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)

Cry havok and let slip the dogs of the Potato Marketing Corporation

“...eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." - Andrew Jackson, 1837.

 

A guy rang me recently looking for employment as a security guard. When I offered him a spot at the annual Nimbin Mardi Grass he promptly declined and told me he was “disgusted by homosexuality”. I laughed and told him it wasn't the Gay Mardi Gras but Mardi Grass as in cannabis, pot, weed etc. There was a long pause followed by a “No way”. He hung up the phone and never forwarded his resume - I guess having decided I was doing the work of the devil and trying to lead him astray.
 
You might go to Nimbin Mardi Grass expecting a libertarian paradise of free love, hash cookies and laughter but no – you will instead find a Police Open Day with the many faces of law enforcement on display – riot police, licensing police, mounted police, drug detection dogs, random breath tests, drug tests and many more flavours of cop all intent on making life as miserable as possible for festival goers. And it works – the event has been in steady decline since the police crashed the party about seven years ago . And cannabis is still illegal.

On my return to the normal world I find there is a new sheriff in the tourist resort town of Byron Bay promising to “clean up Byron” which is cop for for “shut down the night-life in Byron Bay”. Short of stature and chewing gum constantly - he was last seen photographing the cheery crowd of young people outside the Great Northern Hotel on a Saturday night while commenting darkly that “this was no good”. God help us.

Meanwhile in light of recent homicidal attacks on innocent people by various flavours of dick-headed loser in Australia and around the world – politicians and pundits are talking censorship again. Frustrated by their inability to to combat the message of evil they turn their attention to the medium - inferring that some of that evil has rubbed off on it.

Perhaps the time has come to censor the Internet, they gravely intone, and al-Jazeera while we are at it.

While the Prime Minister claims to not understand how a terrorist can be given parole when he knows well the answer - the terrorist in question wasn't one, as he had never actually carried out an act of terror. Turnbull knows this – he was once a lawyer.

As the law-mongers talk minimum sentences and Federal control over State parole boards, the State of NSW hands out M4 assault rifles to riot police and gives all police a licence to kill criminals before they are a threat to others. Both will come in handy next year in Nimbin, or at schoolies in November.

And in Western Australia, a man faces the Supreme Court for the heinous crime of growing too many potatoes.

With no bill of rights to constrain them, Australian politicians will make whatever laws they can get away with to be tough on crime - as being tough on crime, or at least appearing to be, is crucial to winning the next election and keeping their jobs.

With every new law, regardless of its merits, the police and other bureaucrats become more powerful and can intrude further into our lives. We constantly hear of Police being given new powers – we never hear of old ones being taken away.

Instead we hear the sound of our rights being chipped away. For the only right we have in this country is to do that which is not prohibited by laws.

So be suspicious of all new laws, I say. Be suspicious as you would of a lawyer who cannot comprehend the law, a riot cop with an M4, or a man in black from the Potato Marketing Corporation.

And the disgusted security guard I mentioned earlier? Be not suspicious of him. He understands liberty and exercises his freedom to choose where he works and who he works for. His right to be disgusted and express such disgust for anyone, anything and anytime.

He remembers he is free – help keep him that way.

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.

To keep speech free let's no-platform the law-mongers

The libertarian version of free speech wants no conditions, no boundaries and no apologies to anyone. The conservative right claims to champion free speech - but everyone seems to have their own version of it – usually one that enables an attack on actions of those on the left. The left is not bound by such principle at all – leaving them free to attack the speech of others through censorship, legislation and recently no-platforming.

No-platforming is the practice of preventing someone from their expressing ideas usually through a speaking event or some sort of public forum.

Recently, no-platforming attacks have successfully shut down speaking events in Australia by anti-Islamist activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and in America by conservative commentator Ann Coulter.

As much as I would love to join our conservative media in defending liberty by shaming the no-platformers I cannot. For when you spend as much time thinking about these things as I do you realise that this is about emotion not reason.

“It's so sickening when a radical thuggish institution like Berkeley can so easily snuff out the cherished American right to free speech.” - Ann Coulter

Well it sickens me too Annie, but to shout louder than another is not denying them freedom of speech. Intimidating a person into cancelling a speaking tour comes closer, but does not either. Burning flags, burning cars even burning books does not. These are attacks on freedom of speech to be sure, but they have not and will not take away your ability to speak and subsequently to be heard. These are just provocations and punishments meted out by one tribe to spite another.

In the People's Republic of China where I once lived there is no such thing as free speech and there has not been for at least 60 years. This blog could not exist there. The authorities would have blocked it from the first post and warned me not to write another. Had I persisted they would have come around to my house and taken me away and put me in a cell for as long as they saw fit - perhaps forever. To speak of freedom is illegal.

I remember after a typically boozy business lunch in China when a few of our younger associates became relaxed enough to start complaining that the government was keeping them poor. My interpreter shot to her feet and said it was time to go and we left. Not only is it dangerous to speak, it's dangerous to listen.

There was a gay pianist who played in the lobby of the 5 star hotel where I worked in Shanghai. Over time his demeanor went from mildly effeminate to being flagrantly camp until one day he pushed it too far and they took him away.

This is what it looks like to have no freedom of speech. No freedom of expression.

Thankfully, it is very difficult to shut down free speech in the modern western world. You can read books, magazines newspapers and blogs, watch television and youtube, listen to podcasts and the radio all day and night. You will find Hirsi Ali and Coulter prominent in all of them.

No-platforming really only imposes geographical limits on speech. It does not stop you from speaking, just from speaking here. You are free to speak over there.

Even in America where free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment we know that such geographical conditions do not infringe constitutional rights. How? Well thanks to the Westboro Baptist Church.

Between 2006 and 2012 state and federal laws were passed to counter the picketing of funerals by it's hate-mongering members. First Amendment protection of the church's extreme hate speech was confirmed by the US Supreme court in 2011. So to comply with the constitution laws were made that excluded any kind of protest from within 300 ft of a funeral service. You can scream that “God hates Fags” over there, just not over here.

Proof that no-platforming is not only ineffectual but counter-productive is brought to us by the irrepressible Milo Yiannopolous. Right wing media personality Milo has been banned from Twitter, fired from Breitbart News, dropped by his publisher and blocked from speaking at universities in US and Britain. Earlier this year Milo's speech at Berkely UC was shut down by violent protesters. All of which have added to his fame and expanded his audience to make him the new Justin Bieber of the Internet (though as his recent comments in favour of sex with 13 year old boys has seen him branded a paedophile - free speech may well be the undoing of Milo).

In Australia we have no constitutional right to freedom of speech. So lawmakers are free to make whatever laws they wish. Here lies the real danger. Scream loud enough and some populist law-monger will want to criminalise no-platformers or the people they wish to silence. The civil courts could then be used to force institutions into hosting controversial speakers and be accountable for their safety. Or the speakers could be taken away by police for illegal “hate speech”.

Then their tribesmen would congratulate themselves for striking a blow for freedom and justice, when all they have done is throw those things away - forever and a day.

Making laws won't make you free. There are no safe spaces out on the street. Free speech in the public arena is, and always was, a fuck-off all-in brawl.

Let's keep it that way.

R U R Free

Freedom vs market interventionists, scalperbots and Adele

Serial market pest Senator Nick Xenophon is at it again. Poker machines again? No it's ticket scalping prompted by Australian politicians' bi-partisan love for Adele and the fact that a ticket to see her recent show cost as much as $5000. 

Put simply - this is because only a small number of tickets are available to the public and the bulk of those seem to be snapped up by scalpers who go on to sell them for huge profits via the internet. 
 

This is an example of supply and demand economics - when demand outstrips supply prices go up. As profiteers move in prices go up some more. This has been a feature of the free market economy for some time now and is well understood by Year 10 students everywhere.

However, this being 2017, scalpers are thought to be unfairly aided by software 'bots' which are conveniently taking the heat for the situation.

Being a federal Senator and a market sceptic Nick's solution is, of course, market intervention through federal legislation. Firstly by following the US which last year passed the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act and banned these digital daleks.

Ticket bots are basically hacker's tools that can be downloaded from the internet. Banning them would be like banning a virus, or outlawing hacking. Or banning crime.

There is so far no evidence that this legislation has affected ticket prices. No one has been charged let alone convicted under the Act.

Nick has his own ideas though none of them could be described as bright. Such as allowing tickets to be re-sold only when where a ticket holder has a legitimate reason to do so and dis-allowing tickets to be resold for more than 10 per cent profit. Really, Nick? Do you really think such nonsense could be made law?

If it could - we would end up with is a taxpayer funded Fair Ticket Pricing Commission. The Federal Police will need a Ticket Scalping Strike Force with offices in every state. Teams of hackers would be employed by the government to fight the scalperbots in cyberspace. All paid for by you and me. Would it affect ticket prices ? Unlikely. But even if it did, you and I would be subsidising concert goers to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. 

Luckily for us all - Nick Xenophon speaks softly and carries a small stick – for he is just a Senator and cannot put forward a bill to Parliament. He can only put forward a motion which is a statement that other Senators can agree or disagree upon, and that's it. Such motions carry as much weight as the belligerent utterances of a drunk as he slides off his barstool to the ragged cheers of rival barflies.

Xenophon is, and always was, a cheap populist hack.

Politicians commonly branded as populists, like Trump and Hanson, actually have ideas about society and government – big, weird ideas that make them saviours to some and devils to others. Nick Xenophon is a true populist in that he keeps to the centre to please as many voters as possible and kindly offers to legislate against anything that might vex them.

But those who seek to make laws purely to increase their popularity are the enemies of liberty. Every law they make takes away our freedom. And as we only have the right to do what is not prohibited by laws – our rights are taken away too.

Government interventions into the energy market have stuffed it up, particularly for those in Nick's home state of South Australia. Nick's solution – more interventions to stuff up the old stuffed up interventions.

To do this he waved his little stick at a weak government and took tax reform hostage to force his interventions upon us. Tax reform meaning - the lowering of our taxes. His little stick just got a little bigger.

So don't encourage him. Don't vote for him. Don't fall for his populist bullshit.

Remember you are free.

More on the complex issue of ticket scalping to come. In the meantime check out,

 

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/a-ticket-scalper-explains-the-rip-off/8344484

Offend, insult, humiliate (and die)

One hot November day back in 2004 Cameron Doomadgee was arrested on the streets of Palm Island in Queensland. Cameron was drinking beer and full of cheek on a Friday morning, probably looking forward to the weekend as heavy drinkers do. Inside the bucket he carried a mud crab waited patiently for oblivion. Who would have thought it would outlive the man who had caught it?

Sergeant Chris Hurley of the Queensland Police Service was having a tough morning dealing with drunkenness and domestic violence common to the community in which he served.

Sergeant Hurley was in the company of a man named Lloyd - a Police liaison officer on the island. Cameron taunted Lloyd by singing “Who let the dogs out” and had a go at him for helping the Hurley “lock up his own people”. Cameron ended up swearing at both officers for which he was arrested. Offensive language - usually a $100 fine.

A struggle took place at the cop shop and to cut the story short – Cameron was severely beaten by Hurley and died 40 minutes later alone in a cell.

The autopsy report was a ridiculous attempt to cover up the killing. The locals rioted. The police station and barracks, the courthouse and Hurley's house burned when word passed around that Cameron had been “murdered” by the police.

A state of emergency, 28 arrests, a second autopsy, three coronial inquiries, several criminal trials, Supreme Court appeal, a suicide, resignations and incarcerations followed.

In 2006, a coroner found that Cameron was killed as a result of punches by Sergeant Hurley. Four of his ribs were broken and driven into his liver with such force that it tore it apart.

Two legal questions arose from the death. Firstly was the arrest of Cameron lawful and secondly, whether the injuries that killed him were intentionally caused by Sergeant Hurley.

Yes the arrest was lawful and no, Hurley was not guilty of manslaughter.

The years of controversy focused on the second question which was never really resolved to the satisfaction of all. Controversy swirled around the actions of the police, the police union, the state government, the coroner and other agencies as some sought to protect Hurley while others wanted him hanged.

And then there was the issue of race. Cameron Doomadgee was a blackfella and Chris Hurley was white. As a result the case became about Aboriginal deaths in custody – an issue which has haunted Australia for the last 50 years at least.

In all the drama the importance of the first question was overlooked. Perhaps because it was never really disputed that a cop can put you in a cell for offensive language. In fact, in Queensland a magistrate can theoretically put you in one for 6 months.

But it was not race that set these two men on a collision course. It was a law designed to ensure that we all be nice to each other in public.

Criminalising common behaviour unleashes the forces of the law upon ordinary people who may not deserve it and may not have the strength and resources to withstand it. And it can gets rough out on there on streets, in the emergency rooms and the lock-ups. Tempers flare, bones break, bodies bleed. In my time on the front lines I have hurt people too. Some quite badly, though never intentionally. My ribs too have broken by punches and I have broken the ribs of others.

So before tweeting your tribal war-cries and quaffing your pinot noir. Before you go signalling your virtues and superiority to others with your big-hearted concern for the feelings of minorities - you might consider what Cameron Doomadgee's position might have been on offensive behaviour laws as he lay dying in that cell. Ask of his ghost if he and his people felt protected by such laws as his body cavity filled with his own blood. Ask him if it was worth an agonising death that others should not be offended by his conduct. And ask yourself if you have given any real thought to the consequences of such laws at all.

If you really care about people like Cameron Doomadgee – then don't let the dogs out.

And remember you 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).