Never Forget: We Fought For Freedom

The thousands of Australians who enlisted to fight in the First World War did so because they believed that their liberties were under threat.  They fought for freedom and democracy.

However, Richard Flanagan, the Tasmanian novelist and essayist, has said that Anzac Day is a "dangerous myth" and a "cult", and that the government should not spend $100 million on the Sir John Monash Centre Australian National Memorial in France.

At the National Press Club this week, Flanagan said that of the 62,000 young Australians who died during the First World War, "not one of those deaths ... was necessary".  Their lives, he says, were wasted fighting someone else's war.  It would have been better, he said, if they had all just stayed at home.

But the young men who went to fight certainly didn't think of it as someone else's war and they certainly didn't stay at home.  As history has shown us, Australians "flew to arms in an instant".  Nearly 417,000 Australians enlisted while a total of 318,000 actually ended up sailing overseas.  More than 60,000 were killed and 156,000 were wounded, gassed or taken prisoner.  The population of Australia at the time was only four million.

The 318,000 who volunteered were Empire men, loyal and intensely proud of their British heritage.  Three out of every ten men who enlisted were born in Britain and significant numbers had kinfolk there.

The Australians who fought in World War I knew what was at stake and they knew that it was worth fighting for.

They knew that the defeat of Great Britain and France by Imperial Germany could carry serious consequences for Australia.

They knew that the values of liberty, inquiry, toleration, religious plurality and economic freedom were under threat.  They were fighting to keep the rule of law, that broad set of principles vital to the order and stability of society and which is one of the most effective guards against the wielding of arbitrary power.

They were fighting for the notion of a liberal democracy and the right to vote.  Prime Minister Hughes was unequivocal in his contrast of German militarism and Australian democracy.  "We fight not for material wealth, not for aggrandisement of Empire, but for the right of every nation, small as well as large, to live its own life in its own way.  We fight for those free institutions upon which democratic government rests."

These legal and political rights arrived in the new colony of NSW from Britain in 1788, where the balance between arbitrary power and personal freedoms had already been tried and tested over many centuries.

Australians valued this political inheritance and the precious freedoms went with it.  Those who served in Gallipoli faced dangers and privations that they could not have imagined when they enlisted in Australia to defend these freedoms, values and institutions.

Prime Minister Hughes argued that the Australian sacrifice was so great that by "our deeds on the field of battle we had earned the right to a voice in framing the terms of peace ... This is the price," he reflected, "Australia paid for freedom and safety.  Our heritage, our free institutions of government — all that we hold dear — are handed back into our keeping stained with the blood of sacrifice."

The Monash Centre is a significant project, and the government should fund the museum to honour the Australians who died on the Western Front.  It is not, "at heart a centre for forgetting" as Flanagan would illogically have us believe.  The purpose of the Monash Centre is to commemorate the lives of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for future generations of Australians.

The New Assault On Anzac Day

For the last few years, there has been a growing annual assault against Australian identity.  It starts off in early January, a rude awakening from New Year's celebrations, and rises to a crescendo of shrill hyperbole by Australia Day.  Despite the vast majority of Australians loving our great country and embracing Australia Day, the cries of the anti-Australians are having an impact.  Our own national broadcaster, the ABC, shifted the Triple J Hottest 100 Countdown from its traditional spot on Australia to a more "neutral day".

In this age of identity politics, could Anzac Day be next?

Since its inception in 1916, Anzac Day has been the subject of annual criticism.  Its critics say it glorifies war and militarises our history.  For them, Anzac Day is racist, too masculine and too white.  But the criticism in recent years has taken on a nastier tone.  Just recall last year's Anzac Day when internet-activist Yassmin Abdel Magied wrote an incendiary Tweet:  "LEST.WE.FORGET.  (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine ...)".

Other moves to undermine Anzac Day are more subtle.  This year, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was outed for having tasked bureaucrats to see if Anzac Day should commemorate frontier conflicts with indigenous Australians.  While he backflipped on those plans, Anzac Day as we know it remains under threat.

For Australians, Anzac Day's importance has waxed and waned.  It was originally a day for veterans of the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign to gather to commemorate the fallen.  As time went on, Anzac Day expanded to include all those involved in the First World War, and then veterans from other campaigns.  Participation in Anzac Day waned during the 1960s and 70s, before once more gaining in significance during the 1980s as the RSL relaxed rules relating to relatives marching on behalf of veterans and allowed veterans who had only served in Australia to participate as well.

Over the last decade, attendance at Anzac Day Dawn Services around Australia has grown considerably.  Attendance at the Dawn Service at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra reached a peak of 128,700 in 2015 on the centenary anniversary of Gallipoli.  Despite poor weather in 2017, almost 40,000 attended.  What's more, there is anecdotal evidence that more and more young people are attending these services to pay their respects.

What is the appeal of Anzac Day, particularly for those who have no direct experience of war?

For many Australians, Anzac Day is Australia's truly sacred national day, in contrast to the joyful celebration of Australia Day, or the Allied commemoration of the end of World War II on Remembrance Day.  It's more than about the history of sacrifice in war, although this is incredibly important for our understanding of the day.

Fundamentally, Anzac Day is about values.  It's a day that commemorates our shared Australian values — of mateship and camaraderie, of self-sacrifice, egalitarianism, courage, resilience, loyalty, dignity and respect.  It is also an important reminder of our freedom and the basis on which we have represented our great nation in the face of freedom's opponents.

Some critics of Anzac Day argue that we spend too much money memorialising war and Australians dying in vain.

The cost of the Anzac centenary commemorations from 2014-2018 is estimated at approximately $552 million, with $100 million spent on the newly opened Monash Centre at Villiers-Brettoneux in France.  It's true this is a lot of money.  And when it's our taxes footing the bill, it is fair enough to ask if this is money well spent.

But as the years pass and we lose our direct connection to veterans, isn't it these memorials which act as sober reminders of the sacrifice of war, of the values of freedom that our forebears fought for, and of the herculean efforts that must always be expended to avoid war?  This investment is ultimately about "Lest we forget".  Because it is all too easy to forget, especially the vast majority of us thankfully have no direct experience of war.

Lest we forget is not to glorify war, but cherish and commemorate the profound sacrifice, and remember that war as a method of conflict resolution is to be avoided.

Why It Would Be Wrong Not To Cut Company Tax

Writing in these pages Professor Peter Swan AO has forwarded several arguments against the federal government's proposed company tax rate changes.  While he is a giant of the profession and a treasure to the nation, I hope he has made a rare error.

Professor Swan suggests the government modelling in favour of the company tax rate cuts is entirely flawed.  Undoubtedly, based on past performance, this must be true.  Yet there are some uncomfortable facts that mitigate against all arguments not to cut tax rates.  The progressive left tend to argue that tax rates should not be cut because companies don't pay tax due to avoidance and evasion.  Professor Swan suggests foreign investors don't pay company tax due to their harvesting of franking credits.

The MYEFO estimated company tax would raise $81 billion in 2017-18.  That is a lot of revenue for a tax nobody pays.

It is true that our dividend imputation system renders Australian taxpayers indifferent to company tax rates — but it isn't clear that foreign shareholders are indifferent to Australian taxation.

It is entirely true that in the short run the immediate beneficiaries of a company tax rate cut will be foreigners.  Yet it is also clear the ultimate burden of company tax falls on Australian workers and consumers.  Enriching ourselves by enriching foreigners is a business model that has worked well for a long time.  We can quibble as to the magnitudes to the enrichment, but the principle remains unchanged.

BITTER EXPERIENCE

Professor Swan's claim that the foregone revenue could be better spent by government than by shareholders flies in the face of bitter experience.  Has he seen what Australian governments spend money on these days?  I too support dumping the Paris Agreement and government building efficient base load coal-fired power stations — but that money should be borrowed.  If ever there was a case for public debt that is it;  certainly not dodgy submarines and foreign aid.  As Adam Smith argued, government should engage in public works that are beneficial to a great society, yet not profitable.  Power stations that produce cheap and reliable base load energy must meet those criteria.

He is entirely correct to point to the sovereign risks associated with a future ALP government reversing tax cuts.  Even here, however, the outcome of the next election is in some doubt.  The fact is the ALP economics team, while impressive on paper, is quite weak.  Mistakes are already being made.

Malcolm Turnbull will not be caught out by a second Mediscare tactic and can and will pay hardball on the economy.  Poor preparation in selling complex tax mix changes and large-scale economic reorganisation will be quickly exposed.  Even if a Shorten government were elected, it is an open question as to whether it could legislate tax increases through the Senate.

Winning elections, while campaigning for tax increases, from opposition is difficult.  That is the first challenge Labor faces.  The second challenge is credibility.  Both the Coalition and Labor have the same problem — they both want to campaign on personal tax cuts from a position of budget deficit.  At the same time Labor promises big spending.  John Howard's 2004 campaign slogan comes to mind — who do you trust?

In the meantime we should heed Milton Friedman's tax policy advice — cut taxes for any reason when it is possible to do so.  That possibility arises when spending is under control and budget responsibility has been restored.

Why The Liberal Party Is In So Much Trouble

In the 1980s, the Labor Party implemented the Liberal Party's policies.  Three decades later, policy has come full circle.  Today, the Liberal Party is implementing the Labor Party's policies.  This is the truth at the heart of the divisions among federal Liberal MPs.

In the 1980s, the ALP and Liberals supported the liberalisation of the Australian economy.  Today, the Liberals and the ALP support increased regulation, taxes growing as a share of the total economy, and the implementation of huge government spending programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the national broadband Network, and the "Gonski" changes to school education funding.

As was the case with other social democratic parties across the world, the ALP in the 1980s embraced neoliberalism with the zeal of a convert.  It took the ALP many years and many fraught national conferences to eventually accommodate itself to neoliberal economics — an accommodation that now appears to be ending.  In the United States, it was Bill Clinton, not Ronald Reagan, who balanced the federal budget.  In New Zealand, it was Roger Douglas as a Labour minister for finance who floated the NZ dollar and sold off state assets.

In the 1980s, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating pleaded necessity.  Australia would become a "banana republic" if it didn't adopt "a sensible economic policy" as Keating said in May 1986.

Following the defeat of the Howard government in 2007, the Liberals convinced themselves they needed to accommodate and in some cases even pre-empt the shift to the left of public expectations.  The paradox of Australia's 26 years of uninterrupted economic growth is that the community now believes it is affordable and sustainable for government to keep getting bigger.

FUNDAMENTAL ARGUMENT

The current debates in the Liberal Party over climate change and energy policy and more lately immigration are only the precursors to a much bigger and more fundamental argument about what the post-Howard Liberal Party stands for.  In recent years, Liberal MPs have toed the party line and looked the other way as they've waved through tax increases and levels of government intervention in the economy that would have been unthinkable in the Howard/Costello years.  This attitude of benign neglect of principle from Liberal MPs will change should they lose the federal election.  If the Liberals go into opposition, to use a technical expression, "it will be on for young and old".  To characterise the contours of the potential debate among Liberals as being between "moderates" and "conservatives", as so many commentators do, is to misunderstand the condition of the current Liberal Party.  When it comes to economics, the debate will be between those Liberals who believe in economic liberalism and those who don't.

But in addition to fighting between themselves on economics, the Liberals are fighting about culture.  It will be a two-front war.

Managing debates about matters such as the nature of our national identity and the character of the country's history has traditionally been notoriously difficult for the Liberals.  The Liberals resolutely refuse to engage in the so-called "culture wars" but then complain as the tenor of public debate in this country lurches towards the progressive left.

The Liberals have little experience, and even less capacity to engage in any kind of internal or external debate about philosophical principles.  The evidence for this was most clearly seen in how the Liberal Party managed the issue of same-sex marriage.  The Liberals legislated for marriage equality, but had no idea of how the concept of equality should sit against the ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association.  Liberal MPs did what politicians always do when they don't know what to do — they handed the problem to a committee to solve.

The Labor Party for all of its many faults still has a rough idea of what it stands for.  Whether it puts into practice its slogans of "equality" and "fairness" is arguable — but at least most people can comprehend what those words are supposed to mean.

Malcolm Turnbull is derided for his endless repetition of "jobs and growth".  But in fairness to the prime minister, such a phrase so devoid of meaning, is a form of words Liberal MPs can agree on.

Asking Britain To Apologise For Its Empire Is Lunacy

Emily Thornberry's call for Theresa May to apologise for Britain's "historic wrongs" has caused bemusement here in Australia and doubtless other Commonwealth countries.

What exactly is it that the shadow foreign secretary is ashamed of?  The British Empire gave the citizens of Commonwealth countries law and order, democracy, honest government and free trade.  It suppressed slavery, internal warfare and a plethora of barbaric practices.

The British Empire gave its citizens the opportunity to travel and trade.  It gave them education and employment.  It promoted freedom of speech, freedom of religion and equality before the law.  Britain helped save the world from fascists and hyper-nationalist domination.

It is lunacy to hold people responsible for the crimes of their ancestors.  Should the Italians apologise for having invaded England in Roman times?  Should the French apologise for 1066?  Will Ms Thornberry apologise to all Ulster Catholics for the wrongs committed by her Protestant ancestors who took part in the anti-Catholic "Plantation of Ulster" push in the 1600s?

What is driving this mea culpa mania?  It seems to be a combination of ideas, beliefs and fears which are manifesting themselves in a pathological and ultimately self-destructive aversion to and rejection of the positive aspects of British Empire and western civilisation.  Until as recently as the 1960s, academia saw the Empire as one that had committed crimes and was flawed, but in general was well meaning and a force for good.  Now, the opposite view has become the unquestioned orthodoxy.

Rarely, if ever, do historians acknowledge that western civilisation has done more than any other to relieve the plight of the poor and oppressed.  There is moral revulsion at the very idea of one culture being seen as better than another.  Averse to the capitalism associated with the Empire, they also appear to be exponents of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of the "noble savage", whose perfect existence in a paradisiacal state was corrupted by civilisation and private ownership.

Perhaps Ms Thornberry should reconsider her vocation entirely if she is so ashamed of the institutions of which she is a part.

Hijacking Eureka

The Queensland Teachers' Union decision to decorate every classroom in the state with the Eureka Stockade flag is blatant indoctrination and propagandising, which has no place in our public school system.

In retaliation against a puzzling move by the Australian Building Construction Commission, which has banned the use of the flag, as well as other union logos from construction sites, the union has decided to take the fight to where it clearly does not belong and distorted historical fact to suit its narrative.

The Eureka Stockade is one of the most significant protest movements of nineteenth century Australia.  It was essentially a revolt against higher taxes and big government and it should be celebrated and taught as such.

The fact that Karl Marx, who was in London at the time, closely followed the unrest on the goldfields tells you everything that you need to know about why the movement has adopted this particular historical event and the flag.

Marx even contributed an article about Eureka Stockade to an American publication, casting the rebellion on the goldfields as a failed attempt by the working classes to free themselves from the yoke of the political elite.

Let's look at the facts.  In the 1850s, around 500,000 people paid their own passage on a fast ship to Victoria to seek their fortunes.  When they finally arrived after weeks at sea, they had to buy their own equipment and then walk to Ballarat from either Melbourne or Geelong.

The diggers were actually risk taking, independent workers who used their own money to look for gold.

At the goldfields, each person was allotted a piece of land about the size of a bedroom.  The government then taxed each miner in the form of a licence which had to be paid whether gold was found or not.  The licence fee was exorbitant.

By September 1854, the aggressive hunt for gold mining licences by the authorities increased tensions between the diggers and the colonial government.  Some of the diggers formed themselves into a Ballarat Reform League, led by Welshman Basson Humffray, in order to counter the injustices and official corruption on the goldfields.

They presented the government with a list of demands, taken directly from a British reform movement called Chartism.  Many chartists ended up in the Australian goldfields, and applied the same principles, claiming "an inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called upon to obey — that taxation without representation is tyranny".

The Ballarat Reform League demanded universal male suffrage, the abolition of the requirement that to become a member of parliament you had to own land, payment for MPs, voting by secret ballot, short-term parliaments and equal electoral districts.  In Victoria's 1856 general election, nearly all of these demands had been granted.

The protests also led to a re-writing of Victoria's mining laws and taxes.  The expensive miner's licence was replaced by a cheaper licence, and the tax collected from the goldfields now came in the form of a tax on gold actually found.

If you didn't find any gold, you didn't pay any tax.  The modern equivalent would be that if you don't make any profit, you don't pay any tax.  This is one of the basic rights for which the miners fought, and which appears to be missed by individuals who proudly display the Eureka flag as their Twitter display photos.

One of the labour movement's greatest heroes Peter Lalor, went on to become the member for the new district of Ballarat in 1855 and famously told parliament that "if democracy means opposition to a tyrannical press, a tyrannical people or a tyrannical government, then I have ever been, I am still, and will ever remain, a democrat."

What is more, Lalor refused to be guided by a collective but rather extolled the virtues of a society governed by free people and liberal institutions which were embodied in British constitutional procedures.  He was extremely sceptical of both a powerful working class and an overbearing tyrannical government.

The move by the Queensland Teachers' Union to introduce into the classroom militant unionism through the deliberate distortion of what actually happened during the Eureka rebellion is wrong and it's doing Australian children a disservice.

Teachers should be concentrating their energies on the job at hand, which is to impart knowledge, rather than to radicalise and politicise the children in their charge through the teaching of fabricated history.

AFL Acts As Cheerleaders For Labor's Left Agenda

The decision by the Victorian Government to spend $225 million of taxpayers' money on renovating Etihad Stadium is corporate cronyism of the highest order, and inseparable from the AFL's recent lamentable Left-wing turn.

The government and the AFL announced the funding as part of a package that will also see tens of millions of dollars directed to the improvement of Ikon Park and other facilities used by the AFLW.

In return, the AFL has guaranteed the MCG will host the Grand Final until at least 2057.

While AFL boss Gillon McLachlan might think that this is a "modest sum", all in all, it is a huge handout to Australia's richest and most successful sporting competition.  In 2017, the AFL had revenue of $460 million and a net profit of $48 million.  Yet apparently, it cannot find enough cash to renovate its own stadium.

Etihad Stadium has been owned by the AFL since 2016, after being given a sweetheart deal.  Not only was the stadium built by the government less than 20 years ago, at a cost to the public of $460 million, the construction contract promised the AFL outright ownership in 2025 for a nominal $30 fee.

The AFL then bought out the contract in 2016 for an undisclosed sum, widely reported to be considerably less than the value of the property.

So this is the AFL coming back to the public trough for a second, or even third, helping.  Taxpayers are supposed to think that this deal is great value, with the Grand Final staying at the MCG, money flowing into suburban grounds for AFLW, and the AFL promising to use the subsidy to keep ticket prices low.

This is all rubbish.

The AFL would never move the Grand Final because to do so would be an insult to the game's heartland, its biggest fans, and what is left of its traditions.

The alienation that such a move would cause among Victorian supporters would do untold damage to the code.

Even if the threat was legitimate, that would be all the more reason to turn the deal down.

Governments should not encourage big business to blackmail them for public funding.

Regarding the development of AFLW grounds, is it just luck that Moorabbin Oval and Casey Fields are in marginal electorates?  With this government's record of electoral impropriety, you would have to be gullible to believe it is.

And to believe that the AFL will pass on any of the subsidy to fans, you'd have to be, well, the sort of person who is willing to give hundred of millions of dollars to a successful business — one with a record of extracting huge amounts of money from you — in exchange for a vague promise.  In reality, the AFL will charge whatever the market will bear.

It might be tempting to imagine this deal was hammered out after tough negotiations.  This seems unlikely, given the AFL has become one of the biggest cheerleaders for the Labor government's diversity agenda.

These days, it is almost impossible to go to the footy without being subjected to social justice talking points, a reminder that identity politics is now inescapable.  Indeed, we are told that wanting to escape it is just another expression of privilege.

The real deal is this:  the AFL continues to promote the government's pet causes, and in return, the government continues to support the AFL.

The Idiocy Of Cultural Competence

A conference held last week by the University of Sydney's taxpayer-funded National Centre for Cultural Competence has proven once and for all that Australian universities are not only hotbeds of identity politics, but that they are also imposing this post-modernist madness on society at large, and at society's expense.  Entitled "Cultural Competence and the Higher Education Sector:  Dilemmas, Policies and Practices", the two-day conference was attended by an assortment of academics from both Australian and American universities who gathered together to talk about cultural competence.

Precisely what, however, is cultural competence?  According to the National Centre for Cultural Competence, it is about "respecting and being inclusive of intersectionality, diversity and difference, and addressing inequities created historically, politically and socially".  In more precise, less painfully politically correct parlance, it is the belief that the dominant Anglo-Celtic culture is evil, while all other cultures, without exception, are good.

The proponents of this idea genuinely appear to believe that Anglo-Celtic culture and Western civilisation with which it is associated, have been responsible for all the inequality and suffering that the world has ever known and continues to know.  If this is accepted as fact, then the logical conclusion is that equality can only be achieved if Anglo-Celtic Australia acknowledges the wickedness and failings of its own culture and then discards it in favour of other cultures.

The conference's jam-packed schedule was almost a parody of what one would imagine a conference entirely devoted to something called cultural competence would be.  Words such as "intersectionality", "diversity", "gender", "privilege", "race" and "power" were flung about with reckless abandon and inserted into nearly every title of nearly every session.  The guest star of the show was none other than Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasame, who no doubt delivered his keynote address "Cultural competence and structural racism in the higher education sector and broader society" to rapturous applause.

Sessions on Day One included "Universities replicate white power", "Beyond diversity towards inclusion", "Embedding cultural competence in science curricula" and "An Indigenous cultural competency course:  Talking culture, race and power".  Sessions on Day Two numbered topics such as "Representing race and gender;  Performing and teaching intersectionality in Australia", "Unlearning cultural privilege", and last but not least, "History in the now-decolonising 'top-end' higher education using culturally responsive pedagogy".

That much of the academic confraternity in the West is well and truly wedded to identity politics is in itself an appalling enough state of things.  However, it appears that some of its members have ventured out of the confines of their lecture theatres, classrooms, academic journals and conferences and into the wider world, where they are inflicting this insanity on the rest of us through such dubious bodies as the National Centre for Cultural Competence.

When the National Centre for Cultural Competence was launched in 2013, it was given a whopping $5.6 million of our taxes in addition to the generous subsidies that the university already receives from student fees.  The Centre's mission is to "roll out cultural competence across the University and the broader local, national and international community", and judging from its four-year strategy (2016-2020), it's rolling out cultural competence by the barrel load, courtesy of the taxpayer dollar.

The strategy reveals that the Centre is taking what some would say, is a fairly holistic approach to the task at hand by using a number of measures to achieve 100 per cent cultural competence by 2020.  These are:

1. "Education".  A re-writing of all university curricula, not just the humanities, so that all graduates will think the same way upon leaving university;
2. "Research".  The dissemination of identity politics taught within the university into the wider community;
3. "Culture".  Ensuring the wider community, not just students, are fed a diet of radical identity politics;
4. "Organisational Design".  Ensuring that the decision makers and people running our institutions are all exponents of cultural competence, and finally;
5. "Engagement".  Capturing and controlling social media.

Given its record of late, it should be of no surprise that the University of Sydney is driving this extraordinary push.  Last year, the Dean of the university's Business School teamed up with Tim Soutphommasame to lament what the pair perceived to be a devastating lack of diversity in companies, federal parliament and the public services.  Also in 2017, the university launched its compulsory and Orwellian-esque "Unlearn" initiative, whose purpose appears to be the deprivation rather than the acquisition of knowledge.

Under the watch of the current Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence, the University Union has killed the Debating Society by introducing gender and diversity quotas into proceedings on the grounds that such quotas would put an end to "affluent, white" domination of debating.  Australia's oldest university is now also quite possibly Australia's worst university, as Michael Spence appears to be doing his utmost to destroy the institution from the inside.  Unsurprisingly, Mr Spence is an enthusiastic exponent of cultural competence, and was quoted saying that "It's a core intellectual skill" which he wants embedded as criteria for academic employment and student assessment.

In other words, if you are not deemed sufficiently culturally competent by the university administrators, you simply won't get a job at the university, and you certainly won't get your degree.  Academics such as Mr Spence and his fellow exponents of cultural competence have now cast themselves in the role of social justice warriors, whose ultimate aim is to create a society completely free from inequality and thus the suffering which accompanies it.  However, in their attempt to create this kind of utopia, they are actually creating a dystopia for the rest of us.  And what is more, they are going about it with our money.

Three Steps To Reducing Red Tape For Farmers

Red tape is destroying farming communities, yet the best the Turnbull government can do is launch another review.

At end of March, the government announced it would undertake a review into the red tape imposed on farmers by federal environmental regulation.

But this review, like most others, will end up providing a massive pay day for the bureaucrats who run it, only to sit on the shelf and gather dust for decades to come.

What is so troubling is that the government is not taking this issue seriously.

In announcing the review, the government said they would be "weeding out unnecessary red tape for farmers".

Red tape is more than just a few weeds that need to be pulled out.

Only root and branch reform, involving the total extermination of red tape, and the bureaucratic pests which impose it, will help restore prosperity and opportunity to the agricultural sector.

Here's how to do it.

Firstly, the Commonwealth government should announce a moratorium on all new rules being imposed on the agricultural sector for the next five years.  As it currently stands, many farmers are not even aware of the rules that apply to them.  And how could they be?  Seemingly every week a new rule is introduced at the local, state, or federal level.  Busy and productive landowners simply cannot keep up.  They haven't got all day to sit around reading the official government registrar of new rules when there are fields to be ploughed, cows to be miked, and livestock to be attended to.

Secondly, the Commonwealth government should remove itself from regulating the agricultural sector.  That sector is already heavily regulated at state and local levels.  Additional interference at the federal level just leads to more duplication and overlap.

Thirdly, the greatest red tape impost occurs at the state level through native vegetation regulation.  Such laws require private landowners to maintain or expand the extent of native vegetation on their private property.  This effectively results in the sterilisation of productive farmland, which can severely undermine the economic potential of that farmland and throw farmers and their families into chaos.

Moreover, this is greatly insulting to farmers.  They know far more than city-based bureaucrats about how to sustainably manage their farmland.  After all, many farmers have been on the land for generations.  They know what they are doing.  If green groups feel so strongly about native vegetation, then they should buy their own land, not force farmers to give up their livelihood.

While native vegetation regulation is a state issue, there is one thing the feds can do.  Whenever a state government sterilises privately held land to conserve native vegetation, the Commonwealth government should redirect a portion of the relevant state's GST share to the affected farmer.  This would rapidly change the incentives that state governments face, and ensure farmers are properly compensated for the forced sterilisation of their productive farmland.

But it's not just our farmers that are suffering under the weight of red tape.  Red tape in Australia is at a crisis point.  Each year red tape reduces economic output by a staggering $176 billion, which is 11 per cent of GDP.  This makes red tape Australia's largest industry.

Thanks to red tape and high taxes, business investment in Australia is just 12 per cent of GDP, which is lower than what it was during the economically hostile Whitlam years.  Wages growth is stagnating.  And more than 700,000 Australians are without work.

Now is not the time for another review.  Now is the time for action.  The Turnbull government must cut red tape to unleash to productive potential of Australia's farmers.

Socialist Conceit Not Limited To Coal

"Socialism" is how critics have described the proposal of some federal Coalition MPs gathered together as the Monash Forum that the government build, own, and operate a coal-fired power station.

The proposal certainly is a bit socialist.  However the reality is that the socialism ship sailed some time ago when it comes to energy policy in this country.  In an ideal world, the government would have nothing to do with the running of coal-fired power stations.  Also in an ideal world, household electricity prices in Australia would not have more than doubled over the last decade — as has happened.  The reality is that the government has broken energy policy in this country, and government intervention might be required to fix it.

The federal government building a new coal-fired power station at an estimated cost of between $2 billion and $4 billion is no more socialist than the government spending $6 billion of taxpayers' money to get full ownership of Snowy Hydro Limited and then spending up to another $6 billion constructing the fabled "Snowy 2.0".  Being a bit socialist has never stopped Coalition and Labor governments before.  The government owning a telecommunications company is a bit socialist.  And "socialist" is one word to describe the Turnbull government's legislation giving a government agency the power to decide who can be an executive at a bank and how much they can be paid.

A discussion about socialism in Australia is for another day, but our economy bears no resemblance to the neoliberal nirvana it is often made out to be.  The two most important prices in society — the price of money and the price of personal labour — are basically set by government-appointed committees, namely the Reserve Bank and the Fair Work Commission.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his brilliant book Antifragile — Things that Gain from Disorder, ponders what the average American citizen would say if asked whether a semi-governmental agency "should control the price of cars, morning newspapers, and Malbec wine".  Taleb speculates the citizen would most probably "jump in anger, as it appears to violate every principle the country stands for, and call you a Communist post-Soviet mole for even suggesting it."

As Taleb points out, the Federal Reserve manages and controls the price of another good, called the lending rate.  "The libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul was called a crank for suggesting the abolition of the Federal Reserve, or even restraining its role.  But he would also have been called a crank for suggesting the creation of agency to control other prices."

CONSTANT INTERFERENCE

When he rebuffed the Monash Forum earlier this week, Treasurer Scott Morrison said the government would not subsidise any new coal-fired power stations or indeed any other sort of power station:  "The days of subsidies in energy are over whether it is for coal, wind, solar, any of them."  If only this were true.  If the Renewable Energy Target scheme is not a subsidy to the renewable energy industry, then the Treasurer should explain what else it could be.

The Treasurer also talked of the need to have "the best functioning energy market with the lowest possible price for businesses and for households and this is what the National Energy Guarantee and our energy policies are designed to achieve".  Unfortunately there's no such thing as a "functioning energy market".  What there is instead is constant interference, manipulation, and tampering by state and federal governments in the price and supply of energy in Australia.

The National Energy Guarantee has the same relationship to the concept of the "market" as Politburo elections in the Soviet Union had to "democracy".

As the federal Department of the Environment and Energy explains, the so-called energy market established by the "Energy Security Board" comprises an independent chair and deputy chair "along with the expert heads of the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC), the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)."

No doubt the commissars of energy of Australia of 2018 will create a "market" system every bit as successful and enduring as that invented by the commissars of socialism in Moscow in 1960 as they decided on the "market" for brown shoes in Novosibirsk.

Indigenous Incarceration: Reform Policy Should Not Compromise Equality Before The Law

The exceptionally high rate of incarceration among indigenous Australians requires a policy response that does not compromise equality before the law or community safety.

Over the past decade, the national prison population rose by 43 per cent, with more than a third of this growth the result of more indigenous Australians being incarcerated.  Indigenous Australians are incarcerated at 12.5 times the rate of the non-indigenous.  This statistic should be read against a complex background of higher offending rates, including higher rates of violent offending, and under performance on all metrics of socio-economic wellbeing.

This issue is back on the national agenda following the release last week of the Australian Law Reform Commission' report on indigenous incarceration, Pathways to Justice.  This is a welcome contribution to the debate around criminal justice reform in Australia.

Unfortunately, however, the report makes some recommendations that would undermine the bedrock principle of equality before the law.  There are policy options available to governments that do not infringe on this principle, some of which are also recommended in the report, and these should be preferred.

The most objectionable recommendation of the report is that indigenous status should be considered as a factor in sentencing, on the premise that special notice should be taken of socio-economic disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

All jurisdictions in Australia should reject this recommendation.  Sentencing is the process by which the harm done by an offender is matched to a proportionate punishment.  It takes into account the harm done to the victim and the harm done to society.

It should be obvious that the harm done to a victim does not change depending on the identity of the offender.  Nor is there reason to think that the harm done to ­society is lessened by cultural or racial identification.

Indigenous status has no direct causal connection to offending:  the majority of indigenous Australians are, of course, law-abiding.

It is true that there are socio-economic factors correlated with offending, and that these factors are more present on average in indigenous communities.  But because these factors are taken as relevant to measuring the harm an offence causes society, judges already have discretion to take them into account in sentencing.

For this reason, when the High Court considered these issues, in the Bugmy case, it held that socio-economic disadvantage may be relevant to individualised sentencing but that indigenous status is not.  Judges should be concerned with delivering proportionate punishments that are consistent across types of offending, and universally applicable sentencing principles help to secure this outcome.

On top of this, we need to consider the attitude that differential treatment under the law would ­express.

No matter how it is presented, inconsistency in sentencing communicates that some victims' suffering is somehow more important to society than that of others.  When you consider that the victims of most indigenous offenders are themselves indigenous, this recommendation looks less like compassion towards indigenous Australians and more like the justice system turning its back on them.

Relatedly, this recommendation would also risk ignoring the majority of indigenous Australians who abide by the law and depend on its equal protection, in favour of portraying all indigenous lives and communities as disordered.  It would be to patronise the indigenous with low expectations.

The report makes a point of rejecting concerns about formal equality such as these, claiming instead a preoccupation with "substantive equality".  This is shortsighted.  Equality before the law is a hard-won principle that has emerged over the long course of our civilisation to protect minority rights.  Setting aside this principle would be to wilfully ignore this history and to fail future ­generations.

Moreover, the law's authority depends on its equal application to all of us.  Formal equality is an expression of the identity that we all share, and underpins the trust that holds our society together.

It is lucky, then, that despite what the report's authors might think, there are a number of ways to address indigenous incarceration without abandoning core constitutional principles.  The report rightly notes that incarceration of fine-defaulters is costly and pointless, and this is true for all such offenders, indigenous or otherwise.

The report also recommends addressing the burgeoning remand population by changing bail laws to take account of, for example, different types of housing arrangements.  If this can be done safely, it can also be done universally.  There are also access to justice issues, like the provision of interpreters, that go to the administration of justice and not its content, and these too should attract support from governments.

The high rate of indigenous incarceration can and should be addressed consistent with the traditional principles of our criminal justice system:  fair punishment, personal responsibility, and community safety.  To do anything else would be to retreat from the commitment we all have to one another as Australians.

A Universal Basic Income Would Create A Permanent Underclass

Greens leader Richard Di Natale told the National Press Club yesterday that, because of the changing nature of work, Australia should introduce a universal basic income.  His proposal would be costly, unnecessary and would create a permanent underclass.

A UBI is a liveable, unconditional payment to all citizens.  Theoretically, a UBI could be almost cost neutral if it replaced all welfare, health, education, and housing expenditure.  However, this is not what the Greens are proposing.  Di Natale has called for a UBI in addition to government services.

A UBI equal to the aged pension, which leaves no welfare recipient worse off, would cost an additional $230 billion, according to calculations by the Centre for Independent Studies.  To raise this revenue, it would require a 60 per cent marginal income tax for median earners and 80 per cent for high earners.

Even this, a pure UBI where everyone receives the same payment, is unlikely to eventuate.  In practice, there would be pressure to introduce top-up payments for families, disability, and more.

The UBI would become a more expensive version of our existing welfare system designed to buy off the middle class.

It is also not clear that a UBI is necessary.  UBI proponents typically assert that technology, particularly artificial intelligence, will shortly lead to mass unemployment.

Such predictions are commonplace in history.  In the 19th century, the Luddites violently destroyed machines because they would put artisans out of a job;  and in the 20th century there were similar concerns about computers and the internet.

Widespread joblessness has not eventuated.  Economists Jeff Borland and Michael Coelli of the University of Melbourne recently concluded that technology has not decreased the total availability of work in Australia, and there is a lack of evidence that this will happen in future.

In the 1960s, a quarter of Australians worked in manufacturing;  today it is just 7 per cent.  This has not caused mass unemployment.  The type of work we do has changed.  Technology has made us more productive.  We now do better, higher paying, and more interesting jobs.

The trouble with safety nets is that people get tangled up in them.

The inevitable result of the UBI, paying people to not work, is that fewer people will work.  This would create permanent underclass living at subsistence level — enough to survive, but lacking in the dignity of purpose in life provided by work and envious of those better off.

Meanwhile, the rest of society would be forced to slave away for their benefit.

Both the underclass and the workers would grow frustrated.  This is a model for social collapse, not a visionary plan for the future.

During his speech, Di Natale said full time work in the future may be neither "possible or desirable".  It is no surprise that the Greens, whose support comes from knowledge economy professionals, have a condescending attitude to the working class.  The Greens want those with low skills and education to squander their lives on welfare — rather than everyone having the income and purpose provided by a job.

We should be removing welfare traps, improving skills training, cutting red tape, and reforming industrial relations to get people into work — not encouraging unemployment with massive unaffordable handouts.

Farmers Know Best How To Clear Their Own Land

The Palaszczuk government's proposed regulations on native vegetation attack responsible farming and threaten agricultural development in regional Queensland.

The changes, being considered by a parliamentary committee, reverse a policy that allows farmers to clear high-value agricultural land to put it to productive use.

Those laws were a sensible attempt to find a balance between environmental conservation and agricultural development.  They allowed farmers to extract value from their land while still requiring them to minimise over-­clearing by self-assessing their activities against codes of ­conduct.

The proposed laws are a further step away from balance in favour of environmental absolutism.  The presumption underlying the effective prohibition of agricultural land-clearing is that environmental protection cannot coexist with agricultural development.

Indeed, it suggests that there is no situation where the benefits of developing land could ever outweigh the costs of clearing shrubbery and trees from farmland.

This is extreme and ignores many economic benefits — to farmers and the state and the nation — of releasing land otherwise locked up by the government.  It is not surprising over the period 2012-13 to 2015-16 the gross value of agriculture commodities produced in Queensland increased by almost 30 per cent — about double the national increase — and it became Australia's most valuable agricultural state.

By comparison, the gross value of agricultural production in NSW and Victoria over the same period increased by just 7.9 per cent and 12.46 per cent respectively.

A number of other assumptions are clouding the land-­clearing debate.  Claims that land is being cleared at Brazil-like levels since 2013 are overblown.  In 2015-16 just a quarter of 1 per cent of Queensland's land area was cleared.  And about two-thirds of vegetation management carried out by farmers is to control regrowth areas that had previously been cleared, for routine farm maintenance such as the erection of fences and tracks, and to stop encroachment of trees and shrubs into naturally open grassland areas.

And this doesn't say anything at all about the extent of vegetation that has grown back since 2013.  As The Australian reported yesterday, the Department of Science remote-sensing centre leader Dan Tindall has conceded that the satellite mapping of regrowth is a "very difficult thing to do" and that "the possibility exists" that more trees are growing back than are being cut down.

The reason why land-clearing has not been occurring at reckless rates under laws enacted by the former Newman government is because farmers know how to get the most out of their land in the least destructive way.

This leads to the other assumption underlying environmental absolutism:  the idea that farmers don't know how to manage their land so it must be publicly managed.  In other words, the public interest in environmental conservation means private property rights are irrelevant.

But property rights give land owners an incentive to care for their land — they know their livelihoods depend on environmentally sustainable practices.  This may mean economising land use or the use of more efficient and environmentally friendly ­machinery and technology.

They certainly don't need city-based bureaucrats, professional politicians or coastal activists to tell them how to do their job.

The government also transfers the cost of protecting the environment from the public to the landowners.  This distorts how people understand the costs of environmental-protection regulations.  For instance, the explanatory notes for the new proposals estimate the "financial cost of administering the legislation (to be) cost-neutral", but ignores the very real cost to farmers in lost agricultural production, a cost that flows to consumers across Australia.

Sterilisation of farmland may feel good but it will make life much harder for our farmers.  Nor will it put food on the tables of families already struggling to keep up with the cost of living.  My research last month illustrated how government-regulated and subsidised sectors are driving up the cost of living.  Wage growth has slightly outpaced the increase in food prices since 1997, but this will be more difficult if governments continue to pile regulations on food producers.

Red tape costs the national economy about $176 billion each year in lost economic output.  The Palaszczuk government needs to ignore the environmental absolutists' low-growth agenda and start cutting red tape to unleash prosperity for Queenslanders.

Is It Monash Or Marxist University?

Monash University, the first Australian university to introduce trigger warnings, appropriately begins their "#CHANGEIT" advertising campaign by declaring "SOME OF YOU MAY FIND THE FOLLOWING DISTURBING".

This warning is followed by alt-right figure Richard Spencer being punched in the face, and clips of war zones, extreme weather, poverty, fires, guns, pollution, pandemics, fast food, Wall Street, Donald Trump, and protesters calling for a treaty with Aboriginal Australians and the shutting down of Manus Island.

The theme of the campaign is "Don't like it, change it".  Monash declares, for example, that "If you don't like Australia Day, Change It", sticking their middle finger up at the 70 per cent of Australians who in fact do like Australia Day and do not want the date changed.

The corporate social justice warriors of Monash University are something to behold.  In one breathe they're promoting innocuous scientific research.  In the next, they're calling for a "revolution".  In an accompanying video, one student proudly declares that they want to "to get rid of capitalism".  You know, the system that has produced such immense wealth that means the taxpayers can afford to fund universities like Monash to the tune of billions of dollars.

Monash says "Rebellion strongly encouraged".  But they only endorse a single type of progressive left rebellion.  At no point is Monash encouraging rebellion against identity politics which seeks to dehumanise and separate us.  There is no encouragement of rebellion against undemocratic supernational institutions like European Union, as was embodied by the Brexit campaign.  There is no encouragement of rebellion against red tape that is destroying small businesses, families, and communities.  There is no encouragement of rebellion against groupthink at universities.

There is nothing wrong with a campaign that seeks to inspire students to help improve the world.  The real concern is the presentation of only a progressive left idea of change.

If a university wants to show themselves to be open to intellectual debate and discovery, to pursuing truth and progress, they should appreciate there are a variety of ideas about how to improve the world.

The biggest achievements in humanity during the last 30 years has come not from calling for "rebellion".  Progress has come from the adoption of the free market and free trade in the developing world.  This may not be as dramatic as a punch to the face — but it is responsible for lifting over a billion people out of poverty.  Showing a middle-class Chinese person enjoying the fruits of economic development may not be as sexy as violence — but it might actually teach students something useful.

Advertising campaigns such as Monash's Change It, and Sydney University's "Unlearn" campaign, alienate those with conservative, classical liberal and libertarian perspectives.  What if you are a conservative student or academic who thinks that some of the institutions we have inherited should not be changed?  Or a libertarian who thinks the change we need is more freedom?

Monash University is not doing well in promoting different perspectives.  Monash was the equal third most hostile university to free expression in my Free Speech on Campus Audit 2017.  The university recently introduced a social media policy that forbids students, in activities both related to the university and personal usage, from making comments that "might be construed" to be "offensive".  Ironically, a student criticising the Monash campaign on Facebook could potentially be falling foul of the policy.  So much for "rebellion".

The overwhelmingly negative response to the campaign on the Monash University's Facebook page, and other youth Facebook groups is indicative of how the campaign is already putting off many.

"Why do you promote someone being assaulted in the first frames of your video?" a student asks.  "I saw a bit of Palestinian terrorist throwing rocks.  So it's a lefty video to incite violence.  Self-defeating, isn't it?" one young person writes.  "Monash should change their name to Marxist university," another says.

Universities will only endure with community support if they are places of learning where all ideas can be contested in pursuit of truth and progress.  Explicit ideological tropes are below our places of higher learning.