Immigrants boost the economy and should be welcomed

Populism is being mainstreamed in Australia.  At a book launch former prime minister Tony Abbott set out an aggressive populist agenda for Australia — presumably a second Abbott government.  Abolish the renewable energy target, abolish the Human Rights Commission, cut spending, reform the Senate, and cut immigration.

This from a man who couldn't amend a single section of the Racial Discrimination Act while PM.  A man who increased taxes.  A man whose government set the current renewable energy target.  Good luck with that.

More concerning, however, is the increased antagonism towards immigration.  To be sure, there is much to dislike about immigrants.  They take our jobs, live in our houses, marry our women, deprive our children of jobs, and speak with strange accents.  Most immigrants have the temerity to integrate into Australian society and come to think of themselves as being Australian!

Now Tony Abbott wasn't as crude as that in his call for restricted immigration but many would nod in approval while thinking those, or similar, thoughts.  The official line for restricting immigration is to reduce house prices (at least until housing starts pick up).  As if most new migrants to Australia could afford to buy a house upon arrival.

Abbott accuses the federal Treasury of having a "big is best" mode of thinking.  Quite right.  Most economists support free trade and have done so since Adam Smith.  Economists understand that more trade leads to improvements in our standard of living and greater prosperity.  This is the basis for promoting international trade.

What many people don't seem to realise is that domestic trade is good for prosperity too.  We can trade with foreigners across international borders, or we can trade with immigrants right here at home.  The case for free trade — an argument Abbott knows well — is also the case for immigration.  We are better off when goods and services cross borders and when people cross borders, too.

International trade and immigration are not substitutes, they are compliments.

Arguments in favour of immigration usually emphasise diversity, food choice, and the like.  These arguments are true, but trivial.  The benefit of immigration comes from the fact that immigrants increase the size of the market.

Immigrants don't just increase demand for Australian goods and services, they also increase the supply of Australian goods and services.  This is especially so given the fact that Australia's immigrant intake is skewed towards skilled migrants.  People who are likely to quickly gain employment, start paying taxes, and making other contributions to Australian life.

A restriction on immigration is a restriction on economic prosperity — much like increased taxation.

If Abbott truly believes that housing starts are lagging population growth he should focus his attention on supply side barriers to entry and not on restricting the demand side of the economy.  That means lowering taxation, cutting red tape, cutting green tape, and forcing the states to do so, too.

Four Year Terms Are A Bad Idea

The election of Donald Trump, the vote for Brexit, and the return of One Nation have all threatened the centre-right status quo, while on the left, throwback leaders like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have emerged.  All of these movements share one key belief:  that government no longer represents the people.

It would seem a bizarre time, then, to propose reducing the frequency of elections with the explicit aim of freeing those same unrepresentative politicians from scrutiny so they can "get more done".  But this is exactly what Liberal MP David Coleman proposes.

On Tuesday, Coleman released draft legislation that would introduce four-year fixed terms to the Commonwealth House of Representatives, and lengthen Senate terms to eight years.  The Government would lose the ability to call an early election, except for a double dissolution.  Otherwise, the term of the government could only be ended by the passage of a no-confidence motion or by the Governor-General.

Coleman claims three main benefits for this change.  All, however, are either illusory or could be achieved in other ways.

The first argument is that longer terms would enable governments to better respond strategically to long-term policy challenges.  We should consider, though, the possibility that the public do not want a more active, managerial government.  Especially not when that activity will take place away from their scrutiny.  And if the public does want a longer-lasting government with a wider vision for structural reform, then a government that implements such an agenda should have no trouble being re-elected.

Coleman then argues that elections cause investor uncertainty, which harms the economy.  Of course, taken to its logical end point, this is an argument against democracy altogether.  And if investors are really deterred by election season, this reveals that the government is far too active in our economy, not that we should have fewer elections.

Moreover, if economic growth is the goal, there are a number of ways to achieve it without changing the constitution to sacrifice a measure of our democracy.  Reducing Australia's red tape burden, which costs the economy $176 billion a year, and lowering our business tax rate to a globally competitive level would be a good place to start.

Coleman's third point is superfluous.  Consistent frequency of elections across the states and the Commonwealth will do nothing to improve the quality of policy coming from the Federal Parliament.  Instead, why not just put forward good policy and campaign against a recalcitrant Senate which refuses to support reform that is in the national interest?

After all, it is not like four-year fixed terms have improved governance at the state level.  The previous Victorian government, for example, was hamstrung by its inability to call a new election and instead found itself hostage to a wildly unpopular independent who resigned from the government but refused to leave Parliament.

But it is not just when governments are in trouble that they might consider calling an early election.  Fixed terms reduce the incentive for bold governments to seek public ratification of significant reform at the ballot box, reducing the benefit of having a positive policy vision.

Even worse, Coleman says Labor and the Coalition should team up to achieve this constitutional change;  this at a time when the two major parties are already barely distinguishable.  We have bipartisan support on policies from subsidising renewables, to overseeing an expansion of public debt and Budget deficits, to raising taxes on superannuants.

Coleman is right about one thing, however:  reform of our political system is a discussion worth having.  But instead of reducing the number of elections, we should increase accountability and responsiveness through reforms like introducing recall elections, holding confirmation hearings for senior bureaucrats, and allowing citizen-initiated referendums.  More voting, and more public engagement.

Instead, with all of the problems facing the country, from the ballooning deficit to rising international discord, for some reason Coleman seemingly thinks voters are most concerned about politicians' job security.  The last thing we need is to further protect the political class from the scrutiny, transparency, and accountability that comes with frequent elections.

Given that the public is increasingly voicing its dissatisfaction with the political class, voters may find this proposal not just ill-timed but insulting.

The Coalition Hands Its Values To Hanson

The rise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party continues to befuddle the Canberra press gallery and the major political parties.

In Western Australia One Nation could hold the balance of power after the state election next month, and in Queensland the party is polling 23 per cent.  Even in Victoria, the state often presumed to be the country's most progressive, One Nation is on 10 per cent of the vote.

At least part of the reason for the success of One Nation is that Pauline Hanson is not afraid to talk about culture and values.  Specifically, she's willing to support the sort of values that too many commentators are too eager to dismiss as quaint, old-fashioned, or as a "sideshow" to the business of politics.

One Nation is simply filling a void left by the Coalition and the Labor Party.

In response to the survey question, "How important is freedom of speech to you?", 95 per cent of respondents answered either "important" or "very important".  One Nation has a policy position in favour of freedom of speech.  The Coalition and the ALP don't.

The story of Georges River College, a public school in Sydney, is another example of the difference between One Nation and the major parties.

It was revealed this week that the NSW Education department has allowed the school to establish a policy whereby male students can refuse to shake the hands of women.  The policy supposedly respects "the cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds of all students", and so, in the words of the department:  "At the school's 2016 presentation day, the principal explained to invited guests making awards that some Muslim students may place their hand across their chest instead of shaking hands."

Rob Stokes, the Liberal education minister, refused to say what was his view on the policy.  Labor's education spokesperson also refused to comment.

One politician wasn't afraid to say what she thought.  Hanson called the policy "rubbish" and contrary to Australian values.

The practical consequences of a school endorsing male students not shaking hands with women are legion.  An education system that doesn't prepare boys for the world of work and the possibility that one day they might have a female boss is fundamentally failing its responsibility to its pupils.

A few days ago the New South Wales Education Standards Authority announced that the English curriculum would be revamped to have pupils study classic writers such as Shakespeare, Dickens and Austen.

This is a welcome development.  But Stokes should ask himself how any future Jane Austen would be treated should she visit Georges River College.

The refusal of boys to shake women's hands, and then the endorsement of such behaviour by the government raises a much bigger question than just the employment prospects of those students.

A common accusation levelled at Hanson is that she's merely a "populist".  But there's nothing "populist" about being concerned about a government-sanctioned policy of gender segregation such as that practised by Georges River College.  Hanson has proved to be an unlikely champion of gender equality.

For as long as the major political parties refuse to talk about issues such as whether boys should shake hands with girls, they will bleed support to the minor parties.  If the Coalition and Labor want to increase their share of the vote, they must do more than complain about One Nation and its like.  The Coalition and Labor are going to have to engage in the debate about Australia's national culture and values in a way that Stokes didn't.

The Liberal Party has a particular problem in this regard.  With the Liberals directing their preferences to One Nation in Western Australia, a tactic likely to be repeated in other states and at the federal level, there's a danger the Liberals will abandon talking about values altogether in the belief that the "culture wars" can be fought by One Nation, their preference-partners on the right.

This is dangerously short-term thinking.  When a political party contracts out to someone else debates about its principles, it risks sowing the seeds of its own irrelevance.

Witness the Labor Party, and how the Greens now determine much of the ALP's policy agenda.

America has the answer for Australia's failing schools

Australia must tackle the highly-centralised structures of public education if we are to stem the long-term decline of Australian students' performance compared to the rest of the world.

When it comes to public education, Australia has much to learn from the United States.

Last week, the US Senate voted to confirm President Donald Trump's controversial pick for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos.  Vice-President Mike Pence was called in to break a tie vote for the first time in history for a cabinet appointment.

DeVos was a provocative nomination principally because she has spent decades campaigning for school choice — promoting charter schools and voucher programs.  While this has pitted her against the teaching unions, it is hardly a fringe position:  43 US states have adopted charter school laws, and more than 2.5 million students are enrolled in 6465 charter schools.

Research shows that school choice has increased parental satisfaction, and improved achievement and school completion rates for the most disadvantaged Americans.

Injecting school choice into Australia's public education system could be one way to lift our results.  Internationally, the latest PISA rankings show that Australian 15 year-old students' performance in science, mathematics, and reading is slipping — a declining trend since 2006.  At home, the 2016 NAPLAN report showed test scores flat-lining.

The tired response is to call for more public funding.  But throwing money at the problem has not worked.  According to the latest ABS data, commonwealth, state and territory government expenditure on primary and secondary education totalled $43.3 billion in 2014-15, up from $27.6 billion in 2005-06 — an increase of 56.9 per cent.  Claims of "funding cuts" under the federal government are sullied by the fact that education spending is continuing to increase over the forward estimates.

Another common response is to call for improvements in teacher quality.  But this attempts to treat the symptoms without curing the underlying disease.  The real problem is structural;  why doesn't the public education system incentivise improvements in teacher quality and student achievement in the first place?

In each state and territory, the public education system is highly centralised.  This is true even for states with so-called "independent public schools" programs.  In all jurisdictions, school teachers are employees of the government and subject to an industrialised salary structure.  This means a lack of incentives for schools to attract and retain the best teachers.  Removing poor teachers is extremely difficult, and schools are almost never shut down due to underperformance.  Schools must follow a government mandated curriculum and abide by its prescriptive policies and procedures.  Just like any other red tape, innovation is constrained.

Thinking structurally, we shouldn't be surprised that public education suffers from the same problems as any other government-run monopoly — high costs, an inflated bureaucracy, effectiveness issues, and lack of innovation.  A way forward is to separate the functions of public funding and public management of schools.  While there is no single decentralised model, charter schools have a long history of results in the US.

Charter schools are publicly funded schools of choice, run in competition with the centralised system.  They are established and governed by local community boards in accordance with their charters rather than run by government departments.

Charters are publicly accountable to authorising bodies for academic performance and financial management.  Charters have a high amount of autonomy, exempt from a range of government regulations.  Because they are a distinct legal entity, individual charters negotiate teachers' employment conditions locally.  Combined, these features allow charters to tailor educational programs and organisational structures to their own needs — unlocking the potential for innovation.  Effective charter programs can be combined with other school choice alternatives like voucher programs, education tax credits, and more.

As a first step, Australian states and territories could introduce this model by allowing existing public schools to convert to charters.  Universities with education faculties could act as the authorising bodies.  But this will not happen without ambitious leadership.  It would require champions of school choice in positions of power like DeVos.  It will also take grit to stand firm against union opposition, because recent research from education expert Dr Kevin Donnelly finds that the AEU have always placed impediments to increased school choice and autonomy.

None of this is to say that charter schools are a panacea.  But structural change is needed.  The alternative is continuing down the path of a highly-centralised public education system.

As DeVos warned in her opening remarks to her Senate confirmation hearing, "it will not be Washington DC that unlocks our nation's potential, nor a bigger bureaucracy, tougher mandates or a federal agency.  The answer is local control and listening to parents, students and teachers."

Donald Trump's new security adviser must learn to master chaos

After just four weeks, the Trump administration finds itself beset by problems, many of them related to national security:  the botched executive order on immigration; a gush of leaks from the intelligence community and the messy departure of national security advisor Lieutenant-General Mike Flynn; and concerns, increasingly shared by Republicans in Congress, about reported links between Trump's circle and Russia.

Meanwhile, many senior positions throughout the administration remain unfilled, the President's economic message is being drowned out by his vituperative relationship with much of the mainstream media, and a pressing legislative agenda — including tax reform, overhauling President Obama's healthcare initiative, and a major new infrastructure program — seems stalled.

It always takes time to appoint a new team and then to bed down new structures and processes that suit an incoming president's priorities, decision-making style and preferences.

But these are more than the normal teething pangs of a new administration.

Often new presidents find themselves tested by external events.  President George H.W. Bush had to respond to the Tiananmen Square massacre in his first six months.  As a former CIA director and ambassador to China, at least Bush snr had experience under his belt.  Within a few months of being elected, his untested son George W. Bush had to deal with a diplomatic crisis with China, when one of its fighters crashed into a US reconnaissance plane, and then of course with the unprecedented strategic shock of 9/11 later in his first year.

By contrast, President Trump's present travails are mostly self-inflicted.  But he needs to get a grip on the turmoil, and quickly.

Not only is his new administration losing precious momentum, but the threats confronting the United States and its allies will not wait.  ISIL and other terror networks; North Korea's rapidly developing weapons programs (within several years likely to include a long-range missile capable of striking the US mainland with a nuclear weapon); cyber threats; Iran; disintegration in Syria; Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea — the list only grows.

Trump's national security team will also have to sort out their approach to Russia, as well as reassure anxious allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East (Vice-President Pence, Secretary of Defence Mattis and Secretary of State Tillerson have made a good fist of this during their early travels).

After he was reportedly rebuffed by two candidates — high-profile General David Petraeus and Vice-Admiral Robert Harward, a former US Navy SEAL — Trump has settled on another senior military officer, Lieutenant-General H.R. McMaster, to replace the controversial Flynn as national security advisor.

McMaster is well credentialled.  His appointment was quickly welcomed by Senator John McCain, often a strident Trump critic on national security.  A decorated tank commander during the first Gulf War, McMaster has had numerous combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he will have served with Australian forces.

As well as a formidable warrior, McMaster is an outspoken iconoclast and one of the US military's most respected strategists and intellectuals.  He has a PhD in history, authored an influential book on the Vietnam War and was one of the architects of the counterinsurgency doctrine that underpinned President Bush's successful 2007 "surge" in Iraq.

At a recent international security forum I attended in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he was unconventional, provocative and big-picture.

McMaster will need every ounce of his vaunted intellect and judgment to succeed in his new role.

Incoming presidents with scant national security experience — such as Trump (and before him Obama) — often seek to compensate by appointing former military officers to senior positions.  Trump has taken this practice to a new level, with three retired or serving (in McMaster's case) generals in cabinet or other senior roles.

Former air force general Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, set the gold standard.  He was shrewd, tough and discreet; as a result, he was trusted and effective.

But high-level military experience is no guarantee of success.  Obama's first national security advisor, General James Jones, struggled to make an impact.  He was sidelined and left within two years.

McMaster's experience combating terrorists and insurgents in the Middle East will stand him in good stead — President Trump has made the defeat of ISIL his highest national security priority, and the Pentagon is reportedly developing options for an intensified military campaign in Iraq and Syria.

However, the role will also test McMaster's diplomatic and bureaucratic skills.  The new national security advisor will have to navigate interagency politics; develop effective working relationships with fellow general Jim Mattis at the Pentagon, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson; and find a way to end the damaging row currently raging via the media between the White House and leakers in the intelligence agencies.

He will also need to restore flagging morale and fill numerous vacancies on the National Security Council staff, and establish a functioning national security decision-making process.

Even more challenging, to do that McMaster will need to find a way to work with the President's influential political Svengali, Steve Bannon, and an unpredictable new president with a jumble of views and instincts on foreign policy rather than considered or consistent positions — oh, and who tweets.

Refusing A Handshake Is An Affront To Our Basic Values

An early test for Education Minister Rob Stokes comes with the news that Hurstville Boys Campus, a public school in Sydney's west, has adopted "an agreed protocol" which effectively excuses some of its male students from shaking hands with females is yet another attack on our values and has no place in our taxpayer-funded schools.

This decision came about following an awards ceremony at the school during which the female ­presenters were informed prior to the event that some of the recipients would not be accepting their ­congratulatory handshakes.

Shaking hands is an expression of respect, trust, balance and equity ­between parties.  These are the ­values of Australian society.  Refusing to shake hands with someone ­indicates that you neither respect nor hold these values.

The school's ruling is at complete odds with the Australian government which, in its citizenship ceremony, requires all new citizens to make a public commitment to Australia and to "accept the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship".  The exact wording of the pledge is that "from this time forward pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey".

On the one hand, new citizens are required by the state to take an oath to uphold, obey and respect the rights and liberties of our society, but on the other hand, principals in our taxpayer-funded schools are undermining their employer's directive by telling students that there is actually no requirement from them to ­uphold, obey or respect Western values.  They are failing abysmally both as educators and as public servants.

Unfortunately, this is not an ­isolated case.  Last year, a group of students at a Melbourne primary school were granted a religious exemption from singing the Australian National anthem at assembly.

In 2015, the Victorian Education Minister James Merlino tried to stop children being taught to sing ­traditional Christmas Carols in ­public schools.

The concept of schooling is essentially a liberal humanist one which has been inherited from Western civilisation.  It is through schools that knowledge, skills, attitudes and way of acting are transmitted to students.  We essentially use our ­education system to pass onto the next generation our values.

All Australian schoolchildren need to be taught that our ideas about human rights are grounded in Christian theology and that the ­legacy of liberty, of inquiry, of toleration, of religious plurality, and of economic and social freedom originate from the West.  But these ­values are being undermined by the educators.  This is the challenge that lies ahead for Mr Stokes.

IMF Report Shows Old-Time Fiscal Religion Is Needed To Counter The New Mediocre

The latest annual IMF Australia Consultation might have passed unnoticed but for this highly damning statement:  "the new mediocre".  Perhaps they were being polite — Australia's lacklustre fiscal performance has become the new normal or just mediocre.  There is nothing new about the increasing debt and ongoing deficits we have experienced since the Rudd government panicked in 2008 and went on a never-ending spending spree.

A stable and predictable fiscal policy creates a sound environment for business decision making.  Investors who trust that governments can and will manage their own affairs wisely are more likely to engage in long-term economic projects to their benefit, and that of the community at large, and the government too.

As it turns out Australia has a reasonably well-defined fiscal policy framework.  It was articulated by Peter Costello in 2007:  "Our tax system exists to fund the decent services in health, education, aged care, and other services that Australians legitimately expect and are entitled to receive.  If after we provide for those services, invest for the future, and balance our budget, we can reduce the tax burden, we should do so."  The federal government budget should be balanced.  In practice — and as articulated by the Rudd government — that means the budget should have a positive balance of about 1 per cent of GDP.

ALL TALK AND NO ACTION

No government in the last 10 years — since the Howard government was voted out of office — has managed that task.  Politicians give themselves wriggle room by arguing that the budget should be balanced, on average, over the cycle.  That can be described as being the budget anchor:  the policy statement that anchors expectations of budgetary movements.  If and when the budget is in deficit, government will move towards surplus.  If the budget surplus is too large government will reduce it by either spending more or cutting taxes.

Australian governments have failed utterly to achieve this policy goal.  Rather helpfully the IMF have recommended another policy that will mask this ongoing failure.  They suggest a debt anchor.  Rather than target a 1 per cent of GDP budget balance, the government should target some or other level of debt in the long run.  This proposal was critiqued in these pages last week.  It is even more vague and non-binding than our existing budget anchor.

Worse — Australia already has a debt anchor.  Observed in the breach, but also established by Costello:  Australian federal government net debt should be zero.  In essence then, it is unclear what the IMF truly proposes other than to relax the already quite lax fiscal constraints that bind politicians.

It is, however, well worth having a debate on politically binding fiscal constraints.  Just as Australia has a political constitution that spells out the rules of political decision making in the Parliament, so too we should have a fiscal constitution that spells out the rules of fiscal decision making.  Right now politicians tax as much as they think they can get away with, spend as much as they can, and borrow to make up the difference.

THAT OLD-TIME FISCAL RELIGION

Many Australians subscribe to what the 1986 economics laureate James Buchanan described as being "the old-time fiscal religion".  The notion that budgets are balanced, that government spending is frugal, and debt used sparingly and responsibly.  Instead we have "the new mediocre".

It's not entirely fair to blame the government — of either persuasion — for this state of affairs.  All politicians of all parties are to blame.  The budget is brought down every year and should be voted on every year.  By convention, however, a lot of existing budget measures go through on a nod and a wink and many spending policies are legislated to be ongoing.  This is an abrogation of responsibility.  Furthermore politicians — and many bureaucrats too — have absolutely no skin in the game.  Their salaries and pensions are not dependent on economic growth or paying customers, but rather on the ability to tax and borrow.  Putting the budget onto automatic pilot with a debt and deficit trajectory and then borrowing to pay their own salaries is symptomatic of the new mediocre.

Australians pay top dollar for their government and public services and can expect better.  Holding politicians to account for poor fiscal outcomes is a good place to start.  Re-legislating the debt ceiling should be a priority.  Unfortunately out of sight is out of mind and removing the debt ceiling (introduced by the Rudd government and repealed by the Abbott government) has allowed debt to spiral out of control with little public debate.

So while the IMF proposal itself is trivial, we should use this opportunity to drive a harder fiscal bargain in Canberra.

Picking Judges

President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats in the United States are about to engage in political warfare about who will be their next Supreme Court judge.  Australians should be envious.

The American president fulfilled a key promise to conservative voters by nominating Neil Gorsuch to the court's vacancy.  Gorsuch is by reputable accounts an exceptionally qualified jurist, and an originalist in the mould of the late Antonin Scalia to boot.  Regardless, Gorsuch will need to be confirmed by the US Senate to take a seat on the Supreme Court, meaning his qualifications, temperament and suitability for the office will be the subject of robust public debate.

This makes the American judicial appointment process more transparent, as it expects potential judges to make their views on the law known before occupying one of the most powerful positions in the country.

Compare this to Australian judicial appointments.  The High Court is the last court of appeal in the Australian judiciary and has original jurisdiction to declare whether Commonwealth legislation is constitutionally valid.  Yet the process is so opaque that it is unreasonably difficult to get an understanding of what sort of judge that appointee would be.

In case you missed it, this happened very recently.  In November — with no fanfare — the federal government announced that the retiring Chief Justice Robert French would be replaced by Justice Susan Kiefel, whose position in turn would be filled by Federal Court Justice James Edelman.  To even less fanfare, Kiefel and Edelman were officially sworn into their new roles in late January.

By the time the 42-year old Edelman reaches the mandatory retirement age, he will have sat on the court for nearly three decades.  His CV is undoubtedly impressive, but his opinions on constitutional law are not widely known.  This is not exceptional, but highlights something true of all High Court appointees:  that while these judges wield significant power in the Australian political system, there is currently no expectation that a judge should explain how they would use that power.

What the American process gets right is that only at the time of appointment can a potential judge be scrutinised for their approach to statutory and constitutional interpretation.  Unfortunately, the Coalition government since 2013 have been dismally risk-averse in their judicial appointments, preferring instead to appoint uncontroversial "orthodox" judges who will maintain the status quo.  This status quo is the decades of accumulated decisions stretching back nearly 100 years which have fundamentally transformed the federalist nature of the Constitution.

The essence of federalism is decentralised decision making.  Where the laws and regulations that people need to observe are made by those who are most closely affected, the result is more representative law that is appropriately tailored to local circumstances.  Different levels of law-making produces jurisdictional competition which can ultimately drive governments to make good choices:  for instance, the reason that death isn't a taxable event in Australia anymore is because the Bjelke-Petersen government in Queensland led the way in abolishing death taxes in the 1970s.

Sadly, competitive federalism has given way to co-operative federalism, where the states are pressured to enact identical laws where the Commonwealth has no power to simply write them itself.  Failing this, the Commonwealth has often been very successful in writing the laws anyway and receiving the blessing of a deferential High Court.

Reversing this wouldn't politicise the judiciary.  In fact, the court has always been political, going back to the earliest days of Federation.  In 1906, Prime Minister Alfred Deakin expanded the court from three judges to five.  The two new appointments were progressive politicians H.B. Higgins and Isaac Isaacs, who immediately formed a radical minority and set about attacking the federal structure of the Constitution.  This minority eventually became the majority, leading to the 1920 Engineers Case, where the concept of reserved state powers was swept aside.  This was the beginning of a sharp decline of the federal integrity of the Constitution.

Landmark cases include the Uniform Tax Cases in 1942 and 1957 that confirmed the Commonwealth could prohibit the states from collecting their own income taxes, leading to Australia's debilitating vertical fiscal imbalance.  The Tasmanian Dams case in 1983 dramatically widened the Commonwealth's external affairs power, enabling it to pass laws on any topic that was addressed in an international agreement.  The WorkChoices case in 2006 had the effect of centralising industrial relations power to Canberra, paving the way for Labor to pass its destructive Fair Work Act in 2009.

Of course, the government shouldn't appoint judges to secure particular policy outcomes.  However, it is not unreasonable to expect judges to recognise that while the Constitution does enumerate certain heads of power to the Commonwealth, these shouldn't be read so widely as to render the states as nothing more than mere underlings of the federal government.

Australian High Court jurisprudence is in a similar place to where the US was in the 1970s:  loose constitutional interpretation has produced a body of law that is overly deferential to the central government.  Things only improved in the US when the issue was taken seriously and its Senate — through a heavily scrutinised process — began appointing judges committed to interpreting the Constitution as it was originally intended.  Now all appointments by Republican administrations are expected to be first and foremost legal conservatives, ensuring originalism is represented throughout the judiciary.

It can happen here too, but only if the unaccountable, secretive and insular appointments process is opened to scrutiny.  The Right must form a strong counter-establishment in the legal community to challenge the status quo and promote federalists for judicial appointment.  To make judges more accountable, any nominee put forward by the Attorney-General should appear before parliament to explain what kind of judge they will be before joining the High Court.

Only by democratising the Australian judicial appointment process can we hope to push back 100 years of judicial activism and centralisation of federal-state relations.

New Minister Must Get Curriculum Right

The latest NSW Cabinet reshuffle has resulted in some significant front bench arrivals and departures in the new Berejiklian Government.

One of those changes is the replacement of Adrian Piccoli, Minister for Education, with Rob Stokes, previously Minister for Planning.

During Piccoli's six years in office, which have been described as everything from disappointing to a debacle he seemed to focus his attentions on Gonski funding rather than what was actually being taught to school children in NSW.

In 2013, he sheepishly signed up to Julia Gillard's socialist inspired, needs-based funding model which was essentially all about throwing money at the problem in Australia's public school system rather than improving both what is taught and how it is taught.

Piccoli also failed to do anything about the existence of the leftist secular "ethics" classes for children which had been snuck into NSW Primary schools, and which Premier Barry O'Farrell committed to dispense with but never did.

While Piccoli was in office, he was aware that a senior academic and public servant, Dr Paul Brock sent an email to all NSW Department of Education and Training principals asking that teachers make a point of linking the 2013 bushfires to global warming.

Under his watch, the NSW Board of Studies released a new draft curriculum in 2016 which manages to gloss over thousands of years of western development, focussing instead on climate change, sustainability, indigenous culture, feminism, and Australia's relationship with Asia.

In 2018, Year 11 students will be offered a range of subjects such as "People Who Changed Australia", or more specifically Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who changed Australia such as aboriginal activist Eddie Mabo.

Our 15 and 16 year olds will not only be familiarised with "The Environment Movement 1960s and 1970s" but they will also become experts in "The Women's Movement, 1960s-1970s".  Meanwhile, they will leave school with knowledge of fewer historical figures than did previous students.

Another deeply troubling element of the NSW draft curriculum is the existence of the so-called cross-curriculum priorities where select topics are inserted into every subject regardless of their relevance.

These select areas, taken directly from the National Curriculum, these are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia, and Sustainability.

All are of course worthy topics for Australian school students.  But why should they be taught across all subjects when they clearly don't belong?

It is obvious that the idea of sustainability should be part of environmental studies, but it is less obvious as to why it is included in ancient history.

Aboriginal culture should of course be taught in modern history but it is not a key element of chemistry.  And although Australia's engagement with Asia belongs in politics, it is certainly the odd one out in creative arts.

The individuals who have come up with the priorities clearly believe that they are more important than the foundations of Western Civilisation, the power of economic freedom to deliver human prosperity or the development of liberal democracy and free speech.

And this comes at a time when our education system is failing our young people.  According to the OECD, 14% of Australian 15 year olds are functionally illiterate and would be unable to understand the instructions on a packet of headache tablets.

20% of Australian youth lack basic arithmetic skills and wouldn't be able to tell how much fuel was left in their cars by looking at the fuel gauge.

Australia is being outclassed by Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan in international maths and science testing.

Even though Piccoli had just announced that students would be required to meet a minimum literacy and numeracy standard to receive their HSC, last year's dismal NAPLAN results showed that more than half of NSW Year 9 students would fail to hit the required band in reading, grammar, punctuation, spelling and numeracy.

This embarrassing statistic is because the government has been too busy focussing on progressive issues and indoctrination rather than the business of real education.

Every moment spent teaching the children of NSW about ideologically driven cross-curriculum priorities is valuable time not spent on developing the fundamental life skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.

It will be interesting to see if Mr Stokes will follow in his predecessor's footsteps, or if, as the new Minister for Education, he will succeed in wrestling the NSW Curriculum back from the ideologues who are more interested in teaching students what to think rather than how to think.

Debate Must Be Embraced, Not Silenced

Australia's race commissioner Tim Soutphommasane is taking on an Orwellian mission this week, telling members of parliament they need to keep free speech restrictions in place to protect liberal values.

The debate over section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is heating up ahead of a parliamentary committee report into the law due to be released later this month.

Soutphommasane is not in favour of any change.  He believes the law is working as it was intended, and that it does not place an unacceptable limitation on freedom of speech.  Despite Andrew Bolt.  Despite Bill Leak.  Despite the Ashfield Uniting Church.  Despite Alex Wood and Calum Thwaites.

Soutphommasane has been touring Parliament House this week arguing:  "It's clear we can no longer take liberal values of tolerance, equality and non-discrimination for granted".

It is true that values cannot be taken for granted.  If you think your values are important and worthy of promotion you must be ever-vigilant.

But tolerance, equality and non-discrimination are ideas.  They are mindsets.  And laws can't change people's minds.  Only individual liberty can facilitate that kind of change.  Because when we have the freedom to express our own opinions, we are able to convince others of the truth of our own position.

Arguing for a law to shut down those with whom you disagree is an admission that your arguments are insufficient.  It is a public confession that you are incapable of using reason to convince another person of something which you believe to be true.

Australia's race commissioner should have more confidence than to fly the white flag in the face of actual racism, and he should also have the fortitude and honesty to acknowledge that where a section 18C complaint is brought in a context in which no such sentiment exists the law restricts legitimate public debate.

But it's even worse than that.

Soutphommasane's argument is not just that section 18C should not be repealed — he goes further by arguing there shouldn't even be a debate about whether the provision should be repealed.  He was explicit about this in comments reported by The Guardian this week:  "It causes immense anxiety for many to be having this debate when the times are so challenging for race relations".

Advocating retreat from debate in the face of "challenging times" reveals an extraordinary degree of impotence.  If you're passionate about your values, have the confidence to debate them.

Criminal Justice Can Never Be An Arm Of The Welfare State

Crime is caused by people who decide to commit crimes.  It is not caused by society.  The criminal justice system exists to punish criminals and protect the community, not to fix societal ills.

This is a very simple principle.  But it bears restating because it seems to have eluded Rob Hulls in his commentary, published in these pages last week, on our criminal justice report.

As Hulls correctly notes, there are a variety of problems in Australia's criminal justice system upon which people from across the political spectrum can agree.  Chief among them is the plain truth that costs have increased over the past 10 years while results, in terms of reoffending and, more recently, crime, have stagnated or gotten worse.

There is therefore a strong case for rationalising the criminal justice system towards better safeguarding individuals, families, and businesses.  It is very welcome to find that we are united in our determination to address this very important issue.

But there seems to be a fundamental disagreement about what motivates criminal justice reform.  For example, victims are entirely absent from Hulls's analysis.  Instead, he seems to believe that the criminal justice system exists to improve the lot of criminals.  This is at odds with a common sense understanding of criminal justice.

Individuals make choices and they can be held to account for those choices.  Some people choose to commit crime.  Regardless of the circumstances of that choice, it is fair and right to punish them for it.  This is how we keep the community safe, which is the basic purpose of the criminal law.

It is in this context that investing in the police makes sense.  More police, and more targeted policing, increases the chance of criminals being caught.

This is a cost-effective way of deterring people from committing crime.  And it is especially needed given that we have already exhausted the deterrent effect of longer sentences — studies show that further increases from our current position are unlikely to deter crime very much.

Between 2010-11 and 2014-15, however, the proportion of criminal justice spending on police fell from 67.5 per cent to 66.5 per cent, while that spent on prisons increased from 22.3 per cent to 24.1 per cent.

It is true that more effective policing will likely lead to more arrests.  But it would be bizarre to argue that catching more criminals would be a negative for society.  The question is not whether it is unfair to deter and intercept criminals, the question is what is the best way to punish those who break the law.

For this reason, there should be punishment reform for non-violent criminals.  Violent criminals must be locked up to protect the community.  But for others, punishment does not have to mean prison.

In some cases, criminals can be deterred and the community kept safe with a punishment mix that includes home detention and community corrections as well as restitution orders and fines.

It is true that this approach can yield better results for crime and recidivism.  We believe this logic should be applied to all classes of non-violent offending.

There are no compelling reasons for treating white-collar criminals different from other non-violent offenders.  With this focus on low-risk offenders, we can reduce the rapid growth of the prison population.  This will lead to savings that can then be used to fund other parts of the criminal justice system, like the police.

This idea of redirecting funds within the criminal justice system to improve long-term results is known as justice reinvestment.  But how these funds are redirected is a matter of contention.

The experience of the US demonstrates that criminal justice reform can win the support of a broad swath of the political class and the public if it is predicated on conservative principles.

Justice reinvestment must be defined narrowly, in line with the fundamental bases of the criminal justice system:  personal responsibility, just punishment, and community safety.  This means making criminal justice more efficient without compromising on its moral premises.  It does not mean supplementing the ample resources of the criminal justice system or removing those resources to fund social engineering adventurism.

In the absence of these principles, the system would simply be another arm of the welfare state.  The so-called social justice approach shifts blame for criminality from criminals to a society supposedly characterised by systemic oppression.

In doing so, it erases victims and the harm that criminals do to the community.  And ultimately, this means obliterating the concept of criminal justice itself.

The problems of our criminal justice system are well-known and widely agreed-upon.  Fixing them will involve punishment reform and a prominent role for the police.  And any attempt to reform criminal justice by disavowing personal responsibility and punishment is doomed to fail.

Taxi licence compensation sends the wrong message

Lines of taxi drivers crawled across the Bolte Bridge in Melbourne on Monday.  Their protest wasn't over pay, conditions or safety.  It was over the size of their consumer-funded compensation handout as Victoria legalises Uber.

The transition from ageing taxis to innovators like Uber is inevitable and has forced governments to reconsider their cosy relationship with the taxi industry.  Victoria's taxi licensing system will soon be scrapped and replaced with a single commercial licence for taxis, hire cars and ride-sharing services.

But before we quibble over the level of compensation taxi owners get, we need to ask this:  why should they get any compensation at all?

After all, taxi licenses are government-granted privileges to restrict competition in transport.

There is abundant economic evidence that suggests taxi licences have raised the prices we pay for our journeys, while at the same time limiting our transport choices and reducing the quality of service.

For years the industry has benefited from government privileges through obtaining much higher profits than they would have done without those licences.

We've been paying "compensation" to taxi licence holders for decades.

Taxi licences are financial assets.  Nobody who bought those assets should have believed they had a guaranteed return.  All their value came from government policy, which was always at risk of changing.  So who should bear the risk?  Surely not the taxpayer.

Taxi licence holders knew they were receiving a privilege through government regulation, which could be taken away as easy as it was given.

Consumers may start to prefer Uber to taxis but, if so, that will be entirely because taxis are being out-competed by better, cheaper, higher quality transport.

Let's be clear.  The Victorian Government is not "picking winners" — favouring ride-sharing over taxis.  Evidence suggests that since the introduction of ride-sharing, the growth in the taxi market has remained steady.

Even so, taxi licence holders believe the government's proposed compensation of $100,000 for the first licence and $50,000 for the second licence is inadequate.

Such a blanket approach, no matter the original price paid for the licence, has nothing to do with equity or hardship.  It's a handout.

The compensation will be funded by a $2 levy on all taxi and Uber trips.  That money will be pooled and distributed to licence holders at a total cost to consumers of about $453 million.

Taxi licensees want even more compensation, despite the fact that this generous package is already much bigger than the packages announced by other states.

In New South Wales, for instance, taxpayers are being slugged $20,000 per licence, which with a hardship fund combines to make a $250 million package.

It is certainly true that many people invested large amounts of money in taxi licences and their investments will suffer when the regulations come in.

It is entirely reasonable that the public feels some sympathy for them.  Taxi licences were a bad investment.  But the decisions of parliament must always consider the interests of consumers first, not special interests.

We should be extremely wary of the precedent that taxi licence compensation might set.  Imagine paying every time governments wanted to make public policy changes.

Every day, new technologies enter and enrich our lives by disrupting old businesses.  Good public policy understands that Australians are better off when we welcome new technologies.

It has been almost five years since Uber came to Australia.  It's a worry that it takes five years for an innovative, beneficial, popular service to even establish the legal right to exist.  Old incumbent industries watching these debates will learn one thing:  it really does pay to spend time lobbying government for red tape on your competitors rather than adapting to new economic conditions.  To stop this happening again, the core message for governments should be that red tape, once imposed, holds back competition, hurts consumers and costs us all money.

My research have found that red tape costs our economy $176 billion each year.  That prevents us from transitioning to modern, digitally empowered services.

More regulatory battles are coming.  How will the government decide to regulate drones or driverless cars?  Will it introduce complex red tape and licences, only to have to pay compensation decades down the track?

Policymakers must take a stand against taxis holding our finances to ransom and reject these claims of consumer-funded compensation.

Right needs Bernardi's new voice

In the long run, Cory Bernardi leaving the Liberal Party to start his own conservative movement will help the Liberal Party and will strengthen centre-right politics in Australia.  Centre-right politics needs more voices, not fewer, and it needs voices that are not constrained by the limits of day-today parliamentary politics.

Cory Bernardi will still be in the senate, but instead of spending his time toeing the party line and seeking ministerial preferment, he'll be able to propagate ideas, something few parliamentarians have the ability or inclination to do.  Those who deride Bernardi as a caricature of a social conservative have little understanding of his philosophy.  On social issues he's certainly conservative, but on economics he's more likely to incline toward freemarket libertarianism.

Having in the Senate David Leyonhjelm from the Liberal Democrats and Bob Day from Family First has been good for the centre-right, and the same will apply when Cory Bernardi sits as an independent.  The more voices in Parliament of the centreright who are not of the Liberal Party, the better it will be for the centre-right, and the better for the Liberals.

It is true that Bernardi was elected to the Senate as a Liberal just seven months ago, and he'll have to explain to those who voted for him why he's made the decision he has.

Those Liberals now complaining about broken promises to the electorate should remember how before the 2013 federal election they swore black and blue they wouldn't change tax on superannuation.

In the short run, Bernardi leaving the Liberals is a headache the prime minister doesn't need.  But whether Malcolm Turnbull wins the next election won't be determined by what Bernardi did this week.

The ecosystem of the centre-left in Australia comprises the Labor Party and a host of its surrogates including trade unions, the judiciary, government-funded media, community organisations (including the churches), and much of academia and the public service.  And as much as those in the ALP might complain about the existence of a political party on its left, the rise of the Greens has greatly assisted the Labor Party achieve its agenda.

On the centre-right there's the Liberal and National parties, a number of privately funded think tanks, some media commentators (none of whom work at the ABC) and a handful of university professors.

Business organisations and the corporate sector stopped supporting the centre-right in Australia a long time ago.  In any case "business groups" are among the least trusted organisations in Australia, according to a recent Essential poll 27 per cent of Australians trusted "business groups".  The only group with a lower score was "political parties", trusted by just 17 per cent of people.

The Liberal Parry dominates its side of the ideological spectrum, in a way the ALP does not.  The result of such dominance is that centre-right thinking in Australia is inevitably focused on the politics of Parliament In contrast centre-left thinking in this country is focused on the politics of society.  In parliamentary politics it pays to be "pragmatic".  In the battle of ideas being "pragmatic" guarantees defeat The centre-left appreciates what the centre-right doesn't understand.  Politics is the product of culture.  What happens in Parliament today is the result of what was said in a university lecture theatre decades earlier.  Since John Howard's first election victory in 1996, the Coalition has won six federal elections, drawn one and lost one.

What the centre-right has to show for its federal election victories is debatable.

It speaks volumes that after a political ascendancy of most of the past two decades, the Coalition can't even garner sufficient community support to pass a modest cut to the company tax rate implemented over the next 10 years.

The Coalition is a long way from being able to build the sort of community consensus required to take the sort of action necessary to eventually bring the budget into surplus and reduce the country's debt While Bernardi was a Liberal, the Liberals could point to at least one highprofile member of its parliamentary party who was attempting to understand the meaning of Brexit and Donald Trump for Australia Bernardi's loss leaves a big hole the Liberals need to fill.

Trump's artless deals will deeply disturb allies after Turnbull call

Tough phone calls between Australian prime ministers and other world leaders are nothing new.  Even when the messages are firm and the differences great, invariably they remain civil.

Harsh words between a prime minister and a US president are still rarer — although the alliance almost fractured over differences between Gough Whitlam and Richard Nixon, relations with the Reagan administration were strained when the Hawke government declined to host US missile tests in the 1980s.  John Howard sparred with Bill Clinton over lamb tariffs and his refusal to provide US ground troops for the Australian-led intervention in East Timor.

By any standard, however, the accounts of Malcolm Turnbull's recent phone conversation with President Donald Trump is extraordinary.

Trump reportedly complained about the refugee deal negotiated with the outgoing Obama administration, boasted about his electoral performance and then cut short the call, rebuffing Turnbull's attempt to discuss Syria and other pressing foreign policy matters.

In the Washington Post an unnamed senior administration official described the conversation as "hostile and charged".  The language of diplomacy is usually formal and elliptical;  that description would be more in keeping with an exchange between the leaders of two countries on the brink of conflict rather than of two of the world's great democracies, and oldest and closest allies.

Apparently, Turnbull isn't alone in finding himself at the wrong end of a Trump tirade:  other allied leaders including Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto have reportedly had a similar experience.

But presumably the Prime Minister would draw little consolation from the administration official's assurance that Trump's interactions with the leaders of Japan, Germany, France and Russia had been "productive and pleasant".

A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

Trump's humiliating treatment must rankle even more when Turnbull is being attacked at the same time by Labor and his other political opponents in Australia for not publicly criticising the President's refugee announcement.  Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

Convincing the incoming Trump administration to accept the refugee deal was always going to require deft diplomacy.  The Australian embassy team in Washington DC had delivered, securing in Trump's executive order suspending refugee admissions language that in effect exempted the deal with Canberra.

Trump tweeted on Wednesday night Washington time that he intends to "study this dumb deal", less than 2 hours after the US embassy in Canberra stated that it had been told by the White House that the arrangement stands.

Were it to founder, Australia's strong border protection policies would suffer a serious setback, and the personal relationship between the US and Australian leaders would become very difficult.

So what, if anything, does this episode mean for Australia's alliance with the United States, the bedrock of our security for more than 60 years?

SHEDDING A HARSH LIGHT

The first point is that the alliance will survive, as it did each of the difficult periods mentioned above.  It is simply too important to both countries, particularly at a time when threats are rising, whether from nuclear-armed North Korea, Chinese assertiveness in the western Pacific, or global terror networks.

But the Trump-Turnbull phone call does shed harsh light on the President's attitude to alliances — and will feed anxiety created in Europe and North Asia by Trump's previous pungent comments about NATO and the United States' long-standing alliances with Japan and South Korea.

While he often subsequently contradicts himself, Trump has called NATO "obsolete" and criticised Japan and South Korea for not contributing enough to their own defence — views that might have been fairer in the 1980s and 1990s but certainly aren't justified now.

The word most used by commentators to describe Trump's approach to allies — and other powers, for that matter — is "transactional".  The report of his phone call with Turnbull bears that out.

It is understandable that Trump wasn't wild about the refugee deal with Australia, considering that admitting them ran directly counter to the message his controversial executive order was seeking to send.

What is telling, however, is that he seems to have focused exclusively on the deal itself — in zero-sum, "you win, I lose" terms.  Trump is quoted as telling Turnbull "This is the worst deal ever", and complaining it would hurt him politically.  Officials reportedly said Trump could not see any "specific advantage" the United States would gain from honouring the deal.

THE REAL PROBLEM FOR ALLIES

This seems to be a view Trump has brought into the White House from his own business experience.  Every interaction is a one-off deal, sui generis and unrelated to any previous transaction.

If true, that's deeply disturbing for allies.

For one thing, it's historical and shows no understanding of the shared sacrifices, values and interests that have underpinned the US-led alliance system since the Second World War, delivering more than half a century of global prosperity and relative stability.

It also misunderstands how alliances work, and the day-to-day efforts that have to go into to managing and nurturing them — what former US Secretary of State George Shultz called "tending the alliance garden".

Alliances are about give and take.  This time Australia was seeking a favour.  Next time there's every chance that it will be the Trump administration asking.  That's how it works.

Australia was one of the earliest and largest military contributors to the international coalition assembled by the United States to combat Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — supposedly President Trump's highest national security priority.  The Australian government made that decision because it was in our national interest, and the right thing to do.  But it also wanted to support the United States, as former Prime Minister Tony Abbott made clear to Barrack Obama in the Oval Office.

Australia and other staunch US allies will continue to do the right thing both because it is in their interest and because strong alliances weather passing differences between leaders.

But personal relationships matter in diplomacy, and President Trump may soon find that other leaders aren't quite so quick to pick up the phone when he calls.

Revealed: How Your Taxes Fund The 18c Fan Club

One of the most obvious features of the parliamentary inquiry into section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act has been the volume of government agencies and government-funded left-wing interest groups that have contributed to the body of submissions.

These beneficiaries of government largesse are uniformly in favour of more government, and defending the existing prohibition of offensive, insulting, humiliating and intimidating speech contained in section 18C.

One of these is the Cyber Racism and Community Resilience Research Group, an initiative of the Australian Research Council (government body), in collaboration with the Australian Human Rights Commission (another government body), VicHealth (a state government body) and the Federation of Ethnic Community Councils of Australia (which receives financial support from the federal government's Department of Social Services and Department of Health).

The CRaCR's Chief Investigator Professor Andrew Jakubowicz wrote an article at the academic opinion site The Conversation (funded partly by the Victorian government) challenging the results of an opinion poll published in The Australian on Tuesday.  The poll showed that more people support removing the words "offend" and "insult" from section 18C than those opposing that change, whilst 95% of respondents felt that freedom of speech was important to them.

Professor Jakubowicz attempted to debunk what the Gallaxy Poll was "selectively trying to slip through to the inquiry and the press", by reading the underlying poll data published on the front of its website, submitted directly to inquiry members, and attached to a media release sent directly to the press.

Jakubowicz's debunking can itself be easily debunked.  The poll results about the attitude towards amending 18C are largely similar to other polls conducted in the last five months by Galaxy Research, as well as polling conducted by Essential Research.

The main distinction between the September and November polls and the most recent is that people have moved out of the "Don't know" category and picked a side in the debate.  In the aftermath of the dismissed QUT students case, and media attention of the complaint against cartoonist Bill Leak, this is hardly surprising.

Unsurprisingly the Australian Human Rights Commission's race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane enthusiastically tweeted a link to the article to his 16,000 followers, which in turn was retweeted by the AHRC to its 45,000 followers.

In Jakubowicz's submission to the inquiry (submission no. 54), he refers to "sustained self-serving and misleading criticism of Section 18C by a minority of privileged public commentators".  If I am a privileged public commentator, what does that make the groups funded and promoted by numerous state and federal government agencies?

The Left aren’t just giving Australia Day the arse ...

Last Friday, the University of Western Australia Student Guild voted overwhelmingly in favour of changing the date of Australia Day and proposed to ban all future campus celebrations on January 26.

Just hours before the general meeting was to set to begin, the Western Australian Students Aboriginal Corporation (WASAC) had requested that the motion to join the #ChangeTheDate campaign be raised and discussed at the Guild Council meeting.

Even though the official submission date had closed the week earlier, the Guild allowed WASAC to put forward the motion that "Australia day should be moved to a more inclusive day" because January 26 "is the day of dispossession of Indigenous culture and is a commemoration of deep loss".

Just one ordinary Guild councillor spoke out against the motion, while another chose to abstain from the vote.  And when that lone voice of disagreement pointed out that Australia Day is one of "inclusivity and gratitude" and that "many Indigenous and non-Indigenous students are against changing the date", several fellow councillors literally shouted him down with cries of "shame"!

The Guild's vice president stated that "celebrating Australia Day means that you are celebrating genocide", implying that because the councillor chose to observe January 26 as a National Holiday, he was an enthusiast of mass slaughter and indiscriminate killing.

The education president also joined the verbal assault, responding to the councillor's logical and reasoned remarks by announcing that she was "sick of white males who make a comment on race issues they will never be able to understand".

In her view, both the councillor's gender (male) and colour (white) permanently disqualified him from arguing about changing the date of Australia Day because by default, he was a racist.

The exchange is a text book example of identity politics at work, where the victim culture of safe spaces, trigger warnings and macroaggressions employs emotional reasoning as its core tactic.  This is a world in which the left is devoted to shutting down free speech and ridding the world of rational discussion.

In his article The Coddling of the American Minds, Jonathan Haidt, professor of ethical leadership at New York University, exposes how destructive identity politics actually is to the individual and to society, where feelings guide reality and emotional reasoning has become evidence.

While universities in the US have long been the bastion of this "victimhood" culture, this latest episode reveals that Australian minds are not only being coddled but also, fried, poached and scrambled, courtesy of our institutions of higher learning,

The University of Western Australia's student Guild's decision to vote in favour of WASAC's motion to join the #ChangetheDate campaign shows beyond a doubt that the left's pernicious philosophy of identity politics has well and truly infiltrated our universities.  Freedom of speech on campus is seriously under threat in Australian universities.