British Divorce Will Be Australia's Gain

Over the next two years, Britain will focus on the size of its divorce settlement with the EU, as well as on a UK-EU free trade agreement deal.

But for Australia, now that Brexit really does mean Brexit, what next?  The big ticket item for Australia is a free trade deal with the UK.

Although the UK can't negotiate any bilateral free trade deals until it formally leaves the EU, there will be informal talks over the next two years in readiness for a quick deal in 2019.

Australia has great form when it comes to doing comprehensive, meaningful free trade deals.  Think Japan, Korea and China.

The big winners from a bilateral free trade agreement with the UK will be our agricultural exporters, especially beef, lamb and horticulture.

For Australian consumers, UK-manufactured goods should be cheaper.  For car lovers, this could mean the best of British automotive at more affordable prices.

We'll hopefully see a better deal for Australians wanting to live and work in the UK.

Since 2008 the number of Australians working in the UK has fallen by 40 per cent.

This is a result of unlimited migration from EU countries to the UK.  The only way British governments could control migrant numbers was to clamp down on non-EU migration.

And this meant Australians.

Once Britain formally leaves the EU, the situation for Australians should improve.

Finally, a post-Brexit free trade deal with Britain could mean more UK investment into Australia.

Britain is already our second-largest foreign investor after the US.  An FTA could see the UK foreign investment threshold lifted to $1 billion, in line with other recent FTAs.

Britain is also looking for friends.  British Prime Minister Theresa May wants to make the best of Brexit and this means opening Britain up to the world.

Contrary to those on the liberal Left, Britain will not be isolationist.  Rather, it will once again engage with the world and Australia as it did prior to being sucked into the EU vortex.

Britain is already reorienting its foreign policy away from Europe.  Its early focus is on English-speaking countries like Australia, the US, Canada, and New Zealand.  The common values of the English-speaking world, of liberal democracy, the rule of law, and individual freedoms, have delivered peace and prosperity.  Freed from the inward-looking shackles of Brussels, Britain can work together with Australia in defence of liberal democratic values in international affairs.

At a time when the global strategic landscape is so uncertain, with the rise of Russian influence in the Middle East, an ever belligerent North Korea, and uncertainty over US-China relations, there is a great opportunity for a renewed closeness in Australia's strategic relationship with Britain and for it to be a more thoughtful, strategic presence in our region.

Britain and Australia are two stable liberal democracies bookending a developing, but volatile, Silk Road.

Post-Brexit Britain will turn its focus to the engine room of the global economy, Asia, and how to solve the strategic challenges facing this region.

Australia should welcome this shift.

Diverted Profits Tax Will Go Nowhere

The 40 per cent tax on diverted profits is expected to raise $100 million.  That implies that the federal government estimates a mere $250 million of diverted profits.  To put that figure into perspective, the federal government recently announced a tightening of the rules on the grandparent child care benefit.  That policy change would result in welfare savings of $250 million.

Grandparents allegedly rorting the welfare system are a much bigger budget problem than multinational corporations allegedly rorting the tax system.

Indeed, Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan gave the game away on March 16 when he told a Tax Institute conference that the gap between what large corporates and multinationals pay and what they should pay in tax was "relatively modest" and that "the biggest gap we've got in the system is us" — that is, individual taxpayers.

After five years of hyperventilating about corporate tax avoidance, this is a striking confession.  The previous treasurer Joe Hockey made much of the fact that the ATO had identified 30 multinational corporations likely to offend and had embedded agents in those firms and would carefully investigating their practices.

True, Scott Morrison did say that this diverted profits tax is a tax integrity measure.  Ensuring the integrity of the tax base is a legitimate policy goal.  But a diverted profits tax is a counterproductive and illiberal way to go about it.

UPFRONT LIABILITY

It allows the ATO to impose upfront liability and collect tax on allegedly diverted profits.  It reverses the onus of proof and removes the right to silence — thus multinational corporations the right to natural justice under the Australian legal system.  That is not a reasonable integrity measure but rather a punitive regime that targets foreign investors and successful Australian companies.

This is a policy that substantially increases the powers of the ATO without any governance measures to ensure that abuses do not occur.  No doubt these powers will be exercised by the ATO to collect revenue beyond the amount intended by Parliament.  That is simply the nature of regulatory bureaucracies and it will be small comfort for those multinationals who successfully challenge the ATO that their money is eventually returned to them.

Even more fundamentally, the diverted profits tax doesn't sit well with current policy settings, nor with economic reality.  There is currently a lot of effort and anti-business rhetoric to collect $100 million.  Is it a coincidence that business investment is low?  Or is that government is passing tax laws that violate societal norms of fairness and are creating an uncertain and arbitrary tax environment?

Business doesn't know what tax rate they will face in Australia in years to come.  It could be 30 per cent.  It could go down to 25 per cent over 10 years if the Turnbull government's corporate tax cut goes through.  Or it could be as high as 40 per cent if some Canberra bureaucrat, empowered by the diverted profits tax, gets a bee in their bonnet about multinational structures they do not understand.

There's been a lot of talk about policy uncertainty in the Australian energy market.  With a lot less fanfare the corporate tax confusion is doing the same to the entire corporate sector.  This is not how to ensure jobs and growth.

In the meantime, Australia is facing an international environment where the British Prime Minister is openly discussing turning the UK into a tax haven, and the Trump administration wants to reduce America's corporate tax rate to between 15 and 20 per cent.  The Turnbull government has chosen the wrong time to put multinational engagement with Australia at risk.

18c decision could mark the end of the beginning for PM Malcolm Turnbull

We might soon be approaching the end of the beginning of Malcolm Turnbull's prime ministership.

A harsh critic of his government might argue that since the federal election in July last year the government has meandered through policy and lacked a clear definition of its purpose.

If the leader doesn't know, or doesn't explain what they stand for, voters can't be expected to know either.  And the situation is made worse if those things the leader is perceived to stand for are not in substance very different from what their political opponents say they also stand for.

Slowly, but noticeably, things are beginning to change.  On industrial relations, on fiscal management, and now this week on freedom of speech the Turnbull government is starting to develop a clear picture of what it stands for and position itself as different from Labor.

Importantly it is attempting to frame the debate around values.  The government hasn't completely succeeded yet, but at least it is trying.  On industrial relations, for example, the Coalition presents a picture of a Labor Party in thrall to a militant union movement that regards itself above the law, in contrast to a government that believes in the dignity of work and which therefore won't stand in the way of a cut to penalty rates adjudicated by an independent umpire.

The biggest issue on which the government is still struggling is energy.  Try as it might it simply can't convince the public that the Coalition's renewable energy target of 23.5 per cent by 2020 is responsible and affordable, while the ALP's target of 50 per cent by 2030 is irresponsible and unaffordable.

Turnbull's plan to reform section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is significant for a number of reasons.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

At a practical level, it substantially defangs a dangerous and insidious piece of legislation that's operated to censor political debate in this country.  Full repeal would have been better, and there's no doubt that ultimately section 18C will be repealed in its entirety.  Nevertheless, the PM has made a good start towards restoring freedom of speech in Australia and he should be congratulated.

At the level of internal party politics has bolstered his standing with his backbench and with rank-and-file party Liberal Party members.  They think Turnbull has given them an issue of principle to fight for, and they're right, he has.  On Tuesday morning when the amendments to section 18C were presented to a meeting of Coalition MPs and senators for approval the reforms were overwhelmingly supported.  Out of more than 100 MPs and senators in the room, a small handful offered perfunctory objections not on their substance, but because they feared Labor and the Greens' campaign against the reforms.

It's certainly true there's left-wing opposition to changing section 18C, but if the Coalition refused to act against the manifest injustice and illiberalism of the law for fear of what its opponents would do the Coalition would end up only ever doing doing what their opponents agreed to.

The alternative position taken by the cabinet and the vast majority of the backbench is that the Coalition should stand up for what it believes in, argue its case, and win the battle of ideas.  And in the battle of ideas, there's no bigger battle than the battle for freedom of speech.

The reason why so many commentators persist with the demonstrably wrong claim that "no-one cares about freedom of speech" is a question for another day.  As is the question of how a cause traditionally fought for by the left has come to be portrayed by people like Labor's shadow attorney-general, Mark Drefyus QC, as an "obsession" with a "niche" issue by the "far right".  It would be interesting to know the views of the shadow attorney-general on book burning.

If Malcolm Turnbull spends the next two years talking about values and acting on those values, not only will he be doing good things, he'll give himself a chance of winning the next election.  If instead he devotes his time trying to compete against Labor's big spending promises he'll almost certainly lose.

Hopefully this is the week Malcolm Turnbull discovered what a difference being different makes.

Like It Or Not, Coal Is Still King

On Wednesday, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and CoalSwarm released the 2017 edition of Boom and Bust: Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline, a publication that helpfully tallies up all of the coal-fired power stations in development over the globe.

Predictably, the report got a strong run in the Guardian under the headline "Coal in Freefall as New Power Plants Dive by Two-Thirds" with its authors claiming that a reduction in the rate of growth showed that the shift away from fossil fuels was "unstoppable".

However contrary to Greenpeace spin and The Guardian's gullibility, the report shows that ten times the amount of world coal-fired power stations were under construction in January 2017 (a total of 273 gigawatts) than were retired over the previous twelve months (27 gigawatts).  Hundreds more are also in the planning and pre-construction stages.

Examination of the source documents on the related website also reveals that a total of 62 countries are planning or building a combined 841 gigawatts of new coal-fired power stations.

To put this into a domestic perspective, Australia's total coal-fired capacity is currently around 26 gigawatts.

The report clearly demonstrates that while governments around Australia dither about the best way to keep the lights on and prices low, other countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America are still putting money into new coal-fired power plants while also pursuing renewable opportunities.

Based on the 77 gigawatts of new coal-fired capacity that was completed in the year 2016 alone, if the Greens were successful in closing all of Australia's coal-fired power stations tomorrow, the rest of the world would make up for it in four months then keep on going.

The International Left just can't get its head around the fact that for electricity, as with other commodities, it is demand that ultimately drives supply, not the edicts of government, well-funded NGOs or the United Nations.

The desire of people in the developing world for measurable improvements in heating, cooling, cooking, transport, refrigeration and industrial-scale construction can't be met by intermittent wind or solar power, or by building batteries or interconnectors that don't actually generate new electricity.

The extra 2.5 billion people that will inhabit the world's cities by 2050 will not accept burning wood or dung to cook a meal or to keep warm.

Which is why the International Energy Agency in its November World Energy Outlook predicted that more oil, gas, coal and uranium will be consumed individually and cumulatively in 2040 than in 2014 to meet this demand.

Or that the anti-coal, ecological campaigning organisation BankTrack found in 2015 that global bank financing for coal mines and power stations was still worth $141 billion in 2014 virtually unchanged from the previous year.

The Left just can't seem to get its story straight — is coal already done for and hence Australia needs to get out of the business before it is left stranded or is its use still growing exponentially hence the world needs to sign up for ever-more restrictive trade, emissions and financing rules?

If the Australian public really does support renewables, and renewables are already cheaper than alternatives, then reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher's 1975 declaration that "no Western nation has to build a wall round itself to keep its people in" why does the federal parliament have to keep a law to compel electricity retailers to buy that product?

With its abundance of natural resources, Australia should have the lowest cost and most reliable energy in the world, for households and for businesses.

The federal government should be the guardian of competition in the energy sphere, allowing the private sector to figure out which sources of energy and which technologies will satisfy the most customers at the best price.

To this end, all available fuels including uranium, gas and coal should be on the table and any state or federal laws, rules or practices that prevent this should be repealed.

New technologies that burn less black or brown coal for the same reliable power output or that process nuclear waste into electricity are a better long-term option than the diesel generators the Weatherill Government has secured to prevent summer blackouts before next year's state election or the Turnbull Government's water-dependent "Snowy 2 idea".

The rest of the world is getting on with it, and so should we.

18c: Not Perfect, But A Pretty Good Start

The Turnbull government’s proposed changes to section 18c don’t go all the way, but they’re a pretty good start.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Attorney-General George Brandis announced that section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act would be amended so that it is no longer unlawful to "offend", "insult" or "humiliate" another person because of their race.  In their place, the government proposes to insert the word "harass".

Other changes announced are that the test for assessing whether conduct is unlawful — which is currently what offends a "reasonable member of a relevant group" — will become an objective test based on the assessment of the "reasonable member of the Australian community".  Overdue procedural changes to the Australian Human Rights Commission will also be made.

The words "offend", "insult", and "humiliate" were always the most subjective parts of section 18c.  While it's never wise to predict how courts would apply a law before it's even introduced, it is likely removing these words will raise the threshold for unlawful conduct under section 18c.

The wildcard is the insertion of the word "harass", where there is not a great deal of judicial interpretation.  In the case of Monis v The Queen in 2013, the High Court considered section 471.12 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code which makes it an offence for a person to use a postal or similar service "in a way... that a person would regard as being, in all the circumstances, menacing, harassing or offensive."

Justice Hayne held that "harassing" in this context means "troubling or vexing by repeated attacks".  Justices Crennan, Kiefel and Bell commented that "harassing" together with the word "menacing" implied "a serious potential effect upon an addressee, one which causes apprehension, if not a fear, for that person's safety."

If the courts interpret "harass" in the Racial Discrimination Act in a similar way, then the proposed changes would be an improvement on the existing wording of section 18c.

However, the insertion of the so-called objective test will probably not amount to a substantive change of the law.  This is because it is essentially the same test as currently used in the law.

Section 18c as currently interpreted asks judges to assess whether conduct would offend a "reasonable member of the relevant group".  The proposed "objective" test would require judges to assess the impact of the unlawful conduct on the reasonable member of the Australian community.  However, the basis for section 18c is that a person is affected by the conduct of another person because of their race, colour, ethnic or national origin.  The reasonable member of the Australian community would inevitably have to assess the impact of the alleged unlawful conduct from the perspective of someone with the personal characteristics of the person affected.

While these changes are an improvement, and should be welcomed, even this will run into problems.  After all, Cindy Prior launched a three-and-a-half-year legal saga against Alex Wood and the other QUT students on the basis that their Facebook posts were intimidating.

The only way to guarantee section 18c doesn't infringe on freedom of speech is to repeal 18c entirely.  And the proposed changes are an important first step.

Campus Censorship Ratchets Up

At Middlebury College earlier this month, prominent American sociologist Charles Murray was loudly shouted down.  Students began by reading a prepared statement in a loud, robotic, and cult-like manner, and then through chants that prevented Murray from speaking to the public lecture.  In an encouraging sign, Murray was moved by university administrators to a private recording studio for a streamed debate.  However, the students managed to track him down, bang against the walls, and set off a fire alarm.  When he left the studio the angry mob surrounded Murray, an accompanying academic was injured, and his car was banged and rocked.  The students then followed Murray to dinner, forcing him to make a quick exit.

At Lincoln University, in northern England, Conservative students faced censorship this month after pointing out that their university is intolerant of free speech.  The spiked Free Speech University Rankings 2017 found that 64 per cent of British universities now actively censor speech, and 31 per cent stifle speech through excessive regulation.  These figures have been increasing over the past three years.

The Conservative Society posted the meagre result for their university on their Facebook.  In a blatant display of ironic lack of self-awareness, their student union responded by suspending the society's social media accounts.  It's now a thought crime to question the state of free speech on some campuses.  This comes after students at London universities voted to ban a range of major newspapers from their campuses late last year.

Sadly, the situation is little different in Australia.  My Free Speech on Campus Audit 2016 found that eight-in-ten Australian universities have policies or have taken action that unambiguously threatens free speech.  Just one university has no threats.  Last week, among the furore against Coopers following their sponsorship of a debate on same-sex marriage by the Bible Society, the University of Technology Sydney's student union bar, The Loft, announced that it would no longer be selling Coopers.  This is, of course, a commercial decision that they are free to make.  However, as many have pointed out, the furious response to sponsoring what was a calm and civilised debate between two MPs is farcical.

The shutting down of opposing viewpoints is a particularly worrying sign for a student organisation.  The UTS student bar was quite explicit on this point, declaring in a self-righteous Facebook status that "same-sex marriage should not even be a debate".  Not only is this counterproductive to the cause — how does one achieve same-sex marriage if you're not willing to make the case? — it shows that those who should be most attracted to intellectual debate, students, are no longer willing to engage.

The grievances of the Middlebury College protesters provide telling insight.  The students, who were encouraged by some faculty members, claimed Murray is a racist, white nationalist, pseudoscientist, sexist, eugenicist, and anti-gay.  The last point raises the spectre of just how ridiculous these claims are — Murray is a supporter of same-sex marriage.

The protesters have never actually bothered to read Murray's work or engage with the case he makes.  They were fighting against a devil-like construct that simply does not exist.  This makes the Middlebury College episode a serious concern.  Murray is controversial but not intentionally offensive.  He is no Milo Yiannopoulos, he does not go out there to provoke, he undertakes academically deep research and speaks on his findings.

Murray was at Middlebury to discuss his latest work, Coming Apart.  A book not about racial difference, but rather an exploration of cultural divide between rich and poor whites in American society.  He finds Americans live in geographic enclaves with people like themselves, and the poor have lost connection with the core institutions which made America successful.  These insights are helpful to understand attempts to censor today.

Brookings Institution's Richard Reeves recently crunched the numbers on which American universities are most likely to disinvite speakers.  His analysis had an intriguing conclusion:  the more economically exclusive the institution, the more likely the students have attempted to hinder free speech.  It is the array of wealthy students, who, as Murray has found, live in enclaves disconnected from much of the rest of American society, that are most likely to censor speech.

After the protest at Middlebury an academic at Princeton University, who had organised a less dramatic protest against Murray on her Ivy League campus, was interviewed on Fox News.  "At some point we have to stop paying attention to [his views]," she said justifying attempts to silence Murray.  The state of universities could not be more sufficiently summarised.  Academics and students live in a bubble, assume their viewpoints are right and are to be taken for granted, and no longer wish to engage with debate.  People who disagree with their worldview are persona non grata — rarely invited to campus and censored when they do.

Universities should be places where controversial ideas are debated and discussed, where students and academics from different stripes challenge each other.  Universities need people with different worldviews.  This is the most effective way to increase our understandings of problems.  There is nothing rigorous about academic work that is unchallenged, however too often this is just the case.

The relentless effort to censor differing views is damaging to universities, a core institution that has helped the West achieve substantial progress.  Each case of censorship has a further chilling effect that will only make this worse.  Universities will naturally want to avoid similar furores and publicity, and accordingly are unlikely to invite controversial speakers in future.  The tragedy of modern academia deepens.

There is a better home for superannuation

Giving people access to their own money is an uncontroversial idea.  Young people trying to enter the housing market should be granted access to their own superannuation accounts to help make it happen.

One of the biggest hurdles young people have to clear in buying their first home is saving enough money for a deposit.  It takes time, and with rising house prices, the dream of owning a home keeps moving into the distance.

There is a simple solution to this problem.  Many young people already have a house deposit, or a partial deposit, set aside.  They are just not able to access it because it is locked away in a superannuation account that they are not allowed to get their hands on until they retire.

There are many layers to the senselessness of this policy.  The most obvious is that money in your superannuation account is yours.  You have earned it, and you should be able to do with it what you like.  If you want to use your money to buy a house you should be free to do so.

But even if one accepts the rationale for the current system of government-mandated savings there are a number of reasons why granting access to superannuation for first home buyers makes sense.

Money set aside in your superannuation account is invested in the expectation that the initial capital you have put into the account will grow over the long run until you are ready to retire.  There are a range of investments that you can choose to make, but one of them is property.  Including residential property.

In fact, according to the latest Russell Investments/ASX Long-term Investing Report that is the best investment your superannuation fund could have made over the last 20 years.  Superannuation funds that invested in residential investment property in the 20 years to 2016 returned an average of 9.7 per cent per year, the highest of any investment class measured in the report.  Australian shares returned 9.1 per cent, and Australian listed property gave returns of 6.9 per cent.

So your superannuation fund is very likely to be investing your money in residential property anyway.  It is not much of a leap to allow for that money to be invested in your own home rather than someone else's.

The other thing to keep in mind is how important it is to own your own home in retirement.  The disparity in outcomes between people that own their own home and those that do not is stark.

With house prices continuing to go up, and young people finding it increasingly difficult to get their foot in the door, this problem is set to explode over the coming decades.

The problem of not owning a home in retirement is that you have to keep paying rent right up until the day you die.  Recent research from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute projects that by 2050 there will be 832,319 people over the age of 50 living in private rental accommodation, up from just over 420,000 today.

This is not just a problem for older Australians.  Young people also risk depleting their savings during their working life as they continue to rent before buying a home, potentially offsetting any benefits of forced saving through compulsory superannuation.

We need to be clear about one aspect of this debate:  allowing access to superannuation to buy a home is not going to bring down house prices.  It is much more likely to have the opposite effect.

But this is not a policy aimed at housing affordability.  Only releasing more land and relaxing density restrictions can bring house prices down over the long run.  This is a policy aimed at helping young people to become members of the homeowners' club.

Treasurer Scott Morrison should be applauded for looking at creative solutions to break down the rigidity of the current superannuation investment model.  Allowing individuals to access their own money held in superannuation accounts is not a radical proposal.  Especially if the money is being used to invest.  Giving young Australians the flexibility to use super to invest in their own home is just the kind of positive, forward-thinking policy a modern Coalition government should be championing.

The Turnbull Government Doesn't Understand That Politics Is About Values

Francis Fukuyama, Tony Blair and George Christensen all know something that Scott Morrison and the rest of Malcolm Turnbull's cabinet have not yet realised.  Politics is now primarily about values — not economics.

When cultural values were agreed upon between the major political parties and shared throughout the community, politicians could afford to spend much of the time discussing economics.  It's not that values have ever been less important than economics — because they haven't — it's just that there was no need for politicians to talk about values because those values weren't being challenged or debated.  Until quite recently communities in western liberal democracies had assumed their values were settled and secure.

'MIDDLE-CLASS COMFORTABLE PEOPLE'

Precisely what those values were is the subject of debate, but their broad contours can be discerned.  A commitment to the country in which you lived, as expressed for example by singing the national anthem was one.  Another value was gender equality, expressed for example by men shaking hands with women.  Another was that all people should be equal in the eyes of the law, and treated equally regardless of background.  Those values of culture and society can be given any number of names including "traditional values", "liberal democratic values", or even "the values of Western Civilisation".  Of course whether those values are worth defending is now hotly contested.  In an interview on ABC Radio Canberra last week, Professor Simon Rice, from the Australian National University, said that freedom of speech, something which until recently would have been assumed to be a core liberal democratic value, is only a concern to "white middle-class comfortable people".

Cultural relativism, mass migration, and the development of transnational political governance are all challenging those values.  Voters around the world are increasingly looking to politicians who are at least trying to understand what is occurring.  Whether those politicians can do anything about what's happening is almost beside the point.  Voters want someone to listen to them and acknowledge their concerns.

THE TREASURER DOESN'T UNDERSTAND

Which is why what federal treasurer Scott Morrison said about freedom of speech a few days ago was so jarring.  He said that he didn't even want to talk about freedom of speech in Australia and potential reforms of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act because "this issue doesn't create one job, doesn't open one business, doesn't give anyone one extra hour.  It doesn't make housing more affordable or energy more affordable".  Even Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said freedom of speech "will not build an extra road".  But building roads and restoring freedom of speech are not incompatible.

When Turnbull and Morrison do get the opportunity to fight on their favoured terrain of economics they fluff their lines.  It took them more than a fortnight to decide what to say about the impact on employment of the decision of the Fair Work Commission to cut penalty rates.

What Turnbull and Morrison don't understand is that if they don't want to speak about values, voters will look for someone who does.  George Christensen, the Liberal National Party MP from northern Queensland, is happy to talk about values and strongly supports reforming Section 18C.

EVEN TONY BLAIR GETS IT

Tony Blair in The New York Times last Friday analysed — somewhat ironically given his government's decade-long attempt to dismantle traditional British society — the new politics of values and culture.

"Politics is being reshaped, and this phenomenon is the same whether it is in the United States or in Europe [or in Australia] ... This is a revolution that is partly economic, but mainly cultural ... The causes of this movement are the scale, scope and speed of change.  This is occurring economically as jobs are displaced and communities fractured, culturally as the force of globalisation moves the rest of the world closer and blurs the old boundaries of nation, race and culture."

American political scientist Francis Fukuyama made a similar point in an interview last week.  He is utterly disdainful of Donald Trump and "his utter lack of qualification for the job, be it preparation, character or temperament ...", nevertheless Fukuyama correctly comprehends what got Trump elected president.

For Fukuyama "It's not only economics that drives a people — identity and culture matter, too!  There is currently a minuscule elite that consider themselves as global citizens, where geography and culture don't seem to matter.  If this elite thinks that the rest of the world thinks like them, they're wrong."

Pedestrian signals, pedestrian thinking

Today it was revealed by the Herald Sun that the Committee of Melbourne in conjunction with VicRoads are installing 10 female pedestrian figures at the intersection of Swanston and Flinders streets as part of a 12-month trial.

The Committee of Melbourne, the lobby group behind the change are pushing to achieve 1:1 male and female representation at pedestrian crossings across the state.

Seven members out of their 11-person board are women.  It seems passing strange their main focus is on equalising pedestrian lights when they aren't gender equal themselves.

Using pedestrian signals to virtue signal is utter nonsense.

This is politically correct gesturing by policy makers that want to feel good about themselves.  Ordinary Victorians are concerned about job security, energy prices, rising crime and better transport infrastructure.

The Committee for Melbourne and the Victorian Government said it is a useful way of stamping out unconscious bias in gender.  Really?  Do they really think that men look up at that little green man and think about how they are going to be more oppressive to women?  Your average men and women would think that this initiative is ridiculous gesturing.

Victorian are by and large pretty decent people.  The term unconscious bias assumes the worst in people rather than the best.  No ordinary Victorian is crossing the road looking up and thinking "gee-whiz how am I going to be biased to women today?"

This type of policy assumes there are hidden power structures in society, and that these structures are hidden even from those in a position of power, a simpler explanation is that they don't exist.  It is actually a very divisive policy because it is designed to divide people by gender.

Strangely for a proposal at the cutting edge of gender politics, it also assumes that all women wear dresses, which they certainly do not.  What is next?  Are we going to change baby change rooms from a woman to a man for half of them because of unconscious bias against stay at home dads?

What we are seeing with the traffic lights is actually exactly how a left-wing government like we have in Victoria goes about public policy.

They don't see people as people, but as identities that are assumed to be victims (or oppressors) until proven otherwise.  And view social and economic interactions as motivated by power, rather than being mutually beneficial transactions or relationships.

In short, the pedestrian signs are based on a radical Marxist interpretation of the world.  The lights themselves don't really matter.  But the insidious ideology which underpins them does.

This is a clear example political correctness gone mad, surely policy makers should be putting their time and energy into fixing congestion on our roads.

If this is what our politicians, bureaucrats and policy makers think is the biggest issue facing road users then perhaps it goes a long way to understanding why Victorians are stuck in traffic every day.

The Victorian Government should retreat from this politically correct trial and get on with practical solutions to deal with traffic congestion.

Section 18C Of The Racial Discrimination Act Will Be Repealed

Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act will be repealed.  It won't happen today, and it may not happen in this term of parliament.

But section 18C has become such an iconic issue for such a broad group of Australians that its continuing presence on the statute books is utterly unsustainable — and calls to ignore section 18C and the freedom of speech concerns it raises only act to further motivate those who passionately believe in the repeal of section 18C and the consequent restoration of the human right to freely express oneself.

Perhaps the most significant cohort within this broad cross section is the large number of individuals who make up the bedrock supporter base of centre-right political parties in Australia — those who vote for the Liberals, the Nationals, One Nation, the Liberal Democrats, Family First, and Australian Conservatives.

The views of those in the largest of these groups — the Coalition — could not be clearer.  Polling conducted in September last year by Essential research found that 56 per cent of Liberal and National voters support a proposal to remove the words "offend" and "insult" from section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The position of the membership of the Liberal Party is also unequivocal.  At the most recent meeting of the party's federal council a policy motion calling on the government to support the same proposal was unanimously supported by delegates from every division of the party.

This ought to come as no surprise.  The membership of the Liberal Party in every division, except South Australia and NSW, has passed motions calling for section 18C to be amended.

In the context of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's various interventions on matters of policy and principle, it's not too late for Malcolm Turnbull to reclaim the heart and soul of the Liberal Party.  A decision by Turnbull to put a bill to the parliament to repeal section 18C would be very significant.

This week the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights tabled a report following its inquiry into freedom of speech in Australia.  The committee was asked to address the question of whether Part IIA was operating well, or whether changes were required to fix the operation of the law.

To put it mildly, it's difficult to make the argument that section 18C is operating as it ought to.  Recent complaints under section 18C against newspaper cartoonists, young people engaging in Facebook banter, and churches erecting monuments to WWII sex slaves have sharpened the public's focus on and understanding of this sinister law.

Despite such obvious flaws in the law, a range of views was put to the committee throughout the inquiry process.

Some organisations argued for no change at all, turning a blind eye to the injustices that section 18C has caused, choosing to ignore the destructive impact that this provision has had on the lives of vulnerable young people, and disregarding the liberal democratic traditions upon which Australia has been built.

But by far the largest common recommendation to the inquiry was the outright repeal of section 18C.  These organisations and individuals, recognising the abhorrent effect of the law, submitted that Part IIA has to go.  I was one such individual.

Yet in handing down its report the committee failed to include repeal as one of the options for reform.  This is a glaring omission.

And while the most substantial option for reform listed under recommendation 3 of the report (replacing the words "offend, insult and humiliate" with the word "harass") is a step forward, the best way to describe that option is that it's the only change included in the report that might improve the law.

Just in case I've been unclear — that's not a strong endorsement.  Every other option listed is to do literally nothing or next to nothing.

Treasurer Scott Morrison's comment ahead of the release of the report this week that "this issue doesn't create one job, doesn't open one business, doesn't give anyone one extra hour.  It doesn't make housing more affordable or energy more affordable" is like a red rag to a bull for many who support change — likely including many of the constituents of Cook, the seat which Morrison represents.

The president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, was similarly dismissive:  "The point has been made that these are suggested solutions to a problem that doesn't exist and we really don't have a problem with 18C.  The Australian public doesn't really follow it very much, doesn't really see it as an important on the agenda."

The existential risk for the Coalition is that it is seen to be on the same side of the debate as Triggs, the ALP, and the Greens.  And if that perception takes hold, where do you think Coalition voters will go?

Demand Remains For Free Speech

It is disappointing that the parliamentary committee charged with looking into one of Australia's most insidious anti-free speech laws has failed to recommend its repeal.  The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights tabled its final report on Tuesday following its inquiry into freedom of speech in Australia.  Specifically, the committee was asked to assess the operation of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The report lists a range of options for reform, including replacing the words "offend", "insult", and "humiliate" with "harass".  Nowhere near enough, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Section 18C is a dangerous provision.  It makes it unlawful to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" another person on the basis of "race, colour, or national or ethnic origin".  Its effect is to restrict speech and regulate public debate.

Section 18C is the legal basis on which a complaint was launched against several students at the Queensland University of Technology and, ironically, it's the law that destroyed any chance one young man, Calum Thwaites, had of becoming a teacher helping to educate disadvantaged indigenous kids.

The now infamous complaint against the "QUT three" was started after one of the young men — then a 20-year-old engineering student, Alex Wood — made this comment on an unofficial student Facebook page after being removed from a university computer room reserved for Aboriginals:  "Just got kicked out of the unsigned indigenous computer room.  QUT stopping segregation with segregation?"

For this piece of inoffensive Facebook banter the student, along with several others who commented on the original post, has been dragged through a legal saga lasting almost four years.  Australians recognise this is unacceptable in a country such as ours.  A whopping 95 per cent of Australians believe freedom of speech is either "important" or "very important".  This is according to Galaxy Research polling commissioned last year.

Given that we don't expect many Australians to know the precise name of an obscure piece of legislation such as the Racial Discrimination Act, it's also telling that when asked about a change that would delete the words "offend" and "insult" from section 18C an extraordinary 48 per cent approve.

And yet, when a parliamentary inquiry is set up to look into this issue, the repeal of this un-Australian law is not even listed as an option for reform.  I don't know how anyone can hear the stories of Alex Wood and Calum Thwaites and not recommend the complete repeal of section 18C.

Even if the political class is slow to come around to the idea that our basic liberal democratic traditions are worth defending, there's no doubt progress is being made.  The case for repeal grows stronger every day.

Fake News Meets 18C

Earlier this month Professor Andrew Jakubowitz of the taxpayer-created Cyber Racism and Community Resilience Research Group attempted to debunk a Galaxy Research poll showing a plurality of Australians supported section 18C reform.

As I explained on Flat White, his argument that Galaxy was pushing loaded questions fell apart when exposed to minimal scrutiny.  Professor Jakubowitz's CRaCR later commissioned Essential Research to conduct separate polling, culminating in this article by Jakubowitz, Professor Kevin Dunn and Rachel Sharples that appeared The Conversation on 17 February, arguing "an overwhelming majority of Australians support legislation that prevents insults on the basis of race, culture or religion."

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights in its just-released report into 18C even mentioned this poll as a contrast to the Galaxy poll.  But a deeper look at the polling data shows the survey wording to be fundamentally flawed (if not entirely disingenuous) and the conclusions drawn far-fetched.  The Essential polling included four questions:

Q Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

People should be free to offend someone on the basis of their race, culture or religion...

People should be free to insult someone on the basis of their race, culture or religion ...

People should be free to humiliate someone on the basis of their race, culture or religion ...

People should be free to intimidate someone on the basis of their race, culture or religion...

The pro-18C polling has a glaring omission:  any reference to the "Racial Discrimination Act" or "Section 18C".  Despite being highly recognisable and a prominent feature of public debate for a number of years now, the omitted words are not actually used.  On a question of public policy, which the article at The Conversation explains as being the reason for commissioning the poll in the first place, the failure to refer to the actual law itself makes any conclusions about section 18C highly questionable.

On a deeper level, saying "people should be free" is completely distinct from "it should be against the law".  Take for instance an employee who, as part of their contract of employment, agrees to refrain from making comments that bring their employer into disrepute.  The employee may not be "free" to make certain comments, but it is not a government-imposed restriction on speech in the way that section 18C.

Surveying about opinions "race, culture or religion" is particularly bizarre in light of the fact the wording of section 18C refers to "race, colour or national or ethnic origin".  As even Professor Jakubowitz has explained in 2015, section 18C:  "the Racial Discrimination Act does not cover religion.  Never has, and clearly is very unlikely to in the future."  In an email, Professor Dunn wrote:

[18C] does not currently cover with religion.  Religious discrimination is defined as racism within social science.  Attempts re-frame religious discrimination as not racism are nonsensical.

The "social sciences" may think race and religion are interchangeable, but social science isn't the law.

In light of all this, one would be wary of using the CRaCR survey as an accurate indicator of public opinion about section 18C.

Enter Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, who has tweeted several times to the poll story saying "Research indicates the vast majority of people support the RDA's protections against racial hatred", which was later tweeted by the Australian Human Rights Commission to its 45,000 followers.  Our taxpayer-funded race commentator also referred to the poll when he appeared directly before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights to argue that 18C should be retained:

[The poll] found that well over 75 per cent of those respondents in the survey supported making it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate people on the basis of race.

And later:

I referred earlier to a recent survey done by academics at Western Sydney University and the University of Technology Sydney:  namely, Professors Andrew Jakubowitz and Kevin Dunn, which found that there was robust public support for legal protections against racial vilification.

This is all classic goalpost shifting.  Change the question to get the response you want, then present it as proof of the correctness of your position.  It's deceptive, and it's all done at the taxpayer's expense.

But there is a silver lining.  When the pro-18C side of the debate will resort to doing this, there is no clearer sign that public opinion is moving against them.