An address to the National Environmental Law Association
at the Victorian Law Institute on 25 June 1998
It is much easier to raise fears than to dispel them. Any moderately articulate person can raise more fears in 10 minutes than can be dispelled in 30. And fear is a powerful emotion. Fear sells.
So let us not chase every speculative rabbit down every fearful burrow. Let us simply confront some of the things we know.
We know that more wealth means people live longer. People in high income countries live longer than people in low income countries. Wealthy people live longer than poor people.
We know that while the move from low income to middle income levels tends to increase pressure on the environment, the move from middle income to high income generally reduces such pressure. The air and water quality of the US is far better than China or India's. London has much better air and water than Bangkok. Environmental indicators for developed countries are typically much better now than 50 years ago -- London does not have murderous "pea soup" fogs any more, you can fish in the Thames, the Ohio river no longer catches alight.
We know that economic deprivation or pressure reduces concern for the environment, economic prosperity and confidence increases it. Environmental concern goes up in booms and down during recessions; environmental concern is much stronger in rich countries than poor ones.
Though the connection is a bit weaker, wealth is also positively connected to freedom and democracy. With the exception of Bahrain, the top 20 per capita car owning countries are all democracies.
We definitely know that freedom and democracy are fundamentally based on the rule of law. While it is true, alas, that one can have capitalism without democracy, it has not proved to be possible to have democracy without capitalism. There is nothing mysterious in this connection: without a large area of personal freedom -- including the crucial ability to dispose of resources one owns either individually or together as one chooses -- and institutions independent of government, one cannot have the institutional basis for democracy.
Wealth is a good thing; for a whole lot of very basic issues such as longevity, environmental quality, freedom, democracy, human rights.
Indeed, the various attempts to, as much as practicable, replace the consensual private acts of market exchange and civil society with the coercive diktats of the state have produced vile societies which have been shown to be a failure even by their own standards. They have not only produced most of the most grotesque violations of human rights -- rivalled only by the Nazi holocaust, the Armenian and Rwandan genocides -- but also produced environmental disasters on a scale far in excess of any produced in the capitalist West.
The state is by no means automatically environmentally friendly: and it is certainly not automatically human rights friendly.
The MAI is a pretty innocuous treaty. All it basically says is that foreigners have rights too. Specifically, that investing foreigners cannot be treated worse than domestic investors. It is about protecting BHP or CSR's investments in other countries while we promise not to treat Holden or Kodak any worse than we treat any Australian owned company. It bars the expropriation of property; which our Constitution bans the Commonwealth from doing already.
There are about 1600 international treaties on investor rights. Australia is a member of about 600 of them. The MAI is just a clean-up exercise. It has the great advantage that, as a multilateral treaty, the weight of players like the US or the European Union is relatively less than in bilateral agreements, so a more even outcome is likely to be achieved.
The consequences of MAI will depend entirely on the content of local laws. If Australian laws and practices on human rights and the environment are basically sound, the MAI will not change that. It is simply about a fair go for foreigners. And, in the rest of the world, Australians are foreigners too.
The MAI is, essentially, an anti-xenophobia treaty.
That is what xenophobia is about -- turning "foreign" into a "boo-word". Capital xenophobia is about turning demonising foreign investment; trade xenophobia is about demonising foreign goods; immigration xenophobia is about demonising foreign people. If "foreign" is a boo word then it is; you cannot draw neat borders around it and say, Humpty-Dumpty like, that "foreign" is a boo-word only when I say it is. Inconsistent or partial xenophobia will be easily trumped by consistent xenophobia. As the Democrats and the Greens, who are inconsistent xenophobes, have been trumped by Pauline Hanson, who is a consistent one.
The patter against the MAI is about selling xenophobia, and I would prefer not to support that game in any way. But if you want to help build the case for Pauline, go right ahead -- sell your xenophobia. Her overt patriotic traditionalism makes her much better placed in the selling xenophobia stakes anyway. She is ready, waiting and demonstrably able to trump you.
What xenophobia is about is selling fear. Which is what the opponents of MAI are about, because there is money in fear, lots of it. Environmental groups make lots of money out of fear. There are votes in fear too -- see Pauline again. Journalists fill newspaper and the airwaves with stories playing on fear. Fear makes social control easier -- those who wish to control markets, such as capital markets, trade on fear. Such social control is particularly important for lobby groups seeking to impose costs on economic activity. There is a lot of money, votes, newstime and even, potentially, power in the great MAI fear beat-up.
Talk of the MAI conspiracy has much the same status as Hitler's talk of a Jewish Conspiracy -- to conjure up fearful bogeys to fill donation boxes and get votes. And the great Jewish conspiracy, we should remember, was also about the evil agents of international capital corrupting green and innocent lands and visiting destruction on the weak and helpless.
The rampant hypocrisy of the beat-up merchants is shown by the fact that they are very keen on international treaties on other matters, many of which are potentially far more intrusive than the MAI -- many environmentalist groups, for example, advocate positions for treatymaking on global warming whose consequences would be to close the La Trobe and Hunter valleys.
As for those nasty transnationals, it is often far better for less developed countries if a Western multinational moves in rather than a local company, because the Western company brings its, typically much higher, standards of corporate governance and environmental quality with it. It has to also operate back in Western countries where environmental concerns are a serious issue. Companies from countries where environmental sensitivity is much less significant have, predictably, lower standards.
Bunnings in Papua New Guinea replaced by slash and burn Malaysian company.
Greenpeace's dishonest Brent Spar campaign raising claims even it admitted later were incorrect after the close of Shell's 2 year consultation period on the optimum method of disposal for the purpose of boosting Greenpeace UK's membership and donation base
But the concern here is not with actual environmental consequences. It is about selling fear and being holier than thou. We are dealing with moral voguing -- just strike pose.
The modern politics of fear have lots of attractions.
Personally, I would prefer to sell confidence, in particular, self-confidence. What the xenophobes are saying is that Australians can't cut it. Those nasty foreigners, they are too big, clever, shifty, hardworking, dishonest, etc, etc, and they will do over us poor, honest, dinky-di Aussies. I reckon this is nonsense. First of all, I would put Australian used car salesman and real estate agents up against anyone in world in the dubious deal stakes. More seriously, I think the proposition that Australians can't cut it is just nonsense. I think Australians can. Indeed, I think Australians, can, do and will and the best thing for Australians is let the world in to allow us to show ourselves that we really are, or can be, world class. I believe a country of people who believe in themselves is a far, far better and happier country than an insular, frightened, parochial people who do not believe they cut it in the world, who give in to their fears.
So we should reject xenophobia and the peddlers of fear, and go for self-confidence, a fair go for all, and openness to the world and all it has to offer. Because, after all, one of the best things it has to offer is us.
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