This mindless pursuit of scandal belongs to the past

One of the more peculiar literary artefacts of the pre-democratic world is the ''secret history''.  These secret histories purported to expose sex, incest, murder, and conspiracy in royal courts.  The first and most famous concerned the Roman Emperor Justinian.  It was borderline pornographic, and endlessly imitated.

Of course, the stories they told were almost entirely fictitious.  But truth wasn't the point.

Secret histories were political tracts in disguise.  Their significance wasn't the purported scandals, but what the books tried to do:  undermine the authority of the monarch.  Secret histories were democratic politics for undemocratic times.

Australia in the 21st century is a modern democracy.  So why are we just as desperate to discover — even invent — scandals as our ancestors?

Our political class has spent the past two years obsessing over a series of obscure controversies.  Even if they had all panned out — if every allegation about Julia Gillard and Peter Slipper and Craig Thomson were true — it would hardly be Watergate.

Nobody had heard of Thomson until the Health Services Union scandal broke.  Slipper was briefly significant when he was made speaker.

And the Gillard slush-fund scandal?  At least it had the virtue of being about a prime minister.  But then, we're not being asked to hire Gillard as a lawyer in the 1990s, we're being asked to vote for her to run the country in the 2010s.

Like the secret histories, the truth of these scandals is beside the point.  Scandalmongering is politics by other means.  In Britain, scandals engulf the entire political system.  Australian politics is threatening to go down that road.

The Gillard government should be a sitting duck.  In the past six months, Labor has proposed a dangerous internet data-retention scheme, radical changes to anti-discrimination law, and is mulling over whether to regulate the press.

But Coalition frontbenchers seem more interested in whether Gillard signed a mortgage document two decades ago.  No wonder that even with its lead in the polls, the Coalition seems on the back foot.

Still, scandals are a bipartisan distraction.  For most of the year, Trade Minister Craig Emerson has been saying the Coalition is too scandal-obsessed to question him about his portfolio.  Fair cop.

But then the judgment in the Slipper case was released alleging a ''conspiracy'' between Slipper's accuser, James Ashby, and Coalition figures.  Now it turns out Emerson is deeply passionate about scandals, too.  Emerson self-published an article last week asking what Julie Bishop knew about Ashby and when.  He even complained the media wasn't focusing enough on the affair.

Coalition supporters call it Slippergate.  Labor supporters call it Ashbygate.  Both sides are being equally ridiculous.

Labor showed the same political desperation during the Australian Wheat Board scandal.  This was a rich enough controversy as it was.  But apparently, for the ALP, the real issue when a Commonwealth authority bribes Saddam Hussein is whether John Howard knew about it.

Political scandalmongering doesn't just damage its targets.  By the end of 2012, both sides of politics have been greatly diminished.

A shadow minister who doesn't talk about their portfolio area so they can pursue the story of the day may be rewarded with some brief media coverage.  But they will have done nothing to mount a case against the government.  Nor will they have endeared themselves with the electorate.  Voters pay more attention to policy.  Policy matters.  Peter Slipper's text messages don't.

Perhaps the ministers who decide to spearhead scandal hunting think they are taking one for the team;  perhaps they know they'll be worse off afterwards.  Then again, considering how enthusiastically our representatives jump on even the vaguest hint of scandal, perhaps not.

There's nothing more jarring than when partisan hacks congratulate senior politicians for ''taking the lead'' on these absurdities, as if it matters.  You have to wonder why some politicians are even in Parliament at all — at least, if they think there is more to politics than the raw pursuit of power.

Our ancestors eagerly devoured secret histories because they poked holes in the royal bubble when kings and queens claimed to rule by divine right.  Stories that showed them as human undermined their legitimacy.

Our rulers are more humble now.  But ever since Watergate, oppositions have been seduced into thinking they could pull a government down before an election is due.  The more they indulge in this fantasy, the more they corrupt the democratic system they hope to run.

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The state and its leading politicians are in something of an economic policy rut along with the rest of country

This year has represented something of an economic ''annus horribilis'' for South Australia.

In August BHP Billiton spectacularly shelved its $30 billion Olympic Dam copper-gold-uranium mine expansion plan, the subject of sensitive development approval negotiations over many years.

For the domestic audience BHP Billiton CEO Marius Kloppers cited factors such as falling commodity prices and a high Australian dollar as reasons for the mine project cancellation.  However, there is little doubt that other factors were pivotal in the decision.

In particular, the carbon tax, rising labour costs attributable to the industrial relations system and drawn-out regulatory approval processes also conspired to make Olympic Dam an economically-unviable proposition.

The state's unemployment rate, in trend terms, has been on the upward march all year, with 47,400 people languishing on the dole queue in November 2012 alone.

Then, in mid-September, the bad news continued with credit ratings agency Moody's downgrading South Australia's credit rating.

Citing a combination of elevated government spending and less robust revenue growth, Moody's castigated the state's loose fiscal policies, which are likely to see Budget deficits and rising debts dragged out further into the future.

And now state Treasurer Jack Snelling has released the government's mid-year Budget review, unveiling an updated Budget deficit figure of about $1.2 billion for this financial year.

The Treasurer has been quick to cry foul over revenues growing less than previous projections, and hopes that the new parking tax hit will be part of the Budget repair solution, but he should cast his glance away from his State Revenue Office and towards the line departments.

This is because the horror mid-year Budget result is, in fact, testimony to many years of state overspending under the watch of line agency ministers, and the government's general inability to rein in spending to accommodate slowing revenue growth.

If the credit agencies again downgrade the South Australian credit rating in light of this latest reporting on the state of the Budget, it means the government will face even higher costs associated with its already heavy borrowings.

So it seems the state and its leading politicians are in something of an economic policy rut, with the rest of the country — admittedly with their own economic problems — viewing SA with either pity or bemusement.

But rather than dwell on the negatives, as serious as they may be, South Australians should grasp the opportunity to seriously think about the future of their state and recalibrate public policies accordingly.

As the weight of history in Australia and internationally illustrates, economies grow most strongly when the private sector is accorded with greater freedoms to produce goods and services for the benefit of their customers.

In a world of capital and skilled labour mobility, what this means is that the costly and often economically ruinous interventions by government should be reduced, ensuring that market participants receive greater returns from their economic ventures.

So what priorities could South Australians consider to get their economy back on track and their government right-sized in the interests of making the state the best place to live, work and invest?

Could SA take a leaf out of the tax-cutting experience of Queensland during the Bjelke-Petersen years, with the aim of making the state the lowest taxing state in Australia?

Should the creeping regulations of the regulatory state, which imposes substantial financial costs and delays upon investment projects, be substantially cut back to encourage business development?

What about the role of state and local governments when it comes to spending?

Are there reform opportunities available to privatise government assets to allow the private sector a greater role in capital works development and maintenance, saving taxpayers money in the process?  When seeking to answer such questions, South Australians could benefit from considering regional economic success stories from around the world.

For example, Texas continues to buck the trend of tepid economic growth and out-migration along America's east and west coasts by offering low taxes and an efficient regulatory climate to encourage new investments and job opportunities in the Lone Star state.

In Canada the provinces of Alberta and, more recently, Saskatchewan have undergone a process of economic reform focused on repairing their government budgets and reducing relative government size, providing renewed confidence for its burgeoning local oil and gas sectors.

South Australia has a proud history of economic performance, being the traditional home to the likes of iconic company News Limited and a world-class wine industry today, and with some potentially solid advantages such as a minerals bounty in its favour.

While the existing challenges facing the state economy are significant, genteel decline is by no means desirable or inevitable.

Indeed, there is no better time to leave 2012 behind and put in place the building blocks for South Australian economic reform and renewal than the 2013 new year.

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Videogame blame distracts from the real gun debate

Before Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, he smashed the hard drive on his computer.

That act may frustrate investigators trying figure out his motives, but it has proved to be no obstacle for amateur psychologists.

Indeed, the closest the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre came to coherence in his bizarre press conference last week was when he blamed ''vicious, violent'' games like Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat, and an obscure browser game called Kindergarten Killer.

There are now two competing lessons about the Sandy Hook school shooting.  One focuses on Lanza's access to guns, and one focuses on Lanza's fondness for videogames.

A plumber who worked on his home says Lanza was ''obsessed'' by games.  This psychological issue was apparently diagnosed in the time it took to work on the Lanza household's pipes.

A high-school classmate says his preferred weapon in videogames was an assault rifle;  a damning assessment only if you've never played any games at all.  (Assault rifles tend to be best in-game weapons.)

Police investigators report there were ''thousands of dollars'' of games in the home:  another tidbit which is superficially compelling if you don't know a game can cost about $100 and most gamers acquire dozens of them.

Lanza ''played videogames for hours'' breathlessly reported the New York Daily News, which is not remarkable considering most games last around 10 hours.

Take these little factoids with a grain of salt.  The Sandy Hook shooting was nearly two weeks ago but like all tragedies almost every piece of information is provisional.  The world's press has swept through Connecticut trying to find new angles and dig up tales about the killer.

Falsehoods become embedded in our mind when they tell a compelling story.  At his press conference Wayne LaPierre listed the most violent sounding games his researchers could find, but — as far as we know — Lanza's favourite game was StarCraft, a science fiction strategy game.  This Washington Post story says he was particularly good at Dance Dance Revolution.  Not many assault rifles in that game.

The charge that videogames cause violence is easy to refute.  There is a large amount of research on the question and it's compelling.  To give just a taste:  game sales have skyrocketed in the last decade in the United States but the rate of violent crime heading towards historic lows.  There's no obvious relationship between videogame usage and gun-related murder, as this ten country comparison demonstrates.  A study published in August this year (PDF) found videogames don't seem to have consequences — negative or positive — on adolescent aggression in the short or long term.  Virtual violence doesn't desensitise gamers to real-world violence.

On the more particular topic of school shootings, a joint report by the US Secret Service and Department of Education in 2002 found only 12 per cent of school shooters had expressed an interest in violent videogames.

Obviously, Wayne LaPierre mentioned videogames to muddy the policy waters.  Far from the principled defenders of the American constitution, the gun lobby is happy to attack the First Amendment to protect the Second.

But targeting videogames allowed him to make this obscene claim:  ''does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn't planning his attack on a school he's already identified at this very moment?''

This is both logical and stupid:  millions of people play videogames, so millions of people are potential mass murderers.  But how LaPierre thought mass panic would serve the interests of gun owners is difficult to understand.  (Although you can see why gun manufacturers might be pleased.)

In a way, it's too late.  The American education system descended into security paranoia long ago.

After the Columbine shootings in 1999, many states rigidly enforced zero-tolerance approaches to violent or threatening behaviour in schools.  Zero-tolerance made sense at the time.  One of the Columbine killers, Dylan Klebold, had written violent essays, and it was tempting to think the massacre could have been averted if his teachers were on guard.

But in practice zero-tolerance was highly repressive.  There are countless stories of children being expelled or suspended for simply drawing pictures of guns, for playing cops and robbers, for bringing a paring knife in their lunchbox to cut fruit.  These tales would be laughable if they weren't so cruel.

On top of unthinking zero-tolerance policies, we can add metal detectors at schools, massive arrays of CCTV cameras, random locker and car searches, and armed police.  This recollection of education in Virginia on BoingBoing offers a glimpse of the security madness which now characterises the American public school system.

It will only get worse.  In response to the Sandy Hook shooting, all 4,000 elementary schools in Ontario (yes, the Canadian province, that Ontario) will be implementing a ''locked door'' policy during school hours.

The NRA's plan was to use fear — fear of videogames, of violent culture, of ''the next Adam Lanza'' — as a distraction from the gun debate.  Perhaps they needn't have bothered:  that fear and paranoia was already there.

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Heavy hand of regulators promises pain on power

In the week before Christmas, three events reiterated the increasing degree to which Australia's once market-driven electricity industry dances to a tune of government regulation.

On December 19, the Climate Change Authority issued a final report on its review of the Renewable Energy Target.  Originally set to supply 20 per cent of the market by 2020 with high-cost non-commercial renewable energy, lobbying and tinkerings have caused the RET share to blow out so that it will now be at least 26 per cent.

The renewables are divided into large scale (LRET), mainly wind farms, and small scale (SRES), largely photovoltaics.  The latter are uncapped and are far more expensive even than wind farms, which themselves cost twice as much as conventional coal or gas generation.  Nobody could claim the authority offers a clear path to extricating consumers and taxpayers from the costs that these subsidies impose;  and its report doesn't provide regulatory simplicity either.

Dropping all pretence that the renewable program is in place to combat global warming, the authority recommends that the LRET stay as it is and suggests a galaxy of options for changing SRES.

Options offered on SRES include trying to ensure that commonwealth-mandated payments from other consumers to photovoltaic installations be limited to households (as opposed to businesses).  Other canvassed possibilities include reducing the upfront payments for 15 years of deemed generation that offset the installation costs.  These commonwealth subsidies are in addition to state-based regulations which oblige other electricity consumers to finance the costs of the ultra-generous feed-in prices retailers have to offer those with rooftop panels.

Yet while the RET pushes prices up, state governments are forcing unsustainable price reductions on retailers.  On December 19 the Queensland Supreme Court upheld the right of the Queensland government to fix electricity prices at a level that had forced the leading retailer, Origin Energy, to announce a profit downgrade to the ASX.

The Queensland government determined standard electricity tariffs had previously been set at levels that created a floor price that had made it difficult for other retailers to win market share and 60 per cent of household customers remained on the standard tariff, but the Newman government's decision earlier in the year had made supply even less profitable.  Populist price settings are not confined to Queensland.

Until recently, South Australia had a retail regulatory regime that was a genuine fail-safe system.  Its price-fixing was a floor price designed to prevent a grossly exploitative tariff on the part of the dominant retailer (AGL).

As a result there was lots of customer churn and a market that experienced competitiveness rivalling the almost fully deregulated Victorian market.  Only 25 per cent of household customers have remained on the standard tariff.

But in October, the Premier decided that the previous fail-safe tariff should be transformed into one with a floor price, which was carefully sculpted in order to engineer a price reduction.

The default tariff, in the face of increased costs, was reduced by 8.1 per cent and the Premier was calling for this reduced tariff to be made available to all customers.

After much activity and a legal threat, on December 18 the price reduction was modified.  AGL agreed to set the households' standard tariff for those at present on that tariff at fully 9.1 per cent below that previously prevailing.  In return, the government agreed to allow cost impositions from its own and from commonwealth regulations to be passed on to customers.  Those customers on non-standard tariffs are now allowed to rejoin the regulated tariff but with a 4.5 per cent price reduction.  Small business customers' standing offer tariffs are also reduced by 4.5 per cent.

The Premier says in two years' time the market will no longer be regulated as long as prices fall and numerous new suppliers enter the market.  Remarkably, Wayne Swan and Martin Ferguson have welcomed this as deregulation, as have the retail businesses.

Electricity suppliers are all too aware of the damage that government price-fixing and regulatory measures can wreak on their balance sheets.  Businesses have contracts locked in and, as evidenced by the Origin profit downgrade announcement, are hostage to populist government price controls.

The immediate impact of political price-squeezing is unlikely to bring a serious immediate fall in supply availability, since its effects are longer term.  But politicians rarely have a time horizon longer than three years.

The mix of carbon taxes, renewable requirements and other market interventions combined with government-determined increased spending levels on electricity networks have raised electricity costs and the all-important profile of electricity to consumers.  This lays the ground for exercising political muscle on the cheap.

The various interventions are forcing up the cost of electricity to consumers by requiring retailers to use high-cost green power, and incur a variety of management expenses thus reducing their profitability.  The bitter harvest is one for the future.

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Memo to government: having an opinion is not a crime

By now we ought to have learnt this lesson:  don't let lawyers write law.  At first glance, the Gillard government's proposed changes to federal anti-discrimination law seem pretty benign.  The expressed goal is to merge a bunch of acts into one omnibus act, reducing red tape and duplication.  But this impression lasts for exactly as long as it takes to read the draft Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012.  Then it becomes clear the goal is something else entirely — to politicise civil society and tangle our interpersonal relationships in litigation.

It is an extraordinarily broad, excessive, vague and dangerous piece of legislation.  To take one of the bill's most revolutionary provisions:  it would become unlawful to offend someone in a work or any work-related environment because of their political opinion.  Yes, the bill actually says ''political opinion''.  If it became law, our beliefs would become sacrosanct.  It would be against the law to insult them.  The idea is absurd.  Politics — the winner-take-all contest for power — is always going to be offensive to someone.

''Work-related area'' could mean almost anything as well.  The government says it intends to take a broad view of what counts as work-related.  Even volunteering would be covered.

So, did a colleague say something disparaging against the Greens?  Sue them.  Not amused by a cartoon on a co-worker's Facebook wall?  Sue them.  Didn't get invited back to the bake sale after you called the Prime Minister ''Juliar''?  Probably discrimination — sue them all.  Don't be shy.  If you disagree with someone's politics, you can just take them to court.

Has the government really not thought this all through?  Or do they genuinely want to bury society in an avalanche of lawsuits and legal threats?

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt.  Sure, oppositions are sometimes pressed for time, but governments bother to read their own legislation.  It seems there are lawyers within the Attorney-General's Department who believe Australians should be encouraged to take each other to court for trivial slights.

Australia's political classes have long made a hobby of suing each other.  Now the government wants the hoi polloi to share the fun.

The draft bill even reverses the burden of proof in favour of the persons saying they were offended, and ensures that they won't be penalised if they lose.  These provisions are all designed to make the process easier;  to ensure more lawsuits are launched.

On Wednesday, the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, conceded the bill perhaps goes too far.  ''Maybe there's wisdom,'' she said, in raising the threshold for legal action above offence.

Wisdom, yes, but wisdom her organisation does not share.  The Human Rights Commission's official recommendation to government was not to ease back but to double down — to make it unlawful to politically offend anybody in any area of ''public life''.  This would include ''access to public places''.

Still, that argument has a perverse logic.  If the government thinks of workplaces as part of public life (that's what the draft bill says) why should the ban against political offence be limited to the office or factory?

But it's hard to think of anything more undemocratic than the exclusion of controversial political opinion from public life.  Free debate is a pillar of liberal democracy.  We should be resolving our political disagreements in public, not through lawyers.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has a brief to promote and protect human rights.  And it's been pushing for these changes for years.  There's no surprise there.  The commission faces a specific set of incentives.  Discrimination complaints go to the commission for ''conciliation'' before they head to court.  And the more human rights problems there are, the more human rights problems the commission will be asked to conciliate.

In a 2009 paper, one Human Rights Commissioner even said the government should ''moderate'' the expression of religion in public.  In his view, religions needed to be tamed by ''the hand of government, even if gentle and gloved''.

Freedom of religion and expression are our oldest liberties.  Yet in the mind of the government's chief human rights body they ought to take a back seat to new rights such as the right not to be offended.

The commission talks about trade-offs between competing rights.  These trade-offs seem very one-sided.  Inevitably, the government ends up with more power and civil society ends up subject to more legal control.  This bill goes to a Senate committee over the Christmas holidays.  It needs to die a quick death.

Labor Treasurer's promise now surplus to requirements

Can you imagine if John F. Kennedy had announced that the US would send a man to the moon, and then leave him there?

Bringing him home would be too hard, too difficult, not really worth the expenditure.  Well that scenario is what Wayne Swan has delivered.  He sent our budget into deficit and never brought it back to surplus.

This government came to power in November 2007 promising that the reckless spending must stop.  But it never did.  The global financial crisis can only explain so much.

This is a government that has never really committed to the kind of fiscal discipline necessary to keep our fiscal affairs in order.

Swan deserves credit for maintaining the faith for so long.  While I have never believed that he would actually succeed in returning the budget to surplus I have always wished him well in his efforts, and hoped he would succeed.

There are an infinite number of demands on the public purse and so many expenditures that could make the world a better place.  Yet the public dollar is extracted from the private economy at great cost and should be used sparingly.  Swan understands that.  At least, he claims to understand that.

This government had hoped to reduce the rate of growth in public spending and then drive the budget into surplus as the economy grew.

With a bit of smoke, mirrors, fiscal illusion and accounting tricks, that strategy might have worked.  To be fair, lots of other economies are trying the same thing and this sort of strategy has worked in the past.

But it seems there was no plan B.

Here is the thing.  In 2007-08 government spending was nearing $272 billion.  This year it is budgeted at $363bn.  That's down from $371bn last year, but next year expenditure is budgeted to be $388bn.  So in five years, expenditure is up about $100bn.

What has happened to the revenue side of things?  In 2007-08 government revenue was $295bn.  This year it is forecast to be $367bn.  That is a $72bn increase.  About $30bn less than the increase in spending over the same period.  That is before we start to consider any forecast errors.

While we know that forecasting is difficult it seems Treasury has become particularly bad at it in recent years.

In the Howard era Treasury seemed to underestimate revenue while under Swan, it seems to overestimate revenue.

This is especially the case for the corporate income tax.  In a recent article published in Agenda:  A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform I argue that this is due to Treasury's forecast methodology.

To my mind Treasury (and therefore the government) doesn't really understand the corporate income tax base.  If companies made massive losses in 2008-09 that means they won't be paying much tax until the loss carry-forwards are exhausted.  If mining companies are making massive investments that means they won't be paying much because of depreciation, and so on.

Taxable income has not been growing rapidly at all.  The government seems surprised by this fact.  Yet this should have been a warning that all was not well with the economy.

Rather than cutting spending the government has looked to cutting tax expenditures (that is increasing taxes) and means testing some benefits, while proposing new taxes or increasing existing taxes.

The argument seems to be that there is something wrong with our tax system, that it cannot generate the revenue government would like to have for expenditure.

At some level that is true, the tax system will never generate the revenue this government would like to spend, but that is because the spending is unsustainable.

The economy simply cannot afford to divert more resources into government.

Swan is talking now about allowing the automatic stabilisers to drive the budget into deficit.  To be blunt he should have done that in 2008-09.

Rather, the government chose to drive the budget into deficit through massive spending increases financed by debt.  We face a weakened global economy with continuous deficits, massive debts by Australian standards and no credible economic strategy to return to surplus and pay down debt.

Swan can point to the Europeans and Americans and compare us favourably to them.  Yet returning to surplus was the challenge he set himself for himself.  This is not just a ''political'' surplus unrelated to the economy.

The management of public finance cannot be dismissed as mere politics.  When the single largest entity in the economy — the federal government — cannot manage its own budget, then we can expect problems across the economy.

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2012: The year in political outrage

You can still access the Facebook page for the Channel 10 talk show The Circle.

There's a disclaimer on it now — the show was cancelled in August, and Channel 10 doesn't want any responsibility for the page — but the page survives, its wall plastered with happy behind-the-scenes photos.  It's all a bit sad, in retrospect, but they seem like they're having great fun.

Scroll down the Facebook timeline and that joy suddenly disappears.  On February 29, a wall post titled ''A message from Network Ten'' officially apologised for the comments made by Yumi Stynes and George Negus about a Victoria Cross recipient, Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith on the show.

The disembodied corporate voice did not satisfy.  There are 1,918 comments on that post and another 6,461 on a follow up.

''Words are cheap!'' proclaimed one Facebook commenter.

''You are scum, spineless scum,'' said another.

Stynes copped most of it.  (The women usually do.)

''When you hear Yumi Stynes you think of stupid, gutless, low, meaningless, un Australian.''

One comment summed up the general mood:

''The nation was offended and it deserves an act of contrition from TEN that involves sacking.''

The nation got offended an awful lot in 2012.  Ours was such a year of outrage that all these little episodes seem to have blurred into one:  a swirling furiousness against Qantas, Alan Jones, Kyle Sandilands, in defence of Charlotte Dawson, against Charlotte Dawson, Alan Jones again, in defence of Robbie Farah, against Robbie Farah, ''Twitter trolls'', Alan Jones again, and then finally, tragically, the two 2DayFM hosts.

By the time the 2DayFM hosts made their prank call, there was already a fixed outrage-on-commercial-broadcasting playbook:  shut down advertising before advertisers can shut down themselves, bare your soul to the press.

But, 11 months on, can you even remember what was so outrageous about Yumi Stynes?  Don't Google.  It was Negus, not Stynes, who speculated about Corporal Roberts-Smith's sexual prowess:  ''what if they're not up to it in the sack?'' Hence the ''dud root'' comment.  Stynes suggested the good soldier wasn't that smart.

Was this a tasteless?  Okay, if you want.  But, really, ''the nothing hosts of this second rate show MAKE ME SICK''?

The Yumi Stynes saga was a sign of things to come.  As episodes of outrage accumulated over the year, they became more overwhelming.

Alan Jones' infamous comment in September — that the Prime Minister's father had ''died of shame'' — shut down political debate for weeks.  The Alan Jones saga was like a centrifuge:  it dragged in everything, eventually parliament itself.

We forget now that Peter Slipper was not the only ''context'' for Julia Gillard's misogyny speech.  There was also Tony Abbott's thoughtless repetition of Jones' phrase moments earlier.  To the extent that Labor's modest recovery has come by painting Abbott as anti-woman, it was a recovery forged in the winds of the Alan Jones controversy.

Australia isn't good at talking about more than one thing at once.  Our population is too small, our newspapers are too skinny, and our broadcasters are too few.

As with everything else, we are hopelessly constrained by size.  When these episodes of outrage occur they submerge our tiny media sector.  The Alan Jones comments were first reported on September 29.  It was only after Julia Gillard's misogyny speech 10 days later that the public debate came up for air and was able to discuss something else.

It's wrong to blame social media for our new propensity to outrage.  Certainly (as I've argued in the past) Twitter shapes what the media and political class imagine the public thinks.  Nobody would defend the proposition that Twitter is representative but, when you're hit by hundreds of tweets in a row saying the same furious thing, it's hard not to feel that ''the public'' is talking back.

Social media and the mainstream press are interdependent.  The new and old media feed on each other.  We mustn't pretend that the hundreds of columns and news stories published on Jones or Stynes or Robbie Farah didn't happen, or to minimise them by saying they're just a symptom of online activism.

No, outrage suits the times.  It's no coincidence that episodes of outrage have dominated during the greatest contraction in the mainstream press in Australian history.  They're easy to comprehend, they're easy to write about, and everybody has an opinion about them.

And they are entertaining.  What Alan Jones said at a private Young Liberal function is a collective cultural experience in an era where collective cultural experiences are few and far between.

Sure, outrage can be confected.  No-one was really offended by Peter Slipper's text messages.  Showy moralising anger is a new weapon in the political arsenal.

But if you want to see genuine anger, take a moment to scroll through The Circle's defunct Facebook page.

''You have lost me FOREVER Chan 10...... and I will be telling everyone else to dump you guys too.''

''Disgraceful and un-Australian!  How about u go over to the gan and fight for your country and then come back and think about flappin your lips!!''

Outrage is politics packaged up for the water cooler:  it's transient, meaningless, forgettable, and, for a brief moment, intensely all-consuming.

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A solid stance for all on building code

The Victorian government is to be commended for enforcing its building industry code of conduct.  The decision to ban Lend Lease from tendering for government projects shows it is serious about reining in construction costs.  The consequences for Lend Lease are significant as government work is a reliable underpinning for a construction contractor.

The code's implementation guidelines clearly state contractors' obligations.  The building and construction industry is littered with many code and contract requirements, which participants typically expect clients and regulators to show flexibility in administering.

Flexibility means recognising ''the reality'' of workplace relations and accepting that unions dictate the terms of pattern enterprise agreements and working arrangements on site.

The Victorian government has decided to reject this way of doing business.  The appalling desalination plant project steeled its resolve — extravagant entitlements and work practices won on the desal plant have emerged as a feature of other agreements, and the cost of building infrastructure in Victoria was becoming unsustainable for a government with a tight budget.

At the same time, the federal government took a retrograde decision to emasculate its regulation of the industry.

This was strenuously opposed by clients and contractors but payback to the building unions prevailed and changes were made.

The Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner was abolished and penalties reduced by one third.  The new regulator has less power and less capacity, or will, to fight unlawful conduct.

The result, predicted by many, is that workplace relations have deteriorated quickly — intimidation, stand-over tactics and brutal industrial activity have returned with a vengeance as evidenced by headline disputes involving Grocon and a West Australian contractor at a boutique Geelong brewery.

In addition, there are reports that stand-over tactics are sometimes attended by threats of violence.  Many in the industry have concluded that the bad old days have returned, especially in Victoria.

The federal government appears ignorant of the industry's history.  Appeals to respect for the law, reason and tolerance have not worked.  Industry players require strong regulators with strong powers backed by a determination to enforce the law with rigour.

This is the only approach that has succeeded in bringing a semblance of lawful conduct and productivity to the industry.

The Victorian government has a daunting task.  Entrenched interests that benefit from lax regulation will attempt to undermine the code and its guidelines.  Managers of government projects and the Code Compliance Unit will need to be vigilant — Victorian government projects were heavily targeted for unlawful conduct in the past.  Once a code is in place, non-adherence cannot be tolerated.

The reasons for a tough approach are compelling.  It is not about beating unions into submission;  it is about having a productive, competitive and law-abiding industry.  The requirement for more government infrastructure is insatiable as our population grows.  The benefits of projects completed on time and within budget are clear.

Also, honest contractors and workers have a right to pursue their business activity or employment in a lawful environment.  It is intolerable in 2012 that they should be concerned about being confronted daily with unlawful conduct and intimidation as they go about their affairs.

The Victorian government is to be admired for its stand.  It has no option but to follow through against other contractors that do not comply with the guidelines.  It is simply making a statement, that as a client of the industry, proper standards will apply on its projects.

It is to be hoped that other state governments adopt the Victorian approach and fill the void created by the capitulation of the federal government to the unions.

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Government chips away at planning controls

House prices are off the boil.  In Victoria they fell two per cent last year.  Interest rates have been declining and compared to two years ago it now costs borrowers 15 per cent less to service the average $300,000 mortgage.

The Reserve Bank has even predicted that an upsurge in house building will replace the resource boom in driving economic growth.

Governments claim to have forged policies that will improve housing supply.  The Commonwealth Infrastructure Minister, Anthony Albanese, has announced a greater role for planning.  Similarly, Victoria's Planning Minister Matthew Guy has announced a ''masterplan'' development approach including ''integrated employment'', ''high quality urban design'' and water sensitivity.  A more plausible approach to increasing housing supply is Mr Guy's other policy of extending Urban Growth Boundaries to encourage increased land availability.

However, notwithstanding all the words and plans, house building in Victoria and nationally is trending downwards.

Victoria is building 30 per cent fewer new houses than a decade ago and new starts in the latest quarter were 10 per cent lower than a year earlier.  Although apartment construction in the state has increased, this still leaves total home building in the doldrums.

Superficially, the reason for the low level of new house building is lack of demand due to a first home buyer's costs of getting onto the housing ladder.  In Victoria, a standard new home sells for over $350,000.  Mortgage expenses on this often remain unaffordable.  And it requires a deposit of $50,000, which even with a First Home Owner grant of $7500 represents many years of saving.

Regrettably, around $100,000 of a new home's cost is caused by government planning controls.  These artificially reduce the acreage available for housing, even though there is almost unlimited land on the urban edge.

The value of a housing block, currently being used for farming, is under $2,000.  It costs a developer $70-80,000 to put in the roads, water, electricity and other services to prepare it for housing.

Yet, the latest Victorian Property Sales Report shows the average price of a serviced block is $178,000.  The $80,000 underlying costs of a serviced block of land balloons out to $178,000 because the planning induced scarcity of housing land.  Hundreds of different and unnecessary regulations have accumulated over the years to create that scarcity.  Land prices have barely fallen, demonstrating that even the expanded Urban Growth Boundaries has inadequately increased supply.

In amplifying the costs of new housing blocks, regulations reduce the industry's size and constitute a form of discriminatory tax on new home owners.  They are supported by interest groups who oppose development, including urban planning ''experts'' and by busybodies who want to force people to live in city apartments rather than on the urban fringe.  Many developers who have pre-committed to buying land at inflated prices also support regulations.

Yesterday the Productivity Commission offered governments a blueprint for stemming the regulatory tide.  This involves greater pre-scrutiny of proposals.  But the more urgent task is removing existing regulations.  To this end the Baillieu Government has announced a new deregulation commission.  Planning regulations clearly cause excessive house prices and should be an early priority for the new commissioner's attention.

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Pull the plug on electricity shambles

This year thousands of pages in government reports have addressed electricity supply policies.  Electricity is also at the eye of the carbon emission restraint storm that continues to blow, even after the latest fiasco at Doha.

Having started this century with deregulatory and privatisation measures that elevated Australian industry to world leadership in low-cost supply, the electricity sector is reverting to its over-regulated condition before the Kennett and Keating reforms of the 1990s.

The new regulatory morass of controls, together with taxes, has increased wholesale electricity prices by 60 per cent.  Added to this are increases in network charges, many of them government-mandated, together with paper-burden costs.

Though the carbon tax remains the highest-profile measure, its cost-increasing effects may be reduced if the government links it to the European Union's carbon price.  The EU price is likely to stay as depressed as Europe's economy.  Over the longer term the carbon price impact will also be diminished by increased electricity generation from low-carbon emitting gas, which is becoming cheaper due to shale and coal seam technologies.

Even so, unless repealed, the carbon tax will continue to damage industry and consumers.  But its effects will be eclipsed by those of other carbon-restraining measures which are progressively throttling the industry with cost add-ons.

Chief among these are the requirements to use expensive renewable energy to displace low-cost coal.  The commonwealth's energy regulations nominally require 20 per cent of electricity to be sourced from non-commercial renewable sources.  These are high cost and poor quality.  In last month's Energy White Paper the commonwealth boasted that it had forced $9 billion of investment in windmills.  Dubbed by London lord mayor Boris Johnson ''white satanic mills'', windmills cost three times as much as conventional sources to generate electricity.

Even more expensive is the electricity sourced from roof-top photovoltaics, on which more than $3 billion has been squandered through subsidies.  Photovoltaics benefit from a commonwealth subsidy fivefold that of wind.  It has been reduced, but the price remains excessive and is paid up front for the 15 years that the installations are deemed to produce electricity.

In addition, households with rooftop photovoltaics are subsidised by state regulations.  These require energy retailers to buy back any energy not used in the house.  The buyback prices remain over-generous.

The extravagance of the photovoltaics subsidy regime was such that sales boomed, forcing Canberra to split the 45,000 GWh 20 per cent renewable target into two:  the small-scale installations, which were to be ramped up to 4000 GWh by 2020;  and the large-scale facilities, set at 41,000 GWh.  But the Clean Energy Regulator, after previously under-forecasting photovoltaics take-up, now estimates they and other small-scale facilities will actually be running at 11,000 GWh by 2020.This increases the 45,000 GWh target to 52,000 GWh.

All these measures mean the renewable cost subsidy is likely to exceed $7 billion a year by 2020, probably twice the impost of the carbon tax.  At the same time, government-induced price increases have started to suppress demand, by forcing some of our most productive enterprises to reduce their outputs.  As some energy producers have noted, this brings an incidental effect of further increasing the renewable share beyond the 20 per cent envisaged by Parliament.

Carbon taxes and requirements to use exotic renewables have undermined productivity and cost competitiveness in Australia's electricity industry.

None of this has, nor can have, any effect on global emissions of carbon.  Even if such emissions have the malevolent role activists and gullible politicians ascribe to them, the farcical conclusion of the Doha meeting surely hammers the final nail into the carbon suppression coffin.  Only the stagnating juggernaut that is the EU and Australia are imposing emission restraining costs.  It's time for Australia to clean the entire slate and get our economy growing again.

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Losing interest in our rate obsession

As the 20th century opened there were 18 central banks around the world.  One hundred years later there were 173.

But none of them have as tight a grip on the political culture as Australia's Reserve Bank.

No other country grants so much mystical significance to their central bank's interest rate decisions.  We are obsessed.

Last Tuesday the bank lowered the cash rate to 3 per cent, releasing another torrent of claims and counterclaims.  Wayne Swan declared it was testimony to his great management of the economy.  Joe Hockey said the rates had been dropped to ''emergency levels''.  Retail banks were threatened.  Peter Costello's name was invoked.

Politicians have deified the Reserve Bank.  It's unusual for a politician to publicly second guess the board's encyclicals.  Happily, commentators do not share their faith.  So last week, as always, columns were written and talking heads talked.  Is the bank's board being bold, prudent, reckless, negligent?  Take your pick.

We're so used to these theatrics that we don't realise how unusually Australian it all is.

But compare how foreign politicians and parties view their interest rate movements.

For the British Conservative Party, low interest rates are merely a feature of a healthy economy — and not a particularly central one.  Here's a Google search of the Conservative Party website.  The most concrete claim they make is that their hard-won fiscal credibility keeps interest rates low.

The Australian Liberal Party's website shows a completely different picture.  Here, low interest rates are themselves the goal.  Interest rates will be lower under the Coalition.  They're higher under Labor.  Gillard finally admits she has forced up interest rates.  And on and on and on.

We can play the same game with the labour parties, although to be fair the difference is not as stark.  Here's the ALP, and here are their British cousins.

And the Americans?  Well, in the 32,000 word, 55 page Republican Party platform (PDF), interest rates are mentioned ... once.  Even though it's pretty plausible that extremely low Federal Reserve rates were a major cause of the financial crisis.

So yes, Australians are a bit different.  Interest rates are the bread and butter of the political contest — as Australian as asylum seekers.  The federal Liberal campaign in 2004 was almost entirely structured around interest rates.

In April this year Bill Shorten even suggested that knowledge of Reserve Bank meetings was central to political leadership in this country.  Yes, we smugly all laughed as Shorten tried to correct Tony Abbott's factual error with his own factual error (the bank meets the first Tuesday of every month, not the second).  But more important was why Shorten thought Abbott's mistake was a big deal:  ''when you want to be the alternative Prime Minister of Australia, interest rates is just such an important issue''.

And all this rhetoric for something governments have almost no control over.

The Reserve Bank is independent;  it makes its decisions in private, pretending to know nothing of the busy political world outside its boardroom.  When parties take credit for rate cuts or damn their opponents for rate rises, they are simply bluffing.  They have no direct control over the rates.  They have little indirect either.  Of all the sources of inflation in a modern, open, liberal economy, national governments can only really influence one or two.

In other words, our politicians are playing a game with pieces they don't control, but it's worse than that.  If rates go up, mortgage holders will hate it.  If they go down, then the economy may be going down as well, but the Mum and Dad homeowner will be delighted.  Throw into this mix the typical contrarian lines:  the economy is ''over-heating'';  what about retirees?  Nobody can win this game, but everybody is desperate to play.

A more interesting issue has arisen in recent years:  we're learning that even the Reserve Bank has only so much power over economy-wide interest rates.

Australia grew accustomed to the big four banks dancing to the tune of the Reserve Bank's decisions.  During the Howard years rate cuts were dutifully passed on to consumers.  But history may record that as an anomaly — a short decade where retail banks and the central bank were aligned.

We tend to imagine anything that lasts a few years is natural and permanent.  But Australia's banking sector is still evolving since the financial liberalisation of the 1980s.  So too is the Reserve Bank itself;  it only achieved full independence in 1996.

When the Global Financial Crisis came, the close relationship between banks and the central bank broke.  Few regretted this breakup more than the Labor Government.  Now we have the embarrassing spectacle of a Government trying to bully mortgage rates down, and an Opposition pretending they possess a magic hammer that would set the banking system straight again.

Nothing frustrates politicians like powerlessness.  For much of the 20th century, governments were able to control prices across the economy.  They had many levers to do so — tariffs and taxes and quotas and so forth — and the public expected governments to pull those levers.

But the 20th century was a long time ago.  The Reserve Bank cash rate is one of the few centrally planned prices left, and even then it set by a body independent of the government of the day.

When the Reserve Bank cut rates last week, Wayne Swan proclaimed this was the early Christmas present Australia's hard-working families deserved.

But if rate cuts are gifts, does that mean rate rises are punishments?  Of course not.  Sometimes prices go up and sometimes prices go down.  Our political culture needs to stop being so futilely obsessed with the Reserve Bank.

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Junk Kyoto and the carbon tax

From Doha it's clear the rest of the world cannot sustain the UN-led model for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and Australia should recognise it by junking the Kyoto Protocol and the carbon tax it helped create.

Late on Saturday, the UN negotiations to cut global greenhouse gas emissions ended without any clear commitment to cut emissions.  Countries agreed to extend the enfeebled Kyoto Protocol beyond December 31, but they did so because most have walked away from their obligations to cut emissions.

Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Russia signalled that they won't be bound to cut their emissions from next year.  Some countries negotiated the transfer of their unused credits into the second phase of Kyoto, ensuring they can talk the emissions cutting talk without the walk.

That leaves only a core group of countries, including Australia, the EU, Norway and Switzerland, still flying the Kyoto flag from next year to 2020.

Combined, these countries represent a mere 15 per cent of global emissions and don't include any of the major growing emitters in the developing world.

By sticking with Kyoto, Australia, with Europe, has adopted a high-cost pathway to cut emissions while others won't do the same.  Europe and Norway are only sticking by Kyoto for the same reason as Australia.

Off the back of the framework of Kyoto they've established carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes in the hope that the rest of the world will follow their lead.  Instead other countries have seen the consequences of a fraught model and are walking away.

At last year's Durban summit, countries set a time line for a successor agreement to Kyoto to be resolved by 2015 and to be in force by 2020.  With only a couple of years to go, the outcome from Doha suggests this time line won't be met.

Instead of narrowing the focus of a post-2020 regime that countries can agree to, in Doha it has been broadened again.  With every broadening of the agenda, negotiations become more complex and an outcome becomes harder to achieve.

In Doha countries agreed to a program for developed countries such as Australia to financially contribute to the loss and damage incurred by developing countries from a changing climate.  The details have not been worked out.

The Americans are understood to believe any commitment will be included in their share to the already spectacular $US100 billion-a-year Green Climate Fund.  The fund was set up to help developing countries adapt to a changing climate.

Unsurprisingly, developing countries want a blank cheque.  Doing so would give life to the comments at the start of the summit from the chief of the UN climate body, Christiana Figueres, that ''in the whole climate change process is the complete transformation of the economic structure of the world''.

If anything will ensure failure to secure a new global treaty to cut emissions, it is that statement.  But for many countries a ''complete transformation of the economic structure of the world'' is what they are hoping to achieve with climate change as their Trojan horse.  It's a contributing factor to why some countries are now looking away from the top-down, UN-led process to cutting emissions.

Last week Australia's most seasoned UN observer and former ambassador Alan Oxley argued in this newspaper that countries were shifting focus on cutting emissions from the UN to the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate.

The MEF, launched in 2009, brings together all of the major existing and emerging greenhouse gas emitters, including the US, China, India and Europe, as well as Australia.

Outside the UN, countries could agree on how to practically cut emissions based on a co-operative bottom-up process of commitments based on their national circumstances.

It may not be the MEF.  Countries may decide to develop an alternative institution.  But we can be confident that so long as Tuvalu and a band of other Pacific Island states hold veto rights over a deal struck between China and the US, the negotiations will go nowhere.

The irony is that there was a forum set up to achieve similar objectives — the Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, or AP6 — which included a similar country pool to MEF.  AP6 focused on using technology, which remains the only realistic way to cut emissions.

It's only when capturing and storing carbon is proven and cheap, and generating energy from renewable resources is competitive and reliable, that emissions in developed and developing countries will fall.

AP6 was tainted for Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama because it was set up by John Howard and George W. Bush.

But wherever negotiations head, Australia will still be lumbered with its carbon tax and post-2015 emissions trading scheme built on the architecture of the ailing Kyoto Protocol.  We should abandon both.

In the lead-up to Doha, both the government and opposition flagged support for extending Kyoto.

The government had politically boxed itself in.  It was untenable to go to the 2013 election opposing ratification to continue the same treaty they popularly rode into office on in 2007.

The opposition gave in-principle support because it is unlikely it wanted to relive the 2007 election with an unratified Kyoto hanging around its electoral neck.

Worse, the government deliberately brought forward the capacity for business to purchase European permits into the Australian carbon scheme, to make it harder for Tony Abbott to unravel.

But whether they were credible in the scheme was dependent on continuing to support Kyoto.

It would be hard to identify a more naked example of a government and an opposition putting their political interests ahead of the national interest.  We should have followed New Zealand's lead and not made a decision on a treaty until we had seen the final text.  It is not a novel concept.

Now that we have, like the first iteration of Kyoto, it is not in Australia's interests to be a member.

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Boiling Frog of Personal Freedom

The year 2012 should be remembered in Australia as the year of the boiling frog.  Much of the analysis about the past year will concentrate on things like the nastiness of Parliament, whether the boom is over, and the condition of the federal budget.

What will be missed in all of the discussion about 2012 is something that isn't talked about too much these days, namely civil liberties.

The number and variety of threats to the civil liberties of Australians during 2012 approached almost unprecedented levels.

If next year the Gillard government succeeds in its aims of regulating the press, imposing surveillance over the personal electronic communications of every person, and making it against the law to offend someone because of their political opinion, Australians will be substantially less free next year than they were this year.

The Canadian writer and commentator Mark Steyn talked about boiling frogs on his visit to Australia earlier this year.  A frog put into a pot of boiling water will jump out.  But put a frog in a pot of cold water, gradually turn up the heat and the frog won't notice until too late it is being boiled to death.

As Steyn said, so it is with personal freedoms.  When civil liberties are taken away, gradually and bit by bit, few notice what's happening.  During 2012, no less than eight separate pieces of Commonwealth legislation removed the right to silence for individuals accused of committing an offence.  The erosion of basic legal rights now passes without comment.

However, there's something even worse than the laws the government wants to pass.  What's more dangerous is the way that, during the year, the Gillard government stepped up its efforts to inculcate in the community a particular set of attitudes.  Australians are now urged to find sexism, racism, and discrimination at every turn.

The Prime Minister's misogyny speech was noteworthy because it revealed the sense of grievance the Gillard government wants Australians to experience in all walks of life, not just in politics.

Where no sexism, racism or discrimination is obvious, we're now actively encouraged to go looking for it, and if we can't find sexism, racism or discrimination, the government will find it for us.  This is the approach found in a host of legislation ranging from the Fair Work Act, to the Workplace Gender Equality Act which was passed last month, to the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill which will go to Parliament next year.

The irony is that while schoolchildren are encouraged by their parents and teachers to be resilient, a generation of grown-ups is told by government to take offence at the drop of a hat.

There's a variety of motivations for the Labor Party's assaults on civil liberties during 2012.  In part, there is what has always existed in the Left, namely the preference for social control, and this is most apparent in the ALP's efforts to control the press.  Also at play is the desire to impose equality.

But equality comes at the expense of freedom.  Making it illegal for a Christian, Jewish or Muslim school to discriminate, and give preference to job applicants who are of the same faith as the parents at the school, ensures all applicants are treated equally regardless of their religion, but it also means that parents do not have the freedom of choosing who should teach their children.

Why Labor is persisting with its plans to give the security agencies and the federal police practically untrammelled surveillance powers over every Australian's computer and telephone is more of a mystery.  Most likely the Gillard government has been snowed by the security agencies, just as every other government has been.

The Coalition thankfully, after some initial hesitation, did finally say it opposed Labor's plans to restrict the press.  But on internet surveillance and the changes to the anti-discrimination laws, the Coalition has gone missing in action.  As yet the Coalition has refused to say what its position is on these issues, and whether it is appropriate in a free society for someone who claims they were offended by a comment about their political opinion to be able to take the person who made that comment to court.

Budget deficits are serious, but they can be fixed.  Civil liberties, on the other hand, once they're gone are not easily won back.  And civil liberties are even more difficult to recover when the mindset of people is changed so that people don't care whether or not they regain what they've lost.

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Christianity and Western Civilisation

A Short History of Christianity
by Geoffrey Blainey
Penguin Books, 2011, 618 pages

The eminent Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey has produced yet another important work in his A Short History of Christianity.  Blainey, who is well known for writing histories of movements and peoples that cover a long time period, has attempted to detail 2000 years of history in a mere 550 pages or so.  Blainey delivers to the world of history a sober and well-told narrative of one of the most influential religions.

It may be argued that such a narrative history is not necessary, and that "we all know what happened anyway", and that Blainey would be better off using his historical skills to examine only one area of Christianity's history in more detail.  This view could not be more wrong.  With modern history becoming increasingly disjointed, ideological and unconcerned with what actually happened, Blainey's book could not be timelier.

He reminds us of some of the fundamentals that underpin Christian history.  Within the first Christianity and Western Civilisation chapter Blainey dismisses the eccentric, unfounded but nonetheless popular view that Jesus probably did not, or might not have existed.  As Blainey notes "my own conclusion is that, by the standard of the times, Jesus' life was astonishingly documented", with four gospels recording his life and preaching and works by secular historians such as Tacitus and Josephus.  Blainey gives an excellent picture of Jesus as a simple boy from Galilee who spreads a message of love and forgiveness that shocks, but also inspires.  On the issue of his resurrection Blainey notes that although "the gospels give different accounts" they "in spirit agree", and goes through some of the events that led his followers to believe in his resurrection (such as the tomb's rock being rolled away and the visions of his disciples).

Blainey then quickly moves to the debates over Jesus' resurrection and his divinity in the early church.  Blainey provides a good antidote to the views of pop "historians" such as Dan Brown and explains how the vast majority of Christians believed Jesus was the Son of God, but many differed in their exact formulation of that divinity.  Was he always divine?  Was he human but then "adopted" by God as divine, or did Jesus only appear to be human and always was in fact an angel-like figure?  While many modern historians might ridicule these debates as trivial, Blainey gives them the respect they deserve and acknowledges how important they were for early Christians.

All through his analysis, Blainey draws links between the rise of Christianity and Western Civilisation.  The Christian emphasis on learning and theological precision led to the rise of the university and influenced the profoundly intellectual culture that Western Civilisation represents.  The university, Blainey explains, arose out of cathedral schools, monasteries and colleges of learning that were set up and encouraged by the Catholic Church.  This tradition would be continued long after the Catholic Church had lost influence after the protestant reformation and still is a hallmark of modern secular culture.  It is a shame that secular inheritors too often forget to acknowledge the profoundly Christian roots of their society and educational institutions.

Blainey is at his best when describing the lives of some of the most influential Christians.  He paints a vivid picture of St. Francis of Assisi and gives the reader an insight into the passion that drove Francis to give up all he had and live a life of poverty for the Christian God.  Likewise Blainey's portrait of John Wesley gives the reader a sense of the energy with which this protestant reformer sought to reform the Christians of his day.  The subtle mind and theological insights of John Calvin and St. Thomas Aquinas are given ample treatment despite the brevity of the work.  Blainey has an incredible talent for sifting through detail and giving us the most important aspects of a person.

The fight of many Christians against slavery is one of the proudest moments in its history, and is covered well by Blainey.  Although Christianity initially accepted slavery as normal and to be tolerated (even though it was undesirable), more and more Christian reformers in the 18th century began to campaign against what they saw as an unforgiveable evil.  In England campaigners such as William Wilburforce and T. Fowell Buxton successfully lobbied the English parliament to abolish slavery, and in 1833 they achieved this goal.  France followed in 1848.  It was Pope Paul III in Sublimus Dei in 1537 who declared the enslavement of indigenous people as unjust and contrary to the natural law.

Through his role as a historian, Blainey also presents a rather different view of the modern controversy over whether religion is "opposed" to science.  For centuries the Catholic priestly order, the Jesuits, had been at the forefront of scientific discovery, and just as Charles Darwin wrote the Origin of Species, the monk Gregor Mendel founded modern genetics in his monastery in Austria.  The man who discovered the "big bang" theory was also a Catholic priest.  On evolution, Blainey explains that from most of the contemporary church leaders there was not much real hostility to evolution.  The Catholic cardinal John Henry Newman quickly reconciled evolution with his Christian faith, and Frederick Temple, the archbishop of Canterbury, told his faithful adherents in 1896 not to worry about evolution's criticisms but to accept them and rejoice in them.  "I speak of evolution as a fact".  Although the philosophical debate over "science versus religion" will continue, Blainey shows how the debate is more complex than the modern mind might think.

Christianity has been a force for 2000 years and shaped civilisation itself.  Despite its decline in the western world it is rapidly expanding in the third world and Blainey sees Christianity thriving in the next few decades.  This is partly due to Christianity's astonishing ability to re-shape itself and to make itself relevant even in epochs that would prefer its extinction.

A Short History of Christianity is a very valuable contribution to our understanding of Christianity and its role in shaping Western Civilisation.

The Welfare State And Its Consequences

After the Welfare State
by Tom G. Palmer
Students For Liberty & Atlas Network, 2012, 180 pages

The welfare state in its existing form, dominated by government financing and provision of payments and services from cradle to grave, is irretrievably broken.

The blossoming of welfare state programs deters private savings and reduces labour supply, and requires increasing taxes to finance them, all of which inhibits economic growth and prosperity.

Societies characterised by strong family ties and community cohesion increasingly become a feature of the past as growing numbers of welfare recipients lean on the state, rather than their relatives or neighbours, for assistance.

Even in spite of strong tax growth, the welfare state still manages to crowd out the basic protective functions of government, eroding fiscal integrity to such an extent that nation-states are lumbered with budget deficits and public sector debts that cannot be managed.

To rub salt into the wounds, democratic political systems are undermined as people vote in favour of extra welfare benefits to come their way, or, as seen in major European cities, fight tooth and nail to keep whatever largesse the state currently provides.

These are the confronting features of the welfare state presented in After the Welfare State, a new collection of essays published by Students for Liberty, a fast-growing student liberty movement in the United States and Europe, and the Atlas Network.

After the Welfare State makes three distinct contributions to the already voluminous body of literature on the welfare state and the need for fundamental reform in this area.

First, the book convincingly illustrates how accumulating welfare state subsidies and benefits in the name of caring for the poor contributed to the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis, hurting the poor the most.

It may surprise some readers to learn that the European peripheral states of Greece and Italy were once healthy, if not bustling, economies especially during the first half of the twentieth century.

The relative prosperity experienced by these two countries was, however, whittled away from the 1960s by a concoction of strong social expenditure growth, rising taxes and regulatory barriers against entrepreneurial activity.

In an interesting account of the contribution of US economic policies to the GFC, Johan Norberg showed how the elevation of housing as a "social right" led to disastrous policies such as the securitisation of mortgages through Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac, government-sponsored "creative financing" for home loans, and artificially low interest rates by the Federal Reserve.

The second notable contribution of After the Welfare State is its efforts in chronicling the history of spontaneously ordered arrangements that emerged to care for the sick, elderly and unemployed prior to the advent of the governmental welfare state.

One element of the rich array of non-governmental welfare institutions that sprang up during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the so-called "mutual aid societies", whose members would voluntarily pool monies that would be accessed when one of their own fell on hard times.

Until their virtual extinguishment by government welfare, the mutual aid societies were subscribed to by sizeable proportions of the population in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, thus demonstrating that it is not necessary for government to finance or provide welfare.

Finally the book's editor, American free market think tank activist Tom G. Palmer, provides a sweeping and devastating coverage of the numerous economic and social problems attributable to the modern welfare state.

For example, in the opening stanza of the book Palmer exposes the untenable inter-generational fractions created by Ponzi-style modern welfare states:

"Young people are being robbed.  Of their rights.  Of their freedom.  Of their dignity.  Of their futures.  The culprits?  My generation and our predecessors, who either created or failed to stop the world-straddling engine of theft, degradation, manipulation, and social control we call the welfare state."

Palmer also contributes chapters concerning the fiscal common pool problems exacerbated by the welfare state, and broader linkages between issues of poverty, morality and liberty.

In each of these, Palmer displays a masterful command of the intellectual history of thought on charity and welfare, in the classical liberal tradition, of the likes rarely seen in such literature.

As enlightening as these features of the book are, the big question that remains is:  how will vulnerable people in need be cared for if the welfare state in its existing configuration becomes relegated to the dustbin of history?

The answer suggested in the book is that if it was not beyond the ability of individuals and communities in the past to create intricate, multi-faceted welfare systems without government involvement, then it should not be beyond the capacity of those living today to do the same.

The idea behind government progressively withdrawing from welfare financing and provision is to give room for not-for-profit and for-profit organisations to re-enter the welfare field.

In other words "yes" to families, churches, charities and philanthropists and "no" to Centrelink!

In any case the sheer scale of profligacy characteristic of the welfare state should provide sufficient motivation for such reforms.

Spending by all levels of Australian governments on social security alone amounted to $121 billion in 2009-10, and that's excluding public spending on education, health and housing.

Even if we accept at face value the overblown estimates of the welfare lobby that 2.2 million Australians live in poverty, these people could each receive a tidy stipend to the tune of $55,120 per person.

That the government refuses to make poor people instantly wealthy suggests that too much taxpayers' money is being siphoned off through unnecessary fiscal churn, which would continue if the government welfare state is left intact.

This book is unapologetically directed toward young people, who as future workers will suffer the burden of rising taxes to fund growing numbers of typically older recipients of government welfare insofar as the welfare state is left unreformed.

This is not unreasonable but, that said, people of all ages should read After the Welfare State.

After all, the need to downsize government's involvement in welfare will be the greatest and most challenging reform agenda the West confronts, and everyone has a stake in ensuring its success.

The Life And Times Of The Modest Member

The Modest member:  The Life and Times of Bert Kelly
by Hal G.P. Colebatch
Connor Court Publishing, 2012, 300 pages

The publication of this new biography of legendary anti-tariff campaigner, Bert Kelly, is particularly timely.  For it was fifty years ago, in late 1962, that the Australian policy of "protection all round", sometimes dubbed McEwenism, arguably reached its peak and Bert Kelly entered the frontline of its opponents.

That Australia was to be a protectionist country had been established in the first decade of Federation.  By the 1920s, Australia had established one of the highest levels of protection in the industrialised world.  It maintained, and indeed increased, this status for the next few decades.  An addition to the regime in the 1940s and 1950s was the imposition of quantitative restrictions on a wide variety of imports.  In February 1960, the Menzies Government decided to remove these restrictions, but this measure just prompted Country Party leader and trade minister, John McEwen, to introduce other drastic measures to increase protection.

One obstacle in the path of McEwen achieving his aims was that the tariff board under its chairman, Sir Leslie Melville insisted on carefully evaluating in a transparent manner each proposal for protection that came before it.  Thus McEwen sought a way to circumvent the board, coming up with the idea of a special adviser who could deal with "urgent" matters.

The 1961 credit squeeze assisted McEwen's argument that quick decisions were required.  Firstly, it enabled him to point to businesses in distress and allegedly needing more protection, but more importantly the credit squeeze was a key factor in the Coalition only winning the 1961 Federal Election by a single seat.  Menzies needed the Country Party more than ever and thus, for the next two years, McEwen was at the height of his powers.

One of the first manifestations of his enhanced position was that McEwen got approval for the special adviser.  His choice was Sir Frank Meere whose mantra for manufacturers was "you make it and I'll protect it".

Colebatch relates an example of how the new 1962 regime worked in practice.  The board recommended that Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), the only Australian manufacturer of which was ICI, be made subject to a 40 per cent duty.  The government got the special adviser to second-guess this result and he recommended the tariff be almost doubled and, as Colebatch describes, "a disguised tax was being levied in order to benefit a single wealthy company in a secretive and arbitrary manner".  When the manufacturers who then used PVC to make their products complained that their costs had gone up the solution was simple ― increase their protection too!

Faced with this undermining of his authority it was no surprise when on 7 November, 1962 the resignation of Tariff Board head, Sir Leslie Melville became public.  In question time, Kelly asked McEwen about the resignation and caused McEwen some angst.  Protection would not increase unchallenged.

1962 was not the start of Kelly's involvement in trade issues.  In fact, he had been talking about tariffs since his maiden speech in early 1959.  The speech is reproduced in one of the book's several appendices and, in one of the most quotable passages he stated that "the free flow of world trade is the best hope we have of raising the standard of living all over the world".

Kelly had been elected to the parliament as the Member for Wakefield in rural South Australia in 1958.  This seat seemed to bring forth better than average parliamentarians as in the 1930s it had been represented by Charles Hawker, one of the rare breed of free traders in the Federal Parliament in the six decades after 1910.  Hawker's support for sound economics was just one element of a heroic, but ultimately tragic, life which ended with the crash of the aircraft Kyeema into Mt Dandenong in 1938.  The chapter which Hal Colebatch devotes to Hawker's legacy adds to the work he has already done with the biography of his father, Steadfast Knight:  A life of Sir Hal Colebatch, which detailed the contribution of another of those free traders who filled the chasm between the eclipse of the Free Trade Party in the first decade after Federation and the rise of the Dries in the late 1970s.

As well as the Hawker legacy, Kelly was influenced by his father, Stan, who had been a part-time commissioner of the tariff board from 1929 to 1940.  Stan's opposition to high tariffs clearly rubbed off on Bert and the son's regard for the father is reflected in the fact that in 1979 he established a memorial lecture named in his honour.  However, one of the rare bits of personal insight in this otherwise career-focused work, is in the revelation that Stan never got on well with Bert's wife Lorna and that during the war, when Bert went away to join the RAAF, Stan refused to allow Lorna and her children to stay in his home.

Colebatch only lightly sketches Kelly's life in the 46 years before entering parliament, but it is clear he was a very successful farmer.  His abilities were recognised when he was awarded one of the first two Nuffield Farming Scholarships which entitled him to seven months in Britain.  Perhaps more significant for his future career was the fact that, on his return, he delivered over fifty speeches on what he had seen and learnt about British farming methods.  This, allied with the "Dave's Diary" column which he contributed to the Adelaide Stock Journal, indicated that his horizons were beginning to extend beyond the farm gate.

Kelly did not have his heart set on a political career.  However, urged on by his father's keenness for someone to become a parliamentary advocate for lowering tariffs, and by "Hawker's ghost", he felt that in good conscience he should stand for pre-selection when the incumbent retired.

Kelly's subsequent career provides a lesson for any careerist politician with an interest in his or her place in history.  In a 19-year parliamentary career, which saw his government in power for 16 of them, Kelly was only a minister for three years.  He became a minister in 1966, initially in Works and then in Navy, the latter clearly a significant portfolio as the Vietnam War raged.  He became embroiled in controversy when the HMAS Melbourne collided with the US Destroyer Frank E. Evans in Subic Bay in July 1969, resulting in the deaths of 74 US sailors.  Without waiting for the results of an inquiry, Kelly immediately expressed confidence that the Melbourne would "come out with a clean sheet" and while this was not given as the reason for his subsequent demotion, suspicion lingered.  Further notional "failure" came in 1977 when he was defeated at a pre-selection by a colleague whose adjoining seat had been abolished.

Yet, far from a failure, there is a strong argument to say that Kelly was one of the most influential Australian politicians of the 20th century, and the only thing that arguably interrupted that influence was his time as a minister.  Colebatch recognises that making Kelly a minister could have been a way of shutting him up, but also believes that the fact he had been a minister gave a bit more stature and gravitas to his public comments.  The point which Colebatch emphasises is just how well-prepared Kelly was to mount his arguments ― he read all the tariff board reports;  his opponents rarely did.

Once relieved of the burden of ministerial office Kelly was able to focus on writing the "Modest Member" column for the Financial Review, a column which he continued post-Parliament just changing the title to the "Modest Farmer".  The column featured not just the Modest Member himself, but his fictional wife Mavis, farmer-neighbour Fred and the economist Eccles.  The column continued in various publications until 1987.

The focus of this biography is Kelly's war against protectionism, but readers occasionally get insights on some of his other views.  As a farmer, Kelly was particularly sensitive to just how little of the mass of Australia was actually suitable for farming and he did not approve of subsidised immigration that provided a workforce for the protected motor vehicle industry which in turn led to the building of housing for these double-subsidised workers on prime farming land on the urban fringe.

Trade policy may have been in a worse state then in the 1960s than it is today, but on the other hand there is an argument that parliamentary democracy was healthier.  Kelly regularly posed difficult questions-without-notice to his ministers on his own side of the House.  While Colebatch explains that there is evidence that in the post-Melville resignation controversy Menzies was annoyed that Kelly had not flagged his intention to raise the issue with him first, at other times he was happy to give him a reasonably free rein.

One interesting anecdote the book describes is Kelly taking Whitlam to task in the early days of the latter's government for having made an announcement at a press conference rather than in the House.  Whitlam accepted Kelly's criticism with good grace.

Of course, when it comes to cutting tariffs in Australia perhaps the most drastic was the Whitlam government's 25 per cent cut in 1973.  The book notes that some have suggested that the unilateral cut actually set back the cause of tariff reform.  This is perhaps true, but only because the Opposition opportunistically campaigned against it.

Of course, no party had a monopoly of the moral high ground on the issue of tariffs and Colebatch explains how many MPs and some business people were a bit duplicitous, mouthing support to Kelly in private, but publicly opposing him.  In his early days in parliament, Kelly had few supporters on his side of the House, one of the first consistent ones being Dr Jim Forbes.  On the Labor side, one of the first to question protection was Bill Hayden who, in 1967, said that "super-high protection safeguards inefficiency ... [and] guarantees sloppy, costly production methods".

Of course, given that its base was exporting farmers, the Country Party should have been the most sympathetic to free trade.  Obviously, McEwen is the anti-hero of the book, yet it is worth noting that McEwen's own biographer, Peter Golding argued in his 1996 work that while McEwen could be a great hater, opposing him on a policy matter was not sufficient to earn his ire, specifically commenting that he "quite liked" Kelly, despite the fact that Kelly "was a constant irritant in parliament and party room".  Yet Colebatch describes how, particularly when first challenged by Kelly, McEwen responded with "black fury", pointing to the "venom of his tone" when answering a Kelly question.

It says something of the change in attitudes on the tariffs issue, between the time of McEwen's departure from politics in 1971 and Kelly's death in 1997 that one of the more effusive parliamentary condolence motions about Kelly came from McEwen's successor as National Party leader, Tim Fischer.

An important share of the credit for this change in attitudes lies with the Dries who followed Kelly into parliament, in particular John Hyde, who was a colleague for the final three years of Kelly's career.  However, it is also important to recognise that the battle of ideas is one that has to be fought in a variety of forums, not just parliament.  Another significant development also took place early in Kelly's parliamentary career when journalists, headed by Maxwell Newton and Alan Wood, took up the cudgels in opposition to protection.  Similarly, Treasury, as well as the tariff board, provided strong contrary advice to the virulently protectionist Department of Trade.

While we still have protection in Australia, the fifty years since 1962 have certainly been better for the cause of freer trade in Australia than the half century which preceded it.

This biography reminds us of just how courageous and conscientious Bert Kelly was in fighting the just fight against tariffs when that fight was at its toughest.

The Economics Of Food

An Economist Gets Lunch
by Tyler Cowen
Penguin Books, 2012, 293 pages

Have you ever not ordered something at a restaurant because it had strange ingredients, and ordered the roast chicken instead?  Ever tried a restaurant because the social vibe of the place made you think it would be a great night out?

They're safe bets.  You know roast chicken, because you've had it before.  You think that because those people are enjoying themselves, so will you.  Wrong.

At least according to Tyler Cowen, the author of Discovering Your Inner Economist and creator of the great economics blog MarginalRevolution.com.

Cowen wants to help start the next food revolution by turning consumers into innovators, which can be achieved by everyone following his one rule:  "Food is a product of supply and demand, so try to figure out where the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative and the demanders are informed."

The book itself has two distinct personalities ― the first is an economical guide to improving your experience with food, both at home and in restaurants.  The second is Cowen's more serious views on the declining levels of innovation towards food globally, and how it can be remedied.

When Cowen is focused on the former, the book is enjoyable and an absolute page-turner, full of insightful tips and clever analysis.  For example, Cowen advises that when choosing a restaurant to eat at you should try looking for a place that pays low rent on the land.  These places aren't slaves to sales, and can afford the risk of experimenting with dishes to improve them that high rent restaurants cannot.  Note the clientele ― if they are young and good looking, the restaurant makes money from the social atmosphere and people ordering drinks, so they probably don't have to focus on great food.

When seated, don't order the standard, reliable dishes ― your roast chickens, spaghetti bologneseses and so on ― because the restaurant doesn't need to deliver greatness on those to make money from it, only to serve it.  Look further down the list ― what seems strange and unusual?  Order it.  They have to excel at that dish, otherwise they would never sell it.  That's just some of the many tips you can use immediately, and that alone makes the book worth reading.

When Cowen turns to the state of food internationally the book isn't as strong, but it's still interesting.  Cowen believes that the innovation of food is not just held back by us consumers, but many other factors across the globe, including government intervention.

For example, government subsidies for corn in America have led to an abundance of corn syrup on the market, and less land for other products to be grown.  Food innovation in America is shackled by this as a result, and America is stuck with the bland and tasteless corn-based products.  Similarly, genetically modified crops are heavily regulated across the world, preventing experiments which could improve the lives of hundreds of millions around the world.  The less government intervention, the better off food is.

Another highlight of the book is Cowen's criticism of the green movement (political greens, he's pro-vegetables).  Cowen exposes many myths about the green view of food, and not just on genetically modified food.  From the debate over locally-grown food versus imported produce to the "evils" of large agribusiness, greenies are shown to be wrong and wrong again.  Cowen slams environmentalists for only doing things that appear to "save the planet", rather than doing what will actually help the planet and humans as well.

But the book is not flawless.  Cowen clearly writes for an American audience with a chapter on how American food got so bad, and another on where the best American steakhouses are.  Some of this can still be interesting for an Australian audience though, as he does expand these chapters into the realms of government intervention, ethnic foods and supermarket shopping.

But just because Cowen is generally against government intervention does not mean my readers would enjoy every aspect of this book.  This is evident in the chapter "Eating Your Way To A Greener Planet".  Though his critique of environmentalists is refreshing, he is still concerned about how to tackle man-made global warming and limiting our "carbon footprint".  Most annoyingly of all, he spends many pages of the book making the case for a carbon tax, which detracts from his otherwise excellent advice for food-buyers and policymakers alike.