolute bedrock law of the land. No matter what the government of the day may legislate, it must conform to the Constitution.

    Legislation can be overturned by a simple vote in parliament. Or, like NZ’s, it can be restricted such that it cannot override any other legislation. Unlike the US Supreme Court, a NZ court cannot strike down or override any act of parliament with reference to the Bill of Rights. Which makes it a moot point as to why it exists at all.

    The only way to get a Constitutional Bill of Rights in Australia would be by referendum. Good luck with that. The Australian Constitution was framed such that amending it is extremely difficult: a proposed amendment must secure not only a national majority of voters, but a majority of voters in a majority of states as well. Australians have, by and large, chosen to validate that high hurdle: of 45 referendums since Federation, only eight have ever been passed.

    No referendum has ever passed without bipartisan support (and few indeed of those that had bipartisan support). Given that a legislated Bill of Rights has never made it past parliament, the chances of it passing referendum seem almost nil.

    A major reason that a Bill of Rights has never passed parliament, let alone been proposed at referendum, is the suspicion voiced by former prime minister John Howard that such a Bill would transfer power from elected representatives to unelected judges and bureaucrats. It’s not hard to see the wisdom of his observation: consider, after all, just how much power health bureaucrats seized during the pandemic.

    The closest Australia ever got to a Constitutional free speech right was in 1992

    Even the High Court’s “implied right to free speech” decision could be seen as just the sort of judicial overreach Howard warns against. As the US Supreme Court did in 1973 with Roe vs. Wade, the Australian High Court took it on itself to invent a potentially far-reaching decision out of Constitutional thin air. More recent High Court decisions, which affectively affirm the role of magic — a supposed Aboriginal “spiritual connection to the land” — in law show that such unelected judges are the last people to whom we should trust our rights.

    As it happens, the Australian government is, very quietly, once again resurrecting the idea of a legislated “Human Rights Act” — and it’s even worse than you might think. 

    As should surprise no-one, given its origin in a left-wing government, it’s mired, waist-deep, in a mindset of positive liberty. That is, it’s all about what the state will allow Australians to do — not what Australians can tell the state what it cannot do.

    For instance, freedom of religious belief is only allowed at the discretion of a judge. A judge can restrict religious freedom any time he or she considers it “reasonable” and “justified”. Religious freedom may be restricted in order to “protect public safety, order, health, morals or the rights of ­others”.

    Who wants to take bets on how politically-appointed judges will interpret that one?

    Freedom of speech gets even shorter shrift. Speech may be restricted — again, at a judge’s discretion — “in order to respect the rights and reputations of others or to protect national security, public order or public heath”. Ask Zoe Buhler, the Victorian mum arrested, pregnant, in her pyjamas, and crying, in front of her children, simply for posting the details of an anti-lockdown protest on Facebook, how that one’s likely to play out.

    Perhaps the most alarming aspects of the proposed Human Rights Act is that it would include a mechanism that would enable everyone to sue for monetary compensation whenever they decided that their rights had been breached. Again, we only need to look at how aggrieved activists, most notably the “rainbow” lobby, have weaponised the existing “human rights” infrastructure to threaten critics and impose a chilly pall of silence on matters of essential public debate.

    Join Mailing List

    While it may be bad enough that Australia lacks any formal Bill of Rights, the threat of an ill-intentioned, badly framed one is infinitely worse.

    It all comes down, in the end, to what Tony Abbott so famously asked during Australia’s last referendum campaign: do you really trust politicians?

    Anyone who still does, clearly spent the last five years either in a deep coma, or developing a slavish taste for boot leather.

    UAE Facilitating Australian Crime?

    By
    Damon Hayhow
    -
    0

    A recent article in the Age (https://www.theage.com.au/national/australian-drug-smuggling-suspects-right-at-home-as-dubai-makes-world-s-worst-welcome-20240514-p5jdg7.html) argues that authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are immoral for not preventing Australia’s most revered mega criminals from visiting and buying property there. According to the Age, we should all be outraged that the UAE is not doing the job Australian law enforcement is failing to do. 

    But apparently it is no failure of Australian law enforcement that they knew Australian gangsters were trafficking huge quantities of illegal narcotics into Australia (not from the UAE). The Australian authorities were able to quantify and track it all, but they did not care to stop it. 

    It is also no failure of Australian law enforcement that all those illicit drugs were trafficked throughout the country and distributed to, ultimately, tens of thousands of Australian customers in hundreds of thousands of illegal transactions, all of which were able to be quantified, but not stopped. Australian law enforcement apparently knew all about the millions of dollars collected inside Australia, who collected it and where it was kept, and were able to document it all in great detail and share it with journalists. 

    Everybody knows what is going on, including Australian law enforcement. And that’s just fine.

    But apparently it is UAE law enforcement that failed to…?

    Apparently it is also no failure of Australian law enforcement that they knew the names and faces of these gangsters, knew the “outlaw bikie gangs” to which they belonged, knew where they were, knew what they did, and knew they were all engaged in “organised crime”. But apparently it is UAE law enforcement that needs to answer for not…?

    Apparently, the UAE is outrageously immoral because it welcomes valid Australian-passport-holders to meet and talk with one another. It is inferred that, without the UAE, these gangsters would have nowhere to plan their nefarious activities. The article does not explain exactly how members of Australian crime gangs can form gangs, or engage in organised crime, in Australia, without ever meeting inside Australia. Nor does it explain how or why Australian border force lets known drug-smuggling, outlaw bikie gang members jump on planes and leave Australia for the UAE, with an Australian-government issued passport? Presumably, that’s the fault of the UAE too?

    All of this does beg the question: if the UAE is full of despicable, violent, armed robbers from Australia, why is the UAE so safe? Why are there so few armed robberies in the UAE? Why are there so few outlaw bikie gangs in the UAE? Is it too hot to ride bikes or handle guns? Or is Australian law enforcement missing a step or two from the ‘Idiots Guide to Law Enforcement’ handbook?

    It also seems strange how, in Melbourne, for example, regular people often talk about a night club or restaurant as being owned by a particular well-known criminal in a similar manner to Californians discussing which movie star owns which Hollywood Hills mansion. Somehow, in Australia, it is not just acceptable to buy luxury property with the proceeds of crime, there is also a celebrity status attached. On the other hand, buying property in Dubai is crossing a line.

    The United Arab Emirates (UAE) are immoral for not preventing Australia’s most revered mega criminals from visiting and buying property there.

    Similarly, massive money laundering takes place in plain sight in Australia. Customers of beauty salons and fitness centres, for example, often know the criminal bikie gang that funded the multi-million dollar fit-out of their salon or gym. Everybody knows what is going on, including Australian law enforcement. And that’s just fine.

    Strangely, in Dubai you will never hear of a building or restaurant being owned by a drug dealing, outlaw bikie criminal. A Sheik perhaps, or a politician or oligarch. But even someone who made their fortune as a violent criminal in Australia is not referred to as the “criminal bikie who owns (X) Restaurant” in Dubai. That’s mostly because, if that armed-robbing, criminal bikie from Australia tried any of their violent thuggery in Dubai, they know it would not end as positively or comfortably as it seems to in Australia.

    Join Mailing List

    Which all begs the question: is it really fair for Australia to accuse the UAE of facilitating criminality, when all of that criminality is actually taking place in Australia, in full knowledge and view of Australian law enforcement, which does nothing to stop the criminals doing the crimes or leaving with all their proceeds of crime? 

    Should the UAE automatically treat all Australians like violent criminals, seeing as the UAE cannot trust the Australian authorities to do anything about criminality inside Australia? Or at some point is someone going to ask what the hell the Australian authorities are doing that they treat all of us like criminals, except the people who actually are?

    The Best Lack All Conviction

    By
    Lushington D Brady
    -
    0

    Anti-Semitism is on the march because no-one in authority will stand up to it.

    It’s common for historians to portray the Sturmabteilung, the SA or “Brownshirts” as they were known, as a motley crew of rowdy young thugs looking to brawl. The reality, as detailed in Daniel Siemens’ Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts, was far more concerning. In fact, the paramilitaries who propelled the fledgling Nazi party to absolute power were a million-member organization whose ranks included a disproportionately large group of university students and middle-class professionals (doctors, for example, were grossly over-represented in the Nazi membership).

    In fact, the Nazis own propaganda lauded the “Workers of the Head and the Fist”. To that end, in 1926 the Nazis founded the National Socialist German Student League. The league was to foster ideological training at universities and to implement paramilitary training, and the ideal Nazi student was intended to be a man or woman of action, not an idle thinker.

    The passage of the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” on April 7, 1933, was the student Brownshirts’ license to put their training into action. Jews were quickly and violently driven from German universities, whether as students or academics. “Paramilitary student groups often interrupted lectures, provoked skirmishes, and physically intimidated Jewish students.” [W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”]

    Even the Nazis knew that economic collapse, Versailles, even anti-Communism, were their best-selling points rather than anti-Semitism.

    In 1934, the Nazi Student League took over the Student Union.

    Is all of this sounding grimly familiar yet?

    Highly organised, ideologically-motivated and, above all, viciously anti-Semitic student organisations are taking over university campuses once again. Jewish students and professors are verbally and physically assaulted. And campus authorities are either openly complicit, or spinelessly hopeless.

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

    If anyone is in doubt about the absolute moral swamp that Australia’s universities have become, as the vicious herd mentality of student activism reaches a dangerous pitch not seen in the West since the 1930s, consider what our million-dollar-a-year vice-chancellors are doing.

    Worse than nothing.

    Consider the “brave”, “forthright”, “line in the sand” statement by Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott. In just 844 words, Westacott mentioned “anti-Semitism” five times and “Islamophobia/Islam” three times. The same double act runs through her anecdotes: 58 words, two sentences about visiting the Holocaust Museum; 67 words, three sentences dedicated to lauding Muslim “asylum seekers”.

    Remember, this was supposed to be a forthright condemnation of campus anti-Semitism.

    Instead, every time, it was “anti-Semitism and…” “Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or any form of abhorrent discrimination.” “Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, hate speech or intimidation.” “growing division and creeping anti-Semitism.” “hate speech and anti-Semitism.” “anti-Semitism and hate speech.”

    One is left with the overwhelming impression that the crisis on university isn’t about anti-Semitism at all.

    Why does an opinion piece posing as a beacon of moral clarity on campus anti-Semitism need to repeatedly add, “…and Islamophobia”? Is there an anti-Muslim camp on a single university in Australia, let alone the world? Are campuses hosting activists celebrating the murder of Muslims, and promising to visit future terror attacks on Muslims? Are Muslim students being attacked daily, physically and verbally?

    We know perfectly well that the answer to all of those is, “no”.

    So why the moral equivalence? 

    And this is the best statement that any chancellor or vice-chancellor has yet made.

    Everywhere we look to campus authorities for moral clarity, there is, at best, mealy-mouthed moral equivalence.

    Jane Hansen, the chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Australia’s highest-ranked university, refuses to even acknowledge an anti-Semitism crisis. Instead, it’s the same gutless waffle about “many different forms of racism”. Worse, Hansen claims that even questioning supine university leaders is merely “looking for division”.

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

    Ditto University of Sydney chancellor, Belinda Hutchinson.

    This isn’t a “line in the sand”, it’s dragging a rotting jellyfish along the low-tide line, hoping the sharks won’t bite too hard.

    I’ve often wondered what it must have been like for the average German, seeing your country slide, inch by inexorable inch, into anti-Semitic tyranny. I’m finding out in the worst possible way.

    After all, even at its peak (curiously, perhaps, in the last year of WWII), only 12% of Germans were Nazi Party members. In the crucial years of the early 1930s, only 1% of Germans were members. Even among card-carrying Nazis, anti-Semitism was of little to no concern.

    Academic Peter Merkl wrote an exhaustive study of the history of hundreds of foundational Nazis. He found that 33.3 per cent of them showed no interest in anti-Semitism, 14.3 per cent expressed “mild verbal clichés” regarding Jews, 19.1 per cent displayed “moderate” disdain for Jewish cultural influence in Germany, while only 12.9 per cent advocated “violent countermeasures” against Jews.

    Even the Nazis knew that economic collapse, Versailles, even anti-Communism, were their best-selling points rather than anti-Semitism. In the years leading up to the crucial elections that finally propelled the Nazis to the point where they could seize power (even in 1932, the Nazis never won a majority; Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, not democratically elected), even Hitler toned down the anti-Semitic rhetoric. By 1930, he “seldom spoke explicitly of Jews,” says historian Ian Kershaw.

    The gambit, tragically, worked: of the thousands of Jews who fled Germany in 1933, 16,000 returned in 1934.

    Join Mailing List

    That’s how nations slide into murderous tyranny: one step at a time. Every outrage becomes anodyne, and the outrages escalate. One year, student activists are driving Jews from campus; four years later, Jewish businesses, synagogues and houses are trashed in an orgy of violence.

    And it’s far from over. We all know what happened over the next decade.

    Right now, we’re just at the “students trying to kick Jews off campus” stage. Where we go next depends in large part on the nation’s leadership.

    Which, from academia to the floors of parliaments, is almost completely missing in action — or worse.

    123Page 1 of 3
    Facebook Instagram Twitter Youtube

    EVEN MORE NEWS

    POPULAR CATEGORY

    © Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv