Trust not the horse, O Trojans.

In Australia lawmaking has become a political act viewed from a partisan Left vs Right perspective. If a Labor politician proposes a bill it is immediately opposed by those on the Right, and vice versa, regardless of its merits. If the Greens propose a bill there is laughter from both sides. If a cross-bencher propose one then it must be time for lunch.

My libertarian starting point is to oppose the making of a new law because it is a new law.  As each law takes away the freedom of Australian citizens it should be treated with utmost scepticism. The merits of the law must pass my free and fair test. Only then can we begin to debate whether the law is necessary, whether it will be effective, whether it can be enforced, how much enforcing it will cost the taxpayer and whether it is something useful to all citizens rather than just the political tribe of whoever is proposing it.

My libertarianism is a healthy scepticism of lawmaking as the solution to society's evils. As society and technology progresses there will be new laws made and changes to the old ones. But we should not automatically give away our freedoms to enhance the prestige of our tribal leaders and those they owe favours to. Nor should they be used as a weapon against their political opponents or segments of society against which they hold some prejudice.

Some laws are just plain evil as discussed in my last post. Some are ineffectual wastes of our hard earned money. Some laws act as Trojan horses – they are gifted to us for a benign purpose but will kick us in the teeth if we don't pay attention.

One is the Major Sporting Events Act which currently gives the Victorian Police the power to search without giving a reason anyone at and around venues such as stadiums and racetracks.

Designed to eliminate potential terrorist threats at major events, the Act allows police to search you inside or outside the venue – if you refuse they can kick you out or stop you from going in. Refusing their directions will cost you $3000. They can also demand to see your ID and fine you $750 if you don't comply.

Which might all seems well and good if it will help keep some mad bastard from blowing up the Melbourne Cup or the AFL Grand Final.

However,

Victoria's police now want to broaden the scope of this Act to include dance festivals - so that they can surround the event, search young folks for drugs and bar, eject and fine those who do not comply. In other words – so they can shut the damn doofs down.

A classic Trojan horse scenario - a law is passed to combat terrorists but concealed inside it is the means to criminalise our young people for doing what young people do for fun these days.

And while Victorian Police Minister Lisa Neville claims that the proposal is all about reducing harm at festivals, if they were serious about harm reduction they would listen to the professionals and allow pill testing which has proven to be effective all over the world.

And where on from there? Well if you can extend the law to reach from the Melbourne Cricket Ground to a bush doof in Lexton, then it is on to the city nightlife precincts where since April the police have increased their use of sniffer dogs in and around Melbourne nightclubs under Operation Safenight.

So aggressive are the police that the High Alert campaign was formed in response to Operation Safenight by a group of concerned harm reduction advocates, health professional and legal practitioners including Nevena Spirovska, a former campaign manager for the Australian Sex Party.

 

So aggressive that just yesterday a man and a woman were shot by police at a 'Saints and Sinners Ball' inside a Melbourne nightclub following a report that the man was armed with a gun. But as you might expect to find at at fancy-dress party on a guy dressed as The Joker – the pistol was a toy. Not a safe night for him or his girlfriend.

If the Anti-Terrorist / Anti-Fun / Super Safety Squad are successful then it won't be long before similar legislation appears in other States.

Then who knows how far the long arm of the law will stretch to keep us safe from ourselves? Perhaps to Melbourne Cup Day at your local pub, to the Australia Day bash at the end of your street, and to your kid's 18^th birthday party at your house.

Be it what it may, I fear the Grecians even when they offer gifts.

Remember you are free.

Freedom for speech, the press, truck drivers and porn

Without a bill of rights to protect us Australians are vulnerable to the tyranny of politicians who make our laws. Though as our country is a healthy democracy with low levels of corruption, we tend to trust that our government will make laws that will not unnecessarily take away our freedom and if they try, we can vote them out.

And tyranny, really? Do we really need this eternal vigilance against an oppressive regime – this isn't bloody North Korea. But in recent times there have been serious assaults on our freedom in this country and while you may have forgotten them, I have not. And I don't mean by Human Rights Commissioners or social justice warriors but by elected politicians.

Back in 2007 the Rudd Labour government tried to censor the internet in the same way the Democratic Republic of North Korea does by blacklisting websites they considered offensive. Costing upwards of $60 million of taxpayer's money, the secret blacklist of banned websites was initially proposed to counter child pornography and benignly described as a 'filter' by then Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who later admitted that it would also target “other unwanted content”.

As the US State Department was mounting a diplomatic assault on internet censorship worldwide, the Obama administration condemned the Australian government's blacklist, along with those of Iran, China, Cuba and good old North Korea.

When Wikileaks rode to the rescue and published the secret list, only half were child pornography the other half being online poker, YouTube links, gay and straight porn, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions and mysteriously - links to a boarding kennel and a dentist.

The Liberal / National Coalition in opposition seemed to warm to the idea so long as it did not affect Internet speeds and commerce. So it was thanks to opposition from the Greens, and Fiona Patten's Australian Sex Party that the plan was finally dumped in 2012. Good thing too as it is generally held that the ultimate aim was to censor all pornography to secure the votes of the Australian Christian Lobby.

In that same year the Labour / Greens coalition government tried to censor the media in a way that both Trump and Putin would have cheered - the first peacetime government to attempt restricting press freedom since censorship was abolished in NSW in 1823.

Then Greens leader and Deputy PM Bob Brown fired the first shot at the free press when he described News Limited newspapers as the "hate media".

PM Julia Gillard convened an inquiry into media regulation and report concluded the Australian media was 'failing the public interest'. It recommended a new government funded regulator, the News Media Council, with the power to make findings against journalists and without a course of appeal. Those who disobeyed the council would face fines or imprisonment. This censor would even have power over online sites that get 15,000 hits a year which these days is just about every half decent blogger in the country (except me).

This brilliant idea became the Public Interest Media Advocate Bill 2013 that would regulate Australian media mergers and acquisitions as well as journalists and publishers by way of regulating the Australian Press Council.

It failed to get up - not because the opposition rejected it on the grounds of press freedom but because the crossbench found it unworkable. But it was damn close.

In 2012 the same Labour government tried to censor our speech. Attorney-General Nicola Roxon was feeling frisky following her stunning victory over Big Tobacco. Fancy packaging of cigarettes was a thing of the past so naturally freedom of speech should be next to go.

Chillingly claiming that her Discrimination Consolidation Bill would "help everyone understand what behaviour is expected", her proposed legislation sought to make any conduct that 'offends, insults or intimidates' into unlawful discrimination.

The proposed law would have reversed the burden of proof so that the offended one didn't have to provide evidence that someone offended them, the offender must instead prove that they did not. And that would be tough as there was to be no reasonable person test and discrimination was redefined as "unfavourable treatment" of a person. Ways you could discriminate against a person include their “social background”, of which there was no definition.

That's right – anything you do or say to anyone anywhere - if it offends someone they can take you to court and free of charge too (well actually compliments of the Australian taxpayer).

Amazingly but not, this dystopian future hyper nanny state nonsense was initially championed by the notorious Gillian Triggs of the Human Rights Commission who later backed away from it as ridicule poured from all sides.

Roxon resigned. Triggs did not.

And just last year you might remember how big government tried to end the free market in the transport industry by regulating self-employed truck drivers into submission or death, whichever came first.

Set up by Labour leader Bill Shorten in 2012, the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal sought to shut down owner drivers by fixing the rates that their customers paid them to prevent the drivers from from undercutting bigger unionised companies. Failure to pay these 'Safe Rates' would result in prosecution and fines of up to $54,000 for the customer, not the truck driver.

The only way out was to quit working for yourself, sell your truck and become an employee of a big company and join the Transport Workers Union. Brilliant work, and it only took four years and God knows how much of our money to to come up with.

It would be nice to say that the Liberals leapt to the defence of the truckies and free markets, but no – consecutive Prime Ministers Abbot and Turnbull dithered until the eve of an election in 2016 before abolishing the tribunal.

All these attacks on freedom occurred in the last 10 years. All by elected politicians and funded by you and me. Imagine if all of these laws had passed - government agencies would be regulating the internet, the media, and everything you and I do and say. And having crushed the truckies under their boots – looking around for their next target. And no porn. None.

It would be easy to take the view that the Australian Labour Party is the enemy of freedom. It is true that the Liberals are unlikely to propose such laws as these while in government. But they have shown that they will consider selling out our freedom while in opposition or in any position where they can blame their colleagues on the other side of the house.

Freedom and democracy won the day over tyranny in all these cases. So you could say this is proof that our system works – and it does. But tyranny lurks there in the schemes of those who seek power over others, waiting for us to drop our guard for that crucial moment to deliver a knockout blow.

A law once made is hard to unmake - as evidenced by the reluctance and subsequent failure of the Liberal government to abolish 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act.

My brand of libertarianism is a rejection of law making as the solution to all society's evils. These examples go well beyond that - they are of laws made to do evil on our society.

Remember u r free ()

Equality is a consensual hallucination (and I do not consent)

A casual reader might mistake me for a dope smoking gay rights activist or a cop hating social justice warrior – but they have not read the fine print. Libertarians may share some common ground with the progressive left on such things as same sex marriage - but for different reasons as I shall explain.

 

The left these days is all about equality, which I guess goes back to their roots as representatives of the working class striving for equality with the middle class. Or the women struggling to be equal to men, or the blackfellas to white fellows.

My sophisticated libertarian position on equality is that it is, in fact, bullshit.

Equality – really? In what way are you equal to me, or even want to be? Why the hell would I want to be equal to you even if I thought that was possible. I have $10,000 in the bank and you have you have $20,000 does that mean you must give away half your savings to be equal to me, or do I have to sell my car to be equal to you? Or maybe you should give me five grand to make us even.

Should I look like you, or should you look like me, or do we have facial surgery to both look like Che Guevara? Should my wife put on some weight or should yours lose a couple of kilos? I have two kids how many you got? Do we need to trade them away too? Mine are different colours though – so should we spray tan one of yours?

If we should all be educated to the same degree - do I have to go back and finish school or should you whip your kids out in Year 10?

Perhaps you mean the minorities? Equality for the blackfellas, the transsexuals, the migrants? I have met many and none of them have expressed an interest in being me - and I don't blame them.

All Australians are equal in the eyes of the law. All can vote. All can access an range of government services to make our lives easier. Health care an education are free for all. We live in a famously peaceful and secular society. So what the hell is it you really want?

What you want is exceptionalism.

You want aboriginals, gays, muslims and others to be different and to be treated as different so you can insist they are marginalised when they should be equal to the majority.

To achieve equality for the exceptional ones you now demand inclusivity. Having insisted that the peg is square, now you want to hammer it into a round hole.

And to do this you need force. You need discriminatory laws to discourage discrimination. You need commissions, agencies, tribunals and cops. You need a big government with a big bloody hammer constantly bashing away at those pegs.

All the while equality is but a consensual hallucination – we have it when we agree that we have it. But we will never agree, will we? No one ever says righto chaps were all equal lets go out and and have a fucking good time, do they?

No. They will fight for rights that don't exist, exclude the included, minoritise minorities or even majorities (women).

During my time in The People's Republic of China I saw a lot of people forced to be equal – they were uniformly cold, poor and pissed off about it. Now many of them are wealthy due to the fact that the government caved in on equality and let them be individuals. Now they might just take over the world.

I support same-sex marriage on the basis of freedom and fairness rather than inclusivity and equality. I don't want the government to be kind enough to include gay people in the Marriage Act - I would rather the government butt out of marriage entirely as it is none of their god-damn business.

Failing that, gay people should be treated fairly by the law - not to make gay people equal to straight people but because as Australian people we are all young and free.

The Marriage Act does exclude not anyone by way of their sexual orientation - it excludes us all. I am not free to marry another man if I choose to do so and my sister isn't free to marry a woman. Whether we wish to do so, or not, is irrelevant.

Their are no gay rights at stake here – just our natural ability to do what we want without interference from church, government or anyone else who wants to to tell us what to do in our personal lives.

So remember u r free (and equality be damned)

Libertarian pride vs prejudice

Those who seek anti-discrimination laws may do so in the name of equality and diversity, to constrain the prejudices of others to make a better society. Those who favour discriminatory laws may do so for security and the conservation of cultural values but in doing so they attempt to normalise their prejudices and impose them on others.

 

But all such insistence on legislation can only fail - as you can lead a horse to water but threatening legal action won't make it drink.

Like you I have prejudices of my own. But as a libertarian my prejudices are constrained by my principles.

For instance - a great many Australians, perhaps even the majority, would support legislation to ban the wearing of the burqua (and niquab) in public and why not – about a dozen western countries with larger Islamic populations either ban or restrict the wearing of face coverings in some way.

Part of me is with with them. The part of me that cannot understand why a person would dress like a medieval bee-keeper unless compelled by force to do so. The part of me that wonders who is in there and are they armed? The part that says - you people are obviously aliens, so perhaps you would be more comfortable on your own planet.

However,

The libertarian concept of social justice includes preventing the government from expanding the list of victimless crimes rather than constantly dreaming up new ones.

To ban the burqua would require the kind of legislation that I am generally opposed to - laws that take away the freedom of our citizens and criminalises common human behaviours such as what we wear in public. Banning the burqua fails my free and fair test. As soon as I back such a law I cease to be a noble libertarian and become just a run of the mill suburban fascist.

As I am not prepared to do that – it means I must instead stand up for the burqua wearers regardless. It is that simple. Hopefully they will stand up for me.

These principles also make my life a little easier in that I don't have to judge people on the merits of their religion or fashion sense or any damn thing really. I don't have to listen to the endless squawking from the attention seekers of the Left or the Right. I don't need to decide whether such attire is cultural or religious or what the hell Australian values are before deciding if wearing a black tent is compatible with them.

Thank God.

Try it. Try putting the principles of enduring freedom before your political alignment, your tribal customs and your prejudices, petty or otherwise.

The same principles that make me free make you free also. By defending your freedom I protect my own. So try it, maybe you will like it.

And remember u r free.

Associations vs Commissions (Pink Ladies vs pinko ladies)

Having put the free and fair bullet into Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, it's time to take aim at the reason why 18C became so contentious in the first place which is the controversy surrounding the recent actions of the Human Rights Commission.

The HRC is a government agency that works independently of government (to be sure). It mostly investigates complaints and prepares reports to give to the Attorney General. It's basically a human rights ombudsmen.

Unlike laws, human rights are not proscribed, they are consensual hallucination. You cannot be prosecuted by the HRC or anyone else for breaching a person's human rights because you don't specifically have any. You need to have broken a criminal or civil law to be prosecuted by anyone.

The HRC mostly concerns itself with discrimination and the federal acts which might make it unlawful - which is nice. My problem with it is that it is $22 million dollars a year worth of nice. $16 million of that being salaries. Nice work if you can get it.

Well someone's got to do it, you might say – and yes other folks do it too. In my state the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW spends another $4.5 million per year of our cash doing it – and each Australian state has a similar organisation that mirrors the federal one. And then there is the Legal Aid NSW Human Rights Committee (which keeps it's budget to itself).

At least $60 million dollars are thought to be directly spent each year on human rights monitoring agencies in this country, that is to say this figure does not include funding for NGO's. So $1.2 million per week spent on listening to folks complaining is money well spent?

I have nothing against human rights or the lawyers who make them their business. I can live with political bias from HRC President Gillian Triggs, even the questionable ethics and poor judgement that have marked her tenure. She is only human and there is no doubt she is better qualified to do the job than I am.

I just don't want to pay her $418,000 salary.

Because by paying the salaries of various Human Rights Commissioners I become an accessory to their bias, to their poor judgement and dishonesty. I am complicit in their failure to uphold free speech and treat others fairly. By all means be social justice warriors. Damn the government and signal your virtues - I don't care as long as I am not funding your folly. In fact, I don't want to fund HRC at all.

Maybe you do. And that's fine too. So you pay for it. 

How? By abolishing the Commission and replacing it with an Association. A non- government not for profit no-nonsense organisation devoted to all the same stuff. Funded by you. Or not.

If it is so damn important that we be constantly monitored and reported on in case we discriminate against someone then good men and women will rise to the challenge and answer the call to arms and get the job done for free. Don't believe me?

For more than 26 years, Refugee Legal has been providing free legal advice and casework services for asylum seekers, refugees and disadvantaged migrants in the community and in immigration detention across Australia.

Since 2014, as those arriving in Australia without visas are unable to access legal aid unless considered "exceptionally vulnerable", so Refugee Legal has relied on philanthropic grants and donations to fund their services. Migration agents, law students, paralegals and corporate lawyers from a dozen firms work at their clinic free of charge to directly assist more than 12,000 people last year.

Then there is the Human Rights Law Centre, Liberty Victoria, Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, Amnesty International and others. Associations not commissions. Citizens serving a public cause. Getting the job done and not a six-figure salary in sight.

Admirable, yes - but does this sound fair to you? Public servants making their fortunes in the discrimination industry while the private sector works for free?

I'm a public servant too - I work part-time in a regional hospital in NSW. For the last few months we have had a serious shortage of the IV pumps that regulate the drip that goes into a patients arm. They cost about $500 each and we urgently need half a dozen more.

Meanwhile, Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane is so under-worked that he has called for Australians to complain to the Commission about a cartoon. For this we pay him $340,000 per year. If Tim was to instead work part time for 3 days per week and we reduced his salary accordingly - that $136,000 would get us three nurses for a year, or 272 pumps.

 

And Tim would have $204,000 per year and 2 whole days each week to devote to the welfare of the community - perhaps as a volunteer for Refugee Legal. Or the Volunteer Fire Fighters Association, Surf Life Saving NSW or his local Hospital Auxiliary (formerly known as the Pink Ladies). 

Keep the state agencies if you must – at least we know where the money will be spent and we know that Legal Aid persecutes no-one and actually does something other than write reports.

But the federal Human Rights Commission should go – or rather, we should set it free.

Remember you, also, are free.

A free and fair Australia (and tomorrow the world)

In parliament where laws are made you only need support of slightly more than half the votes to make a law, or repeal one. In theory, each parliamentarian is representing the will of the people - but in the real world we know that is not the case. They also represent themselves – keeping one's highly paid job and perks will affect their judgement . They are also expected to represent not only their party but their particular faction within that party. Only then comes their electorate - which is just one small piece in the enormous jigsaw that is our country.

When it comes to making laws there exists little incentive to consider the will of the actual majority of the people let alone the population of this country as a whole.

So how do we decide whether a law is good for all citizens of the country? Perhaps by agreeing on a way each law can be tested.

For god knows how long the test for validity of elections has been a simple one – they should be free and fair.

According to Bryan Mercurio and George Williams (http://apo.org.au/node/664) there are four principles of free and fair elections - put simply as equal opportunity to participate, voting with free conscience, an accurate report of the outcome and voter knowledge about the process and candidates in an election.

So if it works for elections, as the free world has agreed that it does, why not as a test for lawmaking?

Two simple questions,

1. Does the law take away the freedom of our citizens?
2. Is the law fair to all citizens of the nation ?

If the answer is yes to the first question and no to the second – then the law is bad and should not pass.

Take the proposition to change the law so same sex couples can marry. Does it take away anyone's freedom? No. It means more people free to marry. Is it fair to all citizens? Of course – no one is disadvantaged by the change in the law. So same sex marriage passes the test with fabulous flying colours.

Federal legalisation of cannabis passes also. Australian citizens have a new found freedom to grow plants in our backyards and smoke them to our hearts content. Fair? Absolutely (currently only the denizens of South Australia and the ACT can do this, which is bloody unfair to the rest of us).

Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act makes it unlawful to commit a public act that is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people based on their race. Takes away our freedom? Yes – our freedom of speech. Fair to all? No way. If I can lawfully state that “women shouldn't be allowed to drive” but not ”Asians shouldn't be allowed to drive” then it's not fair to all. So 18C goes.

Ok so it's not so easy to test all laws this way – applying it to the Seafarers Safety and Compensation Levies Collection Bill defeated me. But try it yourself on any of the contentious Bills before Parliament - you may be surprised at the outcome.

Remember you are free (and try to stay that way).