Selling Out The Voters

The famous American author Mark Twain is rumoured to have once said "If voting made a difference, they wouldn't let us do it".

The year 2016, though, was supposed to be the year where voting did make a difference.  But the twin political disruptions of 2016 — Brexit in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump as President in the United States — have not lived up to expectations.

Indeed, it is now clear that Brexit will not happen.  On 23 June 2016 the British were presented with two options in a referendum:  "Leave the European Union", or "Remain a member of the European Union".  There was no "hard Brexit", no "soft Brexit", and no mention of a "customs union", of payments to the EU, or of cross-jurisdictional mobility.  Leave means leave.

Except the elites have another idea.  Some 17.4 million Britons voted to Leave, 16.1 million voted Remain;  406 constituencies voted to Leave, 242 to Remain;  and nine regions voted to Leave, and just three to Remain.

Yet just 160 members of the House of Commons voted to Leave, and 486 voted to Remain.  The Prime Minister Theresa May is one of those 486.

The political class never had any intention of implementing the will of the British people.

This intent was on display when the House of Commons voted against a "no deal Brexit" — better known just as Brexit — 321 votes to 274.  This means the only way out of the EU will be some sort of compromise position.  And the only compromise on the table is the one put forward by Theresa May which has been twice rejected by the House of Commons.

In all likelihood Article 50 — the provision which once triggered gives effect to Brexit — will be extended, at first for a few months and then beyond a year.  By then the political class is hoping that the 17.4 million Brexiteers will lay down their arms and ride quietly into the night.

The situation across the Atlantic isn't much better.  Trump's presidency on the whole has been a success.  So far it has included substantial corporate tax cuts, deregulation, withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement, convincing Nato allies to pay their share of common defence costs, a renewed approach to North Korea and appointment of conservative judges.

But, as in the United Kingdom, the political class in the United States has sought to nullify Trump's presidency ever since he was elected on 8 November 2016.

Almost every argument for removing Trump from the Presidency has been used.  The electoral college is outdated.  Trump conspired with the Russians to steal the election.  He is mentally unstable and should be removed from the presidency under the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

And then there is the biggest brickbat of all:  Donald Trump is an avowed and unapologetic racist.

Democratic party Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand, for example, claimed in the wake of the tragic New Zealand terror attack that Donald Trump "embraced and emboldened white supremacists".

Importantly, it is not just members of the Democratic party that have been doing their best to stop Trump.

It was Republican Senator John McCain who voted against repealing Obamacare, after having campaigned on it for eight years.  And it was a majority Republican House and Senate that for two years refused to pass funding to build a wall or barrier on the southern border.

This left Donald Trump with no choice but to make a national emergency declaration to build the wall.  It is little surprise that the establishment is trying to stop that, too.  Recently the Republican Majority Senate voted 59-41 to cancel Trump's February proclamation of a border emergency.  Twelve Republicans voted with the Democrats, triggering Trump to issue the first veto of his presidency.

But Trump himself also appears to be straying from "Trumpism".  He still talks tough on illegal immigration, but at his State of the Union address in February of this year Trump stated he wants legal immigrants "in the largest numbers ever".

Trump's "bring the boys home" approach to foreign policy has been replaced with keeping troops in Syria and escalating rhetoric on regime change in Venezuela.

His hostility to trade deals has softened markedly (a welcome change, but a change nonetheless).  And the "swamp", far from being drained, appears to be alive and well.

None of this is to knock Donald Trump.  He is one man who was sent into Washington D.C. to shake things up.  And he has given it his best.  But in the end it appears that Washington always wins.

Australia faces similar challenges.  The upcoming election is interesting for what isn't being discussed.  Voters are concerned about three big issues:  rapid population growth.  high electricity costs and political correctness.

But the political class is intent on not talking about these issues.  Both the Coalition and Labor have fundamentally the same view on these three issues.  There is literally no difference on population growth.  The Coalition offers a slightly less destructive climate change policy, with a 39 per cent renewable energy target as opposed to Labor's 50 per cent target.  And the government's decision to ban Milo Yiannopoulos from entering Australia is just the latest example of their apathy, if not outright hostility, to free speech.  A hostility that will only be outdone by a Shorten Labor government.

So voting, at least for the meantime, may not make a difference.  But actions still do.  And that is why despair is not the right response.  Rather, we should follow another apocryphal quote, this time from Mahatma Ghandi who said "be the change you want to see in the world".

For those feeling disenfranchised, this means living in a way that will create a better future.  If political parties, neighbourhood councils, or local organisations are not functioning properly, then it is up to all of us to either develop alternative institutions or use our freedoms to join up and make them better.

Let's Not Forfeit Our Own Freedoms In The Rush To Silence Terrorists

American founding father Benjamin Franklin once wrote:  "Any society that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."  Since September 11, 2001, it's a trade-off with which we are increasingly familiar.

The Christchurch attacks were senseless acts of terror that reverberated around the world, but we need to be wary of knee-jerk proposals to limit our freedoms — in this case, restrictions on free speech via tighter regulation of the internet.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is leading the charge among world leaders, warning G20 nations last week that it is "unacceptable to treat the internet as an ungoverned space".  However, the exact content that Morrison proposes to govern against is frustratingly unclear.

Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten are reported to be on a "rare unity ticket" on this issue.  We should be concerned when politicians on both sides come together to rush dramatic changes to our laws without time for proper consolation or policy development.

It could be that Morrison is simply referring to incitement of violence, which is already a crime, and for good reason.  But criminal incitement requires the direct encouragement of acts of violence, with the intent that such acts be committed.  If the Prime Minister is proposing to legislate to prevent the specific crime of incitement online, then it may well be a sensible reform.

To what extent do we want to trust the government to define the difference between the terrible events of Christchurch, and say, and the video footage of September 11, which still remains online.

Moves to regulate the internet are unlikely to end there.  Since the tragic events of Christchurch, the conversation around the "crackdown" on social media platforms seems to focus more on the prevention of so-called "hate speech".  Morrison belled the cat on this overreach, saying he is "quite confident" that tech companies "can write an algorithm to screen out hate content on social media platforms".

But government regulation of social media is wrong in principle and ineffective in practice.  The problem is that laws against "hate speech" are, at best, a blunt instrument that almost always incur unintended consequences.  We've seen anti-discrimination laws recently weaponised against Queensland University of Technology students who actually argued against racial segregation.

Facebook yesterday announced it would extend its ban on white supremacy to cover content that references white nationalism.  But how will it define white nationalism?  It is a concept so broad that it could very well include banning supporters of the elected President of the United States, Donald Trump.

According to Facebook "white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organised hate groups."

This latest move by Facebook would, on face value, sound agreeable if it were not for the terrible track record of social media companies making similarly hamfisted efforts to scrub hate speech off their platforms.

At one stage, American conservative education organisation PragerU had about 80 of its educational videos on YouTube's list of "restricted content".  None of these videos could be considered remotely "alt-right" or "extremist", but they were nonetheless blocked by Silicon Valley.

In Australia, outspoken indigenous conservative Jacinta Price had her Facebook account suspended twice just last month.  Her crime?  Exposing the racial abuse that internet trolls had directed at her.

If this is the record of big tech companies policing "hate speech", we should be sceptical of any government that proposes to do better.

Existing laws regulating internet content have proven to be ineffective.  Court orders against accessing piracy sites such as Pirate Bay are easily circumvented, and a suite of otherwise illegal content is easily accessible via the dark web.  In all likelihood, genuine terrorist groups will simply move underground, while relatively innocuous content is taken down.

Internet censorship will do little to prevent the genuinely dangerous.  And in the process, our precious freedoms will take yet another hit for the false promise of safety.

Trust An Academic To Be So Foolish

Last month the University of Sydney sacked a lecturer in politics who showed his class a swastika superimposed over the flag of ­Israel.  Last week another Univer­sity of Sydney academic, English lecturer Nick Riemer, had published in The Sydney Morning Herald an article that succeeded in being offensive, insensitive and hypocritical.  Riemer managed to display publicly the deep sickness that pervades so many parts of our universities.

Had the author of "After Christchurch universities have a responsibility:  abandon Ramsay" been other than a Sydney University academic, it is doubtful the Herald would have published.  To paraphrase George Orwell, there are some things so foolish that they could have been written only by a member of the intelligentsia.

Riemer argued that in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, the university should not collaborate with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation because Ramsay sought to teach Western culture as a "coherent whole".  He wrote:  "There is a clear analogy between thinking that European books ­belong together and thinking that European people do too."

According to Riemer, teaching Plato, Shakespeare and Virgil in a "single, unified program of study", as Ramsay would do, "represents a separatist cultural essentialism that, after Christchurch, should be deeply alarming".

"If society is to escape from the murderous civilisational hatred displayed on Friday in Christchurch — to say nothing of the West's longstanding, far more deadly military campaigns against the Muslim world — universities simply must stop legitimising this kind of thinking."

In an effort to bolster his case against it, Riemer transcends the bounds of decency when he claims "Ramsay's academic supporters should pay attention" to the words of the alleged murderer and they should "reflect seriously on how the Ramsay curriculum validates the world view behind (the) massacre".

Riemer has the right to freedom of speech and to be deeply offensive.  Presumably some people also would add that the price of living in a free society is that taxpayers fund the salaries of people such as Riemer so that he can say what he wants.

But while Riemer is entitled to criticise Western civilisation, he is a hypocrite to then maintain that students at his university not be able to enrol in the Ramsay course.  The idea that you should be free to criticise the concept of Western civilisation is one of its essential legacies.  However, if ­Riemer had his way, no student would ever find this out.

Riemer is proposing that no one should actually study the thing that he is criticising.

The irony is, of course, that ­Riemer is able to enjoy his academic position, as well as the freedom to criticise Western civilisation, only because of the civilisation that he so despises.  He is a direct beneficiary of its ideals.

Riemer's entire argument is based on the freedoms afforded to us by Western civilisation.  Not once does he mention the freedoms that it has given the world.  Not once does he mention that the victims at Christchurch were free to worship because they live in a Western society, which is characterised by religious toleration.  His intolerance is utterly opposed to the values of a civilisation that has given us the uni­versal values of respect for the individual, equality of men and women under the law, the abolition of slavery and freedom of speech.

Unfortunately, his view is not singular.  Rather, the commonly held notion in Western academe is that Western civilisation is ­responsible for all evils in the world, past, present and future.  Any individual who is deemed to be "in favour" of it is now seen as white supremacist.  This view is shared by elements of the media.

A few days ago it was ­announced that the University of Cambridge had withdrawn its offer of a visiting fellowship to Canadian psychologist and best-selling author Jordan Peterson.  A spokesman for the university said:  "(Cambridge) is an inclusive environment and we expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our principles.  There is no place here for anyone who cannot."

Apparently Cambridge university staff are inclusive of all opinions except those with which they disagree.

Peterson's rejection by Cambridge is a damning indictment on the state of academe in the West, which is full to the brim of self-loathing.  It appears that academics are determined to do their utmost to exclude reason, inquiry and philosophical openness from their respective institutions.

In these academic circles, identity politics is pre-eminent.  Every subject must be considered through the narrow, limited and unimaginative lens of class, race and gender, otherwise it is deemed valueless.  As British writer Brendan O'Neill commented:  "To read the killer's alleged manifesto, as currently being covered by CNN, The New York Times and others, is to gain a horrible glimpse into the cultural fragmentation and racial paranoia unleashed by the relentless rise of identitarianism."

Western civilisation gave birth to both the concept of the individual and the idea that we all share a common humanity.

One of the best expressions of that common humanity is found in Shylock's speech in The Merchant of Venice:  "Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions;  fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?  If you prick us, do we not bleed?"

Shakespeare is included in the Ramsay Centre's curriculum.  It would be a tragedy indeed if, on account of the likes of Riemer, ­students were to be denied the ­opportunity to learn how Western civilisation gave us Shakespeare, Plato and Virgil.

Silencing Milo

The decision by the Federal Government Minister for Immigration to deny provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos a visa to enter Australia is outrageous.  This marks the third position the government has had on Milo.

First the Department of Home Affairs told Yiannopoulos they were planning to deny him a visa.  Thanks to the advocacy of three Liberal MP's, Tim Wilson, Amanda Stoker and James Paterson, the minister rightfully overturned this decision.

However, following the terrible Christchurch terrorist attack, the government then decided to ban Milo when he described Islam as "barbaric" and "alien".

The Department of Home Affairs told Yiannopoulos that it has the power to block someone's visa if there was a risk they would "incite discord in the Australian community or in a segment of that community".  No such ban was recommended for Muslim cleric Dr Omar Abdelkafy, who just last month toured Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.  Dr Abdelkafy recently described the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as comedy.  Referring to a horrific terrorist attack in which eleven Australians lost their lives is certainly enough to "incite discord in the Australian community", but why is the department and the government treating Dr Abdelkafy with kid gloves, but Milo with a permanent censure?

Technically, there is a "risk" that any tourist visiting Australia could incite discord.  This is an extremely dangerous low bar to rule upon and sets a dangerous precedent.

To renege on the decision post the Christchurch attack highlights a government that is unsure of what it believes.  It is a weak and pathetic decision that diminishes the fundamental Australian value of freedom of speech.

By banning Yiannopoulos from Australia, a Liberal government has handed over a powerful heckler's veto to the extreme violent Left.  This decision will empower extremists to protest and disrupt even the most palatable of right-of-centre speakers.  This decision sets a terrible precedent that will haunt the Coalition for years to come.

The Left organised protests against Canadian psychologist Jordan Petersen for his Australian tour last month.  If the Yiannopoulos test was applied to Peterson, he would have been denied.  It might have seemed like a tick and flick decision for Immigration Minister David Coleman, but this decision goes to the fundamentals of freedom of speech in Australia.

There have been reports that one of the grounds to deny Yiannopoulos a visa is that he is anti-semitic.  The provocateur sparked controversy recently when he sent a Jewish journalist $14.88 via Paypal.  These numbers are coded Nazi symbols, and he would have to have known this.  This is an abhorrent thing to do and highly unsavoury.

The first question for the department to ask should have been "has Milo said or done anything that is unlawful under Commonwealth law?"  The answer is no.

In 2017, US comedian Kathy Griffin toured Australia after controversially brandishing a bloodied severed head of Donald Trump, the president of our closest strategic ally.  It seems awfully risky that she could have and did "incite discord" in the Australian community.  Where is the Department of Home Affairs' consistency?  Kathy Griffin should be allowed to tour Australia;  she is not a threat to anyone's safety, nor is what she did unlawful.

Given that the department and the minister have made the decision to ban a person who has engaged in no unlawful activity, but purely on the basis of his notoriety, what is to stop a future Labor government from banning speakers who question the science of climate change, promote a traditional view on marriage, or promote free market economics even?

Visa bans on speech grounds should worry both sides of politics.  If a Liberal government deems it acceptable to ban a visa for a right-wing provocateur on speech grounds, what is to stop them from banning left wing activists who hold radical views on climate change, a contrary view on border protection or even socialism?

Recently the federal government made a decision to ban conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier David Icke from Australia.  What Mr Icke has said in the past is far more offensive and outlandish than Milo, but again, none of what he has said is unlawful to say in Australia.

Australians do not need the government to save them from offensive speech.

If someone tours Australia to spout supposedly offensive views, then their views should be challenged and tested, rather than denying that person a platform in the first place.  If views are offensive, the community should call them out and be given the chance to critique their viewpoint.  Attacks on our freedom won't be solved by more attacks on freedom.

The winners out of this decision are the fringe-dwelling left-wing activists who have aggressively protested recent tours, trying to physically prevent others from attending them.  By making this decision, the Minister may as well have been standing in protest with the fringe-dwellers.

Milo Yiannopoulos has been kept out of the country purely for his opinions.  Not for expressing them, just for having them;  this is an outrageous step.

In 2012 in a speech, when opposing draconian media laws and promising to repeal Section 18C, then opposition leader Tony Abbott said of the Liberal party:  "Essentially, we are the freedom party.  We stand for the freedoms which Australians have a right to expect and which governments have a duty to uphold.  We stand for freedom and will be freedom's bulwark against the encroachments of an unworthy and dishonourable government."

The Liberal party can no longer claim to be the freedom party.  An election might be just around the corner, but freedom of speech is more important than election cycles.  John Stuart Mill argued that the freedom to speak was really the freedom to hear.  To silence someone is to deny others the permission to listen and to test their views against others, even if the end result is the rejection of those different ideas.

Something for Prime Minister Scott Morrison and minister David Coleman to think about.

The Unions Unsheath Their Super Weapon

Bill Kelty knew exactly what he was doing when 40 years ago, he and a few others first developed the idea of government-enforced compulsory superannuation.  Superannuation was, is, and will be for the foreseeable future an essential part of the industrial armoury of the Australian trade union movement.

Control of superannuation gives the union movement an influence over the factors of production regardless of how much union membership declines.

In fact it could be argued that through superannuation, unions have an even more dominant role in the Australian economy than they did in the late 1940s when trade union membership peaked at 65 per cent of the workforce.

The fact that this has only just dawned upon Liberal MPs is a testament to their naivety and the lack of interest that most Liberal MPs have in the history of anything that happened in Australia before their own preselection.  For a political organisation that's supposedly "the party of capital", the Liberals of recent years are ignorant of how capital in this country actually works.

REDUCE THE BURDEN

Most Liberal MPs would be astounded to learn that the $1.4 trillion now under the control of trade union-dominated industry superannuation funds is close to the combined value of every company on the Australian stock exchange.  As at 31 March, 2018, the total value of all superannuation assets was $2.6 trillion.

Ever since compulsory superannuation was introduced by the Keating government in 1992, successive Labor and Liberal governments have argued its purpose was to reduce the burden on taxpayers of the age pension.  After nearly three decades, that hasn't happened.  What has happened is that the trade union movement, which now represents 17 per cent of workers in the labour force, has $1.4 trillion at its disposal.

That's the context in which to understand the recent comments of Transport Workers Union national secretary and alternative director of TWUSuper Michael Kaine, who claimed that "super funds should take an unapologetically robust approach to assessing risks to returns to created by poor labour policies".

Labor Leader Bill Shorten smacked down Kaine and pointed out that the law required superannuation trustees to act in the best interests of their members.  The vehemence of Shorten's reply to Kaine demonstrates just how sensitive this issue is.  Shorten said of Kaine:  "He's entitled to his opinion, but I've given you mine."  The trouble is that what's "in the best interests of their members" is in the eye of the beholder.  Kaine is entitled to argue that investing in a company that enforces union preferences will provide superior returns to investing in a company that believes in the right of workers to choose for themselves whether to belong to a union.

It's not just the amount of money in superannuation that's changed since the early 1990s.  Another thing that's different is the attitude of the union movement to the purpose of superannuation.

Keating and Kelty's Super Legacy — The Birth and Relentless Threats to the Australian System of Superannuation is a recent book by former federal Labor MP Mary Easson from Connor Court Publishing.  It's a deeply researched and perceptive analysis of the origins of the country's superannuation system and is obligatory reading for anyone seeking to understand how superannuation has evolved.

UNSTATED ASSUMPTION

Easson makes the point that as originally conceived by Keating and Kelty, compulsory superannuation was to be the means by which employees and their unions could participate in the shaping of the national economy together with both business and government.

The unstated assumption was that while they might have their differences, unions and business and government shared the same broad objectives and had a common interest in how the economic development of the country should proceed.  It was a model of corporatism informed by the seminal report of 1986 Australia Reconstructed following a joint fact-finding mission to Scandinavia and Germany by the ACTU and the federal government's Trade Development Council.

Whether today in 2019 this country's trade union movement still believes it shares a common interest with business or instead believes it should perpetuate class warfare is surely at the heart of the question about the future of this country's superannuation system.

Labor Push On Minimum Wage Will Hurt Those It's Meant To Help

Bill Shorten has declared the next federal election to be a referendum on wages and has committed to raising the minimum wage to become a "living wage".

A living wage would be set to an amount that could cover necessary living expenses.  While Labor has not indicated how this would be determined, the ACTU has called for the minimum wage to increase by 11 per cent during the next two years.

This proposal is deeply flawed.

The ACTU has said a living wage is required so that "no full-time Australian worker lives below the poverty line".

The problem is that by "poverty" the ACTU means "relative poverty", which is defined as 60 per cent of the median income.

This means poverty could decrease simply because the median income declined, not because of material improvements to those at the lower end of the income distribution.

It also means an individual earning $42,000 a year would be considered to be in poverty.  No one can claim that $42,000 delivers a high standard of living, but describing it as the poverty line is ­inaccurate.

In any event, the best available evidence shows that poverty is declining.

Each year, the Melbourne Institute publishes statistical analysis based on the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey.

It includes two measures of poverty:  an objective measure and a relative measure.

The objective measure, which estimates changes to income across time anchored to purchasing power, has declined from 13 per cent of Australians to 4 per cent over 15 years.

The relative measure, which estimates the proportion of households with income 50 per cent or lower than the median, has declined from 13 per cent to 9 per cent.

The objective measure is a more accurate depiction of the economic conditions of those on lower incomes because it tracks their progress across time.

The relative measure artificially pegs lower incomes to median earnings and so conflates changes to those on lower incomes with changes to the median income.

Unfortunately, it has become a common and dishonest tactic to redefine inequality as poverty to argue for radical redistribution and ultimately destructive wage controls.

Aside from being based on a highly misleading use of statistics, the living wage concept suffers from other drawbacks.

Not all jobs need to be able to sustain the living expenses of a family.  Entry-level jobs, for example, play an important role in the economy and provide economic opportunity for young people.  Then there is the issue of determining a standardised living wage.  A living wage for a single person living at home with their parents would be substantially lower than it would be for someone with a mortgage and a dependent spouse and children.

Applying a standardised living wage across a multitude of ­circumstances is practically unworkable.

Perhaps most important, though, is that a living wage will harm those it is notionally designed to help.  Artificially increasing the cost of workers will not result in higher wages but fewer jobs and fewer hours.

Even the Fair Work Commission, set up by the previous Labor government, is aware of the costs of dramatically increasing the minimum wage.

In response to a submission by the ACTU, the Fair Work Commission notes the "substantial risk of reducing the employment opportunities for low-skilled workers, including many young persons, who are looking for work" as result of a substantial increase to the minimum wage.

Rent control means people line up for rental properties;  price controls mean people line up for bread;  and wage controls mean people line up at Centrelink.

If Labor really believes there are no negative employment effects, then there is no reason to stop at an 11 per cent increase.  Why not double the minimum wage?

While there is never a good time for such a proposal, doing so in today's economic climate is reckless.  Australia is in a per capita economic recession where GDP per capita has gone backwards for two consecutive quarters.  About 614,000 young Australians are unemployed or unable to find enough work.  And 1.1 million Australians are underemployed.

Still, there are legitimate concerns about stagnating real wages.  Real wages in the private sector have grown by just 1 per cent during the past five years.

This is partly because of myriad entitlements and conditions included in employment contracts that raise the cost of employment for businesses and lower nominal wages.  As noted by John Lloyd:  "An agreement's conditions and other legislated employer obligations such as superannuation, workers compensation and payroll tax can add 90 per cent in costs above the prescribed wage rate."

But the single biggest hit to take-home pay is income tax.  Any attempt to improve wages must include lowering taxes, which in practice means reducing government spending.

Governments cannot legislate Australia's way to prosperity, or to higher wages.  Higher minimum wages simply boost the wages of some at the expense of others who will lose their jobs or be set fewer hours.  The best way to increase the take-home pay of Australians is to cut income taxes and reduce the onerous regulations on business that undermine economic opportunity and wage growth.

Pollies May Soon Need To Court The Wombat Vote

It appears that in a bid to change public perception that the humanities produces research which is not only frivolous and completely useless for Australian society at large, a group of academics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney has devised a brand new program called FutureFix.

Comprising six "flagship" themes, academics behind the project claim that over the next few years, they will not only tackle a number of "issues of global importance" but that they will also provide solutions to them.  They are it seems, determined to show Australians that what they do is actually beneficial.

However, the six "flagship" themes listed as part of the program are so far removed from useful that it beggars belief.  They range from reconsidering what it is to be human, to proposing that capitalism is responsible for engendering new forms of insidious inequality.  They believe these to be the most pressing problems of our era.

But the subject which surely wins the prize for the most absurd is called "Multispecies justice".

Described by the project leaders as being "a post human reconceptualisation of justice via a multispecies lens", this movement is essentially pushing for both animals and the environment to be given the same political, moral and legal status and rights as humans.  The team behind this insanity is putting its effort into attempting to work out what "justice across the human and natural world [would] look like and entail".

A University of Sydney lecturer has even made the connection between "multispecies justice" and democracy and political institutions.  He proposes that we need to seriously consider the "arguments for the formal inclusion of animal interests in democracies.  That is, how might we design democracies in ways that are non-anthropocentric."

In other words, we need to work out how to give wombats the vote.  This is absolute lunacy.

It is astounding that this is the same university which refused to take $50m from the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, which would not have cost the taxpayer a cent.  It vehemently opposed the idea of a Bachelor of Arts in Western Civilisation on the grounds that it was "European supremacism" writ large, and opposed to academic freedom.

This would have given Australians students the opportunity to learn about our common humanity, through, for example, studying the works of Shakespeare, which in today's unsettled world is needed more than ever.

Yet, the university is more than happy to take money from the taxpayer to ponder about how best to give animals the right to vote.  There has been no hint of outrage from the 200 staff members who opposed the Ramsay Centre about their colleagues' reflections on wombats and koalas taking part in the democratic process.

All this is especially potent given that last year, former Education Minister Simon Birmingham saved Australians around $4.2 million by vetoing 11 utterly useless Australian Research Council grants.  Among the prospective research projects which he rightly canned were "Writing the Struggle for Sioux Modernity", "A History of Australian Men's Dress" and "Beauty and Ugliness as Persuasive Tools in Changing China's Gender Norms".  The outrage from academics at the intervention was as loud as their defence of the research projects was weak.

Modern academia has made a mockery of the university system, their research ideas are now so ridiculous they have gone beyond parody.

It appears that academics' obsession with radical identity politics now includes animals.  Having exhausted the countless computations of class, race and gender, academics at the University of Sydney have thrown a fourth category into the mix:  species.

The fact academics genuinely believe "multispecies justice" to be a global issue reveals the abyss between the academy and the rest of the world.

Eighty-Nine Billion New Reasons To Quit The Paris Agreement

Momentum continues to build for Australia to exit the Paris Climate Agreement.

New economic modelling prepared by Managing Director of BAEconomics and former executive director of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Dr Brian Fisher, was released on Tuesday.  It shows that the emission reduction obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement will cost Australia at least $89 billion in terms of foregone economic output, and result in 78,000 fewer jobs over the period 2021-2030.

The modelling also shows that the Paris Climate Agreement will result in a 21 per cent reduction in output in the thermal coal sector, a two per cent reduction in real wages, and a $12 price hike to wholesale electricity prices over the period 2021-2030.

Under the Paris Climate Agreement, Australia must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.  This translates into a 50 per cent cut in per capita terms, which is the deepest cut in the developed world.  China, for example, is able to increase its aggregate emissions by 150 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 which equates to around a 120 per cent increase in per capita terms.

The research by Dr Fisher follows my recent research report published last year that the Paris Climate Agreement would cost at least $52 billion by 2030 in terms of the higher cost of generating electricity.  The estimates provided by Dr Fisher are higher as the modelling includes the flow-on economic costs of higher electricity prices, including lower business investment, slower employment growth, and slower wages growth.

However, what is perhaps more interesting than these admittedly dry economic figures is that the Paris Climate Agreement itself is disintegrating.  The four largest greenhouse gas emitters in absolute terms are not in the Paris Agreement (the United States) or their emissions are not constrained by the Paris Agreement (China and India) or are not on target to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement (the European Union).

Further, the Climate Action Tracker, which is a consortium of three research organisations, tracks national progress of 32 nations which collectively account for 80 per cent of global emissions in meeting their Paris emission reduction targets.  The tracker finds that just seven nations out of the sampled 32 nations are on track to meet their national emissions reductions contributions to keep warming below 2°C above preindustrial levels.  Those nations — Morocco, the Gambia, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, the Philippine, and India — collectively account for just 6.6 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Besides, even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full by all signatory nations it would only produce a two-tenths of one-degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100, according to researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Australia accounts for just 1.5 per cent of global emissions from human activity.  And human activity accounts for just three per cent of total emissions.  Even the complete deindustrialisation of the Australian economy would make no noticeable difference to the global climate.

The case for exiting the Paris Climate Agreement has never been stronger.  It will impose significant and irreparable economic damage without delivering a discernible environmental benefit.  Most other nations are not on target to meet their obligations.  And what Australia does makes no noticeable difference to the global climate.

Remaining in the Paris Climate Agreement is simply not in Australia's national interest.  Exiting the Agreement should be a bipartisan priority.

Super Justice Warriors

Captain Marvel, released to cinemas this month, is more than just another addition to the already saturated superhero film market.  It is a perfect case study in a social justice takeover of a pop culture franchise.

Until now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe films — such as the Avengers films, Black Panther, or Iron Man — have been reliably-inoffensive escapist fiction, if at times blandly formulaic.

The Marvel formula, established by the 2008 adaptation of Iron Man and repeated a further 20 times to varying degrees of critical success, has delivered a staggering financial return to Marvel Studios and parent company Disney.

This success equals a massive platform, and all such platforms inevitably attract propagandists who seek to use them to transmit not-so-subtle socio-political messaging.

The "woke" marketing for Captain Marvel was as divisive as it was obnoxious.  Early promotional material for the film used the slogan "The future is female", kicking off hype that the film was "important" for featuring a female character.  The leading actress Brie Larson has been a walking gaffe magnet, complaining about toxic masculinity and the white-male patriarchy.  To Entertainment Weekly Larson said of the film:  "I think because it's 2019, and what 2019 is about, really, is intersectional feminism".  The film's co-director, Anna Boden, noted in an interview ahead of the film's release that "it's not just a feminist movie, it's also a humanist movie".

To the ordinary observer, it would seem utterly bizarre that a film based on an obscure character with no pre-existing fan base or wider cultural impact could not only be greenlit to be produced with a massive $152 million budget, but also heavily marketed with language to turn off segments of the market.

Those familiar with the comic book industry, however, are all too familiar with efforts to push Captain Marvel onto an unwilling market.  The version of Captain Marvel being adapted into film this year was based on a character that since 2012 has been at the forefront of a suicidal effort to subvert comic books for blatantly political ends.

For decades, Carol Danvers was at best a C-list character in the Marvel Comics Universe as Ms Marvel.  Beginning about a decade ago, the leading comics publisher began to believe the suggestion the consumer base for their books was too white and too male.  Comic books needed to be more representative, and those comic books ended up representing fewer and fewer people as the prioritisation of divisive identity politics gutted the industry and turned away hordes of comic fans without attracting new ones.

At the forefront of this destructive mission was Carol Danvers.  Marvel Comics needed a Wonder Woman of their own, and in 2012, Ms Marvel was plucked from relative obscurity and promptly given captaincy.

This promotion was not successful.  As the comics industry was increasingly stacked with writers concerned with political point scoring, the books were filled with lazy social justice tropes.

Modern progressive activists, being obsessed with politics, only respect power.  This usually results in commercial failure in fictional and entertainment outlets, because normal people don't share those obsessions.  For this kind of writer, heroes are not defined by their limitations.  Instead, the relationship between power and the value of a fictional character is a direct positive correlation — meaning the more powerful a character is, the better and more meaningful that character is.  That is why the only character trait of Captain Marvel — being primarily a political creation — is "most powerful superhero on earth" with an emphasis on being stronger than the men.

This is also present in the film.  Larson portrays the supremely competent and powerful character with a snarky "I got this" attitude, while Samuel L. Jackson — as the erstwhile godfather of the mighty Avengers — is relegated to bumbling sidekick who loses his eye to a cat scratch.  As Lindsay Bahr at the Associated Press noted in her review of the film, "I spent two hours with Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers and I still have no idea what her personality is".

That is not an accident;  that is the design.  The activists that have set up shop in the entertainment industries believe power is personality.

Despite the Captain Marvel comic series being launched, cancelled, and rebooted seven times since 2012, the publisher aggressively promoted Danvers as the new flagship character of the Marvel Comics Universe, ahead of proven characters like Spider-Man or Wolverine.  Even more grating, by marketing Danvers as the most powerful character in all creation, readers were reminded that the characters they actually like had to be diminished to suit a fringe political agenda.  Take that, ya geeky male nerds!

Currently, market demand for superhero films is exceedingly strong, and Captain Marvel will likely benefit from added anticipation of Avengers:  End Game, a film that Brie Larson is rumoured to feature prominently in.  But the film's financial success is not a reflection of the popularity of the character which has represented destruction in the comics industry.  If the film establishes a precedent, the rot will accelerate and society will be more miserable for it.

The loss of superhero films may not raise many alarms, but the ongoing assault on superheroes is an attack on a valuable part of Western cultural mythology.  Heroic fiction can recontextualise important social discussions and our anxieties in a way that transforms those heroes into metaphors of power and freedom that we can use to improve our own lives.  Twisting these stories amplifies those anxieties and weakens the foundations of a culture that reveres freedom and personal responsibility.

What is happening at Marvel fits a familiar pattern of left-wing activists infiltrating civil society bodies, corporations, and entertainment outlets.  The goal is not to use those platforms to generate wealth for shareholders, nor is it to make good products or provide good services.  There is no profit motive, just an ideological motive to generate change in social attitudes and impose new orthodoxies.

Fortunately, another Captain Marvel — the real Captain Marvel, marketed under the name "Shazam!" by DC Comics due to legal shenanigans last century — is to be adapted in May with a rare strategy:  they just want to entertain people.

Young Eco-Warriors Not Taught About How We Power Democracy

There's little doubt that the prospect of spending a day out and about with friends shouting about Adani, fossil fuels and the Morrison government is infinitely more thrilling than enduring a morning of double maths followed by an afternoon of double science.

After all, it's much more exciting to be an eco-warrior than it is to sit through hours of algebra, or come to terms with acid-base ­equilibrium systems and their applications.

Alas, there is much more to today's School Strike for Climate than this.  The reason why Australian children are out in force is ­because they have been terrified into it.  These young Australians, convinced that many of them will barely make it into adulthood before the advent of a climate Armageddon in 2031, might as well be wearing "The End of the World is Nigh" sandwich boards traditionally favoured by evangelical doomsayers.

Australian children are taking to the streets en masse to demand climate change action quite simply because they believe what they are being told.  From their first day at school until their last, they are taught an environmental determinist view of human civilisation.  The message repeated ad nauseam throughout much of the national curriculum's content by way of "sustainability", one of the three ubiquitous cross-curriculum priorities, is that "humans and their natural environment are closely interrelated".

The implication of this particular message, drummed into children from the word go, is that environmental factors such as climate presuppose the success or failure of civilisations.

They are essentially being taught that it is our civilisation, Western civilisation, that is failing both the Earth and humankind.

In this simplistic, neopaganistic narrative, capitalism and coal are evil and should be rejected because they are driving us towards a catastrophic, end-of-days scenario of unimaginable proportions that can be averted only by embracing socialism and renewables.

However, few students are taught about the costs that come with climate action.  More worrying, it seems this is being deliberately omitted from their education.  According to analysis by Copenhagen Consensus Centre director Bjorn Lomborg, solar and wind provide less than 1 per cent of the world's energy, and ­already ­require subsidies of $129 billion ­annually.

My research recently found that abiding by the Paris Agreement will cost Australia $52bn.

It's unlikely students will be told about Lomborg's conclusion that the agreement could not only cost up to $2 trillion but that it will also have no discernible impact on the environment.

And although media reports describe the youth climate protests as "global", they have taken place almost exclusively in wealthy countries that have overcome more pressing issues of alleviating energy poverty.  A truly global poll shows that climate change is a low priority, and well behind health, education and jobs.

Many of the children out in force today believe they may not live to see their 30s, and that only they can create an ecologically and sociologically just world through activism.  "Yes, learning is important," said a particularly enthusiastic teenager during a previous strike last November, "but activism showcases a lot of important characteristics for young people and students.  It showcases our initiative, our determination and our passion."

Indeed, the numbers of children participating in today's rally is testament to the initiative, determination and passion of the adults who are encouraging them to strike.

It's hardly a secret that many who choose to go into teaching, as well as academics who inhabit university humanities departments, see their roles not as instructors but rather as agents of change who use schools and universities as vehicles from which to push their political agenda.

More than 800 teachers and academics have signed a letter of solidarity as part of the School Strike for Climate movement, which, although purportedly being run by schoolchildren, has received extensive support from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition.  They have put their names to a statement that "applaud(s) (the children) for their concern for our planet and their conviction to stand up for change to demand urgent action on climate change".

Each and every one of these schoolteachers directly contravenes the Department of Education's policy on political activities, which states in no uncertain terms that teachers "must not solicit students to become agents of any organisation or individual by distributing notices, pamphlets or literature of any description that contains material of a controversial nature, whether originating from a union, professional association, parent-teacher group or any other source".

The letter's signatories are potentially breaking the law by encouraging mass truancy.  As NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes says:  "The law on this is very clear:  on school days, students are ­required to attend school."

The law, however, appears to be of little concern to the teachers who are encouraging the strike ­because they are actors in — and proponents of — a progressive education system that promotes politicking over learning, and feelings over facts.

The great tragedy of all this is that children are being pre­maturely propelled into an adult world of activism, rights and social justice, but without the facts, the knowledge or the maturity to cope with it.

On the one hand they are being told that as future leaders only they can save the world.  But on the other hand, the very people who should be equipping the children in their care with the fundamental skills and knowledge which will make them effective leaders, are failing in their duty to do so.

The Myth Of Our Stagnant Wages

The ACTU has claimed Australia is facing an "incomes recession".  Secretary Sally McManus says working people "are ready to take action to restore our living standards".  She plans worker protests before the federal election.

Economic forecasters are puzzle­d by the behaviour of wages.  We are approaching full employment.  Bosses and recruitment firms complain about labour shortages.  The economy continues to grow.  In these circumstances, the price of labour should be increasing.

But there are two misconceptions here.

First, real wages have not ­declined, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data.  A comparison of wages and prices over five and 10-year periods shows that wages have more than kept pace with prices.

An array of data measuring living standards exists and it may be that a few of these measures have moved into negative territory, but living standards measures, espec­ially over short time periods, should be treated with caution.

The second and more important misconception is a misreading of the dynamic of Australian workplaces in 2019, and it may hold the secret as to why wages are not behaving as theory predicts.

Australian workplaces these days are heavily regulated.  Decis­ions about employing, retaining and remunerating staff take into account numerous and compounding considerations — and they've made labour market governance too complex.

These include the relevant enter­prise agreement or award and extraneous factors affecting employment relationships, all of which moderate the link betwee­n labour demand and supply­, and wages growth.

An enterprise agreement prescribes much more than a wage rate.  It establishes the terms and conditions of employment.  En­title­ments such as allowances, types of leave (sometimes numbering 15 or more), penalties for shift and overtime work and work on weekends and public holidays, rostered days off, terms of engagement, consultation about change and termination.  The list goes on.

The scope and cost of non-wage conditions continue to grow.  Some significantly constrain man­­agement prerogative and others boost union influence in the workplace while ­reducing ­individual employee rights.

An examination of recent agreements highlights these trends.  The Westpac Group agreement introduces innovative types of leave.  An employee can take one paid day of lifestyle and wellbeing leave.  Grandparents are ­allowed one year of unpaid leave to care for a grandchild.  Trans­gender employees in transition are entitled to four days' paid leave and one year's unpaid leave.

Butler Freight Services, a waterfront transport firm, had an agreement with the Transport Workers Union ­approved this month.  The ­em­ployer superannuation contribution is 12.5 per cent to the TWU superannuation fund.  An ­em­ployee who has not used all of their annual personal leave entitlement gains an attendance ­incentive.  The maximum is a $1000 incentive for 10 days' ­unused entitlement.  An employee achieving 12 months' service with the company receives a $5 a week loyalty bonus for every year of service up to 10 years.

Trade union delegates working for Butler are provided 10 days' paid leave to attend union training or conferences, or to engage in union campaign activity.  Union delegates have a right to induct all new staff.  The inductions must contain no more than 15 workers and last at least 30 minutes.

The Victorian Government Schools Agreement entitles a parent to be absent from duty for up to seven years after the birth or otherwise becoming a legal parent of one or more children.

Road travel in Tasmania must be particularly arduous.  The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, when travelling by road, must be given a 15-minute rest break after each two hours of the journey.

The cost of an employee to the business is much more than the wage rate contained in the enterprise agreement.  Employers now take on more social responsibility for employees well beyond the traditional employment relationship.  An agreement's conditions and other legislated employer obligations such as superannuation, workers' compensation and payroll tax can add 90 per cent in costs above the prescribed wage rate.  The scope and generosity of the conditions continue to grow.

There is more.  In Australia we have introduced regulatory ­regimes that influence employment and remuneration settings.

Human rights and anti-­discrimination regulators, at both the federal and state levels, ­intrude on employment decisions.  Some ALP states have relished the opportunity to introduce labour hire and independent contracting regulators.  Rules, regulations and penalties about workplace bullying and harassment have been ­expanded.  The federal workplace relations legislation has an ­expansive section on protecting workplace rights and allowing employees to invoke adverse ­action claims on a variety of grounds.  Then we cannot forget the prescriptive protections against unfair and unlawful dismissals.  These provisions operate with a problematic reputation and are often used by poor performers and malingerers to screw money from the employer.

This all means that many ­employers set the dial to caution when engaging and paying staff.  Competition in most industries is relentless and firms are vulnerable if placed at a cost disadvantage.  Small firms know that a litigious disaffected employee can ser­iously affect the bottom line through, say, a drawn-out discrimination or unfair dismissal case.

Employers and employees ­operate most effectively when there is a shared understanding of the business and its challenges.  A successful business needs motivated employees who are well ­remunerated and enjoy attractive conditions.  This translates into a mutual trust.  The numerous legislative and regulatory impediments to engendering a shared understanding and trust are a frustration of today's industrial landscape.  Also, trade unions, when active in a workplace, often work to destroy such mutual trust.

These workplace dynamics are contributing significantly to a ­reluctance to raise nominal wage rates above the inflation rate of about 2 per cent.

The ACTU and ALP plan to make the federal system more complex by adding regulation under the banner of rebalancing the system.  If this transpires, the next recession should be feared because its unemployment effects will be brutal.

Bad Riddance

When the Left talks derisively about "climate deniers", they probably imagine someone very different from Dr Peter Ridd.  Bearded, bespectacled and softly-spoken, Ridd is a sandal-wearing one-time Green voter and former president of his local chapter of the Wildlife Protection Society.  He is also a marine geophysicist who has been studying the Great Barrier Reef for over 35 years.  And like many in his field, Ridd is passionate about his subject.

But Ridd is equally passionate about his profession, and has spent years questioning the orthodoxy that climate change is "killing the reef".  In speaking out against this climate alarmism, Ridd put himself on a collision course with his employer, James Cook University.  After years of warnings, censures and absurd gag orders, Ridd was finally made to walk the plank.  Now, he's fighting back, in a case with momentous implications for free speech in Australia.

Reading Ridd's work can be difficult for a layman.  It is detached, dispassionate and everything that scientific writing should be:  careful consideration of the evidence followed by a sober conclusion.

Take, for example, Ridd's contribution to Climate Change:  The Facts 2017, in which he dispels the myths about the Great Barrier Reef repeated ad nauseam by climate evangelists.  Yes, coral bleaching has occurred, but that is not a new phenomenon.  In fact, the white colourisation that creates the "bleached" look is a natural response that enables the coral to adjust to warmer temperatures and, over time, thrive.

So why does "conventional wisdom" suggest that the reef is in mortal, man-made danger?  Largely because dissenting voices "are typically ignored, drowned out and sidelined by the majority", Ridd writes.  "There is now an industry that employs thousands of people whose job it is to 'save the Great Barrier Reef'.  As a scientist, to question the proposition that the reef is damaged is potentially a career-ending move".

Ridd's biggest beef is with the questionable marine science fuelling the save-the-reef hysteria.  The "peer review" process feted by "the-science-is-settled" types is not the guarantee of scientific authenticity that its name suggests.  Peer review, according to Ridd, "usually consists of a cursory read of the scientific paper, often just for a couple of hours, by two scientists.  They never have time to check the data property, or to try to repeat the analyses".

But the minute Ridd blew the whistle on this shoddy science, he was a goner.  Given JCU's extensive interest in reef science, publicly questioning their methodology was arguably always going to make him an irritant.

Ridd had been on JCU's radar for some time, but the publication of his chapter in Climate Change:  The Facts transformed his struggle from the occasional skirmish to all-out war.  After a subsequent interview on Sky News, a barrage of letters from the university started, accusing Ridd of "serious misconduct" on several trumped-up grounds.

When Ridd publicly — and understandably — objected to his treatment by the university, JCU accused him of "denigrating" the university, "interfering with the disciplinary process", even of being "insubordinate".  And when public statements weren't enough, the university searched his email account to dig up further breaches of the code.

Worse still, JCU has slapped Ridd with numerous "confidentiality" directions in relation to the disciplinary process.  As Ridd has correctly pointed out, gag orders of this nature effectively create a star chamber in which "victims are isolated, subjected to a closed disciplinary procedure where highly subjective concepts are applied".

Ridd's ordeal culminated in his termination in May last year.  He has taken legal action in response, in part with the help of a campaign on crowdfunding website GoFundMe.  Thousands of Australians donated, and the campaign amassed over $250,000 in just a few days.  Ridd will have his day in court in Brisbane later this month.

Ridd has much in his favour.  The enterprise bargaining agreement covering JCU staff — essentially Ridd's employment contract — has extensive free speech protections.  Under the agreement, staff have the express right to air unpopular or controversial views, and participate in wider public debate.  Importantly, they are also entitled to express public opinions about the operation of JCU and university decisions.

The problem for Ridd is he is also subject to JCU's staff code of conduct, which imposes all manner of vague requirements, like behaving "in a way that upholds the integrity and good nature of the university".  Under the pretext of this code, JCU has hit Ridd with a barrage of outlandish claims of alleged breaches, such as failure to be "collegial" and "respect the reputations of other colleagues".

JCU would have this dispute reduced to the narrow legal matter of which document trumps the other.  Is it the enterprise bargaining agreement, with its protection of academic freedom?  Or is it the code of conduct, with its rubbery obligations of "collegiality"?

But this case is about more than that.  It will decide what academic freedom means, what intellectual inquiry means, what free and open debate means.  And it is about whether a binding legal agreement promising these things can be rendered meaningless by a cadre of self-interested university administrators via an Orwellian code of conduct and a Kafkaesque disciplinary process.

And above all, this case is about the simmering free speech crisis at Australian universities, about places of higher learning that place their own reputations above the search for truth.  Throughout this sorry saga, JCU has justified their railroading of Ridd on the basis of a requirement to protect the "integrity and reputation" of the university.  But all Ridd was doing was belling the cat on scientific standards that were at best sloppy and at worst dishonest.

No doubt exposing such academic quackery probably does compromise JCU's integrity and reputation, but deservedly so.  It would appear, then, that rules against compromising that precious reputation are really just a protection racket.  They are a velvet glove with which to stamp out dissent.

We should be grateful that Peter Ridd is one target who will not go quietly.

The Hottest Summer On Record Except For The Ones That We've Changed

This last summer has been hot in south-eastern Australia.  But was it the hottest ever?  Summer 80 years ago was arguably as hot, if not hotter.

Australia's Environment Minister, Melissa Price, also recently claimed this summer's bushfires as a consequence of climate change.  I grew up with stories from my late father of terrible bushfires — infernos — back in 1939.  The Black Friday firestorm of 13 January 1939 destroyed four times the area of farmland and forest as the devastating February 2009 fires — and twenty times as much as burnt this last summer.

But it is actually now near impossible to know which summer was the hottest ever summer — because of the extensive remodelling of our temperature history.

The extensive remodelling is not denied by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.  Rather it is justified on the basis that temperatures are now measured using a non-standard method (spot readings) from non-standard equipment (custom built probes in automatic weather stations).  Apparently, we need to know how hot it was back then, relative to the equipment used now — so temperature are remodelled.  To be clear, there are three factors that potentially confound how hot it was back then — or now:  the equipment, how it is used, and the remodelling, which is often referred to as homogenisation.

The largest single change in the new ACORN-SAT Version 2 temperature database is a drop of more than 13 degrees Celsius at the town of Wagga on 27 November 1946.

But let's begin with Rutherglen.  The Rutherglen agricultural research station has one of the longest, continuous, temperature records for anywhere in rural Victoria.  Minimum and maximum temperatures were first recorded at Rutherglen using standard and calibrated equipment back in November 1912.  Considering the first 85 years of summer temperatures — unadjusted/not homogenized — the very hottest summer on record at Rutherglen is the summer of 1938/1939.

While this last summer of 2018/2019 was hotter according to Minister Price, such a claim would not pass scrutiny if assessed for the Guinness Book of records — because of all the changes to the way temperatures are now measured at Rutherglen relative to back in 1938/1939.

At Rutherglen, the first big change happened 29 January 1998.  That is when the mercury and alcohol thermometers were replaced with an electronic probe — custom built to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's own standard, with the specifications still yet to be made public.

According to Bureau policy, when such a major equipment change occurs there should be at least three years (preferably five) of overlapping/parallel temperature recordings, except the mercury and alcohol thermometers (used to measure maximum and minimum temperatures, respectively) were removed on exactly the same day the custom-built probe was placed into the Stevenson screen at Rutherglen, in direct contravention of this policy.

In 2011, the Bureau made further changes in that it stopped averaging one-second readings from the probe at Rutherglen over one minute.  The maximum temperature as recorded each day at Rutherglen is now the highest one-second spot reading from the custom-built probe.  That is correct — spot reading.

So, to reiterate, we now have a non-standard method of measuring (spot readings) from non-standard equipment (custom-built probes) making it impossible to establish the equivalence of recent temperatures from Rutherglen — or any of the Bureau's other 695 probes in automatic weather stations spread across the landmass of Australia — with historical data.

Then there is the remodelling — with the most recent remodelling creating Version 2 of ACORN-SAT.  This has resulted in an overall 23 per cent increase in the rate of warming between Versions 1 and 2 for the 112 weather stations that comprise ACORN-SAT.  This is the database used by the Bureau and the CSIRO to monitor climate change across Australia.

At Rutherglen, a modest rate of warming in the raw maximum temperatures of 0.7 degrees Celsius per Century has been changed to 1.3 degrees Celsius in ACORN-SAT Version 2.  Changes to the minimum temperature trend are more dramatic:  a slight cooling trend of 0.3 degrees Celsius has been changed to warming of 1.9 degrees in ACORN-SAT Version 2 for Rutherglen.

This remodelling — known as homogenisation — involves the detection of discontinuities and then adjustments which generally result in past temperatures being cooled relative to the present.  By cooling the past, present temperatures appear hotter.  For example, considering maximum temperatures at Rutherglen, the largest single drop-down (adjustment) to daily temperatures occurs from 1 January 1938 back in time.  The Bureau classifies the hot summer of 1938/1939 as a "discontinuity" that is "statistical" in "cause" and then cools all the days before 31 December 1938 by 0.6 degrees Celsius back to 1912 — the beginning of the record.

To repeat, the Bureau does not deny making these changes.  Rather it claims such changes to Rutherglen's temperature history are necessary to show what the temperature would be back then, using today's equipment.  But.  There was no actual change in the equipment between versions 1 and 2 of ACORN-SAT for Rutherglen.  So, this reason could not actually be considered reasonable.

So why did, for example, the Bureau drop the minimum daily temperatures by a further 2.6 degrees Celsius on the day of the Black Friday bushfire?  To be clear, the minimum temperature on the day of the Black Friday bushfire at Rutherglen was measured as 28.3 degrees Celsius.  This value is changed to 27.8 degrees Celsius in ACORN-SAT Version 1, a reduction of 0.5 degrees Celsius.  In Version 2, the temperature is reduced further, now archived as just 25.7 degrees Celsius for 13 January 1939 — a reduction of 2.6 degrees from the original temperature as actually recorded on that day.

There is a real history of rural Victoria:  71 men and women perished in that bushfire back on 13 January 1939.  According to my late father, it was extraordinarily hot.

The Bureau has never put a media release out letting the Australian public know that there is a Version 2 of ACORN-SAT, with even cooler historical temperatures for Rutherglen and most of the rest of Australia than in Version 1 that was only published in 2012.

Just a few years ago, the minister then responsible for the Bureau, Greg Hunt, was claiming that ACORN-SAT Version 1 was the world's best practice and the correct temperature history of Australia.

Just to the north of Rutherglen is Wagga, and the largest single cooling of any temperature in ACORN-SAT Version 2 was made to this temperature record.  Specifically, on 27 November 1946, the minimum temperature of 21 degrees Celsius in ACORN-SAT Version 1 is changed to just 7.6 degrees Celsius in Version 2.  This is a drop-down (a cooling of the past) of 13.4 degrees Celsius for a single day.

A temperature probe replaced the mercury and alcohol thermometers at Wagga on 1 November 1996.  There was another equipment change on 10 January 2001, when the small Stevenson screen was replaced with a larger screen.

There have been no changes to the site or the equipment since then, since 2001.  Yet there is a further overall one-degree increase in the rate of warming at Wagga between the Version 1 (published in 2012) and Version 2 of ACORN-SAT.

Not only does the Bureau somewhat arbitrarily appear to increase the rate of warming, but it also makes-up/invents 32 years of temperature recordings for Wagga Wagga airport.

The first temperatures ever recorded at this official ACORN-SAT bureau weather station (number 072150) were in January 1942.  Yet the homogenized ACORN-SAT series for Wagga airport begins on 1 January 1910.  This is done by joining the Wagga airport with another temperature series (number 072151), and then homogenising with data from other weather stations including numbers 74114, 73038, 73127, 73019, 72023,72000, 73009, 75028, etcetera.  The pattern and trend in temperatures in the homogenized temperature series (ACORN-SAT Versions 1 and 2) for Wagga bear no resemblance to the original temperature measurements.

The remodelling by the Bureau is industrial-scale:  this is necessary to generate a consistent global warming trend that does not exist in the raw unhomogenized data.

My late father was eight years old and living not far from Rutherglen on 13 January 1939.  He remembered the hot wind blowing from the north-west on that day.  I grew up with his memories of that time.  My father described hot and hungry years — just as John Steinbeck described farm life in the mid-west of the US in the 1930s in his famous "Grapes of Wrath".  There was hardship, and there were dust storms in the US and also in south-eastern Australia.

Indeed, in rural Victoria, the summer of 1938-1939 was on average at least two degrees hotter than anything measured with equivalent equipment since.

Yet Minister Price denies this history — my late father's history.

There are consequences for future generations in this remodelling.  It affects how we understand the relationship between climate and bushfires.  Also, by continually reducing past temperatures, there is potential for new record hot days, record hot summers and hottest years for even cooler weather.  This is nonsense — consistent with how the Bureau now measures, archives and remodels our temperature history.

Modern Monetary Theory, Same Old Mistakes

A radical 10-year plan which charts the course for a government takeover of the American economy has been proposed by the socialist wing of the Democratic Party in the United States.  The "Green New Deal" is notionally about "combatting climate change".  It calls for 100 per cent renewable energy, replacing air travel with a national high-speed train network, and energy efficient upgrades to "all existing buildings in the United States".

The plan also calls for a government imposed "living wage", and government provision of food, water, healthcare, and education.  And calls for action on climate change are a smokescreen for back-door socialism.

The plan represents nothing short of a government takeover of the private economy.  It would divert resources away from productive investment towards social programs and impractical infrastructure projects.  Savings and investment would be severely undermined leading to an erosion of economic prosperity.

Even if unconvinced of the economic consequences of the Green New Deal, proponents still need to explain how the government could possibly fund this unprecedented expansion of government spending.

Modern Monetary Theory has filled this role.  Newly elected Democratic congresswoman and proponent of the "Green New Deal", Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has appealed to MMT when asked about fiscal constraints.  One of the most prominent advocates of MMT is a former economic advisor to for US Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders, Stephanie Kelton.  Kelton was recently in Australia advocating MMT and a government-funded job guarantee.

MMT suggests that government debt doesn't matter when a country controls its own currency because money can just be printed to pay down the debt.  The prospect of defaulting magically disappears.  The role of government, under MMT, is to manage the amount of money in the economy through spending and taxation.  Governments then become unshackled from the normal fiscal constraints and are free to pursue large social programs without worrying about the deficit or debt.

There is, of course, no such thing as a free lunch, even under MMT.  When the government cranks up the printing presses to pay for spending this shoots more money into the economy.  This results in inflation, which in reality is just another form of taxation.

When the price of everything rises, but incomes are the same and nothing extra is being produced, everyone's standard of living takes a hit.  It also destroys the incentive for investing.  If money is worth less in the future then why not spend it all now?  This means less capital stock for future generations, which means lower productivity growth, lower wages, and fewer jobs.

Worse, inflation is a hidden tax.  It doesn't appear on your payslip like income tax, or in your letterbox like the bill for your council rates.  You only notice when you come home with less and less from your weekly grocery shop.

What has been so interesting, though, is how so many self-styled "experts" have jumped on the MMT bandwagon.  This just raises questions about the use of experts and intellectuals.  There has never been a shortage of experts to prop up unsound policy and provide policymakers with an air of sophistication and credibility.  John Maynard Keynes, through the development of what become known as "Keynesian economics" provided intellectual cover for huge government expansion that followed the original New Deal in the 1930s.  The Soviet Union similarly benefited from economic experts in the West who cheerled the totalitarian regime as millions of people starved.

When governments seek to engage in large-scale micromanagement, they rely on a supply of technocrats to tell the people with certainty how policy will play out without due consideration of unintended consequences.

In Australia, we have seen appeals to climate scientists on economic matters to justify government management of the economy.

We have seen lawyers frequently argue in favour of undermining fundamental rights, and commissioners installed to sit in judgement over what speech should be allowed in society.

Proponents of MMT will likely be wheeled out by their political overlords to justify a dramatic expansion of government at the expense of free enterprise.  While advocates of MMT are a fringe group within economics, we can expect to see their profiles rise as politicians use them for their political ends.

Most people react to the ideas of MMT with an initial scepticism that results from a general distrust of schemes offering something for nothing.  However, with socialist ideas again on the rise, creative theories are being employed to justify ideas that have failed time and time again.  Despite the best efforts of experts, no amount of theorising will suspend the laws of economics.

Shorten's Alternative IR Reality Based On Trumpian Alternative Facts

This week the Prime Minister got his wish.

On Tuesday, in his speech to The Australian Financial Review Business Summit, Scott Morrison wanted to get the media talking about the risk of a recession under a Labor government.

On Wednesday we learned Australia was actually already in a recession, at least as measured by economic growth per head.

The release of the national accounts revealed growth per head of population had declined for the previous two quarters, ie the country was in a "per capita" recession.  Somehow this result came as shock to the Reserve Bank — but it shouldn't have.  Anyone who's spoken to a small-business owner in the last few months could have predicted such an outcome.

In response to the national accounts, the Coalition claimed that a statistical measure few people have ever heard of, "real net national disposable income", was a better indicator of the economic conditions.  (Hopefully the government won't try to put that on car bumper stickers.)  Meanwhile others tried to claim that declining growth per head wasn't really a "real" recession.

What's been ignored over the last few days amidst all the talk of a recession is the statement from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that government expenditure "was the main contributor to growth in the quarter, due to increases in social benefits to households from continued government spending on disability, health and aged care services".

In other words, over the last three months the main reason the economy got bigger was because the government got bigger.

The irony for Scott Morrison and the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, although of course they can't acknowledge it, is that if the economy is in a recession their chances of being re-elected actually increase.  The Coalition consistently outpolls Labor on the question of which party is better at managing the economy.

Something else that's been largely ignored is the speech to the Summit from the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten the day after the PM.  Shorten said he wanted to make the next election "a referendum on wages".  What he didn't say was how higher wages were going to be paid for — but then again perhaps in the context of the $200 billion in extra taxes he's promised to implement if Labor wins office, he didn't need to.

Under the Coalition, economic growth has been fuelled by higher government spending and higher taxes — which is presumably how Labor believes it can fund its promise of higher wages.

The problem with Labor's approach is that so many of the assumptions upon which their policies are based are wrong.

For example, Shorten claimed "inequality is at historic highs".  This simply isn't true.  The high taxing and high spending of successive Labor and Coalition governments has resulted in the country creating a welfare state in which inequality is low and declining.

Then from the opposition leader came the statement that stagnant wages are "proof that leaving it to the market leaves Australians struck in working poverty".  Wages and conditions in this country have hardly anything to do with the free market.  According to the World Economic Forum, Australia ranks 105 out of 140 countries for flexibility of wage determination and 100 for "flexibility of hiring and firing workers".

Similarly Shorten said that many Australians are "trapped" in labour hire arrangements and that "insecure" work and rates of casualisation have increased.  Again this is simply not true.

In his submission to the Victorian government's inquiry to the On-Demand Workforce, John Lloyd, a former Commonwealth Public Service Commissioner, pointed that a recent CSIRO study found that 88 per cent of people working as freelancers would continue freelancing even if they were offered a full-time position.

The percentage of the workforce in a "casual" employment arrangement, defined as one without entitlements, but which may be compensated by "casual leave loading", in 1997 was 24.18 per cent.  In recent years the share of casuals in the workforce peaked in 2004 at 25.72 per cent, and in 2017 that share was 25.08 per cent.

Unfortunately for the future of Australia's prosperity, it increasingly looks like Labor has created its industrial relations according to an alternative reality based on Trump-style alternative facts.

Our Unproductive Approach To Growth

Australia has entered into a per capita economic recession for the third time in 28 years, according to figures released yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.  The figures also show there have been 18 quarters in the past 28 years where per capita incomes have gone backwards.

The 28-year yardstick is relevant because that is the time since Australia last experienced a full-blown aggregate economic recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.

To be sure the government will tout the aggregate growth figure, proxied by gross domestic product, which shows the economy continues to expand.

The problem is that GDP measures the total value of all goods and services.  When the economy grows it means more has been produced this year than last.  This doesn't mean much to the average person.  That is why a per capita measure is better because it at least ­divides economic value across the population.  Adding in non-economic factors not captured by GDP paints an even bleaker picture.

House prices are rising as house size and quality is declining.  Electricity bills are rising as supply reliability is declining.  And council rates keep rising as the amenity of local suburbs is declining.

Congestion is worse, there are fewer parks and "green spaces", and many see most modern apartment blocks as cheap eyesores.

The reason why the lived economic experience of many Australians is getting worse is that both sides of politics have given up on productivity-enhancing economic reform and instead rely on population growth to drive headline economic growth.

About 60 per cent of total economic growth since the global financial crisis has come through population growth centred on immigration, with the rest from productivity growth or changes to labour force participation.

This is the opposite of what took place between the early 1990s recession and the GFC of 2008-09.

State and federal governments are addicted to mass migration because by fuelling economic growth it also fuels government revenue.  The federal government's promised return to surplus in next month's budget is almost solely ­reliant on ongoing mass migration.

The same is true for state governments, which rely heavily on the GST and property taxes to underpin their revenue.

The point is not to criticise immigration or immigrants, but that policymakers should be honest about the costs and benefits of rapid population growth supported by mass migration.

In a speech delivered last August, the governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe, noted Australia had the second fastest rate of population growth in the developed world and that this was "largely due to increased immigration".

Similarly, OECD figures show close to 30 per cent of Australian residents are born overseas.  Only Luxembourg and Switzerland, two small nations which are rather different to Australia, have a higher share.

The challenge now for policymakers is to pivot from population to productivity growth as the driver of improvements to living standards.

This won't be easy because many vested-interest groups are dependent on today's high immigration/low productivity equilibrium:  builders and the construction industry through more housing demand;  retailers through more aggregate consumer spending;  universities through more students;  and so on.  But the longer reform is put off, the harder it will be to achieve.  This is why governments of both sides at the federal and state levels must bite the bullet and start sooner rather than later.

There is a developing consensus among economic and policy analysts that the major policy drags on productivity growth in Australia are red tape, industrial relations and tax.

Neither side of politics has a great ­record on these.  True, the Coalition government did seek to reduce the corporate tax rate by 5 percentage points.  But it was due to be phased in over 10 years, and by then the goalposts would have moved further.  There has also been silence on industrial relations and little action on red tape.

Labor, for its part, is looking to roll the clock back on industrial relations, will raise taxes, and has no clear agenda on red tape — and appears uninterested at best.

What is clear, though, is that a government that keeps touting aggregate economic growth figures will be tuned out by a population that is experiencing a deterioration in its standard of living.

Only serious economic reform that penetrates out to the suburbs offers a better future.