The White Picket Fence: Smear claim replaces debate

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Smear claim replaces debate

Graham Tupper ("Smear on aid dollars", AFR December 14) pursues the well-worn path of smearing rather debating.

Contrary to Tupper, my analysis of aid agencies funding anti-mining NGO in Indonesia is documented and referenced in detail. The links between anti mining activist and aid agencies are hardly a secret. They have been thoroughly discussed in many sources including in documentation published by aid agencies, for example see OXFAM/ Community Aid Abroad's Mining Ombudsman Report.

When donors become eventually aware of these actions and the harm they do to the poor and jobless, all aid agencies will suffer.

The attempts by Tupper [of the Australian Council for International Development] to cover their tracks will not hide the facts and funding will fall.

In contrast mining firms often have generous funding relationship with aid agencies with links to anti-mining activist in Indonesia. Why? It's called a "good corporate citizenship" in some quarters and buying protection by others.

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RICHARD J WOOD

Today, those who subscribe to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, the free market, and the rule of law call themselves by a variety of terms, including conservative, libertarian, classical liberal, and liberal.

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"Conservative" smacks of an unwillingness to change, of a desire to preserve the status quo.

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The market-liberal vision brings the wisdom of the Australian Founders to bear on the problems of today.

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Market liberals appreciate the complexity of a great society, they recognise that socialism and government planning are just too clumsy for the modern world.

It is — or used to be — the conventional wisdom that a more complex society needs more government, but the truth is just the opposite.

The simpler the society, the less damage government planning does.

Planning is cumbersome in an agricultural society, costly in an industrial economy, and impossible in the information age.

Today collectivism and planning are outmoded and backward, a drag on social progress.

Market liberals have a cosmopolitan, inclusive vision for society.

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We applaud the liberation of blacks and women from the statist restrictions that for so long kept them out of the economic mainstream.

Our greatest challenge today is to extend the promise of political freedom and economic opportunity to those who are still denied it, in our own country and around the world.

My ever-growing areas of expertise include the environment, deregulation, workplace relations, energy, and governance.

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Countdown:

Policy Papers

Australian coastal shipping: the high price of protection (1990)
Too few jobs: why governments can't cure unemployment (1990)
Vested interests and the public interest: Submission to EPAC (1990)
The destruction and creation of jobs (1990)
The Telecom monopoly, natural or artificial? (1991)
Australian grain marketing: achieving lower costs (1991)
Towards efficient transport (1991)
Higher education in Australia: a way forward (1991)
Empty bed blues: Australian health care policy (1992)
Free to fly: practical airline deregulation (1992)
The sources of union power (1992)
What do our children know?: a study of educational standards (1993)
Who pays for protection (1993)
Deregulate or decay: the lesson of the 1930s for the 1990s (1993)
Fiscal anarchy: the public funding of multiculturalism (1993)
Apprenticeships (1993)
Industry protection, a primer (1995)
The economics of mineral export licences (1995)
A new approach to defence: the Wrigley report and after (1995)
Dividing the spoils: markets, government and corruption (1996)
Honest money (1997)